Tag: Being Cannibalistic

I Once Pulled a Muscle Being Versatile

Yelling Near You and Thoughts Appear were kind enough to award me this:

The rules are:
1. Show the award on my blog
2. Compose a short dedication to the persons who awarded them the award
3. Write a list of five things for their readers that detail things about themselves their readers don’t know, and then
4. Pay the love forward to five bloggers that they feel deserve to receive the Versatile Blogger Award, too.

Number one, done! Must fight typical “I need to take a celebratory break from getting so much done!” reaction and move on. So, two great blogs:

Yelling Near You (Mark and Bitsy, Bitsy and Mark) is great for many reasons:
– Mark is the resource for all of your Canadian advertisement needs.
– He also believes that “mid-season finale” is as idiotic as I do.
– They have an adorable big orange dog who gets his picture taken a lot (and gets his teeth brushed with Mark’s toothbrush).
– Bitsy hasn’t lost her sense of humor despite a cast, medication, acne, and sweating.

Thoughts Appear’s Blog is also great for many reasons:
– She is the resource for all of your Pop Tart information needs.
– Thanks to her, I don’t have to watch Children of the Corn 7 and many other movies which she has bravely endured and passed on the pertinent facts from.
– She just got back together with her boyfriend, squeeeee!
– She found a mysterious hole in the woods and didn’t go see what was in there, which probably saved her life, but also left a mystery we will never know the answer to.

Things you don’t know about me but now do:
1. My lack of a sense of a direction has left me in tears on multiple occasions, and one time, because I missed an exit on the highway, I ended up going on a Christmas hay ride with my aunt and uncle, who had to rescue me and didn’t have time to get me home.
2. One time as a teen I got the two family cars stuck together while trying to back out of the garage. It was amazing.
3. I was born in and have always lived in the South, and I can’t stand humid heat. When I went to the Utah desert July of last year, I realized that there is such a thing as “dry heat” and became very jealous.
4. Tom and I have owned three houses (not at once), and our current house is for sale, in anticipation of hopefully moving back to N.C. and owning our fourth fucking house.  Every time we know we’re going to end up in a new house, we convince ourselves that this time we will become responsible, capable adults who get shit done. It didn’t happen the first three times but I KNOW this time will be different.
5. When I get hungry and my blood sugar drops, I become a black hole that sucks all joy and fun out of the immediate area. That person’s nickname is Scarrie. She is the reason Tom sometimes says things like “we need to feed her,” which once offended my neighbor on behalf of me, and I assured her, there’s no offense to be taken, because that’s how bad it is. The fear of encountering Scarrie has also caused my sister to not be willing to give her husband a granola bar she had because she knew I’d need it later. And I did need it later, and catastrophe was averted that day.

And five nominated blogs, all of which I’ve had the pleasure discovering from blogging (and Twittering):
Our Daily Escape
Guapola
My Blog Can Beat up Your Blog
Ach du Lieber, Jayne!
Going to Mensa

Now, I really need to eat something…

Forgetful Forgetful Grandma

My grandma, Mama Dot (my dad’s mom), was a true character. I hope to be as sassy as she was someday. She was this fantastic combination of the ultimate nurturer and illogical judgment, as I’m sure many grandmas are.

For example, she stocked her cupboards with candy so that her grandkids could gorge themselves on Reece’s cups and York peppermint patties. Then, she’d admonish us for not wanting to eat dinner.

She was a very generous Christmas gift-giver. I didn’t have to come from a broken home to get two Christmas stockings, because she did them for EVERYONE – four grandkids, three children, two in-laws, then, eventually, two in-law grandkids. She would also give us several Christmas presents – a mixture of whatever she randomly chose, and a nice number of things from our specific lists. This of course meant she was buying things that she had no clue about. And, really, who would care to learn more about plastic ponies with pictures on their asses?

One year, either my sister or I had asked for Hungry Hungry Hippos. Here is the ad:

Hungry Hungry Hippos is one of those toys that no one who lives with you wants you to have. It is noisy, it has marbles as game parts, and, usually within the first day, at least one hippo commits suicide. Plus, once you take the dancing cartoon hippos and catchy jingle away, all you have left is the game, which is entirely lame.

But, that’s not the point. The point is that to a kid, the colorful Hungry Hungry Hippos ad makes this game look like a fine way to spend your time, and we wanted it. And we got it. Mama Dot got it for us.

“Hooray!” we exclaimed to ourselves in our minds because we’re both introverts, we got Hungry Hungry Hippos! We immediately opened and set it up, and commenced with de-hungering the Hippos.

Now, if you didn’t watch the commercial, watch it. You will notice that you don’t actually HEAR the game being played. You hear the ecstatic giggles of the children, and you hear the very loud jingle. There’s a reason for that. HHH sounds like a construction site but instead of jackhammers, there are hippos, and instead of cat calls, there are marbles rolling around.

So, when my sister and I happily started our first game (and that is the only time you happily play HHH), Mama Dot walking by, stopped, and exclaimed:

Mama Dot: Who in the hell got you that!?
Us: You did!
Mama Dot: I most certainly did not.
Our Mother (knowing very well who the hell got us that): Yes, you did.
Mama Dot: I think I would know if I got something like that. I wouldn’t get something like that.

After much back and forth, it was established that yes, Mama Dot had gotten us this thing that was filling the house with the sounds of plastic clacking and clanging like awful Christmas bells.

It was actually a running gag in our family – aunts and uncles would get their nieces and nephews noisy toys on purpose. My parents won this contest because they got my nephew an extremely noisy police car. My aunt and uncle thought the torture would be over when the batteries ran out. They swear that the battery somehow fused with the casement to create a never-ending lifespan. You didn’t even have to play with it. If you looked at it wrong it would yell, “STOP! Pull over!”

However, my grandma never participated in this tradition because we actually stayed at her house, so she knew it would eventually bite her in the ass. Needless to say, she was very disappointed to find out that she had brought Hungry Hungry Hippos on herself. But, it never stopped her from complaining about how we have too much stuff, about 25% of which was her fault.

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This post was written in response to Studio30 Plus’ prompt: The Gift

I Bet You One Dollar We’ll Still be Married in Ten Years

My husband and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary last month. We’ve been together for 16 years total. Here’s a list of observations and advice after a decade of marriage:

1. If you don’t like dressing up, church, or being the center of attention, put up with your mom declaring she won’t plan your wedding for you, don’t plan your wedding for a few months, and then maybe you’ll get a big fat check from your parents to just go to the courthouse and get it over with. Worked for us.

2. Barring any accidents, if you spend years having the following conversation:

Husband: Do you want kids?
Wife: Dunno. You?
Husband: Dunno.

You will not end up with any kids.

3. If one of you is a vegetarian, and the other isn’t, don’t worry, there are plenty of unhealthy options for meals so that you can both grow fat together.

4. If you are too much alike, I highly recommend establishing very early in your relationship a designated person between the two of you to ask for help in home improvement stores. Otherwise, you will waste hours and hours of your life. As a compromise, the other one can be the designated take-out food phone caller.

5. Just keep in mind, every time you publicly declare on Facebook or Twitter that you are married to the best spouse ever in the history of man it is almost guaranteed that: 1. Ten other people have done the same within the hour and 2. You are probably also the type to declare your dissatisfaction with the idiot you married within 48 hours (we don’t do either of these things, but it is an observation from the last ten years).

6. After ten years, you will both laugh at how you used to be embarrassed to fart in front of each other and wish that the other person still was.

7. Consider your adult acne a sign that your love is as youthful as it was when you were teenagers.

8. Life is all about compromise. I’m not an outdoorsy person and he is, so I let him do all the yard work.

9. Make wagers. Don’t argue unnecessarily, make bets. If it’s something that’s factual and can be resolved later (how tall is Uncle Stanley, do we have milk at home, did Meryl Streep star in 227) bet a buck and move on. Save the time you would spend arguing over minutiae and spend it discussing things you both hate, together.

10. If you pretend to shiv each other with your car keys as a sign of affection, then you should be good for the next ten years.

I Feel like My Cat is a Face Surrounded by Knives, and that’s What Matters

Yesterday was a dreaded day. It was a day I hat to put my cat in a carrier to get him to the vet.

He’s now 14 years old, and he’s definitely mellowed in his old age. I’m not sure if it’s slightly easier to get him in his carrier now because of that or because we’ve perfected the two-day, multi-stepped process of accomplishing it.

My cat is an asshole. And by that I mean that he has had us hiding in closets before.  So, when it’s time for him to go to the vet, I have a little anxiety.

Here’s the process:
1. The night before – clip his front nails (he will not allow back nails)
2. Get carrier out of closet, hide it in closed bathroom (it has to be in a very small room so he has nowhere to go if I miss on the first try), propped up against the wall with the door already open.
3. Wait overnight for him to forget that he saw me get his carrier out.
4. Next day, pretend there’s nothing up until time to make my move.
5. Say a prayer, and grab him, hopefully while he is relaxing in an easily accessible spot.
6. Briskly move to the bathroom, scruffing him and weathering the thrashing.
7. Hold on for dear life as he sees the carrier; shove him head first into it, adjusting the placement of his legs as he tries to straddle the opening.
8. Apologize once he’s in there, because he will eventually be out.

This time I sustained very minor injuries – no blood!

We made it to the vet, bonus points for bringing one of the dogs, too. The vet visit went fine, which is a huge improvement  – this is the big area where you can tell he’s gotten older. Young Elliott would have screamed and hissed a lot.

Once he gets back into his carrier (which, when at the vet, is like an upscale resort he can’t wait to get back to), we drive home. And, after about three minutes of realizing the next stop is home and out of the carrier – he starts to yell at me. So the ride home is usually me singing along to loud music while he tries to be heard. This time was no exception.

Happy Halloween from a Punk in a Garfield Shirt

As mentioned previously, this introvert did used to dress up for Halloween without any hang ups about it. In that post, I mentioned two costumes: Wonder Woman and Punk Rocker. Since I’m visiting my mom, I could dig up the pictures for a better context.

I thought my mom had made the Wonder Woman costume, but she didn’t. She made many other costumes, though. For this costume, my dad made the bracelets and the headpiece out of coat hangers, cardboard, and aluminum foil-y paper stuff. They were so well-made, my sister wore them years later. My dad was awesome.

I was on a roll getting a picture with every single type of candy I scored until my stupid parents shut down the project.

A few years later, we enter the lazy bones era of Halloween costuming. I was a “punk rocker” for several years, and the costume was pretty consistent every year. It was so convincing – let’s just see if you can pick me out between these two pictures:

One is me and one is Sid Vicious. Look closely, and you will see some subtle differences that will reveal the answer.

This is actually a “Madonna fan with sensible, responsible parents” costume. But, somehow, “punk rock” was always the descriptor. It’s probably what started all the “Avril Lavigne is a punk rocker” bullshite. I’ve created this chart to help you create an actual punk rocker costume:

Happy Halloween, everyone!