Just Look What You've Done to Me

Well, I'll be damned.

When I started this thing 3 weeks ago, I wasn't sure I'd even be able to maintain the level of discipline necessary to post to a blog. I fretted about it all the time--in fact, there are little scraps of paper all over the house with notes like "big head" or "VIC card lady" written on them. I'm always worried I'm going to run out of material.

In the blog world, I've responded to several questions about how long the hiatus between school and writing again really is. My feeling has always been: indefinite. I don't know why--whether it was the intensity of my focus during school, or school's duration, or just general exhaustion related the kind of drama and constant examination that writing seemed to demand--but I've never had more than a fleeting urge to write since May 2003.

Suddenly it seems to me that these little scraps of paper are quite a bit like the little scraps of paper I kept when I was writing fiction--a word or two, a funny line, a tiny summarized idea. I used to like Wendy's advice about joining 3 unrelated things--like confetti, my papers: shake together, pull 3, make story. I've found that all week I've been thinking and hearing like a writer again, imagining beginnings, finding dialogue, looking for counterpoint. Maybe it's nothing--maybe in a week I'll find myself back to my normal routines and my notes for the blog will be just that: notes for the blog.

I've got a bunch of stories left over from school. I've always referred to them as false starts--two pages or less, a set up I loved enough to never get rid of, but ultimately, for whatever reason, never got finished. Do you writers have these too? Want to trade and finish each other's stories? Could be fun.

P.S. The "big head" note refers to the fact that I have an abnormally large noggin. It seems normal when you look at me, but I can't buy hats in stores. Even my friend Bernie's huge cowboy hat perches atop my head like a bird's nest. Last Halloween my friend Michelle raced around Bernie's house screaming, "Megsie's got a huge head!" Just wanted to share that little bit of humiliation with you.

Googling Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

One of the darker parts of the internet--you know, besides child porn--is how easy it is to find out things that you don't really need to know. We're always extolling the virtues of "having the world at our fingertips," but sometimes I think we were better off before. Relationships ended, people went their separate ways, and all you could think was, "Hmm. I wonder what ever happened to that person." And then only if you were nostalgic and felt like thinking that. Oh, occasionally your great aunt Ruth might run into someone's step-nephew and you'd hear something through the grapevine, but you never had to really know how your ex's were doing, hear their words just the way they would say them, see their pictures....you know.

I love looking up old Girl Scout camp friends, talking to weird people from highschool who never talked to me then but for some reason want to befriend me now, and seeing how that dweeb I dated when I was 14 is doing. But the power of Google can run away with a person.

Mostly what you find is that so-and-so got married and has 2.5 kids and 1.4 dogs. You see the wedding album and it tugs your heart a bit. You think semi-catty thoughts about their current spouse and you feel a little lost for a day. But what if you find out that something is really, really wrong...and there's absolutely nothing you can do to help? Nothing you could say that wouldn't make things worse, no way to cross back into who you were to take care of the person you loved then?

I think it's obvious I'm feeling a little melancholy. Mostly it's for my friend and partly for myself and a long ago girl who tried so hard to be a grown up and failed.

Word.

Like many of my blogging friends, I am very grammar-minded. I read a great deal, write a little, and teach English to small, and not-so-small, children. One of my greatest pet peeves is huge signs with spelling/usage/grammar errors. Small, mom-and-pop-made signs trouble me, but not nearly to the degree that billboards and the like do.

My absolute most hated, grammatically incorrect company is Westfield Shopping Town. Their slogan, and I'm not kidding, is Things That Westfield Do. THINGS THAT WESTFIELD DO. This is painted on the walls of the mall and printed on their shopping bags. Things That Westfield Can Do. Fine. Things That Westfield Does. Westfield is a singular noun, people. People won't go to the mall with me anymore because I just cannot let this go.

There used to be a billboard at the corner of Racine and Eastwood that said, "Home Depot: Fixed Pricing Across the Carolina's" that drove me to distraction. It is right beside a store called Larrys'. Does that store belong to more than one Larry? Or is a store only for people named Larry? I cannot understand this.

My friend Kasey was telling me about a segment she heard on Bob and Sheri about the English Language crossing 1 billion words. New Additions for this year include celebutante and podcast. You might think that I would dissaprove of new words but I don't. I love them. Any time we can be more specific, use a more perfect word, I think we should, even if we have to make up a word to say what we mean better. I love celebutante. That's hilarious to me--and very descriptive. What was it we used to say in science class? It has parsimony.

I was saddened to learn that buck naked has been morphed almost universally into butt naked, a phrase that makes dramatically less sense. I was thinking of the phrase "butt fuck nowhere," that was common to my area of suburban Maryland when I was growing up. I think this too was a mutation, beginning with bum fuck--as in, "He lives out in bum fuck." How did this get to be a descriptor?

The world is full of mysteries.

Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy

I am deaf.
Ok, while that's not entirely true, I do seem to have a penchant for hearing things just slightly wrong. For instance:

Actual Nickelback lyric:

And it must have been so bad
Cause living with me must have damn near killed you

Nickelback lyric according to Megs:

And it must have been so bad
Cause Little Women must have damn near killed you

The saddest part about all this is that instead of thinking, "that makes no sense! Little Women couldn't kill anybody!" I invent crazy explanations for why my lyric is clearly right. In this case, it seems like the woman that he is describing throughout the song is very sensitive. Maybe he is saying that she is just SO emotional that reading Little Women must have damn near killed her.

Or the time that I decided that the Nelly Furtado lyric, "I'm like a bird, I'd only fly away," was "I'm like a bird, I don't evaluate." Because birds don't evaluate, people. I'd just like to see an evaluating bird.

Recently I misunderstood the SLVR (sliver) phone as the Slipper Phone. I was like, "Damn, we've got the razor and the slipper, what are we going to get next, the bathrobe phone? The toothbrush phone?" My husband could barely keep from throwing up laughing as he explained that it was the sliver phone....because it is so thin.

Oh.

Love Thy Neighbor Neighbor

I am so excited! My sister has given me her digital camera! Now I can take a picture and share with you the mystery of the sign down the street that says "Love Thy Neighbor Neighbor."

ha HA! Picture coming soon!

Splenda=the Devil

Back to PSA mode...

A few years ago while I still had the benefit of free inspection by the incompetent (yet sometimes right) UNCW health services, I found out that I was developing diabetes. This came as no enormous shock, as it runs pretty strongly through both sides of my family. But being that at that time I had no health insurance (still don't!) the doctors recommended a low carb diet for controlling my blood sugar. It worked like a charm. Most of the horrifying pre-diabetes symptoms (some too graphic to mention) disappeared right away, I stopped fainting in public and lost about 60 pounds. Excellent. I heart Dr. Atkins and still do.

One of the things that has made my transition from whole-pizza-wolfer-downer to slimmer, more healthy, no-sugar eating Megs has been Splenda. Dr. Atkins loved Splenda, and the Atkins craze seemed to cause all companies to begin using it. Ice cream returned to my life and angels sang. My whole family relies on it to help us stay honest and not rot our feet off (diabetes is so great. Yay.)

This weekend I went to a party at my friend's house--where I drunkenly allowed myself to be henna-tattooed, but that's another story--and I met a girl there who is allergic to Splenda. She began telling me about her panic attacks, heart palpatations, dry eyes...a whole slew of symptoms. I immediately called my sister over because she eats a ton of Splenda and has a ton of these symptoms. She found out today after some research that not only are those and other neurological and cardiological symptoms typical of a Splenda allergy, but that it could also explain fluctuations in her hormones causing her to stop getting her period and start bizarrely losing and gaining weight.

So beware!

This PSA brought to you by a Megs who will dearly miss her Splenda ice cream.

Back to School

Back to school...to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool...

So It's Monday morning and I'm going back to work. I know there's only a month left in the school year, but I'm painfully aware that now is when I'm supposed to start looking for a new job. I'm completely paralyzed by the idea. It was so hard to find a good job after I finished school--I can't believe I'm voluntarily going out into the uncharted workforce again. Not that my current job is necessarily good in any way, except the way in which I don't hate it and don't generally wish to be hit by a bus on my way to work, a common feature of my previous jobs.

There's something really ugly about reaching a point in your life when you have to say, I'm tired of living like this. Will I have enough money for food this week if I take the dogs to the vet? If I pay the car insurance 3 weeks early, that leaves me 2 paychecks to cover the rent...Oh crap, that won't work. I forgot that car tax is this month. These are thoughts I no longer want to have. I don't want to wonder if it's broken or hope it's not pink eye. If I don't feel well I want to be able to go to the doctor--or even, for that matter, to stay home from work if I'm sick, an option I don't currently have. I'm not trying to diss my job--it's just that every time I think of leaving it, I have to talk myself up again. (Now I can just read this post!)

So I'm going back today with the odd sense that I will soon be gone.
Anybody know someone who's hiring?

Not My Fault

So, it seems to me that I've been posting for the last two weeks about all my faults: afraid of zombies, compelled to make weird noises, can't dance a jig.

Today I thought I would take a break from this self abuse to give Wilmingtonians a public service announcement:

New Hanover County Library Book Sale!

And this is not just discarded library books--they are selling off books that people have donated to help them make money. There are really good, current books there for 50 cents to a dollar. This is my favorite time of year!

If you go today you have to pay 15 dollars for a membership (worth it for next time and totally worth it to get in on the first day before everything has been picked over). But tomorrow through the rest of the week is free to the public. Prices go down toward the end of the week, but so does the quality.

It's at the library on Military Cutoff, near the forum and it runs today from 9-3. Run! Run to the library book sale!

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

When Hummingbirds Attack

This morning on AOL (yes, I know. I can't believe I still use AOL either), one of the headlines was
When Idols Attack: Did Bo Bice Fight an Ex NFL Player?

Hilarious! I cannot stop giggling about this. I love the phrase "When _____ Attacks."
You can stick anything in there!

My New Career

One day, I was explaining to my friend Bryan that I feel compelled to imitate any strange noise or voice that I hear on TV or the radio. It doesn't matter if it's human or electronic, if there's a sudden loud noise, a computer voice saying something, or an animal sound, I'm all over it. Bryan looked at me and said, "Megs, some people call that Tourettes Syndrome." So true, Bryan, so true.

One of my favorite things to imitate is the automatic checkout machine at Harris Teeter. I am a dead ringer for that lady. I can say, "Please place the item in the bag," or, "Do you have any items under your cart?" with the exact same mixture of pleasantness and rebuke. But my tour de force is, "Thank you for shopping at Harris Teeter." I don't know; you've gotta hear me do it. I think there's a career for me in electronic voices. I could do that VIC lady's job, no problem. The telephone banking woman ("please press 3 for more options"), Voicemail...hell, I can even do the AOL, "Welcome. You've got mail." I mean, the world's wide open for me.

One thing I'm particularly enjoying lately is the commercial where the guy is using the automatic check out and it gets stuck on wart remover. I've spent many a happy few minutes saying, "Wart Remover, wart remover, wart, wart, wart." I heard a DJ on the radio imitating that same commercial last night. But she had nothing on me.

If You Want, I Could Dance a Jig

I'm always offering to dance a jig--it's my sure fire way to cheer people up. Sadly, I have no idea how to dance a jig. Once the offer is accepted, I always have to admit that in fact, I have promised things I can't deliver. So I've turned to the internet for help.

www.irelandseye.com says that:

The lighter jig is a faster dance than the jig, slip jig and heavy jig. The double jig is one of the most popular Irish dances. It commences with the rising step, one of the first steps taught to beginners. The right foot is lifted about 12 inches off the floor, the person hops on the left, while the right is lowered to tap the floor and then each foot in turn is lifted and lowered. This action is repeated three times to one bar of music.

If you could see me trying this at home, you'd laugh.

Electric Boogaloo

This morning as the alarm went off and I, as usual, about jumped out of my skin, I was thinking how likely it is that some form of electronic noise will kill me someday. My friends and family think it's hilarious how I will jump up and claw the air if the doorbell rings, clutch myself if someone's cell phone goes off, screetch when I hear the kitchen timer....but it's not. Each time I've lost a few minutes off my life. Someday, when my husband turns on the car radio and it's set to 20 instead of 12 because he's been driving on the highway, I'll just keel over dead from the shock and then how will you all feel? Huh? Then how will you feel?

Unrelated idea: Whenever a movie sequel comes out, I feel compelled to add "Electric Boogaloo" to the title. Examples:
X-Men 2: Electric Boogaloo
Bad Boys 2: Electric Boogaloo
Aladdin 2: Electric Boogaloo

See how satisfying? I dare you not to say it in your head every time you hear of a sequel from now on.

Why I Love the Breakfast Club

It's late, but I'm feeling guilty for not posting today.
I had a nice meal with my friends Michelle and Mary and watched Idol and Love Monkey...returned home to hang with Jennifer and Holly...drank too much wine.

I was having a conversation with Mary tonight about things we did in high school, or didn't do, for fear of getting caught. I was telling Mary that I never did anything that I was afraid of getting caught doing, and I was constantly convinced that my parents were monitoring my every move--an idea that I do not think was entirely unfounded. Here is my story:

Ok, so I'm 12 years old, maybe 11 and a half. I'm spending the night at my friend Marnie's house. The backstory: I lived in suburban Maryland while I was growing up. Though that area tends to be overrun with townhouses and condos, I lived in a neighborhood that, for whatever reason, never really developed. My yard was almost two acres. We were far from our nearest neighboors, which was not the experience of most of my friends. I was envious. I couldn't ride my bike to people's houses or go next door to play. Marnie could. She lived in one of those overdeveloped areas I envied so much.

My mom takes me to Marnie's at 3 in the afternoon. Please refresh in your memory that we are 11 or 12 and in middle school and that it is 3 in the afternoon. Marnie met me at the door wearing a party dress. I don't mean the scanty things that we now think of as party dresses--think 1990, floral print, boat neck, sailor-y. She was wearing it because it was new and because she wanted to show it to me. My mother took one look at her and decided that we were sneaking out to some wild, 12 year old, floral dress party.

Marnie and I went over to our friend Alyson's house and played basketball in the street for a while. (I'm sure that those of you who know me are laughing to think of me, at 12 or any other age, playing street basketball.) Then Alyson decided to teach me about the New Kids on the Block. You can imagine that this took a while. I had to study the pictures, listen to the tape, pick a favorite, declare undying love, etc. Finally, Alyson's mom comes upstairs to her room. "Meg," she says, "You'd better come downstairs. The police are here."

So it seems that my mom called Marnie's as soon as she got home in order to break up the floral drinking party. Marnie's sister reported that we were at Alyson's. No one answered at Alyson's, so my parents showed up with the police. I'm going to say it again: my parents showed up with the police. After ascertaining that I had played basketball and learned about NKOTB, they left without apologizing. To this day they have never said they were sorry for humiliating my tender 13 year old self in front of Marnie and Alyson and pretty much the entire neighborhood. Their only concession to their mistake and mistrust of me and floral dresses was that I still got to spend the night.

That night I saw The Breakfast Club for the first time. When Emilio asked Ally, "What did they do to you?" I silently answered, "They called the police to my friend's house!"

I love you, John Bender, and I always will.

Zombie Attacks!

My friend Bernie says, "Zombies are cool."

Of all movie-style monsters, I'm most afraid of zombies. Partly it's their whole cannibalism lifestyle, partly it's how quickly they make more zombies, partly their relentless stupidity...I don't know; they just creep me out.

Anyway if you haven't seen the new Dawn of the Dead, or Sean of the Dead for that matter, you should. Both are excellent additions to the zombie genre. I loved them. But several weeks after seeing Dawn of the Dead, Thomas and I were asleep in bed when our dogs, Gonzo and Gertie, started barking like crazy. They do this sometimes. They are dogs. We waited for them to be quiet, but they went on. Finally, Thomas decided to go see what was wrong. I waited. And waited. Still Thomas was not back. I was beginning to worry and so I called out, "What it is it?" and Thomas said, "It's running."

This was befuddling to me, so I, too, got up and went to the front door to investigate. It was running. Hundreds of people, it seemed, were running down the street, screaming. Take a minute to think about how long this must have taken to happen. The dogs bark long enough to wake us, then long enough to force one of us to the door, then long enough for the other to get worried and go to the door--and still, all this running. All I could think was, "It's ZOMBIES!"

I didn't think the running people were zombies, but I definitely thought they must be running from zombies. My sleep addled mind could come up with no reason that practically the entire city of Wilmington would be running down the street, screaming, at 3 in the morning unless they were running from zombies.

Yeah. A party had gotten busted up over in Town Hall on Castle Street. But still!

Last night at Pub Trivia at the Soapbox, my team was sitting under a red light. For some reason, it made our veins all look very apparent, as if we were human road maps. I yelled out, "Look! I'm a zombie!" Because, apparently, that's my explanation for everything.

I Survived!

So, my parents just hit the road. My allergies are better than usual. Hurray!

Top Five Complaints Left Over:

1. Damn the Wilmington Trolley! Damn it to Hell!
2. Rod Stewart week on American Idol. (See Unholy Trinity post).
3. Still pissed about the taxes
4. Inappropriate people hooking up
5. Having to reattach parts of my car with bungee cords


Top Five Reasons to Live:

1. Circa--had a great dinner there last night courtesy of Dad. Awesome.
2. Lula's
3. 7 days left of vacation
4. Playing the Sims 2 all day during said vacation
5. All plants alive and well

I'm melting!

Today is one of those days where I should have just turned off the alarm, gone back to sleep and tried again tomorrow. My allergies are at some kind of insane personal record, seemingly intent upon melting my face. My e-filed taxes were rejected, so now not only do I have to find a way to print before Monday, I am out 30 dollars. The sod in the yard that I hoped was just dormant from winter is dead and started peeling up today when I mowed. My parents will be here in two hours. I'm hung over, bloated and crampy and wishing to God that everyone would just go away and leave me alone.
WAAAAAAAHHHHH. I'm feeling very, very sorry for myself.

On some sort of good side, provided I still believe in good sides, my vacation started today. Whoot! I'm off for 10 days. I have to spend them sodding the yard and paying my taxes, on which I OWE MONEY this year (how can I owe money? I make like, 50 cents a year and give them half!) but at least I'm on vacation.

The Boss

My parents are coming to visit on Friday. I'm half excited and half dreading my inevitable metamorphosis into a 16 year old child. Although my sister lives in Wilmington now and will be sharing this visit with me, so maybe she'll get to be the 16 year old and I can be...uh...18. Or something.

My parents recently gave me this incredibly complicated vacuum cleaner. I had just admitted to them that years ago I threw away the attachments to mine. I was like, who needs these? They keep on falling off and getting in my way! So I threw them out. It was years before I really understood what they were for. So now that my husband has reformed me into a person who might use attachments, my parents gave me The Boss. I'm not kidding. It says that right on there. And seriously, I think it is the boss of me. I'm a little afraid of it. It has something on it called the Power Paw, which I think is the mother of all attachments and may be seeking to avenge its lost children. It also has a swirling, super-charged duster which I do not understand at all. Thomas loves it and seems at one with its many functions, but I just leave it in the mud room and mutter oaths at it periodically. I'm afraid this vacuum cleaner will return me to my former cleaning habits.

Tomorrow is my last day of work before spring break! I plan to drink my own body weight and then spend Friday hating myself and my new vacuum cleaner. Hurrah!

My Shirt is Famous

My shirt was on TV last night.

I was mindlessly watching some weird new show starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus when all of a sudden I saw--MY SHIRT! I felt like leaping up to make sure it was still in my dresser. I had no idea I owned anything that could be on television. I don't even buy the stuff that makes it into the cheesy Old Navy commercials. (Old Navy commercials do not fall into my "lovable camp" catagory. They are listed under "trying too hard to be hip and bizarre"). Anyway, I've searched all afternoon for a picture of said shirt (a fine use of my time) but there aren't any, because the shirt is two seasons old. Why was a television character wearing a two seasons ago shirt I bought at Sears?

Anyway.

Today is a bad allergy day. I'm still two days away from my spring break, which is near about killing me. I've gone since January 2nd without a day off and I am tired. Little kids will suck the life out of you. I spent today trying to keep Colby from rubbing her bloody nose all over one of my few nice, bought-at-NY&Company, this-season shirts. I had to explain to a parent that I could not give his child any grades this marking period because the kid hadn't turned in any work for 5 weeks. I had to clean up spilled tomato soup off the floor (harder than it sounds).

I'm ready for a nap.

The Unholy Trinity

So Thomas is always teasing me about my incredible hatred for Bob Dylan, which is approached in scope and depth only by my hatred for Aaron Neville. Add Rod Stewart, and you have my unholy trinity. A joint concert by these people would likely cause me a heart attack or stroke. At the very least.

Dude, what is up with Bob Dylan. I mean, seriously. What is UP with Bob Dylan? His voice sounds like my weed whacker minus it's tone and depth, and we're all supposed to overlook that because "his lyrics are so brilliant."

Sample brilliant lyric:
"He hears the ticking of the clocks
And walks along with a parrot that talks
Hunts her down by the waterfront docks" --Simple Twist of Fate by Bob Dylan

Is anyone really trying to tell me that when Mr. Dylan pictured this sad love song, there was really a talking parrot in it? Or could it be perhaps that 'talks' was the only thing that he could think of that rhymed with 'clocks' and 'docks'? Or, to press this matter a bit further, are there plenty of things that rhyme with 'clocks' and 'docks' and Mr. Dylan was so lazy that he simply left in this extraneous parrot?
It just pisses me off.

Some people are of the opinion that I hate Bob Dylan because my highschool boyfriend sent Blood on the Tracks to me as a reconcilliatory action 6 years after our breakup. Some people think that I listened to it obsessively and heard in it every apology he never made and then agreed to travel 400 miles to see him, where he promptly dumped me again. Some people think that, is all I'm saying.

The Saga of Pat and Ashley*

*Wilmingtonians will recognize Pat and Ashley as the radio ad personalities for Stevenson Honda/Acura.

Continuing from my previous post about the Burger King, I have come to realize that it is my job in life to love ad personalities that other people find creepy or objectionable. Like Pat and Ashley. When this series of commercials began in 2000 or 2001, Ashley was a college student. She called the (owner?) of Stevenson Honda/Acura because she needed a car. (Did she think she was going to get one on the phone?) Anyway, Pat told her to come on in and hooked her up with a great warranty and financing. She raved about it. A while later, she called Pat up to tell him that she was sending her mom over to him. Then it was a friend. Then, in my favorite installment of Pat and Ashley, she called because she needed a new car for spring break.

We should all be so lucky.

Anyway, in the years since then, Ashley's boyfriends have all gotten their cars from Pat. He's helped out her friends who have bad credit. She tells us that she gets depressed when her friends don't buy their cars from Stevenson, because she just knows that they didn't get the best deal. Once I was actually moved to tears listening to Ashley talk about her new job (of course she needed a new car for it), thinking to myself, "I remember when she got her first car." Sniff.

Anyway, Pat and Ashley have finally dropped the pretense of calling on the phone. I have to say I'm a little sad about that. But it brings to the forefront what I have suspected all along: Pat and Ashley are getting it on. Now Ashley introduces Pat as, "one of my favorite people" and Pat is quick to point out that he "feels the same way." He flirts with her on the air. I am beginning to fear that this whole series of commercials serves as some horrible sexual dialogue between them--that he begs her to tell him about 10 year 100,000 mile warranties when they are in bed.

Still, this does not lessen my love for this campy, overplayed series. I worship Pat Koballah. I have always wanted to meet him. Recently he's begun a series of television commercials, but the man in those commercials claiming to be Pat does not in any way sound like the radio voice I've known and loved for years. I am determined to find out--which is the REAL Pat Koballah? I have searched his website, but found no picture...I will not rest until I know the truth....

Allergies are Dumb

It's 6:30 on Saturday. Dude. I've been awake all night sneezing. I keep being convinced that at any moment, I'm going to enter some antihistamine induced coma, as in the last 24 hours, I've taken an allegra, a claritin and two benadryls. There is no relief. If I try to lie down any way except face up, stiff as a board, I start sneezing and running at the face again. God hates me.

So, I've made good use of my time by ordering allium seeds from ebay. What has become of me? I used to order shoes from ebay.

I've got friends from highschool coming into town today and I'm jazzed to see them. Especially because this year I lost 35 pounds and so I won't be wondering the whole time if they are thinking about how much I weigh. I know that's dumb, but there it is. I haven't kept up with many of the people I knew back then so being with these girls is like have a door flung open on a room in myself that I'd forgotten. I'm looking forward to it.

I Can See You Like the Filet of Fish Sandwich

Has anyone seen this commercial? The girl is blindfolded and the guy is feeding her strawberries. He starts to feed her french fries and ends up eating them himself. Then, out of nowhere, a knowing voice says, over a picture of the sandwich, "I can see you like the filet of fish sandwich." Is there ANY explanation for this except the one in my dirty, dirty mind? I mean, come on, all sex books advocate the "sensual" evening, the blindfold!! The girl in the commercial is clearly performing some kind of sexual act and THEN! That voice! I can see you like the filet of fish sandwich!! It's driving me crazy. Every time it comes on I start ranting about how there can be NO OTHER EXPLANATION.

McDonalds has had several inexplicable commercials this year, including the one where the guy puts his change in a jar and the whole shelf collapses, when the commercial is for 2 sandwiches for 2 dollars---for which there would be NO change. I feel that they are just trying in vain to compete with Burger King's Greatest Commericals on Earth. I am such a massive fan of the king that I keep his mask in my kitchen for easy access. I can be the king whenever I want. My friends think that this is just a symptom of some mental illness I've developed and that the king commercials are creepy, but that's why I love them. There's a terrific element of creepiness which just makes me want to consume fast food. Or at least pretend to be fast food icons.

Cool Whip Tastes Good

It seriously does. I know it's a chemical and not any kind of food product, but I don't care.

So, all day I've been stressing about what to write about today. 3 things sprang to mind and I already used one up.

1. Dude, MANDISA?! I thought she was terrible on Tuesday, but not THAT terrible. Not any kind of terrible compared to the ongoing horror of Ace, Kellie and Bucky. I mean, I guess I didn't vote for her on Tuesday night...but it was just as a fake punishment, an imaginary slap on the wrist ("You were so bad that Megsie from North Carolina didn't vote for you. Better shape up!"), not as some sort of indication that I wanted her to leave the show. I feel chastened by the voting process and saddened that I have to live the next 8 weeks without Mandisa. Was it because they showed her butt in jeans? Why, God, why?

2. So I've been gardening. We just moved into this house in October and I didn't have time to do anything to the yard before winter. I declared April 1st to be the beginning of spring and I've planted my favorite plant (Lantana) and hung my favorite hanging baskets (Portulaca), seeded generously with wildflowers and set up beds in the front. I've lined the walkways with Liriope (monkey grass--but isn't Liriope a wonderful name? I wish it were my name) and potted some New Guinea Impatiens--hey, I've even decided to try to grow eggplants this year. But why? I was excited today to get home from work and fertilize all my new plants. I took my only free time on Tuesday to go buy more plants and there's so much dirt embedded under my nails that no matter how I scrub I just look disreputable. I keep having to encounter worms with my hands and yet I keep on as if this is some sort of fun or soothing activity. I can't figure out if it is fun, or if I just tell myself that it's fun because I have to keep the house looking nice and the only time to do that is on the weekends. Therefore, if I'm spending my weekend time on it, it must be fun. Like getting drunk.

That's all for today.

Everybody Else is Doing it So Why Can't We?

So the problem, to my mind, with any kind of journal keeping is that essentially, at the end of the day, I never feel like I have much more to say than: "April 5, 2006. Went to work. Sunny. Kids insane," which is as boring to me as it is to anyone unfortunate enough to read it. However, my fine friends from a long ago graduate program have all begun to keep blogs, and though our lives are all (thank god) far less dramatic than they were when we were all crammed together trying to think and feel as if from one group mind, I find that I enjoy reading them--sometimes more than I enjoy actually talking to those people. And so, here I am typing these less-than-scintillating words for anyone who might be bored at work or whatever.

In addition, during that same long ago time, I fancied myself a writer. And though I have given that up in favor of teaching, marriage, home improvement, American Idol obsession and an abiding fondness for a certain downtown bar, it would be nice to feel that words continued to come out of me on a semi-regular basis. I'll give it my best shot anyway.