C.L. Bevill's Blog, page 27
July 18, 2011
Hmm. What the Bleep Shall I Write About Today? OR On Taking My Only Child Shopping
Oh, the topics. Oh, the things that have happened that I feel compelled to discuss. Oh, the fact that I feel compelled to use the word 'compelled' over and over and over again. Compelllllllllllllllled.
Usually what I want to write about is what happened recently. So recently someone (my daughter, Cressy, age 7) wanted to spend her allowance at...(dah-dah-dahhhhhhh) Build-A-Bear. For those of you without children, this is a place where a child picks out a plush animal skin (plush animal = not real) and then proceeds to stuff it, and then dress in it in appropriate accouterments. Then one hands over their entire savings to the clerk in exchange for the privilege of taking one of these genuine Taiwanese beauties home. (Bet most of you don't know what movie I stole that from. HIM doesn't count.) (Hahaha. HIM couldn't remember what movie it came from. I love being a movie buff.)
And furthermore, for those of you without children, one can have parties here. One can have funness and delight overwhelming here. It spooges with the essence of funnocity. (I may be making up words galore here. Me and George W. Bush. We're simpactico. He liked to presideniate. I like to wordiate. Yeah.) One prances into Build-A-Bear and begins giggling immediately. (It's their atmosphere, I believe, or possibly a strange gas that they pump into the air there. Not really their gas. That might have been the broccoli I ate earlier.)
So Build-A-Bear before I veer drastically off course again. Cressy picked out a ice cream themed bear. (Big surprise.) If you're a really savvy parent you can get the child to buy a cheaper bear and then skip the whole ensemble thing to save on money. But most parents won't walk out of Build-A-Bear without paying a minimum of $45 on up. (I'm just saying, if you haven't been there before, you're going to spend a little money. I know.) [image error] Wow. Fat Woman slammed Build-A-Bear. Does this mean I
will never shop there again? No, it doesn't mean that. For
we have purchased one of their bears and there is an unspoken
agreement that I will purchases compliments and stuff
from them until I die or until the bear mysteriously
vanishes in a tragic exploding peanut butter jar
accident. (It happens.)
Okay, the ice cream bear cost $22. Okay then. Then she wanted sound effects to go into the paw. This is a little dohickey that costs $5. It says things like, "I luv you," and "You're my best friend," and "Can you spend more money on me?" (Okay, it doesn't say the last thing, but it should have.) A clerk approached with happiness and effervescence overflowing (I don't mean this is a good thing but the clerks are learning about Asskissing 101 in a way that probably will behoove them later in life. They could be President.)
The bear becomes stuffed through a fun looking machine that spews stuffing around inside it and is visible through a glass window. There's a nozzle attachment on this machine that would make a proctologist nervous. Before the bear is stitched up, the clerk has my daughter put in a little heart. But not before a little ritual about bringing the heart to life is performed. It involved rubbing the heart and dancing around and the sacrifice of a chicken who frankly appeared as if she wanted to be laying eggs somewhere instead. (Okay, exaggerating again, but it sure seemed like it at the time.) And ta-dah, the bear had been constructed. [image error] The ideal toy for your 7 year old child.
Here's where the clerks earned her brownie points. (Not from me, that was sure.) "Be sure and 'wash' off the bear in the back," she said and pointed to the 'Fluffing' area. One must go to the fluffing area by passing through the accessory area. The accessories are located at eye level to my daughter, who is eying them with no little regard. Rather, she's checking out the ensembles with the eye of a woman who has just been given the golden key to the city. She has hit the mother-lode. There is more bling, glamer, and 'it' stuff there than on the Las Vegas strip at sunset.
"Look, Mommy, Hello Kitty shirts," Cressy announced. Certainly, there they are, all in convenient bear size for the plush thing you've just committed yourself to buying. Hello Kitty tank tops. Hello Kitty sequined dresses. Hello Kitty slutty leather skirts. And let us not forget the Hello Kitty line of shoes. There are peep toes, closed toes, stilettos, and twinkly ones. (Hello Kitty dresses much better than I do. But then I don't have to cut off one of my toes to fit into the shoes that look good, either.)
[image error] The bear doesn't really say this, but it's implied."Look, Mommy, wedding dresses," Cressy cooed. Yessirreebob, there are wedding dresses for the bears. There are little tuxedos for the boy bears with teensy weensy bow ties. You can have a Build-A-Bear wedding if you're so inclined and have the black American Express Card. In fact, if I Google it, I bet I'll find that somewhere, someone has gotten married at Build-A-Bear with a stupid bear as the maid of honor and another bear as the best man. (Hold on, I'll be right back. Oh, my goodness gracious, I found the cutest Build-A-Bear wedding ever. The bears got married as officiated by two girls who obviously get into their toys. This is so cute that you may need insulin afterwards. Don't say I didn't warn ya!)
"Look, Mommy, military bears," Cressy shouts. Her Daddy and Mommy were in the military so this calls to Cressy's roots. As a matter of fact, she's got a long line of military on Mommy's side of the family but I'm digressing. There are Army outfits, Marine outfits, Navy, Coast Guard, and indeterminable outfits. They have camouflage outfits. They have matching boots. They've got backpacks and other things I don't even know the name of. (They didn't have little Build-A-Bear weaponry, but I guess they must have thought that was going too far. M-16s dripping with bling = tacky.)
[image error] I swear I heard the bear say this, or maybe that was just me
thinking it. Maybe."Look, Mommy, lots of other bear clothes," Cressy bellows, in case I'm not paying attention. Well, yes, I'm paying attention and apparently, I'm paying for a helluva lot more than attention if I'm not careful. And yes, you can even buy panties for your bear, unless you have an odd compulsion to have your bear go commando.
[image error] It's possible that I'm going overboard with this, but I don't
really care.
So quickly, I point her toward the area where we input all our details into a computer so Cressy's bear can have a 'birth certificate.' Also we can enter all of our information onto the computer so they can sell our information to ANYONE with a checkbook and also send us stuff about Build-A-Bear until the throbbing vein in my forehead explodes. (And hey, do I need to mention that we haven't even made it to the register area yet?)
[image error] You cannot say you didn't laugh at this. This was funny.
Anyway, Cressy got the bear. I think I have a few pennies left in the jar in my closet. Oh, well.
Usually what I want to write about is what happened recently. So recently someone (my daughter, Cressy, age 7) wanted to spend her allowance at...(dah-dah-dahhhhhhh) Build-A-Bear. For those of you without children, this is a place where a child picks out a plush animal skin (plush animal = not real) and then proceeds to stuff it, and then dress in it in appropriate accouterments. Then one hands over their entire savings to the clerk in exchange for the privilege of taking one of these genuine Taiwanese beauties home. (Bet most of you don't know what movie I stole that from. HIM doesn't count.) (Hahaha. HIM couldn't remember what movie it came from. I love being a movie buff.)
And furthermore, for those of you without children, one can have parties here. One can have funness and delight overwhelming here. It spooges with the essence of funnocity. (I may be making up words galore here. Me and George W. Bush. We're simpactico. He liked to presideniate. I like to wordiate. Yeah.) One prances into Build-A-Bear and begins giggling immediately. (It's their atmosphere, I believe, or possibly a strange gas that they pump into the air there. Not really their gas. That might have been the broccoli I ate earlier.)
So Build-A-Bear before I veer drastically off course again. Cressy picked out a ice cream themed bear. (Big surprise.) If you're a really savvy parent you can get the child to buy a cheaper bear and then skip the whole ensemble thing to save on money. But most parents won't walk out of Build-A-Bear without paying a minimum of $45 on up. (I'm just saying, if you haven't been there before, you're going to spend a little money. I know.) [image error] Wow. Fat Woman slammed Build-A-Bear. Does this mean I
will never shop there again? No, it doesn't mean that. For
we have purchased one of their bears and there is an unspoken
agreement that I will purchases compliments and stuff
from them until I die or until the bear mysteriously
vanishes in a tragic exploding peanut butter jar
accident. (It happens.)
Okay, the ice cream bear cost $22. Okay then. Then she wanted sound effects to go into the paw. This is a little dohickey that costs $5. It says things like, "I luv you," and "You're my best friend," and "Can you spend more money on me?" (Okay, it doesn't say the last thing, but it should have.) A clerk approached with happiness and effervescence overflowing (I don't mean this is a good thing but the clerks are learning about Asskissing 101 in a way that probably will behoove them later in life. They could be President.)
The bear becomes stuffed through a fun looking machine that spews stuffing around inside it and is visible through a glass window. There's a nozzle attachment on this machine that would make a proctologist nervous. Before the bear is stitched up, the clerk has my daughter put in a little heart. But not before a little ritual about bringing the heart to life is performed. It involved rubbing the heart and dancing around and the sacrifice of a chicken who frankly appeared as if she wanted to be laying eggs somewhere instead. (Okay, exaggerating again, but it sure seemed like it at the time.) And ta-dah, the bear had been constructed. [image error] The ideal toy for your 7 year old child.
Here's where the clerks earned her brownie points. (Not from me, that was sure.) "Be sure and 'wash' off the bear in the back," she said and pointed to the 'Fluffing' area. One must go to the fluffing area by passing through the accessory area. The accessories are located at eye level to my daughter, who is eying them with no little regard. Rather, she's checking out the ensembles with the eye of a woman who has just been given the golden key to the city. She has hit the mother-lode. There is more bling, glamer, and 'it' stuff there than on the Las Vegas strip at sunset.
"Look, Mommy, Hello Kitty shirts," Cressy announced. Certainly, there they are, all in convenient bear size for the plush thing you've just committed yourself to buying. Hello Kitty tank tops. Hello Kitty sequined dresses. Hello Kitty slutty leather skirts. And let us not forget the Hello Kitty line of shoes. There are peep toes, closed toes, stilettos, and twinkly ones. (Hello Kitty dresses much better than I do. But then I don't have to cut off one of my toes to fit into the shoes that look good, either.)
[image error] The bear doesn't really say this, but it's implied."Look, Mommy, wedding dresses," Cressy cooed. Yessirreebob, there are wedding dresses for the bears. There are little tuxedos for the boy bears with teensy weensy bow ties. You can have a Build-A-Bear wedding if you're so inclined and have the black American Express Card. In fact, if I Google it, I bet I'll find that somewhere, someone has gotten married at Build-A-Bear with a stupid bear as the maid of honor and another bear as the best man. (Hold on, I'll be right back. Oh, my goodness gracious, I found the cutest Build-A-Bear wedding ever. The bears got married as officiated by two girls who obviously get into their toys. This is so cute that you may need insulin afterwards. Don't say I didn't warn ya!)
"Look, Mommy, military bears," Cressy shouts. Her Daddy and Mommy were in the military so this calls to Cressy's roots. As a matter of fact, she's got a long line of military on Mommy's side of the family but I'm digressing. There are Army outfits, Marine outfits, Navy, Coast Guard, and indeterminable outfits. They have camouflage outfits. They have matching boots. They've got backpacks and other things I don't even know the name of. (They didn't have little Build-A-Bear weaponry, but I guess they must have thought that was going too far. M-16s dripping with bling = tacky.)
[image error] I swear I heard the bear say this, or maybe that was just me
thinking it. Maybe."Look, Mommy, lots of other bear clothes," Cressy bellows, in case I'm not paying attention. Well, yes, I'm paying attention and apparently, I'm paying for a helluva lot more than attention if I'm not careful. And yes, you can even buy panties for your bear, unless you have an odd compulsion to have your bear go commando.
[image error] It's possible that I'm going overboard with this, but I don't
really care.
So quickly, I point her toward the area where we input all our details into a computer so Cressy's bear can have a 'birth certificate.' Also we can enter all of our information onto the computer so they can sell our information to ANYONE with a checkbook and also send us stuff about Build-A-Bear until the throbbing vein in my forehead explodes. (And hey, do I need to mention that we haven't even made it to the register area yet?)
[image error] You cannot say you didn't laugh at this. This was funny.
Anyway, Cressy got the bear. I think I have a few pennies left in the jar in my closet. Oh, well.
July 14, 2011
Enter the Chicken Woman OR Sometimes When I Shop I Run Intro Strange People OR OMG Calm Down, I Won't Freak Out If You Don't Know the Answer
Warning: No Chicken Women, cats, chickens, X-Acto knife blades, or illustrators were harmed in the making of this blog, but their ears might be burning.
Recently I went to Lowe's to find X-Acto knife blades. If you do not know what a X-Acto knife is, do NOT fret. I shall explain. (Because it might be funny and I love to amuse myself. Also because it might be really funny.) These are little knives with handles about the size of pencils (the handles are the size of pencils, not the knives.) They are used for arts and crafty stuff. Once upon a time when Fat Woman was in the US Army (I was) and I was an illustrator (They did have those - 81E was the MOS, and that's Military Operating Speciality or something close to those initials.) (OKAY, I've been corrected. MOS stands for Military Occupational Speciality. Sheesh. It's been decades since I was in the Army; I'm entitled to be forgetful.)
[image error] We had to do bomb checking and trimming rose bushes
because we were pretty much the bottom of the heap
and the job was considered so not-important that
we were kind of surplus. It was okay. I got pretty
good at trimming rose bushes. Too bad, I never
learned what a bomb was supposed to look like.
But if I had my X-Acto knife, I could have
cut & pasted the holy living hell out of it.So I was like, a glorified graphic artist, except we did a lot of cutting and pasting. There was no graphics program on a computer. There wasn't anything computerized. There was something called a Compugraphic 7500 (5500? 6500? 2 1/2? Seriously, what kind of herbal remedy is it that helps with memory? What was I saying?) This machine made letters on paper. You had to change the type faces by physically changing the typeface within the machine itself. And, what I remember the most, you had to cut and paste a BUNCH! (I'm getting to the point. Stick with me. Look, puns. Point. Stick.) Well, the X-Acto knife was an illustrator's best buddy. (Ask any 81 Echo from the seventies and eighties. Well, find one first. Then ask them.) I might even have slept with mine. (Might have slept with the X-Acto knife, NOT all the 81 Echoes. Potty brain.)
We kept X-Acto knives by the dozens. I believe we even hoarded the little bastards from each other. Here's a picture:
[image error] Jeez, this is fuzzy.
Here's another picture that you don't have to cross your eyes at and then fill in the blanks (That's kind of like voting.):
[image error] There ya go. Fond memories. I could use that sucker
just like the guy at Benihana's. (I sliced the crap out
of my hand once when I slipped, but it was only once. See, I learned
from my mistake.)You may be asking yourself, 'Why is Fat Woman showing me pictures of knives?' I'm getting to it. I've got an art project going on and I needed a sharp blade to do some precision slicing. (It's a collage. Lots of fun with Mod Podge and clippings galore. Hey, I've got a 7 year old, it's summer time, and we can do collages or we can watch Spongebob until our brains internally combust in a way that involves brains leaking messily out of the ears. What would you do? And yes, only I get to wield the X-Acto knife blade with handle.)
Anyway, I went to Lowes to find more X-Acto knife blades. I figure Lowe's has got stuff like that. It's also got other stuff I needed at the time, so I combined a trip. Plus Cressy likes to climb on the riding lawn mowers. (She has a secret dream of riding one of those bad boys up and down the aisles and making people jump into the bags of grass fertilizers to avoid being mowed down like vacuous animals on an isolated road while she laughs like a deranged maniac. Yee-haw! Wait, maybe that's me.)
So I went to the proper locale in the store to find the smaller hand tools and I looked about. Cressy was helpful. Her: "Does it look like that?" Me: "No." Her: "Does it have a green package?" Me: "No." Her: "Does it light up and twirl?" Me: "No." Her: "Is it bigger than a bread box?" Me: "No, if you're quiet for the next five minutes, I'll take you to Dairy Queen for ice cream." Her, innocently: "I didn't say anything, Mommy."
I couldn't find it. There were box cutters. Lots of box cutters. In every size, shape, and variety. (Clearly, they didn't get the 9/11 memo.) There was refills for box cutters. Lots and lots of refills for box cutters. So I looked in the other aisles and I couldn't find them. There was a convenient Lowe's clerk standing on one side restocking a shelf. I asked her.
This was my mistake. Somewhere an alarm should have gone off. MISTAKE! MISTAKE! MISTAKE! You know, kind of like Robbie the Robot flailing about and yelling, "Danger, Will Robinson!"
She was a fifty something old woman in the standard Lowe's smock, restocking a shelf, and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone. I should have read between the lines. I did not. Instead, I asked, "Do you happen to know where you keep X-Acto knife blades?" I wasn't rude. I wasn't demanding. I was matter-of-fact. She had the smock on. It had the logo on it. She had a name tag that I didn't read. She worked there. It was an undeniable fact. Technically speaking, there was nothing wrong with asking her for a little help.
However, she looked at me and made fluttering motions with her hands. Then she made a squawking noise that sounded like a chicken who has just been poked in the ass with something sharp. (I won't explain how I know that particular noise but it has to do with growing up in rural Oregon and not having much to do in the summer. See, collages = good. Kids running around chasing chickens = bad.)
[image error] It was like Siamese twins separated at birth. Really.
I swear to Colonel Sanders that she made a squawking sound. May he come back from the grave and ban me from KFC forever if I'm lying. (I really, really, really like KFC, so this would be a bad thing for me. As God is my witness, I shall never be banned from a KFC. Or as Will Rogers would have said, if he had been a middle aged, sarcastic Fat Woman, "I never met a KFC I didn't like.") [image error] What does this have to do with Chicken Woman? Not a lot, but
since I was thinking about it, I feel compelled to say
that Will Rogers NEVER met my neighbor. I like
this joke because first, you have to know who
Will Rogers was ( a famous humorist/entertainer from
the early 20th century) and second, you have to
know that he's infamous for saying the above statement.
Also I'm pretty sure he didn't meet Charles Manson,
Sarah Palin, and Kenneth Lay. But I'm digressing rapidly.Then Chicken Woman began to bounce up and down in position. Her head began to jerk out and back in. Those hands kept twitching spasmodically. Finally, she gathered herself and said, "What's a X-Acto knife blade?"
"It's just a little blade that you use-" and before I could finish Chicken Woman hopped down the aisle and pointed out the blades that one would use for a saw. (Like the kind of saws used on a tree or in a horror movie. Either one. I'm pretty sure that Chicken Woman never saw that movie. She would have plotzed.)
"That's not what I mean," I said slowly, starting to comprehend that Chicken Woman wasn't all there. She took me to the location where they keep the axe blades. She was following a trend here. If there was a blade, possibly what I wanted was located near it. If she showed me all of the blades, then possibly I would leave her alone.
[image error] Will Rogers never met MELLOW!
Okay, veering off the subject, but if I left Mellow out
she might get her feelings hurt. (Mellow is my sister's cat and
the object of recent taunting. I might be beating a dead horse.
But WTH?)"It's a little knife that has a blade on the end of it," I said. She squawked and fluttered over to the section where they keep the band saw blades.
"The handle is about the shape of a pencil," I added and she fluttered and pecked her way back to the box cutters. (If only I'd had seeds and corn to throw to her.)
"It's not really there," I said. "Do you know if you have..." I trailed off because I think she realized that she wasn't going to be able to answer my question and her body began to shudder nervously. Her hands palpitated up and down. She said, "I don't know if I...maybe if I can...possibly it's in..." and I persued her quivering shape up and down the rows in the tool section. At one point in time she looked at me as though I was about to explode.
I was being very polite. I don't normally get rude with people who are genuinely trying to help. But Chicken Woman got more and more flustered. She didn't know what I wanted and she didn't know how to help me and she didn't have a check sheet of what to do if this was ever the case. She stared at me, made little cluck-cluck-cluck noises and convulsively trembled. I swear I glanced over my shoulder because I thought I would see someone standing there with a large sign that was directed at her, 'If you don't answer this customer's question correctly, you will be blown up by a bomb!' But there was only Cressy there, thinking about Dairy Queen and ice cream. (I don't think my 7 year old daughter could be mistaken for an explosive device. Maybe when she's thirteen.)
[image error] Consider this as the background of the entire Chicken Woman event.And would you believe this only made it worse. At this point in time, I was just going to let it go because clearly I was upsetting this woman. I really didn't want to upset her. She didn't have the answer and I figured out that she didn't have the answer. It wasn't a big deal. I was going to say something like, "Well, I guess you don't have it. I'll just go to Michael's or A.C. Moore's for it," but Chicken Woman squawked again and yelled spastically, "IT'S IN THE PAINT SECTION!" Then she sprinted/hopped for that section not bothering to see if I was following her.
Well, I felt kind of bad for her, so I went along. After all, she was giving it the old college try, or at least, some kind of try. Cressy didn't care one way or the other. Her little brain was dancing with thoughts of ice cream. Voila, in the paint section there were NOT X-Acto knife blades. There were these little mini-box cutter type knives. (Apparently, they had fled from the larger box cutter society in the tool section to form their own society in the paint section.)
As trembling, shaking, knee-knocking Chicken Women was absconding back into the familiar territory of tool world, I said, "Do you know where a large metal ruler can be found?" before I could help myself. I got that there, but only after a great deal of confusion about what 'a large metal ruler' really meant. But I never got the stupid X-Acto knife blades. I went home and used a box cutter. Thffppt.
In conclusion, I don't have to make stuff up for blogs. Nope. Nee nop ba nopity nopus. No. Why? Because Chicken Woman is alive and well and working at Lowe's.
Recently I went to Lowe's to find X-Acto knife blades. If you do not know what a X-Acto knife is, do NOT fret. I shall explain. (Because it might be funny and I love to amuse myself. Also because it might be really funny.) These are little knives with handles about the size of pencils (the handles are the size of pencils, not the knives.) They are used for arts and crafty stuff. Once upon a time when Fat Woman was in the US Army (I was) and I was an illustrator (They did have those - 81E was the MOS, and that's Military Operating Speciality or something close to those initials.) (OKAY, I've been corrected. MOS stands for Military Occupational Speciality. Sheesh. It's been decades since I was in the Army; I'm entitled to be forgetful.)
[image error] We had to do bomb checking and trimming rose bushes
because we were pretty much the bottom of the heap
and the job was considered so not-important that
we were kind of surplus. It was okay. I got pretty
good at trimming rose bushes. Too bad, I never
learned what a bomb was supposed to look like.
But if I had my X-Acto knife, I could have
cut & pasted the holy living hell out of it.So I was like, a glorified graphic artist, except we did a lot of cutting and pasting. There was no graphics program on a computer. There wasn't anything computerized. There was something called a Compugraphic 7500 (5500? 6500? 2 1/2? Seriously, what kind of herbal remedy is it that helps with memory? What was I saying?) This machine made letters on paper. You had to change the type faces by physically changing the typeface within the machine itself. And, what I remember the most, you had to cut and paste a BUNCH! (I'm getting to the point. Stick with me. Look, puns. Point. Stick.) Well, the X-Acto knife was an illustrator's best buddy. (Ask any 81 Echo from the seventies and eighties. Well, find one first. Then ask them.) I might even have slept with mine. (Might have slept with the X-Acto knife, NOT all the 81 Echoes. Potty brain.)
We kept X-Acto knives by the dozens. I believe we even hoarded the little bastards from each other. Here's a picture:
[image error] Jeez, this is fuzzy.
Here's another picture that you don't have to cross your eyes at and then fill in the blanks (That's kind of like voting.):
[image error] There ya go. Fond memories. I could use that sucker
just like the guy at Benihana's. (I sliced the crap out
of my hand once when I slipped, but it was only once. See, I learned
from my mistake.)You may be asking yourself, 'Why is Fat Woman showing me pictures of knives?' I'm getting to it. I've got an art project going on and I needed a sharp blade to do some precision slicing. (It's a collage. Lots of fun with Mod Podge and clippings galore. Hey, I've got a 7 year old, it's summer time, and we can do collages or we can watch Spongebob until our brains internally combust in a way that involves brains leaking messily out of the ears. What would you do? And yes, only I get to wield the X-Acto knife blade with handle.)
Anyway, I went to Lowes to find more X-Acto knife blades. I figure Lowe's has got stuff like that. It's also got other stuff I needed at the time, so I combined a trip. Plus Cressy likes to climb on the riding lawn mowers. (She has a secret dream of riding one of those bad boys up and down the aisles and making people jump into the bags of grass fertilizers to avoid being mowed down like vacuous animals on an isolated road while she laughs like a deranged maniac. Yee-haw! Wait, maybe that's me.)
So I went to the proper locale in the store to find the smaller hand tools and I looked about. Cressy was helpful. Her: "Does it look like that?" Me: "No." Her: "Does it have a green package?" Me: "No." Her: "Does it light up and twirl?" Me: "No." Her: "Is it bigger than a bread box?" Me: "No, if you're quiet for the next five minutes, I'll take you to Dairy Queen for ice cream." Her, innocently: "I didn't say anything, Mommy."
I couldn't find it. There were box cutters. Lots of box cutters. In every size, shape, and variety. (Clearly, they didn't get the 9/11 memo.) There was refills for box cutters. Lots and lots of refills for box cutters. So I looked in the other aisles and I couldn't find them. There was a convenient Lowe's clerk standing on one side restocking a shelf. I asked her.
This was my mistake. Somewhere an alarm should have gone off. MISTAKE! MISTAKE! MISTAKE! You know, kind of like Robbie the Robot flailing about and yelling, "Danger, Will Robinson!"
She was a fifty something old woman in the standard Lowe's smock, restocking a shelf, and studiously avoiding eye contact with anyone. I should have read between the lines. I did not. Instead, I asked, "Do you happen to know where you keep X-Acto knife blades?" I wasn't rude. I wasn't demanding. I was matter-of-fact. She had the smock on. It had the logo on it. She had a name tag that I didn't read. She worked there. It was an undeniable fact. Technically speaking, there was nothing wrong with asking her for a little help.
However, she looked at me and made fluttering motions with her hands. Then she made a squawking noise that sounded like a chicken who has just been poked in the ass with something sharp. (I won't explain how I know that particular noise but it has to do with growing up in rural Oregon and not having much to do in the summer. See, collages = good. Kids running around chasing chickens = bad.)
[image error] It was like Siamese twins separated at birth. Really.
I swear to Colonel Sanders that she made a squawking sound. May he come back from the grave and ban me from KFC forever if I'm lying. (I really, really, really like KFC, so this would be a bad thing for me. As God is my witness, I shall never be banned from a KFC. Or as Will Rogers would have said, if he had been a middle aged, sarcastic Fat Woman, "I never met a KFC I didn't like.") [image error] What does this have to do with Chicken Woman? Not a lot, but
since I was thinking about it, I feel compelled to say
that Will Rogers NEVER met my neighbor. I like
this joke because first, you have to know who
Will Rogers was ( a famous humorist/entertainer from
the early 20th century) and second, you have to
know that he's infamous for saying the above statement.
Also I'm pretty sure he didn't meet Charles Manson,
Sarah Palin, and Kenneth Lay. But I'm digressing rapidly.Then Chicken Woman began to bounce up and down in position. Her head began to jerk out and back in. Those hands kept twitching spasmodically. Finally, she gathered herself and said, "What's a X-Acto knife blade?"
"It's just a little blade that you use-" and before I could finish Chicken Woman hopped down the aisle and pointed out the blades that one would use for a saw. (Like the kind of saws used on a tree or in a horror movie. Either one. I'm pretty sure that Chicken Woman never saw that movie. She would have plotzed.)
"That's not what I mean," I said slowly, starting to comprehend that Chicken Woman wasn't all there. She took me to the location where they keep the axe blades. She was following a trend here. If there was a blade, possibly what I wanted was located near it. If she showed me all of the blades, then possibly I would leave her alone.
[image error] Will Rogers never met MELLOW!
Okay, veering off the subject, but if I left Mellow out
she might get her feelings hurt. (Mellow is my sister's cat and
the object of recent taunting. I might be beating a dead horse.
But WTH?)"It's a little knife that has a blade on the end of it," I said. She squawked and fluttered over to the section where they keep the band saw blades.
"The handle is about the shape of a pencil," I added and she fluttered and pecked her way back to the box cutters. (If only I'd had seeds and corn to throw to her.)
"It's not really there," I said. "Do you know if you have..." I trailed off because I think she realized that she wasn't going to be able to answer my question and her body began to shudder nervously. Her hands palpitated up and down. She said, "I don't know if I...maybe if I can...possibly it's in..." and I persued her quivering shape up and down the rows in the tool section. At one point in time she looked at me as though I was about to explode.
I was being very polite. I don't normally get rude with people who are genuinely trying to help. But Chicken Woman got more and more flustered. She didn't know what I wanted and she didn't know how to help me and she didn't have a check sheet of what to do if this was ever the case. She stared at me, made little cluck-cluck-cluck noises and convulsively trembled. I swear I glanced over my shoulder because I thought I would see someone standing there with a large sign that was directed at her, 'If you don't answer this customer's question correctly, you will be blown up by a bomb!' But there was only Cressy there, thinking about Dairy Queen and ice cream. (I don't think my 7 year old daughter could be mistaken for an explosive device. Maybe when she's thirteen.)
[image error] Consider this as the background of the entire Chicken Woman event.And would you believe this only made it worse. At this point in time, I was just going to let it go because clearly I was upsetting this woman. I really didn't want to upset her. She didn't have the answer and I figured out that she didn't have the answer. It wasn't a big deal. I was going to say something like, "Well, I guess you don't have it. I'll just go to Michael's or A.C. Moore's for it," but Chicken Woman squawked again and yelled spastically, "IT'S IN THE PAINT SECTION!" Then she sprinted/hopped for that section not bothering to see if I was following her.
Well, I felt kind of bad for her, so I went along. After all, she was giving it the old college try, or at least, some kind of try. Cressy didn't care one way or the other. Her little brain was dancing with thoughts of ice cream. Voila, in the paint section there were NOT X-Acto knife blades. There were these little mini-box cutter type knives. (Apparently, they had fled from the larger box cutter society in the tool section to form their own society in the paint section.)
As trembling, shaking, knee-knocking Chicken Women was absconding back into the familiar territory of tool world, I said, "Do you know where a large metal ruler can be found?" before I could help myself. I got that there, but only after a great deal of confusion about what 'a large metal ruler' really meant. But I never got the stupid X-Acto knife blades. I went home and used a box cutter. Thffppt.
In conclusion, I don't have to make stuff up for blogs. Nope. Nee nop ba nopity nopus. No. Why? Because Chicken Woman is alive and well and working at Lowe's.
July 11, 2011
Seriously OR An Explanation for Bubba Fans OR Here Fat Woman Goes Again
[image error]
Yes, I know. I've told you all I write novels, too. (Hey, not only am I a funny blogger, but I write books, too! Are there no ends to my multitalentedness? I think I made up a word.) I write a lot. What's really popular right now is the Bubba books.
Bubba and the Dead Woman and Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas. It's about a good old boy in Texas who happens into murder mysteries. (Oh, my goodness, does that really happen?) Most folks love Bubba. They write me emails. They say all kinds of nice things. They ask me when the next one is coming out. (November/December, depending on the whimsical fates and how fast I can type and proofread. Yes, to some of you who believe I CANNOT proofread. I do. Apparently, I can't make all of you happy.)
[image error] And no, I'm not ranting about poor reviews this time. (Surprise, since HIM, the man to whom I'm married, gets to hear this all the time. HIM is probably sighing with utter relief at this very moment.) No, it's another 'complaint' I get frequently. Most folks are reading one of my books and then they go and get another one of my books and they're dismayed that they're NOT EXACTLY the same style. Even worse, it may not even be the same genre. Bubba and the Dead Woman and Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas ARE the same style and genre. The problem arises when one of the readers reads, say, Bubba, and then reads The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager or Shadow People which are action/adventure/whoa-hold-onto-your-seat novels. Scarlet Tanager is suspense, pure and simple. Shadow People is paranormal suspense. No Basset hounds named Precious in either one of them.
For the most part, I like all of my novels. I wouldn't have epubbed (made up another word) them if I didn't. I have a few in my computer that I'm not sure if I'll ever publish. (I'd have to rewrite them and then sprinkle pixie dust on them and think happy thoughts. Wait, that's Peter Pan. I'd have to do something to them, because they're...baaaaaad.) But there is one that I'm holding onto because it's a Civil War mystery. It's a good book but since it's a historical mystery and supposed to be number one of five, I'm disinclined to make it public right now. (I love Geoffrey Rush from Pirates of the Caribbean.) I'm also disinclined, you see, to write the four sequels that it desperately needs right away, and piss lots of readers off because the four don't automatically follow along. I just re-read the book myself and it's damn good but since I'm committed to Bubba right now, I can't submerge myself into Civil War history and pretty much make myself into a Civil War Zombie. Really, I would be thinking like a Confederate soldier for the next six months and it kind of melts my brain into mush. (Screaming "Run! It's the Yankees! Dixie forever!" while I'm in the grocery line wouldn't go over well, even living in Manassas.)
Let me put it another way. If I wrote Civil War mysteries, then I couldn't write Bubba mysteries. Or the steampunk suspense fantasy one that I really, really, really, really want to write. (So that one will wait a little bit.) And I couldn't write the third Bubba book, which is boiling about in my brain RIGHT NOW. (I hear the gasps of horrified dismay. So relax. I AM writing Bubba the third and I AM doing it right now.)
[image error] BUT, but, but here's the thing that I wanted to explain to people who wonder/complain/marvel at the way I can alter my style from book to book. It's hard to describe but I finally thought of a way to do it. I'm going to use a metaphor! It's chintzy but it makes the point.
Writing a novel is like painting a picture.
It needs to be big and bold and in red and centered. Maybe underlined and italicized too. Maybe it should go on a coaster on Chili's. It should be in a fortune cookie at a Chinese food restaurant. Well, maybe not.
Writing a novel is like painting a picture.
(I'm also an artist and I've got lots of neat stuff in my house.) You see, none of the pictures that I paint will ever be the same as another one, no matter how hard I try to make the same. A few savvy people have noticed that the two Bubba books are even a little different. (I wrote the first one in 1999 and the second one in 2010, so that's a big difference.) For one thing, I headhopped like crazy in the first book. (Incidentally, the very first person to complain about vainglorious headhopping in Bubba just posted a review on either bn or amazon as I was writing this today. See, someone was paying attention.) I stuck to Bubba's perspective in the second book, with a few jaunts into Miz Demetrice's and Precious's heads. Honestly it made for a better book. (AND BY GOD, I CUT WAY DOWN ON THE COMMAS!) (I mean, I stopped to ask myself every time I hit the comma key, 'Do I really need that comma? Is that comma truly necessary? Would that sentence work without a comma?' And Jeez, who needs that kind of pressure?)
[image error] Yes, I know this has NOTHING to do with this blog, but
I haven't harassed my sister's cat, Mellow, in two blogs, so
it needed to be done. And yes, I know, I already used
this one maybe twice. I'm lazy. What can I say?
I get an idea for a book. Sometimes I remember how it came about. Sometimes I don't. It kind of settles in my brain and ferments. While I'm writing, I often will go to bed at night, dreaming about what's happening in my book. Sometimes I'll have vivid dreams about what will happen next in the book. I suppose it's a way of allowing my mind to brainstorm. Anything goes, and often does, when I'm contemplating plots. I usually have a rough outline but it never gets followed explicitly. Things happen and then the novel magically elongates. Mostly it elongates so much that I have to go back and cut stuff out because I made it too bleeping long. Stephen King had a neat phrase for this. He called it literary elphantitus. (And heyheyhey, Steve, if you're reading this blog, let me know, because I would just die if you read my blog.) I've never had the problem of my works being too short. (The novellas don't count because they were supposed to be short.)
So the point of the story for those people who complain about my genre shifting and style bouncing and whatever else you'd like to call it, writing is like painting a picture. I'm going to make sure that at the end it's pretty and cool and great to look at, but it isn't ever going to be exactly like the other picture that you really, really, really, really, really, really liked. As a matter of fact, it might be better.
Bubba and the Dead Woman and Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas. It's about a good old boy in Texas who happens into murder mysteries. (Oh, my goodness, does that really happen?) Most folks love Bubba. They write me emails. They say all kinds of nice things. They ask me when the next one is coming out. (November/December, depending on the whimsical fates and how fast I can type and proofread. Yes, to some of you who believe I CANNOT proofread. I do. Apparently, I can't make all of you happy.)
[image error] And no, I'm not ranting about poor reviews this time. (Surprise, since HIM, the man to whom I'm married, gets to hear this all the time. HIM is probably sighing with utter relief at this very moment.) No, it's another 'complaint' I get frequently. Most folks are reading one of my books and then they go and get another one of my books and they're dismayed that they're NOT EXACTLY the same style. Even worse, it may not even be the same genre. Bubba and the Dead Woman and Bubba and the 12 Deadly Days of Christmas ARE the same style and genre. The problem arises when one of the readers reads, say, Bubba, and then reads The Flight of the Scarlet Tanager or Shadow People which are action/adventure/whoa-hold-onto-your-seat novels. Scarlet Tanager is suspense, pure and simple. Shadow People is paranormal suspense. No Basset hounds named Precious in either one of them.
For the most part, I like all of my novels. I wouldn't have epubbed (made up another word) them if I didn't. I have a few in my computer that I'm not sure if I'll ever publish. (I'd have to rewrite them and then sprinkle pixie dust on them and think happy thoughts. Wait, that's Peter Pan. I'd have to do something to them, because they're...baaaaaad.) But there is one that I'm holding onto because it's a Civil War mystery. It's a good book but since it's a historical mystery and supposed to be number one of five, I'm disinclined to make it public right now. (I love Geoffrey Rush from Pirates of the Caribbean.) I'm also disinclined, you see, to write the four sequels that it desperately needs right away, and piss lots of readers off because the four don't automatically follow along. I just re-read the book myself and it's damn good but since I'm committed to Bubba right now, I can't submerge myself into Civil War history and pretty much make myself into a Civil War Zombie. Really, I would be thinking like a Confederate soldier for the next six months and it kind of melts my brain into mush. (Screaming "Run! It's the Yankees! Dixie forever!" while I'm in the grocery line wouldn't go over well, even living in Manassas.)
Let me put it another way. If I wrote Civil War mysteries, then I couldn't write Bubba mysteries. Or the steampunk suspense fantasy one that I really, really, really, really want to write. (So that one will wait a little bit.) And I couldn't write the third Bubba book, which is boiling about in my brain RIGHT NOW. (I hear the gasps of horrified dismay. So relax. I AM writing Bubba the third and I AM doing it right now.)
[image error] BUT, but, but here's the thing that I wanted to explain to people who wonder/complain/marvel at the way I can alter my style from book to book. It's hard to describe but I finally thought of a way to do it. I'm going to use a metaphor! It's chintzy but it makes the point.
Writing a novel is like painting a picture.
It needs to be big and bold and in red and centered. Maybe underlined and italicized too. Maybe it should go on a coaster on Chili's. It should be in a fortune cookie at a Chinese food restaurant. Well, maybe not.
Writing a novel is like painting a picture.
(I'm also an artist and I've got lots of neat stuff in my house.) You see, none of the pictures that I paint will ever be the same as another one, no matter how hard I try to make the same. A few savvy people have noticed that the two Bubba books are even a little different. (I wrote the first one in 1999 and the second one in 2010, so that's a big difference.) For one thing, I headhopped like crazy in the first book. (Incidentally, the very first person to complain about vainglorious headhopping in Bubba just posted a review on either bn or amazon as I was writing this today. See, someone was paying attention.) I stuck to Bubba's perspective in the second book, with a few jaunts into Miz Demetrice's and Precious's heads. Honestly it made for a better book. (AND BY GOD, I CUT WAY DOWN ON THE COMMAS!) (I mean, I stopped to ask myself every time I hit the comma key, 'Do I really need that comma? Is that comma truly necessary? Would that sentence work without a comma?' And Jeez, who needs that kind of pressure?)
[image error] Yes, I know this has NOTHING to do with this blog, but
I haven't harassed my sister's cat, Mellow, in two blogs, so
it needed to be done. And yes, I know, I already used
this one maybe twice. I'm lazy. What can I say?
I get an idea for a book. Sometimes I remember how it came about. Sometimes I don't. It kind of settles in my brain and ferments. While I'm writing, I often will go to bed at night, dreaming about what's happening in my book. Sometimes I'll have vivid dreams about what will happen next in the book. I suppose it's a way of allowing my mind to brainstorm. Anything goes, and often does, when I'm contemplating plots. I usually have a rough outline but it never gets followed explicitly. Things happen and then the novel magically elongates. Mostly it elongates so much that I have to go back and cut stuff out because I made it too bleeping long. Stephen King had a neat phrase for this. He called it literary elphantitus. (And heyheyhey, Steve, if you're reading this blog, let me know, because I would just die if you read my blog.) I've never had the problem of my works being too short. (The novellas don't count because they were supposed to be short.)
So the point of the story for those people who complain about my genre shifting and style bouncing and whatever else you'd like to call it, writing is like painting a picture. I'm going to make sure that at the end it's pretty and cool and great to look at, but it isn't ever going to be exactly like the other picture that you really, really, really, really, really, really liked. As a matter of fact, it might be better.
July 10, 2011
LOOK, I Made the Background a NEW Color! Or How Cressy Wandered into the Room Whilst I Was Looking at Assorted Backgrounds
This is a very short blog. The title pretty much says everything. Let's see if I can refrain from expounding in a lengthy fashion. (Short pause for effect.) Well, hell, I guess I can. Look at the pinkity, pink, pinkaroo pinkiness. I'm stuck with this until she forgets that she told me to choose this color scheme. It looks like Pepto Bismo threw up on my blog. Haha. I'm so funny.
July 7, 2011
On Having a Daughter OR Don't Stare Luridly at My Child OR I Might Be Oversensitive On This Issue
So anyone who knows me or reads my blog knows I have a 7 year old daughter. Her name is Cressy and she's a lot of fun. See the picture below for uncontroversial proof. This would go down in a trial, see.
[image error] Could be a vampire. Could be a walrus.
Could be playing with her food
at Micky D's.Sometimes she's a big pain in the patootie (and I'm an angel, hahaha) but mostly she's not. Her biggest issues now are how fast is the beach vacation coming and whether or not she can get other kids to play with her. As a matter of fact, she goes right up to strange kids that she's only seen for two seconds and jumps right in. (She's got a little kid radar. A kidar. She really does. She can locate any kid of the correct age within a one mile circumference. Or maybe she's like a shark and smells blood from two miles away. Either one.) ("Will you play with me?" "I don't know you." "It's okay, we'll get to know each other while we play.") So this works for her about fifty or sixty percent of the time. Impressively, she doesn't give up easily. That's called fortitude. I think that's a good trait.
[image error]
I'm trying to picture this working for an adult and all I can think of is the guy who wanted to go eat chicken wings with me. (See 'The Strange Attack of the Fifty Foot Tall Mr. Chickenwings OR How I Was Hit On While in Walmart' from February 2011.) So was that the way he learned to socialize? If you throw out enough lines, something will bite? (Uh-oh, for some reason I'm resorting to fishing/fish analogies. Must be because there was just a fishing contest at our club. There's a big carp in the pond that everyone wants to catch and his name is Big Bubba. (Incidentally, that's a coinkydink. I named my character, Bubba, YEARS AND YEARS ago.) I'm rooting for the carp. I wanted him to leap out of the pond, jam a hook through the kids' lips and say, "See how you like that, mutha!")
Anyway, the problem with that line is that while it's cute coming from a 7 year old, it's desperate coming from a forty-something year old man at Walmart. Or any other Mart for that matter. ("Hey, you want to play with me? I've got chicken wings." Seriously, go read the blog mentioned above. It's still funny. Somewhere there's a very lonely man with a clam shell full of chicken wings looking for the perfect Fat Woman to hook up with.) (See, hook? I didn't mean to make a fishing pun, but I did.)
[image error] Okay, back to the point of the blog before I get seriously distracted. (Look, a plane, a flying tomato, a way of turning steam into natural energy to save the masses from annihilation. See, my mind just wanders aimlessly.)
[image error] What does this have to do with the point of the blog?
I do not know, but it's funny, so just go with it.Ah, yes. The last two weeks of school and my daughter got off the bus one day. She said, "A boy wants to give me a diamond." One might imagine the reactions that I have to such a statement. (And God forbid, I should tell HIM, the man to whom I've been married and the father of the 7 year old, because he will mention shovels, shallow graves, and whupass all in the same sentence.) But back to my reaction: 1) I want to climb on the bus, grab the boy by his shirt and tell him that my daughter is off limits. 2) I want to say, "Does it come with a diamond grading certification?" 3) I want to ask my daughter, "Did he ask you to do something for the diamond?" 4) I want to follow the bus to the boy's house and sneak over later to break both of his little playah kneecaps. 5) I want to call in my last favor from Don Georgio so this kid and his entire family, who are undoubtedly culpable, will go sleep with the fishes. (Dang. Another fish reference. Something's wrong with me today.)
[image error]
But what I really said was, "Sometimes boys say things they don't mean."
Cressy's response, "Oh, he's giving me a diamond. He said so."
My reaction to that, "I just don't want you to be disappointed in case he doesn't do what he says. Sometimes people lie." (I didn't say, "Sometimes boys lie," but I could have. I restrained myself. Really I did.)
Cressy was adamant, and she doesn't even know the meaning of that word. "He'll give it to me."
So the next day when she got off the bus, she said, "The boy didn't give me a diamond. You were right, Mommy." And although she was miffed with the boy for not living up to his declaration, she was not entirely upset.
Me: "I'm sorry, baby. Sometimes it's just the way people are."
But two days later, she skipped off the bus and triumphantly presented me with a small, iridescent, plastic bead. "That boy gave me a diamond, after all, Mommy." There was a smug note of victory in her voice. ("Yeah, Mommy, a boy gave me a diamond. What did you get? Huh, Mommy?")
[image error]
Of course, I was tempted to say that the small, iridescent, plastic bead wasn't really a diamond, but I didn't. She had her moment of conquest over the male species and who was I to take it away from her? Besides I was more concerned about other things. "This boy who gave you a diamond didn't want you to do anything for him, did he?"
Cressy, putting her small, iridescent, plastic bead to the sunlight so that she could better observe the shine and sparkle of it: "No."
Me: "Like, he didn't want you to kiss him?" (I mean, how much can happen in a school bus? Maybe I shouldn't ask that. I'm not cut out for some of this mommy stuff. She's not even a freaking teenager yet. I'm starting to see the appeal of chastity belts.)
Cressy, turning the small, iridescent, plastic bead left and right in the light: "Yucky, Mommy. I would never kiss a boy." (Well, that's telling me. I wonder if I can get that in writing. Maybe notarized officially and all that. At least until she's...oh...thirty-five.)
Me: "So is this boy in your class?"
Cressy: "No, he's an older boy."
Me (WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Ah-oog-AHH! (That's the submarine sound that they make when they're getting blitzed by the Germans or Japanese in WWII) Mommy is having a...moment.): "How much older?"
Cressy, who was in first grade at the time of the alleged 'diamond' incident: "Oh, he's a fourth grader."
[image error]
Me, quickly doing the math in my head. ('Hmm. She's seven. So that makes him ten. I need to rethink my stance on asking for that final favor from Don Georgio, because this little older SOB is slobbering over my daughter.') Finally, I said: "Okay, it's probably better if you don't take things from strangers."
Cressy, snatching her small, iridescent, plastic bead out of the light, and clutching it tightly in her hand, as if I was about to take it away from her: "Okay." But she wasn't happy with me.
But heyheyhey, I had officially set the precedent and that had been years before. When Cressy was a cute little baby and an adorable little toddler, people would fall over backwards to give her things. ("OH, how precious. Have a balloon." "OH MY GOSH, she's a little button. Have a little toy." "OH, isn't she absolutely cutsy-wootsy-mootsy. Here's a little lollipop for her." And yes, someone actually once said the phrase, 'cutsy-wootsy-mootsy' in reference to my daughter. I don't have to make that up.) So if it was okay then, what's wrong with it now?
Cressy looked at me expectantly, protecting her small, iridescent plastic bead in her hand as if I was a ravaging Mongol Horde charging over the steppes intent on pillaging and other stuff. I said lamely, "It's just that sometimes people expect things back when they give stuff. And you don't have to do anything for anyone." (Except Mommy and Daddy and the IRS and maybe Santa Claus, but not the smelly Santa from the mall, only the real one, and where the hell am I going with this? I do not know.)
Okay, that wasn't lame, it was well and truly, HORRIBLY LAME!!!!!
I never saw that one coming. When I first discovered I was going to have a daughter and started blaring the news loudly, no one ever told me, "OMG, wait until strange boys start 'giving' her things. You're gonna be sooorrrrrrreeeeeee."
So when we got home, Cressy made the small, iridescent, plastic bead into a necklace and wore it for approximately 24 hours. Then it disappeared into a drawer and she hasn't brought it up since. Go figure.
And I think I have a strange compulsion to go eat at Long John Silver's. Something fishy, I expect.
[image error]
[image error] Could be a vampire. Could be a walrus.
Could be playing with her food
at Micky D's.Sometimes she's a big pain in the patootie (and I'm an angel, hahaha) but mostly she's not. Her biggest issues now are how fast is the beach vacation coming and whether or not she can get other kids to play with her. As a matter of fact, she goes right up to strange kids that she's only seen for two seconds and jumps right in. (She's got a little kid radar. A kidar. She really does. She can locate any kid of the correct age within a one mile circumference. Or maybe she's like a shark and smells blood from two miles away. Either one.) ("Will you play with me?" "I don't know you." "It's okay, we'll get to know each other while we play.") So this works for her about fifty or sixty percent of the time. Impressively, she doesn't give up easily. That's called fortitude. I think that's a good trait.
[image error]
I'm trying to picture this working for an adult and all I can think of is the guy who wanted to go eat chicken wings with me. (See 'The Strange Attack of the Fifty Foot Tall Mr. Chickenwings OR How I Was Hit On While in Walmart' from February 2011.) So was that the way he learned to socialize? If you throw out enough lines, something will bite? (Uh-oh, for some reason I'm resorting to fishing/fish analogies. Must be because there was just a fishing contest at our club. There's a big carp in the pond that everyone wants to catch and his name is Big Bubba. (Incidentally, that's a coinkydink. I named my character, Bubba, YEARS AND YEARS ago.) I'm rooting for the carp. I wanted him to leap out of the pond, jam a hook through the kids' lips and say, "See how you like that, mutha!")
Anyway, the problem with that line is that while it's cute coming from a 7 year old, it's desperate coming from a forty-something year old man at Walmart. Or any other Mart for that matter. ("Hey, you want to play with me? I've got chicken wings." Seriously, go read the blog mentioned above. It's still funny. Somewhere there's a very lonely man with a clam shell full of chicken wings looking for the perfect Fat Woman to hook up with.) (See, hook? I didn't mean to make a fishing pun, but I did.)
[image error] Okay, back to the point of the blog before I get seriously distracted. (Look, a plane, a flying tomato, a way of turning steam into natural energy to save the masses from annihilation. See, my mind just wanders aimlessly.)
[image error] What does this have to do with the point of the blog?
I do not know, but it's funny, so just go with it.Ah, yes. The last two weeks of school and my daughter got off the bus one day. She said, "A boy wants to give me a diamond." One might imagine the reactions that I have to such a statement. (And God forbid, I should tell HIM, the man to whom I've been married and the father of the 7 year old, because he will mention shovels, shallow graves, and whupass all in the same sentence.) But back to my reaction: 1) I want to climb on the bus, grab the boy by his shirt and tell him that my daughter is off limits. 2) I want to say, "Does it come with a diamond grading certification?" 3) I want to ask my daughter, "Did he ask you to do something for the diamond?" 4) I want to follow the bus to the boy's house and sneak over later to break both of his little playah kneecaps. 5) I want to call in my last favor from Don Georgio so this kid and his entire family, who are undoubtedly culpable, will go sleep with the fishes. (Dang. Another fish reference. Something's wrong with me today.)
[image error]
But what I really said was, "Sometimes boys say things they don't mean."
Cressy's response, "Oh, he's giving me a diamond. He said so."
My reaction to that, "I just don't want you to be disappointed in case he doesn't do what he says. Sometimes people lie." (I didn't say, "Sometimes boys lie," but I could have. I restrained myself. Really I did.)
Cressy was adamant, and she doesn't even know the meaning of that word. "He'll give it to me."
So the next day when she got off the bus, she said, "The boy didn't give me a diamond. You were right, Mommy." And although she was miffed with the boy for not living up to his declaration, she was not entirely upset.
Me: "I'm sorry, baby. Sometimes it's just the way people are."
But two days later, she skipped off the bus and triumphantly presented me with a small, iridescent, plastic bead. "That boy gave me a diamond, after all, Mommy." There was a smug note of victory in her voice. ("Yeah, Mommy, a boy gave me a diamond. What did you get? Huh, Mommy?")
[image error]
Of course, I was tempted to say that the small, iridescent, plastic bead wasn't really a diamond, but I didn't. She had her moment of conquest over the male species and who was I to take it away from her? Besides I was more concerned about other things. "This boy who gave you a diamond didn't want you to do anything for him, did he?"
Cressy, putting her small, iridescent, plastic bead to the sunlight so that she could better observe the shine and sparkle of it: "No."
Me: "Like, he didn't want you to kiss him?" (I mean, how much can happen in a school bus? Maybe I shouldn't ask that. I'm not cut out for some of this mommy stuff. She's not even a freaking teenager yet. I'm starting to see the appeal of chastity belts.)
Cressy, turning the small, iridescent, plastic bead left and right in the light: "Yucky, Mommy. I would never kiss a boy." (Well, that's telling me. I wonder if I can get that in writing. Maybe notarized officially and all that. At least until she's...oh...thirty-five.)
Me: "So is this boy in your class?"
Cressy: "No, he's an older boy."
Me (WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! Ah-oog-AHH! (That's the submarine sound that they make when they're getting blitzed by the Germans or Japanese in WWII) Mommy is having a...moment.): "How much older?"
Cressy, who was in first grade at the time of the alleged 'diamond' incident: "Oh, he's a fourth grader."
[image error]
Me, quickly doing the math in my head. ('Hmm. She's seven. So that makes him ten. I need to rethink my stance on asking for that final favor from Don Georgio, because this little older SOB is slobbering over my daughter.') Finally, I said: "Okay, it's probably better if you don't take things from strangers."
Cressy, snatching her small, iridescent, plastic bead out of the light, and clutching it tightly in her hand, as if I was about to take it away from her: "Okay." But she wasn't happy with me.
But heyheyhey, I had officially set the precedent and that had been years before. When Cressy was a cute little baby and an adorable little toddler, people would fall over backwards to give her things. ("OH, how precious. Have a balloon." "OH MY GOSH, she's a little button. Have a little toy." "OH, isn't she absolutely cutsy-wootsy-mootsy. Here's a little lollipop for her." And yes, someone actually once said the phrase, 'cutsy-wootsy-mootsy' in reference to my daughter. I don't have to make that up.) So if it was okay then, what's wrong with it now?
Cressy looked at me expectantly, protecting her small, iridescent plastic bead in her hand as if I was a ravaging Mongol Horde charging over the steppes intent on pillaging and other stuff. I said lamely, "It's just that sometimes people expect things back when they give stuff. And you don't have to do anything for anyone." (Except Mommy and Daddy and the IRS and maybe Santa Claus, but not the smelly Santa from the mall, only the real one, and where the hell am I going with this? I do not know.)
Okay, that wasn't lame, it was well and truly, HORRIBLY LAME!!!!!
I never saw that one coming. When I first discovered I was going to have a daughter and started blaring the news loudly, no one ever told me, "OMG, wait until strange boys start 'giving' her things. You're gonna be sooorrrrrrreeeeeee."
So when we got home, Cressy made the small, iridescent, plastic bead into a necklace and wore it for approximately 24 hours. Then it disappeared into a drawer and she hasn't brought it up since. Go figure.
And I think I have a strange compulsion to go eat at Long John Silver's. Something fishy, I expect.
[image error]
July 3, 2011
Various, Sundry Stuff That I Feel COMPELLED to Discuss OR WTH, Let It Rip and Not In a Bad Way (HIM Said, 'Pull My Finger!')
Warning: This is a truly silly blog. My mind just went wherever the hell it wanted to go. So if you don't have a sense of humor, you shouldn't read this. Stop before it's too late. Whoops. Now you've done it.
Have a great Independence Day! I'm pretty sure there were fat women in the Revolutionary War. They were cooking. Or doing something equally interesting. Spying maybe. Definitely nagging. ("I want tea. And independence. Those English guys who live in our house are really annoying me. Do something.")
[image error] I'm not being disrespectful. It's just that I'm CERTAIN
there was an unappreciated Fat Woman somewhere
in the Revolutionary War and I feel compelled to
make note of it.That being said, it's a great day to just write about whatever topic floats through my mind. I'm exercising the rights that a bunch of really great people fought and died over. And besides, sometimes I just let things rip, because it's fun and because you never know what might pop out. (That's how I come up with some my best novels.)
[image error] For those of you who don't keep up with my blog, (go and read some of it,it's
terribly funny, you might shoot peas out of your nose) this is another
dig at my sister's cat. Her name (the cat) is Mellow and I'm pretty
sure she's all about Independence Day. Especially for the
liberation of tuna fish cans.So those of you who are still with me, get ready for an immediate change in the direction of my thinking. Here goes. Recently I ranted about my least favored neighbor and forgot to do an illustration of this person. There it is, in full Fat Woman Melodrama. (Of course, when someone else does it, it's pronounced Dram-a. Long a. Get it right. If I do it, it's drama, short a. If this person does it, it's Dram-a. Long a. Big difference. Plus it's my blog and I can say what I want to as long as I don't defame anyone.) (Celebrities and politicians do not count. Godzilla sucks toes. The Vice President thinks about gay men in bathrooms. I'm pretty sure. I'd like to see him prove that he doesn't think about it, and if he wasn't thinking about it, he is now, especially after he read this. Sorry Joe, it had to be said. Incidentally, does that mean that he's a bad VP? No, but it does mean that I'm completely messed up sometimes. Okay, the VP really DOES NOT think about gay men in bathrooms. Maybe he thinks about polka dotted underwear.) Anyway back to my artistic vision.
[image error] I love Autodesk Sketchbook.So where is my mind leading me? (I warned you. Silliness involved. It's not too late for those of you without any sense of humor to click on the big red X in the upper right hand corner.) You were warned. (You have to hear the audio voice of doom in your head. Yooooouuuu....weeeeeeerrreeee.....waaaaaaarrrrnnneddddd....)
Thought shift coming! Here it comes. My garden has turned into a pumpkin patch. There's a lesson in there.
[image error] These are growing in my garden. And well, it's taken over the garden. It's
about to hit the neighbor's fence. Then the world. But hey, on the
bright side, we'll have lots of pumpkin pie.The garden was 10X10 feet around. I allowed HIM and Cressy to pick the seeds. They came back with like, twenty packages and looked at me funny because I wasn't inclined to plant ALL of the packets in the same 10X10 feet patch of prepared earth.
[image error] There were peppers in there somewhere. Also basil and green onions. They might be still there, but I'm not going in. God knows what's under the ginormous leaves. Could be cannibals. Could be unicorns. Could be cannibal unicorns. (Maybe they taste like chicken.)
[image error] And you thought they lived on pixie dust and rainbows.So I stopped blogging to go to the store to get marinade for the steaks for grilling. (Who does Independence Day without grilling? Heathens. God knows I can't blog without firing up the grill and throwing on some massively proportioned cuts of Angus beef.) And I couldn't NOT go through the chips and snacks aisle. (They were calling to me. "Fat Woman," the chips called. "Fat Woman! Come and buy us! We want to come home with you! We need you, Fat Woman!") (I should be banned from there. Seriously, they should have a sign of me at the end that prohibits me from being within fifty feet of the chips. They're like kryptonite to me.) So whilst I was pondering the advantages of plain old chips versus Sour Cream and Onion chips, I found this:
[image error] Are you kidding me? This sounds
gross. Yucky poo gross. Gag me
with an old eighties move.But then I looked further and here this was:
[image error] If you want steak flavor, why not, oh, say,
EAT a freaking steak. Not steak flavored
potato chips.Incidentally, people look at you very strangely when you take pictures of food with your Droid.
But then I saw this. This was the one that made my normally chip-eating-like-a-fool stomach say, "WTF, over?":
[image error] This is what I call grossinating. It's so gross but
you can't look away because it's
also fascinating. I swear I didn't buy
this. Who thinks of these things?So let's just say that Independence Day rocks. I'm glad for all my constitutionally guaranteed rights that enable me to let my odd, little mind wander wherever it likes to gambol. I sincerely hope that you all feel the same. I'll end with a quote that particularly moved me:
Have a great Independence Day! I'm pretty sure there were fat women in the Revolutionary War. They were cooking. Or doing something equally interesting. Spying maybe. Definitely nagging. ("I want tea. And independence. Those English guys who live in our house are really annoying me. Do something.")
[image error] I'm not being disrespectful. It's just that I'm CERTAIN
there was an unappreciated Fat Woman somewhere
in the Revolutionary War and I feel compelled to
make note of it.That being said, it's a great day to just write about whatever topic floats through my mind. I'm exercising the rights that a bunch of really great people fought and died over. And besides, sometimes I just let things rip, because it's fun and because you never know what might pop out. (That's how I come up with some my best novels.)
[image error] For those of you who don't keep up with my blog, (go and read some of it,it's
terribly funny, you might shoot peas out of your nose) this is another
dig at my sister's cat. Her name (the cat) is Mellow and I'm pretty
sure she's all about Independence Day. Especially for the
liberation of tuna fish cans.So those of you who are still with me, get ready for an immediate change in the direction of my thinking. Here goes. Recently I ranted about my least favored neighbor and forgot to do an illustration of this person. There it is, in full Fat Woman Melodrama. (Of course, when someone else does it, it's pronounced Dram-a. Long a. Get it right. If I do it, it's drama, short a. If this person does it, it's Dram-a. Long a. Big difference. Plus it's my blog and I can say what I want to as long as I don't defame anyone.) (Celebrities and politicians do not count. Godzilla sucks toes. The Vice President thinks about gay men in bathrooms. I'm pretty sure. I'd like to see him prove that he doesn't think about it, and if he wasn't thinking about it, he is now, especially after he read this. Sorry Joe, it had to be said. Incidentally, does that mean that he's a bad VP? No, but it does mean that I'm completely messed up sometimes. Okay, the VP really DOES NOT think about gay men in bathrooms. Maybe he thinks about polka dotted underwear.) Anyway back to my artistic vision.
[image error] I love Autodesk Sketchbook.So where is my mind leading me? (I warned you. Silliness involved. It's not too late for those of you without any sense of humor to click on the big red X in the upper right hand corner.) You were warned. (You have to hear the audio voice of doom in your head. Yooooouuuu....weeeeeeerrreeee.....waaaaaaarrrrnnneddddd....)
Thought shift coming! Here it comes. My garden has turned into a pumpkin patch. There's a lesson in there.
[image error] These are growing in my garden. And well, it's taken over the garden. It's
about to hit the neighbor's fence. Then the world. But hey, on the
bright side, we'll have lots of pumpkin pie.The garden was 10X10 feet around. I allowed HIM and Cressy to pick the seeds. They came back with like, twenty packages and looked at me funny because I wasn't inclined to plant ALL of the packets in the same 10X10 feet patch of prepared earth.
[image error] There were peppers in there somewhere. Also basil and green onions. They might be still there, but I'm not going in. God knows what's under the ginormous leaves. Could be cannibals. Could be unicorns. Could be cannibal unicorns. (Maybe they taste like chicken.)
[image error] And you thought they lived on pixie dust and rainbows.So I stopped blogging to go to the store to get marinade for the steaks for grilling. (Who does Independence Day without grilling? Heathens. God knows I can't blog without firing up the grill and throwing on some massively proportioned cuts of Angus beef.) And I couldn't NOT go through the chips and snacks aisle. (They were calling to me. "Fat Woman," the chips called. "Fat Woman! Come and buy us! We want to come home with you! We need you, Fat Woman!") (I should be banned from there. Seriously, they should have a sign of me at the end that prohibits me from being within fifty feet of the chips. They're like kryptonite to me.) So whilst I was pondering the advantages of plain old chips versus Sour Cream and Onion chips, I found this:
[image error] Are you kidding me? This sounds
gross. Yucky poo gross. Gag me
with an old eighties move.But then I looked further and here this was:
[image error] If you want steak flavor, why not, oh, say,
EAT a freaking steak. Not steak flavored
potato chips.Incidentally, people look at you very strangely when you take pictures of food with your Droid.
But then I saw this. This was the one that made my normally chip-eating-like-a-fool stomach say, "WTF, over?":
[image error] This is what I call grossinating. It's so gross but
you can't look away because it's
also fascinating. I swear I didn't buy
this. Who thinks of these things?So let's just say that Independence Day rocks. I'm glad for all my constitutionally guaranteed rights that enable me to let my odd, little mind wander wherever it likes to gambol. I sincerely hope that you all feel the same. I'll end with a quote that particularly moved me:
There, I guess King George will be able to read that.
- John Hancock
On signing the American Declaration of Independence.
June 30, 2011
Momfia in the Hood
Caution: No fatness is mentioned in the following blog. The material contained therein is not directly related to fat issues or fat woman problems. (I'm saying it happens to skinny people, too.) But I'm already digressing.
Warning: Bitchiness follows. May be extreme bitchiness. (Just ask HIM, the man to whom I'm married. HIM knows about the bitchiness.) May be bad for your mental health to read this blog. May cause warts, instantaneous blinding, gaseous pains, and sneezing. No neighbors were harmed in the writing of this blog.
Okay. The mafia isn't dead. It's been replaced by the MOMfia. My daughter's preschool class's room mother was a card carrying, originating member. She carries her Gucci purse like it's got a .45 in it. She drives her Denali as if at any moment the police will start chasing her. I can vividly recall a moment in time where she was sitting in it at the preschool parking lot, waiting for other mommies to deliver envelopes of money for the gift cards she will be purchasing for the teacher and the aide. (Picture surreptitious women sneaking up to the Denali, and passing the envelope through the window, and maybe kissing her college class ring. Maybe she went to Brown, not Vassar.) [image error] She'll make you an offer you can't refuse. Fahgedaboddit.In any case the room mother with the Denali and the Gucci purse doesn't hold a candle to my neighbors. I live in a cul-de-sac. (Cul-de-sac defined: the bottom of a pouch. I swear, that's what it said in my dictionary. Also the closed end of a pouch. Also a blind alley or passageway. I suppose Americans have made it their own. In America, as far as I know, it means the dead end of a neighborhood street.) Anyway, that's where I live. It's fun. The kids play in the court. I get to avoid toys, bikes, and stuff when I drive in and out, and most of it doesn't belong to my family. There's fireworks galore, and I don't just mean on the fourth of July. It's Peyton Place without the cute, adorable and/or hunky actors making time with other characters.
[image error] The Seventh Level of Hell or, as we call it, home.God help me.
So I'm not supposed to blog about my neighbors (and you have to know that I'm going to do it anyway) but there is one who drives me insane. (Of course, there are a significant number of things and/or people that drive me insane or I wouldn't have anything to blog about.) But uh-oh, I'm blogging about the forbidden thing. Now I'm going to be in big trouble.
I think I can determine how this really originated. Pre-mommyhood, I didn't realize that when I became a parent that I would have to be a parent to other people's children. It's an unstated rule. No one will tell you. It just happens. You gotta do it. Like Nike. Once you have a child, other children flock around, and then you have to be a surrogate parent. Furthermore, you may not like those other children very much because their parents let them act like little buttwipes. (Buttwipe being the best term I could come up with on the spur of the moment and least offensive in comparison to what I was really thinking.) This is the basis of why I'm disliking the one particular neighbor.
This neighbor, who I've called names so often that my daughter has commented, "Mommy, are the cows home?" in reference to them, is the least likable person that I've ever had the displeasure to meet. If I never meet this person again it will be too soon. This person is a fervid believer of thou shall do unto others as I don't do unto others, but don't you dare bring that up because I will deny EVERYTHING!
Upon bottomless reflection and the longing to rant about the issue so that I may let it go, I came to some inferences. Deep seated, psychological inferences. It's my belief that I have deciphered this person's personal ten commandments. Seriously, this is how this person thinks. (This should be fun.)
1. Thou shall only apologize in one direction from you to myself. I shall never apologize for that goes against my personal beliefs, no matter how wrongity-wrong-wrong I am. (I'm not wrong. You're just wrong for thinking it.)
2. Thou shall believe in MY religion and not your crappy one that really doesn't count, except that you're not a pagan and I'm not so sure about that since you let your daughter dress as a witch one year for Halloween. (Witches = badness, except for Sabrina, Samantha, and Glenda, but only if I'm in a benign mood.)
3. Thou shall NOT direct my children not to be poorly behaved, even though I said you should, because my children will lie to me about what really happened and I will immediately take their side because they are ANGELs and you are scum, plus not of my religion. (See above.) (Not of my religion = badness, like Charles Manson or Newt Gingrich.)4. Thou shall NOT mention all the favors you've done in the past for my family because no matter how many you've done, it doesn't equal the piddly amount I've done for you. Besides who's really counting? (Keeping count = badness, kind of like any socioeconomical program that expects me to produce for a living.) [image error] Diagram of dogly doobies. How can any canine possibly poop
that damn much?5. Thou shall ignore the dozens of cigarette butts that I toss willy-nilly about my property, your property, and everywhere I see fit to toss the buttiness. I have complete rights to do as I see fit with the remnants of my cigs and you can do little about it. (Complaining about my hygienic standards = badness, like 'How dare you judge me?')
6. Thou shall ignore the fact that my dog wanders around freely and poops wherever he sees fit. We cannot be bothered to watch where he poops, much less pick it up, as is stated by the laws of our city. How dare you suggest that our dog be contained in a legal manner? You are scum for suggesting that our dog be treated...like a dog. (Suggesting that we pick up our dog (gasp!) poop = badness, or 'It'll wash away in a few months, just don't step in it.') [image error] Why, yes, yes he does. I think they feed him Ex-Lax.
7. Thou shall ignore the fact that we drink alcohol constantly and leave the beer cans everywhere. Thou shall ignore the fact that we throw them down the water drain as well because obviously our mamas never taught anything about civil conscience. (I should really cross this one off because they're obviously just being 'green' and planning on using their empty beer cans for a gigantic beer can sculpture on their front lawn. Silly me.)
8. Thou shall ignore the fact that we leave all kinds of crap (not necessarily the dogly kind) on our yard in a way that reminds me of the hoarding show on TLC. (Maybe I should cross this one off too because they could be planning their own reality show. Who am I to impend their imminent stardom?)
9. Thou shall never again mention anything that we've borrowed from you and never bothered to return or even discuss why we haven't returned it to you. We (the royal we) may do as we please. (This includes cash, DVDs, toys, and anything we many have 'borrowed.') (Reminding us of stuff we borrowed = badness or 'You should have known better than to have loaned it to us.')
10. Thou shall ignore the fact that I allow my offspring to run screaming into the night, every night, every single, solitary night, because since they are home-schooled and I allow them to 'sleep' in so that I may 'sleep' in. So what if you and all the other neighbors have to get up early for various other reasons. If you complain you are impeding my children's development into perennial laziness and sloth. Stupid neighbor. (Complaining about noise = badness or 'You should just sleep in, too.')
In conclusion, I have tried to be a good neighbor. But my idea of 'good' only stretches only so far. (I think that particular rubber band has snapped a long, long, long time ago.) HIM has told me that I cannot post this blog. It may be the one and only time that I'm going over HIM's head. Basically, here's the one fingered salute for the not-so-stand up individuals that I'm discussing. It ain't libel if it's true and here's a little primer on libel for my readers and for my least favorite neighbors:
Warning: Bitchiness follows. May be extreme bitchiness. (Just ask HIM, the man to whom I'm married. HIM knows about the bitchiness.) May be bad for your mental health to read this blog. May cause warts, instantaneous blinding, gaseous pains, and sneezing. No neighbors were harmed in the writing of this blog.
Okay. The mafia isn't dead. It's been replaced by the MOMfia. My daughter's preschool class's room mother was a card carrying, originating member. She carries her Gucci purse like it's got a .45 in it. She drives her Denali as if at any moment the police will start chasing her. I can vividly recall a moment in time where she was sitting in it at the preschool parking lot, waiting for other mommies to deliver envelopes of money for the gift cards she will be purchasing for the teacher and the aide. (Picture surreptitious women sneaking up to the Denali, and passing the envelope through the window, and maybe kissing her college class ring. Maybe she went to Brown, not Vassar.) [image error] She'll make you an offer you can't refuse. Fahgedaboddit.In any case the room mother with the Denali and the Gucci purse doesn't hold a candle to my neighbors. I live in a cul-de-sac. (Cul-de-sac defined: the bottom of a pouch. I swear, that's what it said in my dictionary. Also the closed end of a pouch. Also a blind alley or passageway. I suppose Americans have made it their own. In America, as far as I know, it means the dead end of a neighborhood street.) Anyway, that's where I live. It's fun. The kids play in the court. I get to avoid toys, bikes, and stuff when I drive in and out, and most of it doesn't belong to my family. There's fireworks galore, and I don't just mean on the fourth of July. It's Peyton Place without the cute, adorable and/or hunky actors making time with other characters.
[image error] The Seventh Level of Hell or, as we call it, home.God help me.
So I'm not supposed to blog about my neighbors (and you have to know that I'm going to do it anyway) but there is one who drives me insane. (Of course, there are a significant number of things and/or people that drive me insane or I wouldn't have anything to blog about.) But uh-oh, I'm blogging about the forbidden thing. Now I'm going to be in big trouble.
I think I can determine how this really originated. Pre-mommyhood, I didn't realize that when I became a parent that I would have to be a parent to other people's children. It's an unstated rule. No one will tell you. It just happens. You gotta do it. Like Nike. Once you have a child, other children flock around, and then you have to be a surrogate parent. Furthermore, you may not like those other children very much because their parents let them act like little buttwipes. (Buttwipe being the best term I could come up with on the spur of the moment and least offensive in comparison to what I was really thinking.) This is the basis of why I'm disliking the one particular neighbor.
This neighbor, who I've called names so often that my daughter has commented, "Mommy, are the cows home?" in reference to them, is the least likable person that I've ever had the displeasure to meet. If I never meet this person again it will be too soon. This person is a fervid believer of thou shall do unto others as I don't do unto others, but don't you dare bring that up because I will deny EVERYTHING!
Upon bottomless reflection and the longing to rant about the issue so that I may let it go, I came to some inferences. Deep seated, psychological inferences. It's my belief that I have deciphered this person's personal ten commandments. Seriously, this is how this person thinks. (This should be fun.)
1. Thou shall only apologize in one direction from you to myself. I shall never apologize for that goes against my personal beliefs, no matter how wrongity-wrong-wrong I am. (I'm not wrong. You're just wrong for thinking it.)
2. Thou shall believe in MY religion and not your crappy one that really doesn't count, except that you're not a pagan and I'm not so sure about that since you let your daughter dress as a witch one year for Halloween. (Witches = badness, except for Sabrina, Samantha, and Glenda, but only if I'm in a benign mood.)
3. Thou shall NOT direct my children not to be poorly behaved, even though I said you should, because my children will lie to me about what really happened and I will immediately take their side because they are ANGELs and you are scum, plus not of my religion. (See above.) (Not of my religion = badness, like Charles Manson or Newt Gingrich.)4. Thou shall NOT mention all the favors you've done in the past for my family because no matter how many you've done, it doesn't equal the piddly amount I've done for you. Besides who's really counting? (Keeping count = badness, kind of like any socioeconomical program that expects me to produce for a living.) [image error] Diagram of dogly doobies. How can any canine possibly poop
that damn much?5. Thou shall ignore the dozens of cigarette butts that I toss willy-nilly about my property, your property, and everywhere I see fit to toss the buttiness. I have complete rights to do as I see fit with the remnants of my cigs and you can do little about it. (Complaining about my hygienic standards = badness, like 'How dare you judge me?')
6. Thou shall ignore the fact that my dog wanders around freely and poops wherever he sees fit. We cannot be bothered to watch where he poops, much less pick it up, as is stated by the laws of our city. How dare you suggest that our dog be contained in a legal manner? You are scum for suggesting that our dog be treated...like a dog. (Suggesting that we pick up our dog (gasp!) poop = badness, or 'It'll wash away in a few months, just don't step in it.') [image error] Why, yes, yes he does. I think they feed him Ex-Lax.
7. Thou shall ignore the fact that we drink alcohol constantly and leave the beer cans everywhere. Thou shall ignore the fact that we throw them down the water drain as well because obviously our mamas never taught anything about civil conscience. (I should really cross this one off because they're obviously just being 'green' and planning on using their empty beer cans for a gigantic beer can sculpture on their front lawn. Silly me.)
8. Thou shall ignore the fact that we leave all kinds of crap (not necessarily the dogly kind) on our yard in a way that reminds me of the hoarding show on TLC. (Maybe I should cross this one off too because they could be planning their own reality show. Who am I to impend their imminent stardom?)
9. Thou shall never again mention anything that we've borrowed from you and never bothered to return or even discuss why we haven't returned it to you. We (the royal we) may do as we please. (This includes cash, DVDs, toys, and anything we many have 'borrowed.') (Reminding us of stuff we borrowed = badness or 'You should have known better than to have loaned it to us.')
10. Thou shall ignore the fact that I allow my offspring to run screaming into the night, every night, every single, solitary night, because since they are home-schooled and I allow them to 'sleep' in so that I may 'sleep' in. So what if you and all the other neighbors have to get up early for various other reasons. If you complain you are impeding my children's development into perennial laziness and sloth. Stupid neighbor. (Complaining about noise = badness or 'You should just sleep in, too.')
In conclusion, I have tried to be a good neighbor. But my idea of 'good' only stretches only so far. (I think that particular rubber band has snapped a long, long, long time ago.) HIM has told me that I cannot post this blog. It may be the one and only time that I'm going over HIM's head. Basically, here's the one fingered salute for the not-so-stand up individuals that I'm discussing. It ain't libel if it's true and here's a little primer on libel for my readers and for my least favorite neighbors:
How to prove libel - There are several ways a person must go about proving that libel has taken place. For example, in the United States, the person first must prove that the statement was false. Second, that person must prove that the statement caused harm. And, third, they must prove that the statement was made without adequate research into the truthfulness of the statement. These steps are for an ordinary citizen. In the case of a celebrity or public official trying to prove libel, they must prove the first three steps, and must (in the United States) prove the statement was made with the intent to do harm, or with reckless disregard for the truth. Usually specifically referred to as "proving malice". - Sexton, Kevin (2010). "Us political systems"There I feel better.
June 27, 2011
The Origin of Zombies OR Why We Must Never Drive Past Graveyards at Night
So today we were driving along, my daughter and I, when we passed a graveyard and quite naturally the topic of zombies came up. It's the kind of family that we have. (You don't know what you're missing until you can speak on the assorted bizarre topics that my family can discuss ESPECIALLY with a 7 year old. Godzilla, zombies, vampires, poison dart frogs, boy cooties, etc.)
Cressy informed me that my knowledge on zombies was sadly lacking. She looked at me kind of like this.
[image error] No, she didn't really say that, but her expression said everything. Now I must sum it all up for the discerning reader. Try to stay with me. Zombie information is going to be disseminated. Hopefully in a helpful fashion but probably not. (You know in case we wake up tomorrow and zombies have taken over the world. Wait. Hasn't that already happened? You recall the election of 2008? Or I guess that was just me.)
First and most importantly, how to recognize a zombie.
[image error] 1. I'm informed that all zombies have gray or white skin.
2. Zombies have messy shirts. All the blood and brain juice just pretty much make that shirt a nonstarter. (Zombies have problems with job interviews and dating.) And all that pink stuff on the zombie's shirt above is brain juice. (Cressy's exact words, "Brain juice, Mommy. Don't get it wrong." There's probably a highly technical word for the same thing but I'm going with 'brain juice.')
3. Zombies DO NOT wear shoes. I don't know why. Perhaps they didn't get the memo about the buy one get one free from Payless Shoe Stores. Perhaps they have bunions. It's a mystery.
4. Zombies say, "Brains..." in a weird voice like they're hungry, or maybe because they're really GOP members who are trying to run for the 2012 election. Whateveh.
[image error] Now for the real details that most people aren't really aware.
1. Zombies DO live in graveyards.
[image error] What does this have to do with zombies living in graveyards?
Nothing but I felt compelled to taunt my sister's cat again.
(For those of you who don't read my blog regularly: bad readers. But do
go and read 'I Have NOT Yet Finished With My Sister's Cat OR How
I Continue to Taunt a Helpless (Hah!) Animal.') (And no,
my sister's cat is not a zombie but it's still funny.)2. But Zombies have dens in graveyards. I'm informed by my source that these dens are remarkably similar to the den under a large tree that the bunnies had in 'The Runaway Bunny.' (For those of you without children and whose mommy's never read them books growing up, this is about a little boy bunny who dreams of running away from mommy bunny in various and exotic locales, but the moral of the story is that you can't ever really get away from mommy. Story of our times. Norman Bates learned it well.)
[image error] I can totally picture zombies in their dens. 3. Zombies DO NOT like sour brains. (The word 'sour' applies to literally everything my daughter does not like. Broccoli, any green vegetable, mashed potatoes, anything she hasn't eaten before, and probably Justin Bieber. So it's a pretty wide spread application.) Zombies DO like milk and sugar on brains to make them not sour. (So if we're invaded by zombies tomorrow, we can eliminate the supply of milk and sugar and zombies won't eat our brains. Wow. Problem solved.)
4. Zombies spread their 'curse' by eating people's brains and then that person becomes a zombie. (If the person's brains were sour and milk and sugar were unavailable, there might be a loophole but I'm still checking with my source on that one.) There are other theories, of course, like the one in the following clip (Haha. Bob Hope was priceless) (And yes, I managed to slam both political parties in the same blog.):
Most importantly, there are three ways to get zombies. (Get being the word that Cressy, er, my source, used.) (Really urgent information in case of zombie apocalyptic world issues.)
1. Slapping a zombie upside their head will often make them dizzy and then you can run away like a little bunny rabbit who just smoked a pipe full of crystal meth.
2. Zombies may be kicked. The preferred method of budding karate masters, the kick will instantaneously disembowel and deter any typical zombie. (But if you run into other types of zombies you will probably be eaten alive. You poor, sad, silly bastard.)
3. The least known and most fascinating method is to hypnotize a zombie. "Shut UP!" you say. "Completely true," I say. Carry that watch around that Grandpa left you instead of the $50,000 in cash that he left to the Old Soldier's Home and you might be able to save your ass from utter zombie annihilation.
[image error] There ya have it. Everything everyone needs to know in a nutshell about the great zombie infestation.
P.S. The other day I went to see my daughter's last day at gymnastics where they show us everything they've learned. As I was sitting down I heard the instructor tell Cressy that, "Your mother doesn't make up all kinds of stories." And naturally I interrupted with, "What was that?" The instructor proceeded to tell me that Cressy was telling them that I made up stories and some other stuff that was clearly untrue (untrue to her skinny little emaciated butt). So I frowned my fiercest frown and said, "Actually, I do make up stories for a living and she isn't lying." Red faced, the little twat went on with the class. Making up stories is not a great living but it's a lot of fun. Probably better than teaching gymnastics to kids at the local rec center. And that's what you get for making assumptions. I hope a zombie gets her and her little skinny thighs, too. (But HIM just added that the zombie would starve to death on her insignificant, teensie weensie brain. Poor zombie.)
Cressy informed me that my knowledge on zombies was sadly lacking. She looked at me kind of like this.
[image error] No, she didn't really say that, but her expression said everything. Now I must sum it all up for the discerning reader. Try to stay with me. Zombie information is going to be disseminated. Hopefully in a helpful fashion but probably not. (You know in case we wake up tomorrow and zombies have taken over the world. Wait. Hasn't that already happened? You recall the election of 2008? Or I guess that was just me.)
First and most importantly, how to recognize a zombie.
[image error] 1. I'm informed that all zombies have gray or white skin.
2. Zombies have messy shirts. All the blood and brain juice just pretty much make that shirt a nonstarter. (Zombies have problems with job interviews and dating.) And all that pink stuff on the zombie's shirt above is brain juice. (Cressy's exact words, "Brain juice, Mommy. Don't get it wrong." There's probably a highly technical word for the same thing but I'm going with 'brain juice.')
3. Zombies DO NOT wear shoes. I don't know why. Perhaps they didn't get the memo about the buy one get one free from Payless Shoe Stores. Perhaps they have bunions. It's a mystery.
4. Zombies say, "Brains..." in a weird voice like they're hungry, or maybe because they're really GOP members who are trying to run for the 2012 election. Whateveh.
[image error] Now for the real details that most people aren't really aware.
1. Zombies DO live in graveyards.
[image error] What does this have to do with zombies living in graveyards?
Nothing but I felt compelled to taunt my sister's cat again.
(For those of you who don't read my blog regularly: bad readers. But do
go and read 'I Have NOT Yet Finished With My Sister's Cat OR How
I Continue to Taunt a Helpless (Hah!) Animal.') (And no,
my sister's cat is not a zombie but it's still funny.)2. But Zombies have dens in graveyards. I'm informed by my source that these dens are remarkably similar to the den under a large tree that the bunnies had in 'The Runaway Bunny.' (For those of you without children and whose mommy's never read them books growing up, this is about a little boy bunny who dreams of running away from mommy bunny in various and exotic locales, but the moral of the story is that you can't ever really get away from mommy. Story of our times. Norman Bates learned it well.)
[image error] I can totally picture zombies in their dens. 3. Zombies DO NOT like sour brains. (The word 'sour' applies to literally everything my daughter does not like. Broccoli, any green vegetable, mashed potatoes, anything she hasn't eaten before, and probably Justin Bieber. So it's a pretty wide spread application.) Zombies DO like milk and sugar on brains to make them not sour. (So if we're invaded by zombies tomorrow, we can eliminate the supply of milk and sugar and zombies won't eat our brains. Wow. Problem solved.)
4. Zombies spread their 'curse' by eating people's brains and then that person becomes a zombie. (If the person's brains were sour and milk and sugar were unavailable, there might be a loophole but I'm still checking with my source on that one.) There are other theories, of course, like the one in the following clip (Haha. Bob Hope was priceless) (And yes, I managed to slam both political parties in the same blog.):
Most importantly, there are three ways to get zombies. (Get being the word that Cressy, er, my source, used.) (Really urgent information in case of zombie apocalyptic world issues.)
1. Slapping a zombie upside their head will often make them dizzy and then you can run away like a little bunny rabbit who just smoked a pipe full of crystal meth.
2. Zombies may be kicked. The preferred method of budding karate masters, the kick will instantaneously disembowel and deter any typical zombie. (But if you run into other types of zombies you will probably be eaten alive. You poor, sad, silly bastard.)
3. The least known and most fascinating method is to hypnotize a zombie. "Shut UP!" you say. "Completely true," I say. Carry that watch around that Grandpa left you instead of the $50,000 in cash that he left to the Old Soldier's Home and you might be able to save your ass from utter zombie annihilation.
[image error] There ya have it. Everything everyone needs to know in a nutshell about the great zombie infestation.
P.S. The other day I went to see my daughter's last day at gymnastics where they show us everything they've learned. As I was sitting down I heard the instructor tell Cressy that, "Your mother doesn't make up all kinds of stories." And naturally I interrupted with, "What was that?" The instructor proceeded to tell me that Cressy was telling them that I made up stories and some other stuff that was clearly untrue (untrue to her skinny little emaciated butt). So I frowned my fiercest frown and said, "Actually, I do make up stories for a living and she isn't lying." Red faced, the little twat went on with the class. Making up stories is not a great living but it's a lot of fun. Probably better than teaching gymnastics to kids at the local rec center. And that's what you get for making assumptions. I hope a zombie gets her and her little skinny thighs, too. (But HIM just added that the zombie would starve to death on her insignificant, teensie weensie brain. Poor zombie.)
The Origin of Zombies OR How We Must Never Drive Past Graveyards at Night
So today we were driving along, my daughter and I, when we passed a graveyard and quite naturally the topic of zombies came up. It's the kind of family that we have. (You don't know what you're missing until you can speak on the assorted bizarre topics that my family can discuss ESPECIALLY with a 7 year old. Godzilla, zombies, vampires, poison dart frogs, boy cooties, etc.)
Cressy informed me that my knowledge on zombies was sadly lacking. She looked at me kind of like this.
[image error] No, she didn't really say that, but her expression said everything. Now I must sum it all up for the discerning reader. Try to stay with me. Zombie information is going to be disseminated. Hopefully in a helpful fashion but probably not. (You know in case we wake up tomorrow and zombies have taken over the world. Wait. Hasn't that already happened? You recall the election of 2008? Or I guess that was just me.)
First and most importantly, how to recognize a zombie.
[image error] 1. I'm informed that all zombies have gray or white skin.
2. Zombies have messy shirts. All the blood and brain juice just pretty much make that shirt a nonstarter. (Zombies have problems with job interviews and dating.) And all that pink stuff on the zombie's shirt above is brain juice. (Cressy's exact words, "Brain juice, Mommy. Don't get it wrong." There's probably a highly technical word for the same thing but I'm going with 'brain juice.')
3. Zombies DO NOT wear shoes. I don't know why. Perhaps they didn't get the memo about the buy one get one free from Payless Shoe Stores. Perhaps they have bunions. It's a mystery.
4. Zombies say, "Brains..." in a weird voice like they're hungry, or maybe because they're really GOP members who are trying to run for the 2012 election. Whateveh.
[image error] Now for the real details that most people aren't really aware.
1. Zombies DO live in graveyards.
[image error] What does this have to do with zombies living in graveyards?
Nothing but I felt compelled to taunt my sister's cat again.
(For those of you who don't read my blog regularly: bad readers. But do
go and read 'I Have NOT Yet Finished With My Sister's Cat OR How
I Continue to Taunt a Helpless (Hah!) Animal.') (And no,
my sister's cat is not a zombie but it's still funny.)2. But Zombies have dens in graveyards. I'm informed by my source that these dens are remarkably similar to the den under a large tree that the bunnies had in 'The Runaway Bunny.' (For those of you without children and whose mommy's never read them books growing up, this is about a little boy bunny who dreams of running away from mommy bunny in various and exotic locales, but the moral of the story is that you can't ever really get away from mommy. Story of our times. Norman Bates learned it well.)
[image error] I can totally picture zombies in their dens. 3. Zombies DO NOT like sour brains. (The word 'sour' applies to literally everything my daughter does not like. Broccoli, any green vegetable, mashed potatoes, anything she hasn't eaten before, and probably Justin Bieber. So it's a pretty wide spread application.) Zombies DO like milk and sugar on brains to make them not sour. (So if we're invaded by zombies tomorrow, we can eliminate the supply of milk and sugar and zombies won't eat our brains. Wow. Problem solved.)
4. Zombies spread their 'curse' by eating people's brains and then that person becomes a zombie. (If the person's brains were sour and milk and sugar were unavailable, there might be a loophole but I'm still checking with my source on that one.) There are other theories, of course, like the one in the following clip (Haha. Bob Hope was priceless) (And yes, I managed to slam both political parties in the same blog.):
Most importantly, there are three ways to get zombies. (Get being the word that Cressy, er, my source, used.) (Really urgent information in case of zombie apocalyptic world issues.)
1. Slapping a zombie upside their head will often make them dizzy and then you can run away like a little bunny rabbit who just smoked a pipe full of crystal meth.
2. Zombies may be kicked. The preferred method of budding karate masters, the kick will instantaneously disembowel and deter any typical zombie. (But if you run into other types of zombies you will probably be eaten alive. You poor, sad, silly bastard.)
3. The least known and most fascinating method is to hypnotize a zombie. "Shut UP!" you say. "Completely true," I say. Carry that watch around that Grandpa left you instead of the $50,000 in cash that he left to the Old Soldier's Home and you might be able to save your ass from utter zombie annihilation.
[image error] There ya have it. Everything everyone needs to know in a nutshell about the great zombie infestation.
P.S. The other day I went to see my daughter's last day at gymnastics where they show us everything they've learned. As I was sitting down I heard the instructor tell Cressy that, "Your mother doesn't make up all kinds of stories." And naturally I interrupted with, "What was that?" The instructor proceeded to tell me that Cressy was telling them that I made up stories and some other stuff that was clearly untrue (untrue to her skinny little emaciated butt). So I frowned my fiercest frown and said, "Actually, I do make up stories for a living and she isn't lying." Red faced, the little twat went on with the class. Making up stories is not a great living but it's a lot of fun. Probably better than teaching gymnastics to kids at the local rec center. And that's what you get for making assumptions. I hope a zombie gets her and her little skinny thighs, too. (But HIM just added that the zombie would starve to death on her insignificant, teensie weensie brain. Poor zombie.)
Cressy informed me that my knowledge on zombies was sadly lacking. She looked at me kind of like this.
[image error] No, she didn't really say that, but her expression said everything. Now I must sum it all up for the discerning reader. Try to stay with me. Zombie information is going to be disseminated. Hopefully in a helpful fashion but probably not. (You know in case we wake up tomorrow and zombies have taken over the world. Wait. Hasn't that already happened? You recall the election of 2008? Or I guess that was just me.)
First and most importantly, how to recognize a zombie.
[image error] 1. I'm informed that all zombies have gray or white skin.
2. Zombies have messy shirts. All the blood and brain juice just pretty much make that shirt a nonstarter. (Zombies have problems with job interviews and dating.) And all that pink stuff on the zombie's shirt above is brain juice. (Cressy's exact words, "Brain juice, Mommy. Don't get it wrong." There's probably a highly technical word for the same thing but I'm going with 'brain juice.')
3. Zombies DO NOT wear shoes. I don't know why. Perhaps they didn't get the memo about the buy one get one free from Payless Shoe Stores. Perhaps they have bunions. It's a mystery.
4. Zombies say, "Brains..." in a weird voice like they're hungry, or maybe because they're really GOP members who are trying to run for the 2012 election. Whateveh.
[image error] Now for the real details that most people aren't really aware.
1. Zombies DO live in graveyards.
[image error] What does this have to do with zombies living in graveyards?
Nothing but I felt compelled to taunt my sister's cat again.
(For those of you who don't read my blog regularly: bad readers. But do
go and read 'I Have NOT Yet Finished With My Sister's Cat OR How
I Continue to Taunt a Helpless (Hah!) Animal.') (And no,
my sister's cat is not a zombie but it's still funny.)2. But Zombies have dens in graveyards. I'm informed by my source that these dens are remarkably similar to the den under a large tree that the bunnies had in 'The Runaway Bunny.' (For those of you without children and whose mommy's never read them books growing up, this is about a little boy bunny who dreams of running away from mommy bunny in various and exotic locales, but the moral of the story is that you can't ever really get away from mommy. Story of our times. Norman Bates learned it well.)
[image error] I can totally picture zombies in their dens. 3. Zombies DO NOT like sour brains. (The word 'sour' applies to literally everything my daughter does not like. Broccoli, any green vegetable, mashed potatoes, anything she hasn't eaten before, and probably Justin Bieber. So it's a pretty wide spread application.) Zombies DO like milk and sugar on brains to make them not sour. (So if we're invaded by zombies tomorrow, we can eliminate the supply of milk and sugar and zombies won't eat our brains. Wow. Problem solved.)
4. Zombies spread their 'curse' by eating people's brains and then that person becomes a zombie. (If the person's brains were sour and milk and sugar were unavailable, there might be a loophole but I'm still checking with my source on that one.) There are other theories, of course, like the one in the following clip (Haha. Bob Hope was priceless) (And yes, I managed to slam both political parties in the same blog.):
Most importantly, there are three ways to get zombies. (Get being the word that Cressy, er, my source, used.) (Really urgent information in case of zombie apocalyptic world issues.)
1. Slapping a zombie upside their head will often make them dizzy and then you can run away like a little bunny rabbit who just smoked a pipe full of crystal meth.
2. Zombies may be kicked. The preferred method of budding karate masters, the kick will instantaneously disembowel and deter any typical zombie. (But if you run into other types of zombies you will probably be eaten alive. You poor, sad, silly bastard.)
3. The least known and most fascinating method is to hypnotize a zombie. "Shut UP!" you say. "Completely true," I say. Carry that watch around that Grandpa left you instead of the $50,000 in cash that he left to the Old Soldier's Home and you might be able to save your ass from utter zombie annihilation.
[image error] There ya have it. Everything everyone needs to know in a nutshell about the great zombie infestation.
P.S. The other day I went to see my daughter's last day at gymnastics where they show us everything they've learned. As I was sitting down I heard the instructor tell Cressy that, "Your mother doesn't make up all kinds of stories." And naturally I interrupted with, "What was that?" The instructor proceeded to tell me that Cressy was telling them that I made up stories and some other stuff that was clearly untrue (untrue to her skinny little emaciated butt). So I frowned my fiercest frown and said, "Actually, I do make up stories for a living and she isn't lying." Red faced, the little twat went on with the class. Making up stories is not a great living but it's a lot of fun. Probably better than teaching gymnastics to kids at the local rec center. And that's what you get for making assumptions. I hope a zombie gets her and her little skinny thighs, too. (But HIM just added that the zombie would starve to death on her insignificant, teensie weensie brain. Poor zombie.)
June 23, 2011
Slug A Bug! Or Legitimate Ways to Hit Your Sibling
So when my sister and I were growing up we used to play this game. The game was usually played while in the car. The game commenced when one of us saw a white VW Beetle. (The old classic style, of course, because the new one had not yet commenced its state of being.) And yes, it had to be white. (Them was the rules.)
[image error] Ye old putt putt car. (While I was posting this picture, my daughter came
in to get my help with a craft project and nailed me. Good thing she
doesn't know how to hit hard.) (Dammit, she just did it again.) (And there's the third
time because I made the mistake of showing her the blog again.)The lucky person to see the bug first got to smack the other one in the arm, shoulder, side, etc. (I believe the accepted locale was the upper arm because Marquis of Queensberry rules did apply, especially when a parent was in the immediate vicinity.) The winner got to hit the other one. And parents couldn't complain. (Well ours didn't. It wasn't like we were punching each other in the face.) So the object of the game was to be the one with the least amount of bruises on their arms at the end of a given trip.
[image error] Our mother, about to have an internal cranial implosion.
This was pretty much our entire trip to Disney Land in 1975.
All 800 miles of it.
And yes, that was actual smoke coming out of her head.A few years ago, was it a few years?, VW starts with the commercials about Slug A Bug, but they didn't really call it that.
And isn't it funny that Stevie Wonder has the magical power to see the color of VW's? But hey, they're not playing the game right. They're hitting for EVERY single VW out there, every model. That's a lot of VWs, ergo, that's a lot of hitting. (I was trying to find the one where a guy thumped a baby but I didn't find that one. Maybe VW was embarrassed even it if it was a teensy weensy little thump.)
So here are my Official rules for Slug a Bug . (Modified for present day.)
1. All VW Beetles count. Old classic ones get two punches. New Beetles get one. Only classic or new Beetles. No other VWs. No Vanagons, Things, Jettas, etc, and especially no Routans. (That's keeping the game pure.)
2. Slug a Bug must be called when the hit is made. (Cressy, our daughter, often will say, "Mommy, put your arm back here," while we're going about our daily business in a precursor to hitting me with a Slug a Bug. She doesn't yet realize that she's warning me. But she's getting better. Last week when I reached back to Slug a Bug her, she quickly punched my arm first and yelled, "Slug a Bug!" getting the drop on me. A true child of my loins.)
3. No punch backs are allowed.
4. Only one punch per day per bug. (That means that when we drive past the red one that lives around the corner it can only be used once in a 24 hour period. Cressy doesn't always get this one because she'll forget that it was used before. After all, she saw it first the second or third time we passed it in a day. Power to the elementary school kid.)
5. Any color of a Beetle is allowed. Not just white ones. (I seem to recall that there was also a game about white horses and involved pinching. I believe my sister and I were vicious little beasts.)
6. If a person is slugged and it is determined that a Beetle was not seen, the initial hitter gets twice hit back and harder. (Vicious. Little. Beasts. We. Were.)
7. VW Dealerships only count if they're accidental. HIM has been known to deliberately drive by places he knows that there are Beetles. (I don't want to think about the variation of the game that HIM and his sister played as children. It was probably bloody and involved chainsaws and gas powered tools. The Marquis of Queensberry rules were akin to a foreign language to them.) (Upon consideration and decades of hearing stories about the road trips that HIM and his sister were dragged upon (HIM's exact phrase, 'dragged upon.') (Look parenthesis within parenthesis. This could be bad.) I figure that there was an invisible shield in between the front seat of the family car and the back. My FIL and MIL probably completely tuned HIM and HIM's sister out unless blood was being squirted over the backs of the seats. I don't have photographs but HIM often complains about his sister breaking the camera at an early age. Oh, what joyful times.) [image error] My MIL and FIL on one of their infamous 'road trips.'
Apparently the back seat was where all the action
took place.
8. If you own a Beetle then it can only be 'slug a bugged' once per 24 hour period by the first person who sees it and calls it.
9. The driver of the car is not encouraged to play. (Gee I wonder why.) But stoplights are a free for all.
10. Whining in the game is generally prohibited. (Cressy compensates by saying, "Ah, man," in a saddened tone of voice as if she has just lost her best Barbie doll.)
11. No knuckles. (This is for HIM, who must have learned this particular torturous technique as a child.) For everyone else, this means when slugging, you don't push out one of your knuckles in order to facilitate a better bruise. (I know this makes HIM sound mean, but he really isn't. Old habits die hard.)
12. Only hands may be using for slugging. No baseball bats, wrenches, iron skillets, or maces. (There's a reason I'm adding this. A very scary, sincere reason.) Just in case someone gets any special ideas about Slug a Bug.
13. No imaginary Beetles. HIM knows what I'm talking about. If HIM is the only one who sees the Beetle then there is a distinct possible that it wasn't really a Beetle. (It was a 'ghost' Beetle. Holy shades of What's Up, Doc? Batman. That's only for Bogdanovich buffs.)
14. Only actual, live, in person Beetles count. Not pictures on say, a blog, or the TV, or in a magazine.
[image error] Here's the new New Beetle. I think it looks like a squashed old New Beetle.
(Could have been a birth defect.) Also if you're playing by Cressy's
rules you can now Slug a Bug someone.Addendum (Cressy rules from her perspective):
1. If I see it second, although you saw it first and called it, I shall say that I saw it first and Slug a Bug you.
2. No one shall hit me harder although I have that option to tenderize your fleshly upper arm with impunity.
3. If you see one, you shall ignore it and pretend you didn't see it first, so that I may see it and consequently call it on you or Daddy. Mostly you, though. (Apparently the fact that Daddy makes most of the money that buys my toys has rubbed off on me.)
4. I can pretend that I didn't see that red one from around the corner for the third time today and use it again. (The 24 hour rule only applies to you, Mommy.)
5. I'm not really caring if you're driving when I see one, Mommy. I want to Slug a Bug you and in an impertinent fashion.
6. Whenever I see a Beetle, whether it's on TV, on the net, or say, on your blog, I'm going to Slug a Bug you. Especially you Mommy. Remember you started this game.
7. I always win. Sucker.
With that in mind, I think I'll go look on Amazon and see if they have 'What's Up, Doc?' on DVD.
[image error] Ye old putt putt car. (While I was posting this picture, my daughter came
in to get my help with a craft project and nailed me. Good thing she
doesn't know how to hit hard.) (Dammit, she just did it again.) (And there's the third
time because I made the mistake of showing her the blog again.)The lucky person to see the bug first got to smack the other one in the arm, shoulder, side, etc. (I believe the accepted locale was the upper arm because Marquis of Queensberry rules did apply, especially when a parent was in the immediate vicinity.) The winner got to hit the other one. And parents couldn't complain. (Well ours didn't. It wasn't like we were punching each other in the face.) So the object of the game was to be the one with the least amount of bruises on their arms at the end of a given trip.
[image error] Our mother, about to have an internal cranial implosion.
This was pretty much our entire trip to Disney Land in 1975.
All 800 miles of it.
And yes, that was actual smoke coming out of her head.A few years ago, was it a few years?, VW starts with the commercials about Slug A Bug, but they didn't really call it that.
And isn't it funny that Stevie Wonder has the magical power to see the color of VW's? But hey, they're not playing the game right. They're hitting for EVERY single VW out there, every model. That's a lot of VWs, ergo, that's a lot of hitting. (I was trying to find the one where a guy thumped a baby but I didn't find that one. Maybe VW was embarrassed even it if it was a teensy weensy little thump.)
So here are my Official rules for Slug a Bug . (Modified for present day.)
1. All VW Beetles count. Old classic ones get two punches. New Beetles get one. Only classic or new Beetles. No other VWs. No Vanagons, Things, Jettas, etc, and especially no Routans. (That's keeping the game pure.)
2. Slug a Bug must be called when the hit is made. (Cressy, our daughter, often will say, "Mommy, put your arm back here," while we're going about our daily business in a precursor to hitting me with a Slug a Bug. She doesn't yet realize that she's warning me. But she's getting better. Last week when I reached back to Slug a Bug her, she quickly punched my arm first and yelled, "Slug a Bug!" getting the drop on me. A true child of my loins.)
3. No punch backs are allowed.
4. Only one punch per day per bug. (That means that when we drive past the red one that lives around the corner it can only be used once in a 24 hour period. Cressy doesn't always get this one because she'll forget that it was used before. After all, she saw it first the second or third time we passed it in a day. Power to the elementary school kid.)
5. Any color of a Beetle is allowed. Not just white ones. (I seem to recall that there was also a game about white horses and involved pinching. I believe my sister and I were vicious little beasts.)
6. If a person is slugged and it is determined that a Beetle was not seen, the initial hitter gets twice hit back and harder. (Vicious. Little. Beasts. We. Were.)
7. VW Dealerships only count if they're accidental. HIM has been known to deliberately drive by places he knows that there are Beetles. (I don't want to think about the variation of the game that HIM and his sister played as children. It was probably bloody and involved chainsaws and gas powered tools. The Marquis of Queensberry rules were akin to a foreign language to them.) (Upon consideration and decades of hearing stories about the road trips that HIM and his sister were dragged upon (HIM's exact phrase, 'dragged upon.') (Look parenthesis within parenthesis. This could be bad.) I figure that there was an invisible shield in between the front seat of the family car and the back. My FIL and MIL probably completely tuned HIM and HIM's sister out unless blood was being squirted over the backs of the seats. I don't have photographs but HIM often complains about his sister breaking the camera at an early age. Oh, what joyful times.) [image error] My MIL and FIL on one of their infamous 'road trips.'
Apparently the back seat was where all the action
took place.
8. If you own a Beetle then it can only be 'slug a bugged' once per 24 hour period by the first person who sees it and calls it.
9. The driver of the car is not encouraged to play. (Gee I wonder why.) But stoplights are a free for all.
10. Whining in the game is generally prohibited. (Cressy compensates by saying, "Ah, man," in a saddened tone of voice as if she has just lost her best Barbie doll.)
11. No knuckles. (This is for HIM, who must have learned this particular torturous technique as a child.) For everyone else, this means when slugging, you don't push out one of your knuckles in order to facilitate a better bruise. (I know this makes HIM sound mean, but he really isn't. Old habits die hard.)
12. Only hands may be using for slugging. No baseball bats, wrenches, iron skillets, or maces. (There's a reason I'm adding this. A very scary, sincere reason.) Just in case someone gets any special ideas about Slug a Bug.
13. No imaginary Beetles. HIM knows what I'm talking about. If HIM is the only one who sees the Beetle then there is a distinct possible that it wasn't really a Beetle. (It was a 'ghost' Beetle. Holy shades of What's Up, Doc? Batman. That's only for Bogdanovich buffs.)
14. Only actual, live, in person Beetles count. Not pictures on say, a blog, or the TV, or in a magazine.
[image error] Here's the new New Beetle. I think it looks like a squashed old New Beetle.
(Could have been a birth defect.) Also if you're playing by Cressy's
rules you can now Slug a Bug someone.Addendum (Cressy rules from her perspective):
1. If I see it second, although you saw it first and called it, I shall say that I saw it first and Slug a Bug you.
2. No one shall hit me harder although I have that option to tenderize your fleshly upper arm with impunity.
3. If you see one, you shall ignore it and pretend you didn't see it first, so that I may see it and consequently call it on you or Daddy. Mostly you, though. (Apparently the fact that Daddy makes most of the money that buys my toys has rubbed off on me.)
4. I can pretend that I didn't see that red one from around the corner for the third time today and use it again. (The 24 hour rule only applies to you, Mommy.)
5. I'm not really caring if you're driving when I see one, Mommy. I want to Slug a Bug you and in an impertinent fashion.
6. Whenever I see a Beetle, whether it's on TV, on the net, or say, on your blog, I'm going to Slug a Bug you. Especially you Mommy. Remember you started this game.
7. I always win. Sucker.
With that in mind, I think I'll go look on Amazon and see if they have 'What's Up, Doc?' on DVD.
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