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.