So I officially registered to run a half-marathon today.

I managed to squeeze it in between a breakfast of Diet Coke and Tylenol and a lunch that was at least 86% sour cream.

I'd talk more about how excited I am but I'm running late for a Happy Hour thing and I still have to bribe someone to carry me into the shower.

My apologies to clowns. And... everyone else.

Randy just got home from a monthly meeting and he had a joke for me. He often returns from this particular meeting with jokes but not anything I would ever repeat; not anything Randy would ever repeat either, since he usually gets about halfway through one before he resorts to wild gesturing and muttering, "you know, you know" because he can't bring himself to actually utter the punchline. I think the birth of his granddaughter rendered him physically incapable of articulating certain words and/or phrases that breech an understood base level of decorum. It's endearing, really; his mouth keeps moving but it's mostly high-pitched squeaks. Like one of those bark collars, but one that's activated solely by crude references to female genitalia.

So here's his joke. That he told. That I liked. And laughed at.

A clown is walking hand in hand with a child into the woods. The child looks up at the clown and says, "It's really dark out here! I'm scared! Let's go back!"

The clown pats the child's hand and smiles. Keeps walking deeper into the woods.

"It gets darker and scarier the farther we go!" whines the child. "Let's go back!"

The clown shakes his head and keeps walking.

"Mister, please!" the child says, "It's dark and spooky out here, I'm really scared!"

"How do you think I feel?" the clown says, "I have to walk out of here alone."


Annnnd that's the only joke my husband has told me in ten years that I can repeat. Now who wants to hear the one about the three-armed narcoleptic stripper who SQUEAK! SQUEAK! SQUEAK!

His sea monkeys greeted him fourth. With somersaults.

I saw a commercial early this morning for this stupid shoulder bag with a zillion compartments, and it never would have even pinged my radar were it not for the "FREE BONUS" gift the stupid bag people were using for bait. Because (as seen in the above link) the FREE BONUS gift was a "tapeless voice recorder"!

Tapeless! It's a recording machine that doesn't require tape! What year is this, 3042? Did the aliens bring this device as a high stakes bartering chip for our collective bone marrow? Because that's the only plausible explanation! Next thing you know they'll be giving away a magical wand that you wave at your television to change the channel! YES, I WILL BUY A BAG WITH A SPECIAL COMPARTMENT FOR MY CATHETER TUBES IF IT MEANS I CAN OWN TOMORROW'S TECHNOLOGY TODAY.

Somewhere there's a guy who just got home from work, right, and when he unlocks the door to his townhome the first thing he's greeted by is the flashing "12:00... 12:00... 12:00" from the clock on his VCR. The second thing that greets him is the ERROR message on his answering machine letting him know his message tape is full. Luckily the third thing that greets him is his pet rock or this might have been a pretty rough day. THAT'S the guy who seriously needs to learn to program his VCR to record the shoulder bag infomercial.

Look...

I said I would post every day in October, I didn't say every post would be readable.

And I'm taking the weekends off from here on out, too, unless you want more Amazon screenshots and BlackBerry Messenger updates. I've got a huge craft show this weekend and I'm up to my nethers in stuffing over here. See you Monday.

In the meantime go read the latest issue of The Plug. Good luck on that "Treasure Haunt", damn thing took me four days.

I'm slammed today finishing zombies for a big craft fair on Saturday but in the interest of actually posting every day in October, here. A big dork update.

RIM released the newest version of BlackBerry Messenger yesterday, version 5.0, and it's awesome. If you use a BlackBerry and your operating system is 4.5 or higher*, point your BlackBerry browser to blackberry.com/messenger for the download and follow the directions.

(*If you don't know what operating system you're running, go to "options ->about" and you'll see it. And if you're running anything lower than 4.5 you should update it.)

Oh! Oh! And the incomparable Kate Danley is going to be on Parks and Recreation tonight! NBC! Check local listings! Keep an eye out!

Or a martini shaker.

I was just searching Amazon for a baby swing-- this family has a couple of outdoor-loving babies who could swing you under the table and I finally managed to find a tree limb in the backyard that doesn't dead end straight into a concrete wall-- when I found this swing by Fisher Price.


Hey, perfect! A brand I trust not to fall out of the tree, right size, good price... heyyyyy, wait a second:


Oh hell yes. This could only be better if instead of that pet stair thing, Amazon recommended noise-reducing headphones.

363 days until 35.

I had a bunch of bills and zombies and things to mail yesterday so I drove to the only blue mailbox I know of that opens wide enough to accept a packaged zombie. Standing in front of it my hands were ridiculously full, envelopes, packages, car keys...

You see where this is going.

HA! No you don't! Because I very smartly opened one hand and let my car keys fall safely to the ground while I did my dangerous mailing! Look at me, taking preventative measures and whatnot.

"Maybe thirty-four is going to be my year!" I thought. And then I smugly shoved everything else I was holding into the mailbox. Including a $700 bank deposit.

A couple of weeks ago at the grocery store I picked up one of those days-of-the-week pill keepers like your great-uncle and your drug dealer have, the long strip of plastic pockets with the days of the week on them so you can allocate your daily vitamins and pills in advance and have them all in one handy place. As opposed to losing an entire open Costco-sized bottle of Centrum for Women under the passenger seat of your car where you occasionally snatch for one when you happen to be both at a red light and feeling particularly low on B7.

I had actually wanted to bring my grandmother's pill keeper home with me after she passed away because I thought it would be a daily sentimental reminder. I was wrong, though; according to every single person I've ever met, using your deceased grandmother's medication holder isn't "sentimental" as much as it is "breathtakingly morbid" and I was rather harshly ordered NOT to store my Claritin in the same plastic pocket where my grandmother once kept her nitroglycerin.

Fine then, I bought my own. And I felt self-conscious and rickety and like a giant hypochondriac doing it-- I mean please, right? I need a pill organizer the same way I needed a retainer made out of paperclips when I was eight. In third grade my next door neighbor and I came up with a plan to break each others' arms so we could get plaster casts. We didn't go through with it, of course, but lack of follow through isn't the problem: I HAD THE IDEA. THAT'S the problem.

So I get home with my pill keeper and I start bustling around grabbing vitamins and shit out of the pantry, and Randy swings through the kitchen and sees me and he's all, "???" And I'm all, "!!!" And he's all, "Yeah, I'm leaving now because I can't pronounce an asterisk but don't touch my BC Headache Powder." And I was all, "YOU BETTER FEED YOUR LEECHES BEFORE YOU LEAVE."

I popped open Su through Sa and started assigning pills to days; fiber tablets, linty Centrum I scraped off the floorboards, vitamin E capsules the size of quail eggs, a bunch of Cipro for a UTI (you're welcome), vitamin C, some Anacin (don't tell Randy), assorted allergy medication, and before I knew it all seven of my plastic compartments were jammed.

JAMMED. I tried to slam Tuesday closed and a fish oil capsule exploded.

So obviously I ran out and bought a larger pill organizer. Larger. A larger one. It came with a free bottle of Geritol and a coupon for five dollars off at Cardigan World. I could store a portable breathing machine in Wednesday and still have room for an adrenaline shot on Friday. Deep inside me a little girl squinting needlessly through her mother's reading glasses rejoiced.

Randy happened to walk back in as I was repositioning everything and stopped to watch.

"Hey, are those One-A-Day Men's? And these," he pointed, "these are for joint pain. You don't have joint pain."

"I might have joint pain."

"You should have told me," he started, and I grabbed my pharmacy and ran out of the room before he could slap a leech on me.

The whole system lasted exactly one week; I lost interest when it was time to refill everything again. Now I'm back to eating Centrum off the car floor. It's probably for the best, it was a really weird week. I mean yeah, my UTI went away and I was completely allergy-free, sure, but I also started growing hair on my back and my joints felt all soggy inside.

It's my birthday!

And we've been busy. I promise this won't be a month of Family Guy videos, I truly have a bunch of posts lined up, but I'm totally exhausted and I seriously adore this clip.

The Teepee Farm can just WAIT.

It's almost 5:00 and I've managed to spend the majority of today, the eve of my 34th birthday, on the couch dozing in and out of "The Lottery Changed My Life" on TLC. Relaxing, sure, but the downside is that I keep waking up out of a sweaty half-sleep convinced I've won the lottery and for a split second I scramble around for my checkbook so I can throw fifteen million at a teepee farm.

This morning I was in the shower and I realized I've finally figured out how much shaving cream it takes to shave my legs. And I think that's the culmination of Year 33 right there, that's the crowning achievement of my earned knowledge-- the fact that I figured out to only press the shaving cream dispenser for three-quarters of a second versus four seconds.

Of course right after that I accidentally conditioned my hair with 12% alpha hydroxy acid.

So to sum up:

I'm not making a hell of a lot of headway, here.
As we speak my scalp is organizing an enormous skin regeneration project; the jury's still out on whether or not my hair is going to stick around.
The first thing I'm doing when I win the lottery is investing in a large-print, waterproof label maker.

DELETED!

Entry deleted. I still get credit, though, even if you weren't fast enough to get here.

Here, watch this clip from Family Guy:

A Tragedy of Poultry. In Three Parts.

Part 1: February, 2008. I plop a slippery, naked, happy-go-lucky whole chicken onto my chicken grilling contraption and rub its chilly body down with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. The chicken giggles. "That tickles!" laughs the chicken. Very gently, I separate the skin from the chicken's body and softly massage garlic-infused butter over its back and legs. The chicken understandably dozes off during this massage and so I'm quiet when I carry it outside to the waiting preheated barbecue. As I open the lid the chicken wakes up, straightens its neck nub, and yawns.

"See ya later, Chicken!" I sing.

"After while, Not A Chicken!" the chicken sings back, waving a bumpy wing. "Thanks for the rub down! See you in about an hour when I'm golden brown and my juices run clear!"

Five minutes later: The barbecue is awash in flame. I grab a potholder and throw open the lid but it's too late, it's a massacre.

I hurry the chicken inside to better assess the damage.

"What happened out there?" I ask.

The chicken coughs. "I don't know," it moans, "things were good, you know, warm... and then... and then I think I exploded?"

Through cracks in the chicken's blackened skin I see sticky raw chicken flesh.

"Am I... can you still eat me?"

"I'm pretty sure that's a no," I tell it, "I'm pretty sure you'll kill me if I try."

"I won't! I wouldn't! I promise!" Bloody smoke billows from its neck hole.

"Yeah... I think you will. I think I have to put you in the Big Trash Can Outside. It's garbage day tomorrow so it shouldn't be that bad. And I'll weight the lid down with something," I add for decency's sake, "to keep the cats out."

The chicken sighs wetly, filling the kitchen with a dark fog.

"Okay," it relents. "And hey, I'm really sorry about all this."

"Don't even worry about it," I say, carrying the chicken out to the garage. "We've got some leftover pizza." I pry the chicken from the grill tray and set it on top of the trash before putting a couple of bricks on the lid. As I walk back into the house I can barely hear the chicken crying.

Part 2: April, 2009. I grab the grill tray out of the pantry where it's been sitting for more than a year. I cut a chicken free from its plastic bag and toss it in the sink, scraping out its assorted organs as I go. "Hey," the chicken pipes up, "Aren't you going to use any of that stuff?" I toss what I presume to be a heart, a liver, a gallbladder and what, a lung, maybe, into the garbage disposal. "Because it's kind of a waste," the chicken says over the grinding motor, "some of that stuff is pretty good." I grab a pair of scissors; we've got some chicken skin that has to come off. "Whoa, what are we doing? What are we... hey!" I trim a healthy wedge of skin from the top and bottom of the chicken and cram it into the disposal. "Fire hazard," I explain. "Th...th... that's okay," the chicken replies, shivering.

Setting the chicken on the counter, I pour sea salt into its cavity. The chicken's ensuing screams fill the kitchen. "I'm all raw in there!" it wails. "Can't you do that on the outside?" I ignore the snuffling of the chicken and attempt to jam it on the roasting spit thing. It takes like four tries because the chicken's opening isn't big enough. On try number three the chicken loses consciousness.

It wakes up as I'm opening the barbecue. "Wait," it mumbles, disconcerted, "Don't I at least get a butter massage?"

"Too flammable," I say, "We're going to have to count on your natural juices for flavor."

The chicken attempts a shaky thumbs up with its neck nub. "I won't let you down!"

Five minutes later: The chicken let me down. I grab it and hustle it into the house.

"Son of a bitch," I mutter. "What the hell happened out there?"

"I... I don't know," the chicken moaned. "Things seemed to be going pretty well, but then all of a sudden..."

"You exploded?"

"Maybe? I'm not really sure. It felt pretty bad, though."

I upend the grill tray over the sink and give it a good shake. The chicken slides loose with an unceremonious plop! and slides neck down into the drain hole.

"I think maybe this part is good right here," the chicken mumbles hopefully into a sponge, gesturing to an upper thigh. "This part isn't hurting me." Ignoring it, I grab it with a wad of paper towels and head out to the Big Trash Can. Trash day isn't for four days. And I'm out of bricks.

Part 3: Two weeks ago. The whole chicken on the counter bobs its neck nub with excitement as I draw near. "Hi! I am just so excited to be here, I can't even stand it." I open a utensil drawer under the counter. "Oooh, what are you getting? A baster? Oooh, oooh! Or one of those flavor injectors? Because I've heard good things!" I grab a mallet. And a cleaver. And close the drawer. "Wow," says the chicken. "That looks a little overkill."

Anything else that chicken has to say it says to itself, presumably in its Happy Place, as I proceed to chop and smash its body into manageable, less likely to explode pieces. I mercilessly trim the skin and cover everything halfheartedly in salt and pepper. I dump the chicken on the grill and make sure all the burners are set to LOW. Right before I close the lid I see the chicken attempting to roll its traumatized pieces into seven separate fetal positions.

I sit inside, eyes narrowed. Waiting. Waiting. Nothing. Everything looks fine out the window, situation normal. I let my guard down, stupidly, and concentrate on salad. Suddenly and without warning the house fills with the smell of burning plastic; running to the window I see that the yard is full of smoke. Had a Chicken Jedi Master been over and waiting for dinner he would have felt a great disturbance in The Force.

When Randy emerges from his backyard reconnaissance mission, he explains that the barbecue somehow became so hot that all of the hard plastic control knobs melted off and formed little rubbery pools on the patio.


We silently agree not to discuss the chicken.


I now live in a state of perpetual fear. Fear that one day I'll find myself in a dark parking garage or a drizzly back alley and my peripheral vision will catch the silhouette of a shadowy figure reflected on a wall, a figure slowly approaching; a hulking, heaving chicken, wearing a tight trench coat and hellbent on revenge.

Makes me glad we're not really beef people.