If You Think Your Figure Needs Work...

I awoke this morning to a deep, lingering question:

Did the first human have a belly button?

Yes, I, in my genius, am really asking.  What do you think?

(Please leave your answers in the comments section, or this debacle might haunt me another night.)

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If that doesn't keep me awake, this sure will.

For the rest of my life.

So please... post me some of that hidden wisdom.

Ooh - Is That A Reindeer?!

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… there’s freezing rain coming down, a sheer layer of ice on the driveway, and moderately-large forest animals walking around on our roads. 

The moose are out, and when I say “out”, I mean absolutely everywhere.   

Do you ever have those late night drives when you know that you're going to need a serious jolt to stay alert?  You know, when twilight has faded and your heavy eyelids begin to droop?  When the car feels warm and cozy, and somehow your otherwise uncomfortable driver’s seat has miraculously converted into a plush recliner with proper lumbar support?  When you cover 10 miles of sharp S-turns only to notice that you can’t recall driving through them, much less how you avoided crashing through the side rail and careening off of a cliff into the river?  Well, I’ve got just the thing to wake you up, and it’s totally natural – no pills, no super high-test coffee, no drugs - just pure, old-fashioned, run-of-the-mill adrenaline. 

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You see, moose don’t really appear as concrete objects when they go strolling across the pavement at 8 o’clock on a moonless night.   They seem to be more the absence of something, like a large dark hole in the fabric of the world.  On rare occasions, you might be fortunate enough to glimpse your reflected headlights in a pair of big eyes, or spot a patch of lighter-colored fur on the back of a 6-foot calf, but the vast majority of sightings begin as a strange and blurry sci-fi wormhole hovering in the distance.  It goes like this: you think you might see something in the hazy blob ahead and take a second to squint and clear up the image, then - WHAM - it’s a moose.  The animal is unmistakable, and it's not because squinting enables you to see it more clearly (though it does seem to help when I forget my glasses at home), but is rather because in the three seconds it’s taken you to crane your neck forward like a kid in Driver’s Ed and scrunch up your face, you’ve traveled 200 feet and you’re suddenly a car’s length from what you now really wish was actually a hallucinogenic portal to 2nd century Egypt.  And you’re adrenal glands are buzzing like sugar-laden elves on December 24^th, because past experience tells you that these giant beasts don’t do the old "stare-and-run" act like other animals.  Wiser animals.

Instead, they stare, and then they chew on a little of what they’ve been keeping in their 4^th stomach.  And then they stare some more.  

No movement, whatsoever. That is, until you’ve sufficiently freaked out and are [probably] sideways in a ditch.

There is nothing going on in there.  Look at those eyes.

I don’t know if this news is coming across as fun and intriguing, or if it’s making you too nervous to ever leave your house in southern California.  Heck, those of you close enough might not even want to come visit after what you’ve read, but trust me - should conditions stay as they currently are – when you do come see us, you won’t need a third double espresso to stay awake, nor will you need to dump water on your face and roll the windows down.  The anticipation of a close encounter is almost as good as the jolt of energy you get after you slam on the brakes for a family of half-ton pedestrians. 

It’s really better than it sounds.  We’ll see you soon, I’m sure of it.

Reason #989 Why I'm Glad To Be A Grownup

I'm not sure why this crossed my mind today, perhaps because I was perusing a friend's baby registry, but I was again reminded why I am so perfectly happy to be an adult, and in this particular case, over the age of two.  Here's why.  We'll start with a shopping list.

Go with me, here.

Shopping list:

• 1 roll of tape (preferably painter's tape, but I suppose electrical or duct tape would suffice)
• 1 large Hefty outdoor trash bag
• 1 pair brief underwear (men's, women's or underoos... any will do)
• 1 ladies' maxi pad 

 (There are some further instructions for the pad purchase.  The purchased item must be classified as at least "super" absorbency, if not "ultra super-duper".  You must purchase the cheapest brand, and if you are going to be traveling by air soon, the ones that they keep in the plane's lavatory are perfect.  This thing should give you the mental image of bouncing on a bed.)

• A ticket to the nearest outdoor or indoor water park
• sandpaper

Instructions:

1. Night before:  eat a big dinner, with lots of leafy green vegetables.
2. Morning of: eat a nice farmers breakfast (eggs, sausage, bacon, homefries and coffee).
3. After breakfast: insert maxi pad into briefs.  
4. Insert legs into briefs.  Pull up.
5. Tear two leg holes into the bottom of the Hefty bag.  
6. Insert legs into and through the trash bag.
7. Tape each seam of the leg holes, which should now be around your thighs, very close to your underoos.
8. Tape around your waist, being sure to snugly secure the bag around your NATURAL waist (ladies...).
9. Scrape the sandpaper against the hefty bag.  Do this in various locations.
10. Rip little tears in the seams of the tape.
11. Drive to water park.  You should only be wearing your Hefty bag, along with a shirt and maybe some flip flops.  You also may need to pay off/ persuade/ bribe with snacks the employee at the entrance to said water park.
12. Slide.  Slide like you've never slid before.
13. Do it again.
14. When your Hefty is sufficiently torn and seems to be taking on water, slide one more time.
15. Drive home.  In your Hefty bag.
16. Head to the bathroom. 
17. Clean your Hefty bag [hoping desperately that you were able to "hold it" after that farmer's breakfast this morning, but if not, this will only emphasize the seriousness of my argument]. 

This is life with a diaper.  And if it's a cloth diaper, you get to do this again in a couple of days.  Wearing the same pair. 

Next time I complain about renewing my driver's license or paying taxes, remind me to read this. 

That's Why I Keep Lobster Bibs In The Top Drawer

Not 5 minutes after crossing the threshold of the beach resort where we’d spend our day on Grand Bahama island, I found myself peering curiously at a group of four transparent pitchers holding a variety of colored liquids: pastel yellow, soft orange, mint green, and on the right, a dusty pink.  After sniffing them thoroughly [and thereby killing any fellow interest], I was still having a hard time getting a whiff of the pink stuff on the right, which was the pitcher that really intrigued me, because hey - it could be a strawberry smoothie or something really good like that, right?

My plan was to pour a small “tasting” amount of the beverage into my glass, but there was this stubborn plug of fruit pulp in the neck of the bottle that was blocking the flow.  The mixture was frustratingly resistant to gravity until suddenly, when I had it practically upside-down, it wasn’t.  That's the moment I found myself standing in a large puddle of creamy watermelon juice that extended over to the dripping buffet counter and also coated my arms like runny oven mitts.

Post-spill.  I got a nice full glass.

I wish this event didn’t throw me into a foaming wave of pasty pink flashbacks, but unsurprisingly, it does.  During my four years of undergrad, I developed a somewhat regrettable relationship with the cafeteria frozen yogurt machine.   I’m the first person to encourage a dessert course, whether it’s after breakfast, lunch, dinner, or a snack, so it should come as no surprise that I was a frequent visitor to the frozen goodie station of our dining hall. 

One weekday after an early lunch, I strode over to the dessert counter, blindly reached for a sugar cone (which I could have done in my sleep), and held it in my left hand under the Columbo yogurt nozzle (flavor of the day: raspberry) while I pulled the white lever with my right hand.  Instantly, the device began gushing pink, frothy, room-temperature liquid in a 4-foot circle around my feet… all in view of 400 or so peers who I would spend the next month trying not to look in the eye.

To challenge any generous assumption that I’m a fast and thorough learner, an identical event happened on a second occasion, this time leading to strawberry- flavored results.  I eventually did get the message: Don’t try to satisfy a fro-yo fix before 1 o’clock; DON'T DO IT.  Because if I do decide to pull that lever and try my luck, I’ll just have to waste another Rhetorical Theory class showering syrup the color of Pepto-Bismol off of my legs, and I doubt that Dr. Chase is inclined to accept that excuse more than twice.  At least not without laughing in my face first.

Despite many years scattered with a multitude of bittersweet accidents, I want to encourage each of you to keep on filling that sugar cone.  However, if you’re standing in line and you feel even a shred of doubt, just go ahead and let someone else pull that lever, because while you can clean up the sugary stink, there’s simply no sponge in the world that can scrub away the shame.

Finger Lickin' Good

Monday I celebrated my 100th post with a little dance and an astonishing ginger pumpkin mousse made by the excellent chef at Lake Parlin Lodge.  Last night, Kiwi, our cat celebrated my milestone by catching a mouse in our living room and gnawing on it for 15 minutes until its faint shrieks prompted me to snatch it away from my then-fanatical feline and chuck it out the front door with a pitcher.  This morning, Kiwi attempted to rouse me by burrowing her face near my neck and filling my air supply with her nasty rodent breath before attempting to clean me with a mouth that I had last seen with a tiny foot and tail poking out the front.  I know that licking the area around my nose is her love language, but considering the circumstances, you can imagine how it went this morning.  She flew.

It's important to know a few things about our cat.  This is only the second mouse that she has apprehended in our 5 year history together.  In all truth, you could probably consider it the first, because Kiwi is what C and I like to call "lazy and totally infantile".  The only other time she's had the opportunity (that I'm aware of) to catch a field mouse was in a small cabin we lived in for the first year and a half of her adopted life.  It was a nice grey box nestled into a wooded hill, which probably made it an easy case for a pack of Italian Job forest creatures small enough to dig into the floorboards and walls.  It took place, as last night, at about 3 o'clock in the morning, and in similar fashion,  I awoke to Kiwi scrambling about, tearing her claws into the carpet, only on that occasion the crime scene was our bedroom.  It was as pleasant as it sounds.

So the scenario played out in roughly the same fashion as last night's event, barring the fact that our vicious cat with razor blades for fingernails was totally unable to catch her prey.  She looked like a blind gorilla playing whack-a-mole, throwing her hairy arms wildly in every direction, smashing the blue carpet with more spit and vigor than I'd ever seen her demonstrate anywhere.  This is the cat, that when the vet needs to use the rectal thermometer to read her temperature, responds by purring loudly and rubbing her chin along the latex gloves of the lab tech holding her in place, which is a totally needless assistant in this particular instance, might I add.

Crackers are another strong love language for our fish-breath angel.

5 years ago, when C finally relented to my pleading and reluctantly accompanied me to the nearest Humane Society, it didn't take long for us to find our special friend.  This was a remarkably well designed and beautifully maintained facility, and there were a number of glass-walled cat rooms for us to visit, including the unusual chamber we found Little Miss Einstein in.  Going into the process, I was already leaning toward adopting a black cat or kitten.  I'm not entirely sure what went into my decision, but considering my overwhelming reputation for donning predominantly obsidian apparel, it's probably due to something that happened to me as a child.   So not surprisingly, I entered into a small room that was filled exclusively with black cats.  I'm not certain of what message this particular establishment was trying to send, or if there was actually some kind of evidence-based motivation for this state of segregated affairs, but there they were, with every pair of lime green eyes flashing in our direction.  The only exception to the color palate was a single mostly-white calico cat that was hiding under a chair, hissing wildly.  It was hard not to read anything into the scene.

I knelt down onto the pale linoleum tile and waited.  I was there for maybe a full minute before I was greeted, no - accosted by this one small, ratty-looking animal that was suddenly mounting my chest and summiting my shoulder.  Within seconds, the tiny beast was smearing drool onto the side of my face and working it into the crevices of my left ear.  I don't even think I was holding her up as she clung to my chest like a magnet on a refrigerator.  Instantly, I knew that the search was over.  This was my kind of animal.

As I should have suspected, there was more to this package than tattered fur and dual fountains of saliva and love.  As we filled out paperwork at the front desk, the employee helping us explained that, "all of the volunteers adore her", and that they take turns bringing her home on the weekends.  This is a good sign, I thought. "There is one thing you should probably be aware of, though", said the young fellow as he proceeded to inform me of her condition.  You see, something went wrong when our hairy ray of sunshine was a kitten.  She wasn't weaned long enough, or perhaps it was that she was weaned too long, but either way, she developed a certain coping mechanism to deal with stress.  She suckled.

She what?

Suckled.  As in, finds the nearest finger and latches on like a newborn.  Well, I thought as we signed the papers, how bad could it be?

BAD.  REAL BAD.  

5 years later she still does it, sniffing through the bed sheets like a pig searching for truffles and nosing around in your sweatshirt for the hands you've crammed into your kangaroo pocket.  She will find them, and she will not relent until she has done it. We've been worn into giving up pretty easily, but I think we're going to start keeping a pair of deer-hide mittens on the coffee table, just so we don't have to scramble around like we've entered a game of capitol-punishment Twister where you're playing against ten rottweilers and your hands are made of bacon.

All I know is that after last night, I will do whatever is necessary to keep that dirty mouth from finding one of my fingers.  And please, whatever you do, don't come over today.

I won't be able to open the door after I tape these Cheerio boxes to my arms.

Could You Please Pass The Awkward?

The other day I was telling a friend about another friend who cleans his hair solely with baby shampoo, and mistakenly said he swore not by washing with baby shampoo but by washing with baby hair.

Last night I ordered a veggie sub.  I asked them to make it with turkey.

I once told a friend with a glass eye to sleep with one eye open.  

The glass eye was always open.

Do these things happen to everyone, or is it just me?  There are days when I feel like I might have hatched on the face of another planet and stowed away to earth on the underbelly of the mars space rover.  After so many foot-in-mouth moments and ridiculous physical happenings, you start to wonder if maybe it’s only you that seems to need around-the-clock safety gear and a shock collar muzzle. 

I’ve mentioned the eating tuna under the dining room table episode, as well as the toxic poisoning from feeding dolls cough syrup incident.  Other happenings include sliding underneath a horse while riding behind the saddle and having a tiny deer tongue a twenty-dollar bill from the depths of my pant pocket while visiting the zoo (the first time my parents let me hold my own money).  I’ve skied into a metal pole and had the ice cream machine in my college dining hall explode on me.  Twice.

In elementary school I talked to frogs and my toothbrush, but not to men with beards.

I used to unravel paperclips and wrap them around my teeth to pretend I had a retainer like my sister.  I must have envied the way she had to clean out food debris after meals and soak it in Fixodent before bed, which as you know, is totally understandable.

When I was a sophomore in college, I sported a hairstyle that is now commonly referred to by my friends and husband as the crow.  It was an attempt at a short, hip cut, but looked more like I had gotten gum stuck in my hair, and had to chop off all the sticky bits.

Another danger contained by the good work of the New York Football Giants.

Only they were everywhere.  I looked like an inverted tulip after a terrible rendezvous with a weedwacker.

As children, my sister and I might have lacked all common sense and any grip on reality.   During much of our youth, half of our house was in the framing stage of construction, and rather than play with dolls or stuffed animals, Renee and I would nail or staple lace veils to random timber slats and draw faces on them.  While Ken and Barbie were hitting Rodeo Drive in her pink convertible, our wooden babies were getting married in a construction work zone. 

One of these days all of my bad stories, incoherent jokes and bodily accidents are going to catch up with me, and humankind is going to put me in a permanent time out.  Which will be followed by an awkward, uncomfortable silence, because even Mars won’t want me back.

Is That The Best You've Got?

Thank you for obliging a science lesson yesterday.  Here’s what my sister thought of the entry:

It's certainly one of the most disturbing ones I've seen.  Look up donkey dung sea cucumber.  You could have gone with the one that looks like a big turd.  Fun fact, speaking of epidermal tissue, did you know sea cucumbers will eviscerate when threatened.  They'll expel their whole digestive track then regrow it in hopes they can amble away while the predator snacks.  And you mock them....

There's my classy lady.  Bio. lab meets 3rd grade recess.

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As promised, here’s an entry on small disasters.  These happen often enough that I’ll probably have another list in a week for you.  Here’s a toast to social pain and humiliation – enjoy!

The Machine

I have a programmable Cuisinart coffeemaker with a nice stainless steel carafe, which we bought about a year and a half ago, after the ugly demise of an earlier Black & Decker model.  So, our Cuisinart has been running like a champ, brewing coffee like a Petri dish brews e.coli – often and in large quantities.  It’s been a steadfast friend, and on Santa's "nice" list, until just recently.   In our kitchenless apartment, C and I have a limited daily menu, but this coffeemaker has always been faithful to provide our morning cup of joe.  About two and a half weeks ago, on a morning that somehow was already proving frustrating (you know those days),  I come into the kitchen/closet/table area to see the coffeemaker hissing with gritty brown toilet water gushing all over the place.  After a primordial scream, I run to the bathroom and get a towel to try to sop up as much of the mess as I can.  

(You might wonder why I wrote in a previous entry that we cook in the bathroom.  

You’re about to find out why.)

Unfortunately, in order to fit all of our kitchen apparatus into the built-in shelving in the kitchen/closet/table area, I had to cram the coffeemaker into an 8-inch space between the minifridge and the wall.  It was the only spot with an outlet.  And it was the only spot.  So now I’m trying to clean up a wet mess in a tiny space against a wall only to see my every swipe of the towel lead to more coffee pouring down on the floor.  So I unplug it, grab the entire machine and waddle to the bathroom, trying to preserve my last shred of dignity as this hot, wet liquid trickles down my legs.  As this demon machine is leaking coffee like the Exxon-Valdez, poor C is trying to simultaneously help and stay out of the way of his moderately furious partner.   And this is only the first spill.

Yup, that’s right. At this point, I’ve figured out that perhaps it’s best to keep this monster close to a sink, just in case.  Now, wait five minutes and replay the last scene, this time in the bathroom.  My mind was potato soup 20 minutes into the day.

Call the Cops

I’m new here, so I try to make a good impression when I am out in town.  I was at the grocery store awhile back, getting a few things to try to make my next crock-pot fiasco a prettier mess, when I look to the end of the checkout line and see a stack of the local free paper.  Now, this might sound completely crazy to you, but I got really excited.  Back home, we had these wonderful free local papers that most of the small towns produced, and I loved them.  So, you can understand my excitement when I realized that there was enough going on in the area to warrant a paper like that here.  I paid for my groceries, grabbed my bags, and picked up a paper as I walked out. 

Fast-forward three hours.  I’ve just gotten to the point where I’m sitting down and reading through my new acquisition.  It’s great!  I learn about things going on at the local school, some community events, and town politics.  I fold the paper back up and am getting ready to move on to the next thing, when all of a sudden my eyes glance up to the top right-hand edge and catch the bold print “75 cents” label at the corner.  ACK.  ACK.  ACK.   It wasn’t a free paper - I stole it!!  I’ve been here two weeks and I’m already the local thief.  They might still have stocks here.  Or gallows.

After a mild personal crisis (after all, I’ve never shoplifted before, so I’m mentally coming to terms with my new life of crime), I try to relax.  I plan a drive to the store later to confess and pay the price for my stolen merchandise.  Of course, hours later when I actually do this, no one remembers me taking the paper.  They accept my money, but I get the feeling that they all think I’m a total whacko.  Hey, at least I feel better.

I’m not going to take up more time now with the other stories, but just so you know I’m not lying when I say that these things happen often, here’s a small selection of other accidental misdeeds you've accomplished if you're me.

• Stolen your boss' coffee mug.  Directly after she purchased it. 
• Driven to the correct town in the wrong state (this has happened twice).
• Brought a customer's bag out to her car.  Watched her drive away only to realize that she hadn't paid for it.  And you helped her.
• Almost sunk a forty thousand dollar speedboat.  Full of kids.

Stay out of trouble.  If you can’t, be sure and tell me about it.