Friday, July 30, 2010

It's Like I'm A Pilgrim From The Friggin 20's

Oh Snooki, I missed you!

Rinsing clothes off in a sink that has running water, in a penthouse apartment in Miami built and styled for a group of people who use gangster tagging equipment to paint on tans, and drink something called Ron-Ron juice IS just like being a Pilgrim from the 20's!

What sort of f*&ked up Back to The Future is that?

"Hey John Locke?"

"Yes Jedidiah?"

"I thought we just landed in Massachusetts looking for religious freedom. What is this place???"

"This is the 20's Jed. My flux capacitator must have calculated wrong. I told that nosy little Pocahontas to stay away from the men's work."

"How come those guys have tattoos of Italy on them?"

"Sex appeal?"

"Well, sure."

"Dang. I did not want to end up here. The 20's blew. Roaring my ass."

"There's no roaring?"

"Not for us my friend."

"Oh."

"Well, I guess we better rinse these clothes off in the mettacular sink."

"Thank God we still have some comforts of home."

"You said it Jedidiah."

And then they fist pumped their way through the Depression just like everyone else. The End.


I'm so excited Jersey Shore is back on, I can't stand it! I actually clapped with happiness at my TV last night because IT'S JUST SO AMAZING. It's the only time in my life I get to use words like, JWOW, Snicks, blow-out, and smush and feel totally serious about it.

Why wasn't this show on when I was in college? I would have transferred to New Jersey Community College faster than you can say "I'm putting Vaseline on my face, taking my earrings out, putting my hair up and I'm beating the crap out of her."

(Vaseline? So if she gets a hit in it just slides right off? Seriously. How can you not love that?)




Thursday, July 29, 2010

CSI My Bathroom

You know that feeling you get when you wake up in the morning and something is just wrong?

You check the clock and no, you're not late for work, it's Saturday. You check under the covers and you still have your legs. In fact you've still had your legs everyday since the early 80s when you started waking up and freaking out that they'd been amputated in the night - maybe it's time you calm down about that. You check your phone to see if you missed a death phone call (one where someone calls you to let you know someone is not. . . you know if you can't figure it out, I'm not gonna explain it for you), but no. Everyone is still alive. The dog is fine and breathing, the sun is up like it's supposed to be but. . .

And then it hits you.

Where is the cat?

And who set the alarm to play Ace of Base EVERY MORNING?

(I mean seriously. Every morning? I love them, but a girl can only hear The Sign a certain number of times before she wants to claw her own eyes out. I'd take a little Wilson Phillips now and again. Hold on to One More Day?

I know that there is change.

Butcha.

Hold on for one more day.

Breakfree from the chaaaaaange.

(and then I skip straight to the breakdown part of the song because it's just too damn good, and I love it so much I can't waste my love on the boring parts of the song) ).

(the amazing starts at 2:33 and ends at 3:20)
However these guys kinda make the whole song bearably amazing. Especially the ending.



Anyway, I woke up feeling weird and then realized I couldn't find James. And THEN realized there was blood all over my bathroom floor. Not the hall, or the bedroom, or anywhere but the bathroom. It was like someone knew they were going to murder, and so they covered themselves up in saran wrap and surgeon booties and then Dexter-ed the shit out of my bathroom but ran out of time to clean up.

Now that James is an outdoor cat he is out and about in the elements all night, and occasionally returns home muddy, and scraped up, and soaked even though it hasn't rained (sprinklers set off while he was robbing a bank?) but he usually checks in and sleeps at my feet still (proving he loves me even though he's free to run away, which just makes me more insanely in love with him/9,000 times more likely to be a crazy cat lady sooner than I thought) but not last night. Last night he didn't check in.

Or did he?

Now, let my backtrack by saying the blood on the floor was not startling to me. At first. Because he's left blood on the floor before, but never this much. I did a fair amount of panicking/expecting to see his head in the bathtub staring out at me, but just as I was about to call the police (logic not abundant when I'm tired and scared - the police would probably have arrested me for calling them) guess who came sauntering into the house all sleepy and cute?

Anyway, long story short: James is alive. But several mice are not.

Turns out, James was just a serial killer trapped in a Chicago apartment for too long with nothing to kill. He probably would have turned on me if we'd stayed a little longer, because clearly that little sucker has a taste for blood, and it wouldn't have been easy to overpower me and carry me around the place with his tiny little jaws, but he would have figured out a way because he's obviously a sociopath.

A sociopath who is the cutest little sociopath around!

I tried to take a picture buy my camera died, and my cell phone now refuses to take pictures, so instead I drew this diagram of what I saw so you too can know the horror I felt at 6am Monday morning.



(I'm considering applying for a job as a sketch artist for the FBI)

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Catalina, Part 2 of 2, Picture Edition

My grandma invites people to Catalina the way someone blows on a dandelion and suddenly there's a million dandelions in your front yard, on your porch, sleeping four on the fold-out couch, and you're fighting them to use the bathroom in the morning and then once you finally get in there there's no more toilet paper.

She judges occupancy not by the number of beds, but by the lengths of floor open that will hold a body. Most years in a room that sleeps 5 we've had to squeeze in at least 9 - and that's just that room, once you step out of it you'll have to dodge bodies strewn about the living room, kitchen, and onto the porch. It's like she's running her own hostel in Bratislava that doubles as a commune.

So this year, Gabi, Gige and I decided we would get our own house so that we could control the amount of people sleeping in it, and Oh My God - It was so worth it. The only people waking me up in the morning were these two, and it's totally ok because look how cute she is:


Oh, and Hailey is pretty cute too.

Seriously, she looked like that almost every moment of every day. She's the happiest baby in the world. I'm fairly certain Gige has some sort of racy drug in her breast milk and that's why Hailey is so happy. You better believe the next time I'm feeling down I'll be calling her over for a little cream in my coffee.

My feelings about this trip were pretty boring, because I had fun. (Aside from missing the P's, and SA like I'd miss a limb) There were no crazy meltdowns, or enormous family drama, or making out with underage boys - and at one point I looked around and was like, "Wait. . . Hold up. . . Is this what growing up feels like. Ew. Weird. Why aren't I hungover? How come the dishes are done? Why doesn't Gabi have a new STD?"


So here's some pictures from the trip. I'm going to try very hard to not post seven hundred of me holding Hailey.




Oops. Bad start. Ok, no more of me and Hailey I promise.





Just kidding! Here's another! I'm probably yelling about how much I love that couch. Look at it. It's the most pastel couch in the world.



The Math Teacher and Marc are trying to get their iPhones to tell them where the fun is.



Gabi also checks her iPhone for fun. Gige checks her invisible phone.



Me: "And then the bear said. . ."
Hail: "Yeah, whatever. The ending blows my mind, let's skip past all this bear bulls$%t and get to the ducks."



You can't tell from this picture, but Bub's boobs are actually way bigger than Gige's. I put one of her bra cups over my entire face the other day. It's huge.

(As a joke. Not just 'cause I go around putting bras on my face.)



We took fourteen of these types of pictures before the waiter finally asked if he could do it for us. You can tell from the following, Hailey was not pleased with how long we spent taking pictures of ourselves.



We made her sit alone. Also, doesn't it look like Gabi is doing something sneaky to me under the table, and like she is whispering through clenched teeth, "No one's ever gonna know."



Oh yeah, and like dorks we read the same book every year in a weird book race. This year is was Eat Pray Love. Last year it was Tori Spelling's STORI Telling. We're only getting smarter people. Only getting smarter. Next year it'll probably be War and Peace. In Russian. (Not a hundred percent sure that's by a Russian author. Not going to look it up either because I already have wikipedia open to dandelions, and Usher Raymond and I don't need any more tabs cluttering up my task bar.)

Look at Gabi, sunbathing in the nude like a floozy.

(She's not really naked, but somehow Gige managed to capture this in a totally awesome way.)

And I apparently grabbed a hand towel instead of a beach blanket to lay on.


Next year:

Less pictures of me with babies. More pictures of my friends looking naked.

You're welcome in advance.





Tuesday, July 20, 2010

This Post Is Not For People Who Like Seeing Things Alive

The good news:

James is officially an outdoor cat! No leash, no escaping, no running away to live with another family for six months - just pure, unadulterated, outdoor cat-y stuff. He loves it, and I love it. Need to go get the mail? James will follow you. Need to run outside to the car to check and see if that's the thing that's been running for almost seven hours in front of your garage? James will trot along beside you. Missing a little kitty love? Just stand at the door and call "Hi honeys. Where's my little kitten power?" and watch James run from a nearby tree into your open arms.

Seriously, it's like I had this grumpy, moody cat who like to shred furniture and human arms, and then all of a sudden I have a cat made of fairy sparkles and tickles.

Outdoor cat = way better than indoor cat. I don't care that his lifespan has been cut in half, and it's much more likely now for him to be carried away by something with talons than it was before, he's happy. And that's worth more than his life.

(You know what I mean.)


When James became an outdoor cat, flowers just started blooming spontaneously.





The bad news:

James is officially an outdoor cat.

My feelings on this can only be expressed via visual aids.

Feeling 1:



Nooooooooooooooo.


Feeling 2:


Noooooooooooooooo. GAH!!!! Why are you scooting CLOSER to it????


Of course no one was home to help me rid the house of the prize James brought in (and then shook a little for good measure sending feathers flying all the which way, coating the house like I just had a slumber party from an 80's movie), so I had two decisions: 1. Leave it there until someone more appropriate could take care of it. Or 2. Gear up like I was going in for a HVAC procedure and try to get the thing from the ground to the outside trash without causing any more damage to my psyche.

Yes, I'm a wimp when it comes to animals. Dead humans? I'll hold the hands of those suckers until the cows come home, but dead animals? No. I'm fairly certain they're just faking it/have become evil in their death and by the power of some sort of Freddy Krueger-poisonous spider they will come back to life and start moving around, and I will NOT KNOW HOW TO DEAL WITH THAT SHIT.

So, the clean-up process took about a half an hour and went like this:

Ok, ok, it's ok. . . just don't look, just don't AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH IS IT IN THE BAG?????? AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH JAMES HELP ME GET IT IN THE BAG!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! OK, OK, It's ok. Deep breaths. Deep breaths. It's dead. It's not gonna do anything, it's just lying there like AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH I THINK IT JUST MOVED! FUUUUUUUUUUDGE (apparently I don't curse when scared because I said 'fudge' like seven different times) Ok, Ok, Please don't come back to life, please don't come back to life, please don't AAAHHHHHHHHHH JAMES DON'T EAT HIM! OH GOD PLEASE DON'T EAT HIM WHILE I'M TRYING TO GET HIM OUT OF HERE! Ok, Just for the love of fudge please if you do come back to life, just let it be for a little bit so you can roll yourself into this bag so I don't actually have to feel your dead little body because then I'm gonna start crying on top of all this and I don't JAMES STOP TRYING TO EAT HIM!!!!!

Yeah.

Anyway, after all that I'm still thrilled with James being an outdoor cat. I'll put up with the trauma because of his happiness.

I just hope he remembers me in his will.

Monday, July 19, 2010

Catalina, Part 1 of 2, Wherein Joy Is Regained, And Freakishly Large Goldfish Cause Sheer Terror With Their Venomous Stares And Human-like Lips

My brother came to Catalina for a few days, and for the first time in YEARS he had a good time. The last few years? Not so fun. Mainly disoriented, confused, angry, depressed, hating anything fun, ripping clothes off in public - and I don't know about you, but all of those things (save for that last one) do not spell vacation to me.

Life is apparently really hard when you can't talk, and your family loses the ability to read your mind accurately. I mean, the nerve of us. He looks and looks, and points and points but there were(are) a few years in there where we just Could Not figure out what he wants to tell us. Mainly it's something as simple as:


"Hey, people - this sandal is cutting into my foot and I'm freaking starving. Where's my sandwich? Seriously, my blood sugar is dangerously low. Sandwich? Sandal? Cutting into my foot? Sandwich? Blood sugar? Anyone? ANYONE?"

And there we sit chit chatting about Taylor Lautner and planning out our naps.

None of those things is a sandwich.

(but, mmmmmmm . . .Taylor Lautner.)

But sometimes (and this is where my heart breaks into a million pieces) it's not that simple. Sometimes he's upset because he's in pain from the enormous sinus infection/blockage that's been plaguing him for so many years, and has become so enormous it takes bleeding from the ears (mygod) before he'll actually be able to let us know he's in pain because this - this is what finally gets him to cry. My brother? He doesn't cry. He bites things. He yells. He points his fingers off at words that do not convey what he's trying to say, but (I guess) is hoping will distract him. But cry - no. So, when he does it, I pretty much want to find the nearest set of train tracks and lay down on them because honestly I cannot handle it when either one of the twins are so upset they cry.

(I once broke down in tears when I was at a doctor's visit with Becky and she had to get a shot. Not me. Her. But we were little and she seemed scared, and I didn't want her to be scared so I did the right thing and started crying. This at least confused things. I couldn't assure her everything was going to be alright, but I sure as hell could make her freak out about something different. It's a wonder she chose to go solo to her first gyno visit, despite my willingness to be there to support her. "Are you sure?" "Yes. You're just gonna cry." "No, I'm not." "Amy." "Ok, maybe. But it's just because I care.")

ANYWAY, he had a good time. Which was awesome. Lots of smiles and trolley rides, and my mom didn't lose her clothes anywhere (later story for those who haven't heard it)(though if you haven't it's probably because my mom was around and I'm pretty sure she's not at the "Well, it's funny now. . . " stage yet.)

This is when he first got off the boat. I have a better picture of us, but I love this one because it looks like I have something magical in my (gigantic) hand (why does it look so large?) and Michael is captivated by it.




Lucky for us the island library had Dumbo in stock. God forbid we go a whole day without watching it and ruin his life.



We went swimming which is Michael's favorite thing to do.


Oh yeah, except that he didn't really get in because it was too cold. It deceptively looks like it's sunny and warm here. It's not. It's freezing, and this picture isn't cropped to show just the three of us. We were the only three brave enough to get in. And then the fish started charging us like hungry little zombies. I'm not sure who that guy is with the snorkel, but I'm fairly certain he was bending over to see if he could find his finger that had just been bitten off.



They're cold blooded those Garibaldis. Look:


If that isn't the look of blood lust I don't know what is.

Monday, July 12, 2010

Vacation, It's Good For You - Mostly

I just got back from Catalina so my mind is still in double-stuf-oreo-beach-napping-not-afraid-to-use-men's-deodorant-instead-of-stupid-girl-non-working-deodorant-that-just-makes-me-smell-like-pear-scented-high-school-me-which-is-awful-because-it-brings-back-a-flood-of-make-out-memories-I'd-rather-not-remember-(I'm talking to you Tony)-(and you boy who's name I don't remember but I took you to Sadie Hawkins one year even though you didn't go to our school. I had mouth herp that day and never told you. Sorry.)-sunscreen-and-soft-serve-and-buffalo-hiking mode, so this is going to be a short post, lest I do something retarded (I can say that because my brother is retarded, suckers) like what just happened in my work bathroom:

Me: (bursting into the bathroom nearly running someone over before I stop with crazy sharp reflexes, sort of waving my arms to get balance, like someone about to fall off a building, but am not about to fall off a building, am just standing unsteadily in a public bathroom) Oh, sorry, were you waiting?

Stranger: Yeah but. . . you look like you need to go. You first.

Me: No, that's ok. Go ahead.

Stranger: Uh. . . (looking scared) no, you.

Me: No, I insist. (I don't usually spend so much time trying to convince someone to use the bathroom before me, but my horoscope told me to be generous today.)

Stranger: You sure, you seem. . . you sure?

Me: Yeah (what the h?) I'm sure, you were here first. Go for it!

Stranger: . . . Are you su-

Me: -Yes, I'm sure! My horoscope told me you should go first. (holds out hand which has been clutching horoscope even though I didn't realize it til that second. reflexes are working in mysterious ways.)

Stranger: First of all, (it's totally ok she's first-of-all-ing me because I am thrusting things in her face all crazy-like) that's not a horoscope.

Me: (looking down at hand)

Stranger: It's a candy wrapper.

Me: (totally true)

Stranger: Second of all, it doesn't really matter what your candy wrapper is telling you to do, if you're just gonna be unbuttoning your pants in the hallway anyway.

Me: (slowly, looks from hand to pants. pants are indeed unbuttoned and unzipped already.) Oh, when did that happen?

Stranger: Before you got in here.

Me: Jeeze. I'm sorry. I just got back from vacation.

Stranger: Naked vacation?

Me: (suddenly I love her) No, just vacation. My brain isn't working, and things are frantic, and I work in that first office right there.

Stranger: Oooooooh, say no more. I've been in there.

Me: And this candy wrapper has a saying on it ok. So it's sort of like a horoscope.

Stranger: . . .

Me: . . . but not really. It's more of like. . . a saying.

Stranger: . . . .

Me: Please use the bathroom.


Once in elementary school I tried to force my friend Amber Hume to use the bathroom because our 3rd grade teacher told us at lunch time we should eat, play, and use the bathroom and I had noticed that Amber Hume had only completed 2 out of the requisite 3. I was a stickler for rules. Apparently it stuck with me.

Amy Stern : pressuring people to use the bathroom since 1987.


Hopefully tomorrow I'll be a little more coherent. And full of pictures the island! Pants intact.