Thirty One, It's A Whole Lot Weirder Than Thirty For Some Reason

I'm not sure how it happened, but somehow another year passed and I'm 31 today.

WHAT?!

When I was a kid 31 seemed soooooooo oooooooold. Now I know that all those mothers and adults and teachers I though were ancient, were really just sitting around thinking, "How am I old enough to be that kid's mom? I mean, I got drunk last night and made out with a sailor. I might still be a little drunk right now. Thirty something year olds don't do that, do they? Ok, fine. So it wasn't really a sailor, it was just the father of my kid, but I was pretending he was a sailor in my head so that counts right?"

Anyway, I decided I need a list of life goals to complete now that I'm in my thirties. So I made a list, a lofty list of goals, not for my life, but for the next year. A list to be completed before I'm 32. Making a list? That just got checked off my list. One down, tons more to go!

BIRTHDAY LIST OF GOALS SPECTACULAR! :

A list of lofty goals. To be completed before I turn 32.

1. Finish writing a book. I’ve got like seven started, just pick one and finish it. Worse comes to worse I’ve got a book I hate. But at least I can say I finished one.

2. Try not to get nails done for an entire year. Every time I get them done I rip them off three days later. (already I want to cross this one off my list because I love having my nails done, even if it is for a few days damnit.)

3. Run a third marathon.

4. Win third marathon.

5. Or at least, pretend to win when I cross the finish line at 4 hours and 55 minutes by holding hands up in the air and shouting, “CHAMPION OF SLOW MARATHONS!”, and get Becky and Math Teacher to suspend me over their heads like an actual champion.

6. Can up the drama by pushing baby in a stroller during entire marathon thus, when cross the finish line can say, “CHAMPION OF BABY PUSHING!” Or can use puppy if baby is uncooperative.

7. Actually finish Anna Karenina. Or War and Peace. Or Moby Dick. Something that is long and foreign. Not sure if Moby Dick is foreign, but it’s about a whale and the sea or something, and since I’ve never been a captain of a ship, it’s foreign to me.

8. Make a weekly comic.

9. First decide what comic should focus on.

10. Decide on own! Do not spend seven hundred hours re-reading online comics. That doesn’t make you productive it just makes you a dork. A thirty-one year old dork.

11. Do more yoga.

12. Train James to not scream his ass off at 3am, but rather to be a calm sleepy kitty that does not walk across chest in the middle of the night and stop to get nose to nose, scaring the living daylights out of me, before meow-yelling and jumping onto stomach then off bed.

13. Find out what “scaring the living daylights out of me” actually means. Living daylights? Are there un-living daylights? Like zombie daylights? Vampire daylights that go around inside of people just waiting to be scared out. Is very strange saying.

14. Swim to the bouy in Catalina. Or at least, watch people swim there as just remembered water is not actual water – is ice that has recently been melted into fooling you it’s water, but is actually just an illusion. Is giant ice cube bodysuit.

15. Eat lots of (un-massacred) donuts in Catalina.

16. Fall asleep tanning (with sunscreen on) on beach in Catalina while reading same book as Gabi. Try not to get the hiv. (Becky and I get blisters on our hands and feet every year [which we call the hiv, because it sounds better than what it actually is] in Catalina because it’s the first time our paper-like skin has been exposed to so much sun in a year and every year it hurts, and sucks, and is ugly. This year I will NOT get the hiv!) (But if I do I will not have a donut the next day as punishment.)

17. Have donut anyway, because am thirty one! Can eat donuts whenever I please!

18. Make out a lot. Just because am in thirties does not mean making out goes out the window. Making out should be re-upped and re-awesome because can think in head, “I’m making out with someone in their thirties! Sixteen year old me is sooooooooooooooo jealous right now!”

19. Write a letter to unborn baby apologizing in advance for all the embarrassing things I may or may not say or do to it. Like talking about making out. Be very sincere, as am sure will have a lot to apologize for, as sometimes cannot control mouth/body when it needs to talk/dance. Try to focus on fact that I will try very hard not to talk about my boobs or other people’s boobs if child does not like it. However, will continue to talk about boobs when child is not in ear shot, because I mean, c’mon . . . what’s not to talk about.

20. Spend more time singing on the phone to my brother.

21. Spend more time singing on the phone to my sister, even though she hates it. (Do not want either of the twins to feel left out)

22. Tell my friends and family how much I love them.

23. I love you guys!

Well, at least I can check one off the list already! I’ll get started on all the others after my birthday nap. Or two.

Killer Of All Things, Living Or Not

So, James has a new thing. Since we moved, he's trapped in the house again and thus has to hunt things he normally wouldn't have to hunt. Instead of bringing live animals into the house and then slaughtering them before my very eyes, he has to resort to other, less bloody (sometimes) options.

ie; hunting and then killing the exposed area of my back through the open slats of my chair. I'm not sure why this is a fun chase for him, except that he loves to be able to attack through things, and reaching through the chair to my now scratched-to-hell-back skin is like reaching his paws through jail bars and scratching the eyes out of a nearby inmate.

Or sometimes he'll stalk, carefully circle, then strike my hairbrush DEAD. Like, d. e. a. d., dead. I have about fifteen things out on my little bathroom stand, but he always goes for the hairbrush, as if it said something mean about his mother once and he's gonna keep killing it and walking around with it in his mouth like a gay tiger until he feels his mother has been revenged.

And then, there's the newest attack - the cereal stalk.

This is the worst because I can't eat breakfast in peace anymore. Now I have to deal with this.

First the hunter eyes his prey. Slowly, without the Raisin Bran noticing, he creeps up on it.

Then once he sees the Raisin Bran doesn't notice him, he'll get even closer. Just waiting for the right moment to pounce.

Then - I couldn't get a picture of it, because I was too busy being drenched in milk and soggy cereal - James gets both of his paws up in the cereal bowl and splashes around in it until he feels it has been sufficiently clawed to death. Thus ruining my breakfast time once again.

Of course after he's done with all that, he gets a little thirsty and drinks the rest of my water.

Sometimes it takes me three tries before I can actually eat an entire breakfast.

I do not wanna know what he's going to do when I have waffles tomorrow.

Still Thirty

My mom called this morning to remind me I'm getting older. Which is always nice.

Because I still feel sixteen I don't ever feel guilty for not finishing writing a book, or not finishing nursing school, or not finishing Anna Karenina - because I'm sixteen. Who's got time for that? I've got making out to do yo, I can't waste precious time reading a classic. Plus I've got years and years to do all that other stuff, I mean I'm only mother f-ing sixteen!

"You're in your thirties."

"No, I'm thirty."

"That doesn't make you in your twenties sweetie, I hate to break it to you."

"I hate to break it to you, but yeah it does."

So, I don't feel guilty for not finishing things until my mom, who is supposed to support my delusions as a loving mother, insists on ruining my lifelong daydreams and snaps me back into reality with her "logic" and "facts" and "those aren't sixteen year old thighs though, are they honey?".

(Just kidding, she wouldn't say that to me. My sister and I could weigh seven hundred pounds and she would still be all, "Oh please, you're too skinny. Eat a damn cookie.")

When I tried to point out that she was also getting older her response was:

"Oh no, I talked about it with Becky and she's going to stay 29 and I'm going to stay 59! Isn't that great?"

"What about me?"

"What about you?"

"You guys stay young but I don't?"

"Well, one of us has got to get older honey."

"Why does it have to be me?!"

"Because Becky and I already talked about it."

"I don't like your logic here."

And I don't. I really don't.

So, now I'm feeling guilty for not finishing things because I (temporarily) remember how old I actually am. Thus I will be trying to write two hundred pages today, while practicing giving shots to oranges, and taking breaks only to read four hundred pages of a Russian novel.

If my hands, ears, and various body parts are bleeding tomorrow, you'll know why.

It's because I'm in my thirties.

Warning: Overly Melancholy Post That Doesn't Even Mention The Fact I Made An Entire Oreo Cheesecake For Myself Today Not Because I Was Sad Just Hungry

I'm so in love with Patty Griffin right now that I'm having a hard time focusing on Glee - even though I loooooved it - it's just that I recently put her back on my "baking" playlist which has sort of turned making brownies into more of a gut wrenching/crying-my-eyes-out-in-the-kitchen-in-the-middle-of-the-day-with-my-pants-unbuttoned sort of thing, than it is a let's-bake-a-tasty-treat sort of a thing.

I mean, just listen to this. Just listen and tell me you don't feel a stirring in your soul you haven't felt since you were in High School and everything was emotional to a fault, and then once you got older things started to dry up, and close off, and put itself into a complete emotional coma so you could actually get through life instead of just feeling heartbroken and devastatingly gloriously happy all at the same time for tiny little things like when Angela held hands with Jordan Catalano for the first time. Or when the guy you were (secretly) in love with laughed at something you said in class and you thought you were going to melt through the floor into a puddle of something that resembled mercury - all silver and moving like waves on the carpet and if touched cut into a million pieces. Or when your brother moves out of the house and into a group home, and then one day you walk past his room expecting to see him in there laughing at one of his secret little jokes with himself and it's takes you a good ten seconds to remember he moved out two years ago, and is so happy where he is - but still it makes you curl up onto his race car bed and fall asleep there until dinner.

Listen and tell me this doesn't make you feel like that. Or however you felt when you were in High School. (And if you were one of those kids who made it through teenager-hood without some sort of misplaced passion for everything, then I can not ever relate to you. Sorry.) (Just kidding, you're probably much better off.)

(The video is lame, so you can just stare at a picture of a rainy landscape if it helps. Like this one.)

And now I've run out of time to explain why I loved Glee (boy kisses!), but I will tomorrow (kissing of boys!) when I've had time to re-watch it (the scene where the boys are cute and they kiss!) and can pinpoint exactly what made this episode so good (not a tiny kiss but a full on sweet, romantic kiss!).

Licking Things

I haven't written in a while because I cut my hair and got really sick.

Not in that order, I got sick, and somewhere in the fever-induced delirium I cut my hair off, and didn't cry. Because I'm growing. Or because I was too sick to do anything but fall asleep as she hacked off my pony tail, but still - Progress!

I'm still sick (mono?) but I'm well enough now to leave bed and do things like, brush my teeth, and smile, so that's fun. James is not the biggest fan of me spending all day in bed, I think it's kind of freaked him out because he'll coming screaming through the house to my room, at the top of his little kitty lungs, like he's lost me - every single day - and has to go shouting for me through the corridors until he finds I've been hiding away in the North wing with the Duchess.

I hear it starting sort of softly, like a distant siren, and then it gets louder and louder as he approaches the bedroom, stops - looks up at me - and continues yelling. As if the louder, and the longer he does it the more likely it is I'll be able to understand him. Once he finds me he's thrilled for a second, and then rolls around and immediately falls asleep - presumably because the effort of locating me several times a day for weeks on end is just too exhausting for him.

Anyway, he's being a little weird. And then today after his screaming routine he found me at my desk, dusting off my laptop, and fell asleep on top of my toast. I made some new toast and then came back and got to work, and I must have been really into it because I didn't pay attention to when he woke up or what he was doing, because when I looked up the little sucker was carefully, and very sneakily licking my colored pencils.

Licking them like they were kitten lollipops I left out as a special treat for him. He was purring, he was so happy with his tasty find, and when I looked at him with disgust and a split second "Hmm, I wonder if that is good," he looked at me from the corner of his eye and was like:

"What?"

"They're pencils, and they're wood-y."

"James, what are you doing?"

"What?"

"What are you doing?"

"Licking pencils."

"Why? What are you doing?"

"I don't think that's good for you."

"Are you sure?"

And that went on for a while, where he'd lick, I'd ask him something, he'd stop to yell, lick, yell, lick - until that wore him out and he started the weirdest stretching routine directed right at me, and done right on top of my laptop so I would extra notice him.

After the last lick he shut his eyes really slowly at me, and then opened them, like he was trying to be sexy, then started what I can only describe as yoga.

Some sort of weird sun salute.

Then directly into....

Downward dog.

Then he flipped over and, hanging off the desk like a bat, he fell asleep because he apparently just got way too tired after his four seconds of stretching to make it anywhere else but dangling precariously off a ledge for his nap time.

I'm afraid he might have narcolepsy.

(**James is not a calico cat, he's black and white, but my black and white drawings weren't as cute as the eye patch-y one so, there you go.**)

Portlandia

I was having a really plain day last week that was threatening to become cry-worthy (due to a combo of being ridiculously hormonal - combined with the fact that it's tax season - combined with the fact that I have been watching Oprah, and all that lady does is try to make me sob myself to sleep at 4pm.) (Seriously, don't switch from Ellen to Oprah unless you want to have your soul ripped apart.) (Oh, but it's ripped apart so good.)

Anyway, it was a weird day, and then out of the blue one of my bff's Kevin sent me this (because he sensed my tears?) and it made me so happy I can't even tell you! I keep watching it over and over again, and it never gets old.

Just when you think it's funny, you keep watching and it gets even better.

I used to spend every Sunday with Kev, going to brunch and then the movies, and then spending the rest of the day at Barnes and Noble and Cold Stone. It was like a religion. It was the Church of Kevin.

And now I get joy on Sundays through funny clips he sends me, or Britney Spears mash-ups. It's a poor man's second. (Yeah, not even a poor man's Sunday - it's like second best, but a poor man's second best.) My sappy point is that I miss me some of him. And his dance moves.

But at least for now, we have Portlandia to get us through. And oh man, does it ever.

Pepe Le James

I don't even know where to begin.

I'll start at the end:

I've just washed every single thing that is washable in my house, and I'm about to wash it all again. Sheets, clothes, couch cushions, James, my hair, even the little things that keep a door closed - you know, those lipstick-top-shaped latches that pop into a hole when you close a door (sexual) so that it stays shut? Washed, and washed again.

Why?

Well, I'll have to go back to the beginning I guess:

Once upon a time I had a cat. Now I don't. Now I just have a little guy with dyed pink hair like he was trying to join a punk band or something but forgot it wasn't the 1980's anymore.

Opps, I'm at the end again. Sorry.

Once upon a time I had a cat. And a dog. And the dog woke me up barking his head off in the middle of the night. But not like a warning bark that he was about to kill an intruder, it was a sad, distressed bark like he needed to save someone from a burning building but we wouldn't let him out of the house.

So, I get up and see him at the window, and it smells vaguely like skunk, and I'm like, "Ok, we don't need to kill skunks at 3:30 in the morning, you're fine." Then a few minutes later James scratches at the window wanting to come in, presumably because he doesn't want to be where the skunk is either. So I open the window and let him in, and the smell comes wafting in, so I shut the thing as quickly as possible and try to fall back asleep.

But about two minutes later, the skunk smell has shifted, and it has turned into something way worse. It's like burning rubber, or dying bear set on fire, or a warning sign that the house is about to blow up. That's actually my fear, that the house is going to blow up. Because I'm very rational at 3 in the morning.

So, I go to check and make sure James hasn't blown up, when I discover it.

The little kitten is sitting by his food bowl, trying to stare up at me, with his ENTIRE HEAD plastered with skunk oil.

PLASTERED.

Like, I'm not kidding, it looks like he pulled up the skunk's tail himself, got about two centimeters from the spary zone and then pissed the dude off. He couldn't even open his poor little eyes because there was stuff EVERYWHERE. And he tried to meow his concern to me, but he couldn't open his mouth either because then the stuff would get all in there. It was soooooo sad and heart breaking, I felt like my child just came home from preschool covered in poo.

I don't know if you've ever smelled skunk up close and personal, but let me tell you it is one thousand times worse than that smell you get driving past an area where a skunk has just sprayed. That smell - that smell we all hate - is nothing, compared to something that has actually been sprayed. That smell is like a bed of fresh roses - I prayed for that smell all night.

Instead, the direct hit smell is like if someone took some teeny tiny rubber tires off of a truck, shoved them up into your nostrils and then lit them on fire with the body of your dead great uncle.

It was SO BAD.

I quickly googled skunk removal and it said tomato juice bath, or soda bath, or dish soap bath - so I decided I better go with all three, because I was in a complete panic that if I didn't try to get some of this stuff off of him we were all going to die and no one would want to come and claim the bodies because it would be too stinky and we'd just lay there rotting away, until a year from now when the officials decided to just burn the place down via satellite bombing.

We didn't have any tomato juice, but did have some brand new spicy bloody mary mix, so I grabbed that and heated it up in the microwave so it wouldn't be too cold on his little tiny head, and then grabbed some 7 Up (which I later found out you weren't supposed to use at all, by 'soda bath' they meant baking soda, but whatever), and some dish soap and proceeded to make the grossest concoction ever. It was like a bubbling witches brew. I'm pretty sure I wasn't supposed to mix them, but it was in the middle of the night, and I was about to pass out and three separate baths seemed like a horrible idea.

So, I grabbed James and locked the two of us in the bathroom, fairly certain that I was going to be leaving bloody, because cats do not like baths. Especially not spicy bloody mary, 7 Up, soap baths.

But I think he was just so distraught and defeated, and probably in pain, that my poor little sucker just sat there and let me douse him with my mix-drink-gone-wrong, until the whole bowl was empty. Then I shampooed him with some Herbal Essences.

Finally he could kind of open his eyes, and he looked up at me like, "Mom, that was so scary. I think I just saw Jesus."

And I was like, "Oh honey, I'm so sorry! Don't try to kill things that are your size anymore."

And he was like, "I'm going to lick myself now even though I really don't want to."

And he sort of paused and looked at his paw like, do I have to do this? Like, he was so sad he couldn't stop himself. He took a lick, and then looked up at me like, Oh my god what the hell is that!? That's what death tastes like.

By about 5:30 am I finally decided to try to get some sleep, and hoped to God sleeping with all the windows open would at least help me not to suffocate and it did. But it did not get rid of the smell a single ounce. So, I spent the entire day yesterday doing laundry and scrubbing, and lighting candles, all with the windows open so the 38 degree wind could maybe freeze out some of the stink.

I felt like I was on Little House on the Prairie meets Apocalypse Now, but with less fun.

And now James is walking around with all of his white hair dyed a beautiful spicy bloody mary pink - and I think he kinda likes it. He walks around with a little strut, and then will suddenly fall to his back to show me his pink belly, like, "Hey mom, check this out. I'm hard core. Like Avril."

And then he'll get up and strut to the bed, where he curls up and gets his skunky-ness all over my comforter. Which I will now have to wash for a fifth time.

Awesome.

Babies And Gangstas

So remember when I was telling you one of my best friends was pregnant?

Doesn't that seem like it was about two years ago? It does to me. She was the most pregnant woman in the world FOREVER. I think she was actually showing the day she conceived. That's how pregnant she was.

Anyway, from the time she told me she was pregnant, until the time she actually gave birth (vaginally AND C -Section) (because she just haaaaad to do it all. Show off) - I felt like it was the amount of time it took me to get through Jr. High. I grew some boobs. My hair got a little longer. I had like seventeen crushes on boys that were inappropriately aged for me, and I avoided joining a latina girl gang even though a huge part of me really wanted to get jumped in.

Thank god I was too scared of my mom, and life in general to actually do anything like join a gang that back then. Can you imagine what I would have looked like at six foot, fourteen years old, trying to look like a tough Mexican?

I can.

And of course, in case you can't figure out what's going on here:

What was I saying?

Oh yeah! So it took a long nine months but she had her baby!!!! All those funnel cakes paid off, because Eleanor Judith Jane was so chubby and cute and ridiculously adorable when she was born! At nine pounds and seven hundred ounces she couldn't manage to fit her little self all the way through her mom's . . . canal. She was like, "I'm just so cozy and squishy. Why don't you get another ice cream cone and we'll discuss it?"

And Jess was like, "Uh, I don't think so missy. You're coming out."

And then she did!

Hi HONEY!

Look at all that hair! I'm not sure why no one is chewing on her little cheeks right now, but god damn is she cute. And I am so happy and excited for her parents, because they are amazing, and I know they're just going to rock the shit out of parenting.

Ok, So I Fell Asleep Before The End, But I ALMOST Made It

Oh my gosh, I don't usually sit through awards shows at all. Like, I'll tape them and fast forward until Justin Beiber comes on, and then fall asleep eating mini Snickers and apples (the apples cancel out the Snickers) (also if you eat a lot of pizza at 4am it cancels out the whiskey) because I just get really bored with them.

But for some reason I watched all of the Grammy's last night, and I'm so glad I did because did you see that Cee Lo Green song!? Where Gwenyth Paltrow fucking rocked that shit, and those muppets killed harder than any other back up singers?!

It was the best performance of the night - some muppets and the actress who was in Shallow Hal. Go figure.

Maybe next year Angie Harmon and a the space between Tori Spelling's boobs will be the big hit. Who knows.

Ok, so yes, it could be that I loved the Cee Lo/Gwen combo so much because it was like Glee coming to life and jumping off the tv screen and sitting down with me in the bathtub and scrubbing my back while I tell them how much I love them and they tell me they're not only responsible for happiness, they also are the reason for that warm feeling you get when the sun shines, and then I tell them I'm so in love them I'm willing to break out the fancy bath salts and let the salts work their magic on Glee's private parts.

I got so excited when the piano started for that song I jumped off the couch and knocked a glass of wine over and didn't even care. Yeah. That's how excited I was. I didn't even care about wine.

It wasn't my wine, but still.

In case you missed it, here it is. ENJOY

We Also Quote Commercials From The Early 80s

Have I mentioned that my sister and I do something horribly embarrassing?

Not like, weird-embarrassing stuff that other sisters do like brushing each other's hair in public with their fingers, or holding hands, or making out with each other's boyfriends, just normal-embarrassing. (I'm not sure if that's what sisters do, but that's what I imagine other sisters are like probably because I read too much V.C. Andrews when I was in sixth grade, and also because I don't really know many sisters. Most of my friends just have brothers, or if they have sisters they live in different states from them hence the public grooming is kept to a minimum.)

Anyway, the other day someone bonked their knee on something and Becky immediately screamed in a very droning way, "Geeeeeet an ice pack!" to which I responded, "Geeeeeeet an iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice pack!" and then we burst into uncontrollable laughter. And the knee bonker said, "What's that from?" Because it was clear we were quoting something. So Becky and I just stared at each other like, "Uh oh. What the fuck do we do now. Make something up, quick! Quick!"

"Bonanza."

"That's not from Bonanza."

"How do you know?"

"Well, a) because you guys were talking in some weird sort of accent that was not Southern. And b) you just told me the other day you've never seen an episode of Bonanza."

"Way to go Becky."

"Oh like I was supposed to know she would remember that."

"So, what is it from?"

**We sort of stare at the floor and shift back and forth hoping the shifting with be sway-y enough to hypnotize her into forgetting what she'd just asked.**

"Guys?"

**Shifting didn't work. I shift harder.**

"Hello?"

**Becky looks over and sort of hold her arms out like she's going to have to catch me because now I'm rocking like a crazy person**

"Ok, fine. You tell her."

"Fine," Becky says. "It's from 1991."

"What?"

"It's from a home video from 1991, ok. We're quoting ourselves. We're quoting a home movie."

"Oh my god."

Oh yeah, that's right. It's totally unavoidable. We try reeeeeeeally hard not to do it in front of people because it's horribly stupid to quote a video you made one day after school before your parents came home - but it burned itself into our memory so hard I can't not quote it.

I'm not sure why, but we went through this phase where after school time, became lets-video-tape-ourselves-being-totally-stupid time. If I had the balls I'd post a clip of it sometime, but I don't yet. It's too embarrassing. Becky was still growing out her mullet, and I was like eleven years old, six feet tall, about a hundred pounds, and had Sally Jesse Raphel glasses that wouldn't quit. (somehow I grew so fast and awkwardly, but Becky took her slow time, and flew by unnoticed, even though she hit six feet she did it by the end of High School, so by that time most of the boys had sprouted and she didn't look odd at all. Bitch.)

Instead of the video, here's a drawing of what I looked like when I was eleven and why I'm so glad I made it through to semi-adulthood without too much psychological damage or therapy.

It might not seem that bad but that's only because I can't draw acne or the fact that my chest looked like a little boy's.

Here's some descriptions of what was going on here.

And this still doesn't do what my life was like justice because you can't tell how tall I really am. So I drew a to-scale drawing of me versus some of my friends in fifth grade.

I am not exaggerating. This is the height difference between us for years and years. I frequently was knocking my friends in the head with my elbows because my hands were always on my hips - they were so long and lanky I didn't know where else to put them. Dangling by my side they just looked like hairy gorilla arms that I was about to trip on.

In sixth grade I tried to go trick-or-treating with my friends but a handful of houses refused to give me candy because they thought I was the teenage older sister taking her kid sisters out. I cried every time they said no, and luckily that pulled on their (almost non-existent) heartstrings enough for them to chuck a mini snickers into my bag.

Looking back I should have taken advantage of my tallness to . . . I don't know . . . reach things. And play basketball. But I was too busy being a kid, and making home videos with legos and our hamsters. See where having fun gets you? Unable to dunk a ball. That's where! And quoting yourself.

So embarrassing.

Not Insomnia, But It's Starting To Feel Like It

Sometimes it's so hard not to walk into Bed Bath and Beyond and say:

"Excuse me, can you direct me to the Beyond?"

I mean, seriously - Beyond? What the hell does that mean. "Over here we've got bath mats, soap pumps, and then blankets, different sorts of pillows, and then right back there we've got Space jets, moon rocks, and your grandma who died in 1989."

How awesome would a store be that had all your favorite dead people in it?

"Where you going?"

"Bed Bath and Beyond in Boise. I hear that's where Chris Farley is."

"Really? My Aunt Millie said she saw him at the one in Tacoma."

"Seriously? Shit. You just can't trust the dead anymore."

"They're stuck in a home goods store. What else are they supposed to do but fuck with us?"

Ok, so maybe it wouldn't be so awesome. Maybe it would just be scary and a little sad.

Anyway, I didn't sleep well last night. Not sure if you can tell. James has taken to walking across my face ten times a night, which for some reason triggers my bladder, and so I end up peeing all night like a 73 year old man with prostate problems. I'm not even sure how my bladder refills itself so fast - but when I go at 2am, 3am, 4am, etc, it's always like I'm going for the first time in two days.

Well, I'm either going to go take a nap (even though it's only nine thirty in the morning) or drive by some stores and see if I can't harass the personnel. I'll be honest, both sound equally as fun right now. Apparently sleep deprivation turns me into a High Schooler.

At Least It Wasn't A Stranger's Pair

You know what's not cool? Waking up to find the Math Teacher's teeny tiny dog has pulled my underwear out of the laundry and is chewing on the crotch like it's going to give her everlasting life and happiness.

Seriously puppy, what the h!?

After I scolded her and told her that sort of behavior is just a step before ending up on Dateline's To Catch a Predator - "Why do you have condoms in your car little tiny dog?" - "Uhh, those aren't mine." - "Why do they have your initials on them, and why are they numbered?" - "Oh I like to know how many I use - I mean . . . shoot! I'm outta here!" - After that I jumped in the shower, and completely forgot about the whole underwear incident.

Until I got out AND SHE HAD THEM AGAIN.

I'm not sure how she got them, because I put them on top of my sister's bookshelf (you're welcome Becky) and this puppy is seriously like three pounds and as long as a football. But somehow that little sucker had managed to get them again and was now wearing them over her head like some sort of creepy, perv babushka.

I don't know what's going on, but I locked all my underwear in the bedroom, so if I come home and that puppy has my underwear again I will be a) impressed; and b) will have to ultimately come to the conclusion that my underwear tastes like Skittles.

THAT'S THE ONLY POSSIBLE EXPLANATION.

I Also Love The Dancing

I don't know if it's because it hasn't been on in like seven months (it's not summer FOX, stop pussyfooting around), or if it's because I need to rethink my sexuality, but I keep dreaming about Santana.

Not the Mexican rocker Santana, the Mexican girl from Glee Santana.

Maybe it means I want to be Mexican (Oh my god I wish) (Do you know how awesome I would be as a Mexican? TOTALLY awesome.) (And I would time travel back to 1991 when being a Mexican girl meant I could wear lip liner the color of chocolate, and pale nothingness as the fill in lipstick, and I would hair spray my hair so crispy if you got near it you could snag your sweater on it and end up trapped in my curls like a burr patch, and I would talk with a thick ghetto accent even though my parents and I speak Castilian Spanish at home, and I would wouldn't have had to wear pants that stopped about mid-thigh because I out grew everything at a lightning pace back then because I wouldn't wear pants, I would wear leggings under jean shorts and an over-sized Raiders jersey that I borrowed from my boyfriend Jose! I don't even care which Jose, and of the ones I knew would work!)

(To be fair that's actually what I looked like back then because I desperately wanted to be Mexican except I'm not, so I just looked like a ridiculous, white, gangly, Jewish girl with too much mousse in her hair and not enough boob to make the Raiders jersey look remotely attractive. It just looked like I was wearing a nightgown to school. And that I'd accidentally lined my lips with a sharpie.)

Anyway, the holidays are over and it's time for mah stories to start coming back on. Raising Hope, Glee . . . lets do this mother!

Here's a magic little gem because it's the song I dreamed about last night. Santana was singing it to me at the hospital while I got my teeth capped with gold and diamond caps. And then I shaved my head.

Maybe I don't wanna be Mexican, maybe I want to be a rapper.

I'm not sure I would fair as well.

Jack In My Heart

Let me tell you a little something about breakfast croissants from Jack in the Box. . .

I'm fairly certain they're made in the heavens by chubby little angels that went to Hogwarts and died in some sort of epic battle against the Dark Arts teacher and now have a place in magical Heaven, not normal human Heaven, and for some reason they work on a line system, like the elves in Santa's Village, even though they're in Heaven and they shouldn't have to work, but these are the kids that really wanted to go to culinary school but couldn't because they got a letter form Dumbledore and had to go just to make their parents happy, all of whom said, "Just finish your seventh year and then you can do whatever you want, go to pole dancing school if you want, I don't care, but you're gonna finish Hogwarts and you're gonna finish good." And then they ended up dying, which just made their parents devestated and crying in the corner, "Why didn't I just let little Bathildaione go to pastry school like she wanted?! Bwaaaaa!", but it's ok because now they get to spend eternity spreading love and joy and magic through cooking those tasty little breakfast croissants.

BEHOLD:






And they're two for three dollars! SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

I'll take twenty!

Anyway, I'm not sure why I'm going on and on about this, but when I lived in Chicago the closest Jack was and hour and a half away, and don't think that I didn't consider taking four trains to get there once, because I totally did. But now my sister lives like a block away from one, and it's pretty much going to be the death of my arteries, and I don't even care.

There goes my "Eating Healthy in 2011" resolution, I think I've officially changed it so now it's, "Eating Healthy More and More in 2011 and Loving Every Single Ham and Cheese Filled Second"


(P.S. I really wanted to label this post: "You Can Put Some Jack In My Box" just to show how much I love it - but then I remembered my Mom reads this so decided against it. Family friendly people.) (Sometimes.)

James Dahmer

Well, my murdering little psycho is back in action. You can all breath a sigh of relief - much like the way I hold my breath waiting and hoping Dexter will kill someone soon, because damnit if that Julia Stiles isn't putting a crimp in my stories with all of her feelings and blah, blah, blah - James has started murdering again.

Because of the winter, my little sucker doesn't spend much time outside if it's too cold, but we've had a weird warm patch which not only brought out the cat, it also apparently set all the mice in the world free, making it like a pedophile set loose in an un-teachered elementary school.

I'll be honest, I liked kill-free life. No blood to clean up, no praising him for bringing dead things into the house even though all I really want to do is cry/throw up a little. Plus when he comes into bed at night to snuggle in my knee nook, I don't worry that my lower legs are about to get some sort of SARS from one of the wild birds he has just eaten while still alive, and then my legs will be the resurgence of SARS back into the world, and I'll be quarantined in some government manned hospital where eventually they erase me from all world data banks, cut off my legs, and make me hobble around on my nubs, occasionally strapping wheels to them like some horrible version of human roller skates except way less fun.

But apparently I can't have life my way all the time. Because this morning. . . . this morning James caught a mouse the size of a football then let it go, caught it again, let it go, caught it again, threw it up in the air for a little bit in some sort of horrible juggling show of death, let it go, caught it again, juggled it, I think laughed a little bit, and then continued on with this cycle for a good forty five minutes, until he got bored, the poor thing died, and James decided the party was over and it was time to eat.

But I swear to God he's so super cute and teeny you could never imagine him doing such a thing! Which I imagine is the trick of all the great serial killers, it's how they get through life - making everyone believe they're innocent and tender and cute and cuddly, and then when you're not looking - *BAM* - there's a slaughterhouse in your front yard.

I hope it snows.

Kitten Pancakes

I'm pretty sure I used to do normal things. A while ago. Like, maybe back in High School. I know I at least made it out of my pjs everyday, because I went to school and trust me I would remember if I showed up in my green paisley silk pajama bottoms (that stopped just above my ankle bones) and my sister's t-shirt from kindergarten that said 'Class of 2000' on it. ( Why they gave a 5 year old a t-shirt that would fit a sixteen year old the size of a anorexic Luke Walton I'll never know.)

So, definitely back then I did important things like learn how to drive a car, and memorize the entire periodic table of elements, and discover that not all boys made out with their entire faces, some actually didn't leave a string of saliva between us like some weird sort of I'm-dating-you-umbilical-cord-of-gross. From there I somehow made it to college and graduated (twice)(how?)(I mean, I pretty much drank my weight in whiskey, which leads me to believe I am simply much smarter when drunk)(maybe alcoholics aren't alcoholics, they're really just cancer-solving, world-hunger-ending, space-robot-physicists trapped in a sober body?)(Please do not spread this around as fact though, as is just a theory. And probably a really bad one. Maybe. I can't tell, I'm sober.)

But then everything after that is sort of a reverse blur where I end up back in my pjs, watching waaaaay too many episodes of Two and a Half Men (awful), and making pancakes for my cat.

Oh yeah. That's right. I woke up the other day and made. pancakes. for. my. cat.

Ok, but here's the thing . . .

I've never made pancakes before. Like not even from a Bisquik mix. I don't even ever order pancakes. Once, Gige's husband and I were really hungover and we all went out to breakfast and he and I noticed the couple sitting next to us left almost an entire stack of uneaten pancakes. And by 'almost' I mean ok, fine, they had eaten a quarter of them, but the other quarter was untouched and golden and I think even glowing a little with sunshine sparkles, and we looked at each other, shrugged, and much to Gige's absolute horror, dug in and ate those suckers. But even then I didn't order them, I just ate them off of some strangers plate.

Anyway, so I don't normally have anything to do with pancakes. But I woke up and was like, "I think I want pancakes today. On a Wednesday. Even though it's 10am and I should be working." And just at that exact moment James jumped onto my chest, squished my boob as hard as he possibly could, and said, "Fuck yeah let's have pancakes."

So that's what we did.

Since I don't actually know if he used the F-word or not, I had to go by his actions, and the little sucker got up and followed me to the kitchen and watched every single thing I did to make the batter, like a crazy little Gordon Ramsey. But one that can fit in the mixing bowl. Which was where he sat after I'd made all the pancakes. Because he liked the feel of the leftover batter on his paws? I'm not sure. That little guy is weird with his textures. But he sat in that bowl as if I was supposed to rub the excess all over him like a whole body facial, or some sort of disguise he could use around the neighborhood to fool all the unsuspecting birds into coming to him.

Unfortunately I didn't act fast enough to get a picture of it, because I was too busy falling in love with him all over again for being RIDICULOUS, but I did manage to get a picture of our pancakes.

I ate like seven, and he only sort of licked this one, but it was totally worth it. Next week I might try waffles, that way maybe I can pour little tiny square pools of milk in them and make a fun little checker board of drink for him to relish! He's so lucky!

And yes, I'm going to shower and leave the house now. I do hear myself.

Just Creeping On The Down Low

So I - like the total creep I am - read a lot of Mommy blogs. Like, they're the first thing I check in the morning. So I - like a creep - totally know all about these strangers' kids, how old they are, what their names are, when they started walking, and so on. So much so that a year or so ago, I somehow brought it up with a girl I went to school with and she was all, "Oh my god I read them too! Did you hear blah blah had her baby?!" and I was all, "YES. She's soooo cute! Almost as cute as her son." and we chatted on like this for a while, talking about these women as if they were our friends, dodging weird looks from the guy we went to school with because he had noticed we were talking about people that were almost fictional to us. But worse. Because they're not fictional - it's not like I have some weird fan obsession with Bella and Edward and their world - it's an obsession about real people.

Cue police escort out of the building.

Anyway, I checked one this morning I haven't seen in a while and was shocked to find the baby is not really a baby anymore. She's walking and has hair and I was stunned. Like, I assume people freeze in time when I'm not reading about their personal life? Actually, yes. That is what I assume. The fact that life keeps happening when I'm not checking up on it is almost mind-boggling. And completely self-absorbed, I know, but still - shocking. Like, there's this kid I knew in first grade who broke his leg, and I haven't seen him since, and for some reason when I picture running into him I picture me as a thirty year old, talking to Casey Waters the six year old - asking him what's going on with his life, how's recess, did he get chocolate or plain milk for snack, you know, the ushe.

And I feel even more like a creep because I know if I ever ran into one of these women I read, or their kids, I would be all, "Oh my gosh! Hi Heather! Leta and Marlo are so cute! Hi Marlo, I know you love cheerios, why don't you come into my van and I'll give you all the cereal you want. Start the van Donny, START THE VAN, I'VE GOT THE KID!"

Just kidding. I don't know anyone named Donny.

Anyway, the whole point is, I should probably leave my house more and talk to real people so that one day I don't stumble out of the yard looking around me like - Where did all these flying cars come from? What's this facebook thing the kids are all talking about? Michael Jackson died when???

And I will. I will leave the house.

Right after I check up on some blogs. Like a creep.