Making a whole other person from scratch would be less time consuming.
I made tabbouleh last night from scratch. It was like making traffic. If anybody else in the greater southwest needed parsley sometime in the next three weeks, sorry about that.
- 1 cup fine bulgur (crushed wheat)
- 1/2 cup finely chopped mint
- 4 1/2 small freight barges + one barn full of finely chopped parsley
- 1/2 cup finely chopped onions
- 1 ski mask, black
- 3/4 cup chopped tomatoes (optional)
- 3/4 cup olive oil
- 1 cup lemon juice
- 2 assault rifles (using ammunition reserved from that time you made French onion soup and had to hijack the red onion load flying in from California)
- 1 temporarily requisitioned produce truck full of Italian and curly parsley, finely chopped
- Salt and pepper
Usually when I can't find my car it's because it's in the garage. But you never know.
So, ha, here's something pretty terrible. I got home from work on Saturday and as soon as I walked in the door The Jake started with that whole excited shaking and whining thing he does, that thing that
usually means he'd really appreciate a giant plastic cup full of crunchy moth-flavored pellets in a bowl, but
today meant he wanted me to throw a sticky porcupine toy I'd never seen before. So I trudged outside where I planned to fling it exactly
one time into The Pasture, the Way Back Yard, the part of the property we categorically ignore because the grass is long and hidey and sometimes there are heaps of things that move a little, heaps that make it acutely clear they'd be much happier remaining undiscovered, and also sometimes giant cougars breed back there. In groups. I'm actually not one hundred percent on that last thing, but I ventured back there one time looking for my car and I found three empty cheap champagne bottles, a pair of orange four-legged panties, and an enormous First Response pregnancy test.
It was negative.
I know. I was disappointed, too.
So I was walking through the middle of the Not Way Back Yard-- the LTLC&J Neutral Zone****--when absently I felt something brush against my arm. Something feathery. Something talon crispy. Something dead.
Two dead birds. Both stuffed rather violently inside our birdfeeder.
My initial reaction, standing there eleven inches from an avian homicide scene, was to cover my nose and mouth. Not to prevent breathing dead bird into my body, but because (split-second emergency referring to my my internal spreadsheet of Knowledge Gained Through B-Minus Movies And Bar Trivia) I know that when birds unexpectedly drop dead while enjoying a beakful of tasty, tasty seed it can only mean one thing: the mine shaft has been compromised.
And while I was pretty sure I wasn't actually
inside a mine shaft, for all
I know about the universe we
all-- our whole planet, our whole solar system, our whole Outlook contact list-- could just be microscopic miners in the giant mine shaft of life. Please, I'd just worked a
Saturday. I was wearing
close-toed shoes and my brain had been active for nine hours without forcing my body into a preemptive coma. As fast as
my world was crumbling around me we could all be living in a goddamn giant cotton candy tube.
My secondary reaction was to race through the potential causes of death. You can shrug off a singular dead bird as an unfortunate accident, even if it is undeniably way too far inside the feeder for explanation comfort. But two? Two makes you stop. Two is a spree. Was there in fact a tiny bird murderer on the loose? Or was there a less radical explanation, did the birds simply leave a Honda running inside the feeder and forget to open a window?
I'm joking about it, but as you can imagine it was really awful and sad and disconcerting. We've had that feeder hanging in the yard for years and years and it's never claimed a single victim. I think when it started to run low on seed, the birds must have put their little heads in the holes and gotten stuck. Maybe one started panicking and then the other one panicked and... well.
I called Randy and left a message that there was something seriously wrong in the backyard and then I sat down in the family room to wait and to feel bad.
Half an hour later Randy burst through the door wearing a safari hat, rubber gloves, and cradling an enormous baby bottle. In hindsight I probably should have specified in the message that the problem wasn't related to premature baby cougars.
****
Lion, Tiger, Leopard, Cougar & Jaguar Neutral Zone. Technically they're permitted to enter, but not without proper identification (and, if the T-Rex is on duty, a strip search).
Prissycook (who I've met in real
life, by the way, REAL
LIFE) knows a guy who'll send you a made-to-order hot dog in the mail.
For a dollar! I just ordered a dog myself. With mustard. And extra mailbox smell. This gives me that added push I needed to get fiftycentnachos.com* up and running.
(*Sour cream, cheese, beans, peppers, ground beef, olives, and chips fourteen dollars extra. Each.)
I know I still have a lot of banners I need to post for
the mistake site. I'm sorry. If you sent me one I promise I'll get it up. It's just... it's tax season, and I guess since I'm sort of "involved"
in that now I'm up to my pulpy eyeballs in K-1 statements. Which would be admittedly worse if I hadn't already
pried out my eyeballs and laid them on a low table. So really the K-1 statements are only like waist deep.
I'm a big baby, I know.
Frozen bags of nibblets make fantastic pillows. If you don't believe ME just ask that kid on the floor.
I was driving to work this morning when a black Lexus suddenly veered in front of me, forcing me to step on the brake harder than the brake has ever been stepped on in the history of stopping things. After I scooped my heart up off the dash and crammed it back down into my chest cavity, I noticed with watery eyes that the Lexus' license plate read "
PYIT4WD".
So on the drive home tonight I made four ridiculously short turns without my turn signal and then cruising through a crosswalk I bumped a guy off his bike while screaming, "I AIN'T GOT TIME FOR PEDLIN'!" out the window. Oh, and then I tripped an eight-year-old in the frozen aisle of the Safeway. Just to really go above and beyond. I'd hate to have a balance on my PYIT4WD tab.
There's a new girl starting at work tomorrow. In celebration I announced not only would I be arriving for work in different pants, but that I would be bringing homemade cinnamon rolls with me.
I just finished kneading the dough, and I realize now I bought
cumin instead of
cinnamon. Is that a major problem? I'm really more of a
cook than a baker. I'm really more of an
eater than a cook. I'm really more of a
sleeper than an eater. I'm really more of a
coma-riding frozen fossilized caveman than a sleeper.
So how much ground round goes in the icing, you think?
Okay. I've got pants to wash.
Quickly! And then I've got to climb back in the freezer for naptime! To prevent my delicate antique epidermis from thawing!
"Insult to Injury"
Oh faithful left thumb
Who has always been there
Attached to my hand
Ready to do my bidding
Never for anything terribly important because that's what Right Thumb is for,
But still
You'd steer and stuff.
Sometimes maybe help crack an ice tray
In that first apartment.
Remember that place?
Of course you do.
What a shithole.
But I digress.
Thumb!
I realize now
How I took you for granted
All those times you held my sunglasses while Right Thumb pushed the cart
In the days before I slammed you
Fucking hard
In the back door of the house yesterday.
In the days when you were still opposable
And not nearly this fat and purple.
I entreat you, dear left thumb,
To remember the good times we've had
The ice cream cones you held
Albeit briefly
When Right Thumb got too cold,
The Marboros you helped hold
Back in the day
Once I finally figured out how to smoke in the car
Without burning the crap out of the upholstery
Which was never
But you kept trying.
Good times.
Is what I'm saying.
And I hope that maybe
Just maybe
When you think about the time we've spent together--
The life we've made together--
Maybe you'll cut out all this throbbing bullshit for a few minutes
And just hold the hair dryer
Like every other day
For the past twenty years.
But my sincerest hope
Second dearest thumb,
Is that you'll do everything in your tiny fat power
To hold on to your nail.
Hold on!
And never let it go!
Because really
That nail
Is the only thing keeping you
From looking like a tiny
Fat
Purple
Hand penis.
North Dakota's in the house! Somebody turn the music down.
Yesterday close to nine thousand people gathered in Bismarck, North Dakota to break the world record for
most snow angels ever made at once.
"It's fun and puts us on the map," Arvidson said. "People think there's nothing going on up here."I hear after the record was set, everyone celebrated by staring quietly into space and being really ridiculously cold.
It was one hell of a party.
My mom found Petals in the Wind under my bed? And I'm not kidding, I almost got shot with the Homeschool gun.
I was thrilled to learn that
Sarah is still accepting
submissions to the Cringe book. I've kept some diary or another since I was nine years old, and when I was eleven or twelve I convinced my mom to invest in a locking safe box from K-mart so I could lock my diaries away and not lie awake all night twitching in squinty horror from the idea that my parents might read my innermost pre-pubescent thoughts.
I still have that box. It lived in the trunk of my car for five or six years; in my early twenties I couldn't sleep knowing my nefarious roommates could potentially gain entry into my soul so I drove everywhere with all my secrets clanking around behind me.
When I heard the
call for submissions I pulled out the infamous box and pried it open with a flathead. Thankfully Randy was on the phone with a client at the time or he would have been witness to my horrification and we probably would have wasted a lot of money on MedEvac and an internist. What I found in the box:
- An entire diary in which I devoted every written confession to "Anne". As in "Anne Frank". Yes. I felt it necessary to address a universal symbol of innocence and virtue
every time I came clean about dialing a 1-900 number.
- A book of poetry dedicated to the children of V C Andrews' Flowers in the Attic, Chris, Cathy, Cory, and Carrie. I didn't submit any of this because honestly I'm still too emotionally scarred by the overwhelming beauty and sacrifice of the situation.
- Some loose-leaf poetry I wrote at thirteen while crouched on my bed wearing a Walkman stuffed with Tori Amos' "Little Earthquakes". The handwriting here is really beyond exceptional, surprisingly so, and I think that makes the content (popular girls whorishly spreading their whore legs like whores and... whorenot) that much more jarring. And ridiculous. And generally really bad. And potentially illegal.
- An entire journal I filled at 14 containing nothing but sexual fantasies. Graphic sexual fantasies. Featuring significantly older men. That I wrote in the third-person.
I couldn't read more than a paragraph of any of the above before my face folded in on itself and my spleen started leaking tears. I ended up
submitting ten pages of the sex fanfic
but I still couldn't read it. I'm not kidding-- I looked away when I was scanning the pages. I thought this might be a sign I shouldn't share my internal pre-teen sexual angst with the world at large, but then I remembered: I had exactly the same feelings of insecurity and self-doubt that time I got my masters degree. And everyone thought
that was a pretty good idea.
Except my professors.
I think someone must have given them the box. Or at least that stuff about the
Dollangangers.
The Raptr D-4500! Shock Collar Carrying Case Not Included.
I was talking to a friend today and her cell phone kept cutting in and out.
"I seriously need a new phone," she said. "I'm thinking about getting one of the new Raptors."
"Uh, you mean the '
Razer', I think. Not the 'Raptor'."
"Ha! Yeah, the
Razer. What, they don't make a
Raptor phone?" she joked.
"They tried to, but every time someone used it he'd find himself suddenly surrounded by other raptor phones. Hiding behind telephone poles and shit."
"Because Raptor phones hunt in packs."
"Clearly."
"I guess
that combined with the whole 'I made a five-minute call and now I need my skull stapled back together' really hurt the market," she speculated.
"Exactly! And the insurance didn't cover bite attacks."
She laughed.
I laughed.
"But," I said, sobering up. "Seriously, those Razers are supposed to be pretty nice."
"Nah," she sighed. "I think I'll wait."
I don't blame her. Once you've gotten your hopes all the way up to Raptor it's hard to get excited about existing technology.
Randy misses bread. That's clear.
Randy’s been really busy with work lately, lots of late evenings and weekends. It’s great all-in-all; Randy loves what he does and he’s always energized when business is good, but it means I haven’t seen a lot of him recently. It’s easy to tell when I’m missing him because I send him an inordinate amount of text messages throughout the day. Likewise, it’s easy to tell when he’s missing me by the way he doesn’t respond to any of my texts. Ever. Judging by his unfailing silence, he must miss me enormously all the time. His love, it blinds.
Today, for example. Randy was out with various clients all day and I had some errands to run. For starters I decided to go to the mall and swoop up some tank tops because I only have seventy-three and I can’t sleep at night unless my tank tops outnumber my brain cells. So I got online and plotted my optimal mall schematic because that’s what you do when you’re over thirty, apparently—you get on the internet and pull up the mall’s website and then draw up the most efficient way to get to all the stores you need without ever passing Hot Topic or Rampage. If there’s a basement entrance available or an underground ventilation shaft big enough to shimmy through, thumb’s up. Write it all down on a napkin, then pop your teeth in and call Dial-A-Ride. According to my napkin, I could get in through Barnes and Noble, make a quick right, dart down the hall to American Eagle, and then back out through a supply closet drainage grate.
Text Message To Randy: “I think that giant indoor playground at the mall is really where they put all the kids with rabies.”
What Randy Would Have Text Replied: “That explains why the Inoculations-R-Us store next to the Sunglass Hut does so well. And why the Wild & Crazy Dogs store had to close.”
What Randy Actually Text Replied: Nothing. Randy doesn’t text message.
Even though I’m roughly seventeen years past the target demographic for American Eagle, I’m really buying into the whole “long” thing when it comes to tops and AE has the longest shit going. I could wear one of these tank tops to middle school as a dress and be well within code. I won’t be happy until I can tuck my shirt into my shoes. The guy at the counter—who I think I may have babysat, incidentally—asked me if I wanted to open a credit line and save some money on my purchase.
“Okay,” I laughed, “But this never works. I must be a flight risk.” And maybe it was the fact that I was surrounded by girls a decade or more my junior, girls I could have feasibly given birth to, or maybe it was the sudden freezing realization that I’m over thirty, but I can tell you with complete conviction that my bad credit joke? Yeah, it’s officially no longer funny.
Text Message To Randy: “I got fifteen percent off by opening a credit card at AE! Smart, right?”
What Randy Would Have Text Replied: “Where the fuck is your handler? And what’s AE? Jesus Lord, please tell me it’s not jewelry or cars.”
What Randy Actually Text Replied: Not a single thing. Can’t figure it out.
After I scuttled my way out through a steam tube in the back of the pretzel shack, I dusted off the salt and decided to surprise the still-working Randy with a treat. For the past few weeks we’ve been genuinely trying to be healthier, working out more, no alcohol, no sugar… so pretty much every night we just sit around glumly staring at each other, each of us waiting for the other to miraculously morph into a Nestle caramel cone. Every night after our dinner of protein powder mashed into the shape of French bread, Randy looks at me forlornly and asks, “What’s for dessert? What’s for dessert? WHAT’SFORDESSERTWHAT’SFORDESSERTWHAT’SFORDESSERT???” And I throw a tiny packet of almonds at his torso. He is understandably nonplussed. As evidenced by his constant muttering about arsenic poisoning. So this afternoon I bought him some trail mix! With dried cranberries! From Trader Joe’s! The special dessert edition trail mix with extra nut husks! And then I got myself a smoothie the size of a baby elephant with a straw stuck through its head.
Text Message To Randy: “I got a Jamba Juice! A pineapple one! It’s only 277 carbs! Mmmmmmm!”
What Randy Would Have Text Replied: “There better be an army battalion-sized box of ice cream sandwiches in the freezer when I get there.”
What Randy Would Have Also Text Replied: “Or just one ice cream sandwich. And enough actual sandwiches for an army battalion.”
What Randy Actually Text Replied: “Bread. A lot. Please.”
AWWWWWWW, I MISS YOU, TOO, BABY!
Survival of the Germ-Infested. (Plus Jack Bauer Who Will Continue Repositioning Satellites Until He Gets His Way.)
I had a dream last night about scaling the walls at Disneyland, trying to sneak into Pirates of the Caribbean but ending up in someone's secret Disney-encapsulated backyard instead. When I woke up I started thinking... what if when Walt was hustling around, snatching up property for the DL Project, there was one old wire-haired terrier of a man who refused to sell out his homestead? Team Disney would have had no choice but to sigh and build up around him, rubberizing and purple-painting his house to blend in with Main Street USA. So that shaky dirty blacksmith down by the Haunted Mansion who's always storming around outside of his shop with a Winchester yelling at mouse-eared toddlers to get the hell off his lawn? Yeah. Not on the payroll.
CW, you'll appreciate this: I was reading the January edition of Esquire yesterday, specifically a series of interviews with actors and scientists and other notable public figures called, "What I've Learned". Clive Davis, James Watson, Alan Arkin... it was an entertaining feature. And after I read all about what Forest Whitaker has learned, I flipped the page... to Jack Bauer.
"What I've Learned," by Jack Bauer:
"So many times when I thought there was no more time, there was." Sing it,
Jack.
In completely unrelated news, I just pulled a rubber foot off the bottom of my laptop and popped it in my mouth. So every surface-- every tray table at thirty-thousand feet, every generic desk, every pair of pants, every sticky bar, every "here, hold this for me a second"-- this computer's ever touched? Welcome to my insides!
I pose a valid argument against natural selection despite my best intentions.
Reason #2 To Get Married:
As per the previous entry's comments, all appeals for oral are thereby submitted to the Keep It In Your Pants Review Board. And as the Review Board spends a lot of its time pretending to be asleep, it's not uncommon for such appeals to end up misfiled. Or shredded. Whoops.
Reason #1 To Get Married:
It will finally give me the authorization I need to call the cable company and sanction the addition of Showtime to our lineup.
HA HA HA HA YES HE DID.
The three-hole punch and I were engaged in a battle of wills yesterday (I wanted to purge him of his dots, he was adamant about keeping them) when one of my bosses called me into his office.
"If it's about the paper dots all over the floor, that's totally not my fault." Three-Hole Punch sneered at me from the counter and started chewing on some envelopes. I shook my fist in the air.
Which was weird, probably. In hindsight.
"I need you to post a job listing for me," my boss said, handing me a sheet of paper. Sounded like a good plan. It would give the Punch a few minutes to gather his wits before I pried his ENTIRE RUBBER ASS OFF WITH A LETTER OPENER, YOU HEAR ME, PUNCH?
So the only point of this story is that my company has made a significant change to its standard job overview since my application loitered through the door: instead of "casual work environment", the listing now reads, "
business-casual work environment".
Huh.
I turned around in my chair. "Hey," I hollered toward my boss' office. And I was going to ask if we should specify that the "Three-Day In A Row Target Tee-Shirt Wearer-slash-Same Old Navy Jeans For... Exactly How Many Months Have I Been Here" position's been filled.
But just then Three-Hole Punch spit a whole load of dots at my head. So I stopped.
Punch
does have more seniority than I do, after all.
And our disagreements aside, Three-Hole Punch didn't get where he is today by running his mouth.
Still posting banners.
Mia's trying to drive me insane with questions. And with hunger. And with awesome.
Might as well get used to sharing my personal space with a barely-balanced 8-year-old, I guess.
"Our early twenty-first century civilization is being squeezed between advancing deserts and rising seas. Measured by the land area that can support human habitation, the earth is shrinking."
Add to that the casual observation that the
world's population is screeching through town like a runaway freight baby, and you can't deny there are soon going to be a couple billion more of us trying to fit into smaller and smaller apartments.
You know what's
not helping? Buying your kid shoes with
built-in wheels. Because kids aren't taking up enough space already-- let's make sure they're really
constantly in other peoples' way.
New opposite Out of Character banner up! Thanks,
Scott, for making us all really sad. 100% your fault.
and from
Sonya:
"I held a dandelion under the chin of the moon last night to light his face up half yellow. Did you see me do it?"Oh, how I wish I'd been looking.
Looks like Blogger worked it out.
But the contest is totally
still on. I have way too many fantastic pictures to post.
