I'm curled up on the couch, face half smashed into a drooly pillow. Mouth open. Redundantly. I'm grouchy and hot and itchy and my nose is the kind of full that only the sweet, sweet ADULTO ether can handle. And as I shove more toilet paper up my nose, I'm bitterly reevaluating my perhaps hasty (albeit somewhat bloody) disposal of the liquid nitrogen in question. Then I notice The Jake, my faithful black and white friend, with his little black and white nose sniffing my face and his big eyes all full of concern... two centimeters from my eyes... initially I rejoiced in this careful attention from my The Jake; seeing as how R went to bed two hours ago after I started hissing and throwing magazines, any attention is good attention. Plus, The Jake can't make a casual critical comment about a sauce I spent an hour and a half slaving over. Well, he can, but he won't. The Jake learned better manners when he was studying pastries at the Institute.

Anyway. Initially I rejoiced. My The Jake loves me. He senses my discomfort and, much like I nursed him through a neuter, a splinter, a forty-foot fall and another splinter, The Jake is concerned for my welfare.

And then The Jake drew still closer.

And his eyes took on a slightly sketchier shine as they focused on my fist and nostrils full of wet tissue.

I lay helpless as tiny gentle teeth ventured forth, seeking pulpy cotton. At first I resisted. But, really, what's the use? It's snotty toilet paper. It gives.

The Jake was in it for the boogers.
The Jake is a charlatan.
And one hell of a Fondant savant.
But... secretly? I bet he thought my sauce could have been thicker.


P.S. Oscars. When that guy won for best song tonight, and he busted out at the microphone with a song in Spanish, did anyone else notice that the cameras immediately and frenziedly panned to the closest Latino available? I think at one point they had a confused Nicolas Cage caught in the crosshairs. 
¶ posted by Erin on Sunday, February 27, 2005

  Oh, it must be sweeps week.

I'm watching American Idol (because I require oxygen to breathe and water to live and tri-weekly Victoria's Secret catalogs to shave, just like the rest of you) and suddenly it's a commercial and I see that Seth kid from the OC and then there's like a pentagram on his hand and some guy's stomach starts acting all "undulating alienish" and then there's some screaming and the music is low and weird and dark and I immediately think, "Whoa, man, just get back with Summer already. Point taken. Damn." 
¶ posted by Erin on Tuesday, February 22, 2005

 

Happy Valentine's! I Got Nostalgic And Ate Like Four Whole Rolls Of Necco Wafers In The Car And Now I'm Completely And Disappointingly Ambivalent About Chalky Valentine Hearts.

Mexico was wonderful. Thank god, because now R is sick. Like, "Nyquil all day in the truck drink holder" sick. I dosed him up with Robitussin when I got home, since he no doubt obliterated his susceptibility to Nyquil when he drank two and a half quarts out of a Thirstbuster with a Wendy's chicken sandwich this afternoon. On ice. Which he then ate. Yeah. I tried to score him some crack, but Walgreen's doesn't carry crack. Even when you say, "No, seriously, do you have some crack." So I scoured the shelves until I found a long-forgotten bottle of ALCOHOL-BASED cough medicine. The box was all dusty and soft-cornered... if you're taking laudanum you're supposed to steer clear, according to the label. I think we're good. R's breathing is even... it's easy to gauge, really, since he's only inhaling four times a minute.

(SIDEBAR: R just palsy-shook himself out of a sticky coma to mumble at me that I should "just sneeze" instead of doing that weird "hold it in my face" thing I do. I passive-aggressively suggested that laudanum addicts don't really get a vote. Go back to bed, Shaky.)

Last year I got all whored up for VD. I was tempted to go the same route this year, but really... how many pair of eight-inch clear plastic heels does one girl need?

Eleven. Bingo. I'm out.

So what did I do? I went back on birth control. Oh yes. I got my boyfriend the gift that keeps on not giving. There were way too many running jokes about commando sperm replete with grease paint and tiny camo helmets elbow-crawling their way into the Enemy Zone. I was contemplating buying fake-out white flags and tiny automatic weapons for my ovaries. Because they lie. THEY LIE! When my ovaries started slipping me little notes about Nuremberg and legal counsel, I knew it was time.

Seriously. It was time. My ovaries and David Berkowitz have the same handwriting.

The Jake Who Jumps was left at home to gleefully eat all of our ski clothes, but I took pictures of "The Mexico Incident Scene". As you'll recall, The Jake bailed out of a window forty feet off the ground in his retarded zeal to roll around in dead fish RIGHT NOW.

This is the actual window that the Actual The Jake actually flew out of. I can't really blame him... I almost clambered over the edge myself. Almost. ALMOST. Good thing I was all leashed up.

This is the view from said window. I'm quietly proud of my accurate "squishy death represented via every available material substance" depiction. The Jake landed on the grass, as you recall. This is either because The Jake is blindingly fucking "Jedi owes him money" lucky or because he's a pretty good flailer. I don't know. Flailing runs in this family, sure. But then, so do cash-poor Jedi knights.

Sometimes you should just go to Godiva.
Or else cut to the chase and find your local laudanum distributor.
Either way, stay out of Walgreens.
And don't take any checks from shifty, shady Jedi knights. 
¶ posted by Erin on Monday, February 14, 2005

 

As of today I've been on time for work and I've remembered to punch in and out every day for two weeks. I'm officially meeting all minimum employment requirements. SHAKAH. To celebrate, I pretended to know where some stuff was, lost some other stuff, lied about finishing some different stuff and then took off at three.

R and I are going to Mexico this afternoon. I've promised to bring back three thousand bottles of ephedra for the female office faction. So everyone can be a size 0 and run around sweating and shaking and fighting over the copy machine until their little stringy hearts explode and their bird-bony chests cave in. I'm not actually sure if you can get ephedra in Mexico. If not, everyone's getting Excedrin Migraine.

Who am I fooling. No one's getting anything. Let's stop the charade.

Hey, does anyone else think it's really a phenomenal coincidence that Dr. Lecter's name was "Hannibal" and that he was, actually, a cannibal? What if his name had been "Pecropheliac"? Or "Maxe Nurderer"? WOULD HE STILL HAVE EATEN PEOPLE?

I've got to go. 
¶ posted by Erin on Friday, February 11, 2005

 

If I Knew What Housekeeping Was This Might Be That, But We Won't Call It "Housekeeping" Because Then I Wouldn't Write Anything, I'd Just Lay On The Couch With My Mouth Open Pretending Like I Don't Know The Dishwasher Needs To Be Unloaded. For Four Days.

1) For those of you who keep hoping I'll post the damn tattoo Paint pictures, quit hoping and SEND ONE IN ALREADY. I'm not posting these until I start feeling all clammy and overwhelmed by all the entries. That's how I work, people. Right now I have, like, seven. And they're fabulous, they are, and I CAN'T WAIT to show them to you, but I'm still pretty comfortable with myself. I'm still sleeping okay, and I'm not thinking about calling in sick to stay home and "power through" the post. You other slackers need to throw in. Come on. Make me wish I'd never brought it up.

2) All of my coworkers are talking about what they're giving up for Lent. Being a lapsed Methodist (which is pretty much the same thing as being an active Methodist, only with less self-righteousness and more sinning), I'm not really bound by the whole "Lent" gig. I don't think. I'm not sure, actually. I might be. At this point I think God would be offended if I participated, so I'll bow out and keep doing the reams and reams of shit that I should VERY OBVIOUSLY give up. I keep announcing when asked, though, that I'm going to give up not drinking at work. I don't think it was as funny the fifteenth or sixteenth time I said it, and I don't think the Director of Risk Management thought so, either. At least, he didn't seem that amused when he confiscated my bottle.

3) There's a Costco-sized bottle of Palmolive on the barbecue outside, and everytime I walk by the window I jump and stare and go, "AGGGHHHTHERE'S A PERSON WITH A GIANT WHITE HEAD OUTSIDE LEANING AGAINST THE GRILL!" and then I go, "Damn. I should really bring that in." And then I sit down and post an entry to my website. TADA! BRILLIANCE.

3.5) You know what would be funny? If someone else brought that Palmolive in, and the next time I walked by the window, I'd go,"AGGGGHTHERE'S A PERSON WITH A GIANT WHITE MISSHAPEN HEAD OUTSIDE LEANING AGAINST THE GRILL! NO, WAIT, THAT'S JUST THAT SOAP! HA HA HA! R?" but R wouldn't answer because he'd be hiding in the pantry with a ball peen hammer a grocery sack over his head. Fool me once.
 
¶ posted by Erin on Wednesday, February 09, 2005

 

If You're Thinking That You Attended The Worst Superbowl Party In History Tonight, If You Weren't Force-Fed Lasagna With Celery In It, You're Wrong.

We drove like twenty-five miles out of town to go to this party where the host fell asleep on the only piece on furniture that wasn't suitable for medieval torture or sobby hair shirt penance, the hostess locked the bar at 7:15 and doled out instant coffee and someone's little kid had some weird allergic reaction that required her to throw up on the fruit plate. Sad Old Guy talked animatedly about his cats during the commercials, and I knew that I would be sentenced to the "Mean To Sad Old People Who Only Have One Leg" section of hell if I ignored him. I'm pretty sure that's the section of hell where they make you watch tapes of a Grandma getting all dolled up for Visiting Day at the nursing home, only no visitors ever show so three hours of the tape is just Grandma sitting all alone on a bench, all straight-backed with a shaky smile, fidgeting with her hem while she watches all the other Grandmas play with their grandkids.

So I listened. Of course. And I smiled and smiled and smiled, and I asked the names of all the cats, and I asked the hostess for a napkin to pinch-gather some stray child throw up off the table, and then I asked which cat was the oldest, and then I concurred that sneaky cats who pee on you while you're sleeping are really... OH MY GOD THE SUPERBOWL COMMERCIALS ARE ON RIGHT NOW YOU ONE-LEGGED SPONGE AND COULD I PLEASE GET A MOTHERFUCKING NAPKIN.

I like to think that I'm in a holding pattern for the hell where you do your taxes all day and the cork always breaks off in the bottle and all your pants are just a little too short. Me and a bunch of wide-eyed, "gee whiz" fourth graders in this "best case scenario" hell of mine. Let's move on. Away from all this pollyanna make-believe.

The MS tattoo pictures are fantastic, as usual. More of you need to submit. And then I'll post them. Be sure to visit Reverse Survivor, too, where the theatrics are reaching that inevitable stage where tangible hatred begins to set in. It's awesome. I'm in with the losing set, FYI. Shocking, I know.  
¶ posted by Erin on Sunday, February 06, 2005