Artificial Intelligence

Does the middle piece of your 3 part artificial Christmas tree piss you off as much as mine does me? Being all holier than thou, thinking it's the glue that holds my holiday fun together.... I tell you, after the first few years of fake tree bliss the honey moon period wears off and that middle tree piece just becomes annoying.
You start to notice things, like how it's so much more smug than the top and bottom pieces, how it acts superior every Christmas you haul it out and place it on the bottom piece, crowning it with the wee top. It acts like it invented Christmas and that I should give it more ornaments because it's easier to reach than the top and bottom.
Fret no more, your free loading, hate fueled by fake fir, middle tree piece days are OVER.
Say goodbye...to the jam in a tree sandwich, where in the top and bottom pieces are the bread and the middle is the jam and what I'm saying is you don't NEED THE JAM.
Hear that sound?
The sound of boo-hooing from the garage where the middle piece lays abandoned on the cold cement floor? Well ignore those tears, they're as fake as the whole tree.
I give to you, the world at large or at least the percent that uses the internet and wanders into my neck of the virtual woods..... the NEW look for your same artificial tree. If your tree doesn't have 3 pieces....well.......look on the bright side, no smug, superiority complex pieces for you to deal with.
I've been kicking around this idea for a while, sometimes hearing it rattle back to the forefront of my mind, squeezing it's way between clay character ideas, thoughts about coffee and world domination. (Ignore that last one, it's rather un-holiday-esque to admit to things like wanting world domination instead of peace)
This year my idea become a reality!
We left out the aforementioned and verbally bashed middle section of the tree. We did need to do a little creative finagling because the top piece didn't actually connect to the bottom piece all stable and perfect like. (It's as if the artificial tree craftsman don't WANT you to play with your tree like it's a really scratchy set of building blocks)
Not wanting to deal with yelling "Timber" if the top piece fell off, we found a sturdy bit of cardboard tube we'd saved, because of course we save cardboard tubes. It's an unwritten rule of life. Every one saves cardboard tubes and makes fun of each other behind their backs. This is one of those reaaaaaaaalllly sturdy sort, ultra thick. We cut a piece that fit over the bottom section of tree pipe..er...trunk...and also over the trunk of the top piece. It needed a little stuffing of tissue paper to create a perfect tight fit, but Voila! My new tree jam!
Since the cardboard tube wasn't working for me, decoratively speaking, I took a piece of artificial garland and wrapped around it.
Now you can't even tell anything is different! You can applaud if you want, I'd clap too if I weren't busy typing.
Fluff your tree as usual, connect the lights and go on about your holiday making with a brand new look for your same ol' fake tree!
I LOVE this look! We set our tree up on a stand we have in the living room to provide some of the height lost because we left the snooty middle piece out. The NEW tree look is more natural, less perfectly pruned and conical, more like the kind of Christmas tree you find in the wild. I like wild. I like my tree and maybe some year when I'm ready for a taller more traditional shaped tree maybe I'll even like my middle piece again. Maybe.

The blog post that has nothing to do with babies.

(Our plastic child can sit on the floor keeping company with lighters, tequila, knives, credit cards, car keys, lasers, bleach, candy, pure sugar, razors, scissors, rock music with swear words, prescription meds, a hammer, dangerous reading material among other things and.....nothing. Plastic children are safe, predictable, if not a little boring, and will never cause any trouble. Plus I can decoupage her if I get the urge.)

Hey I'm all for not having the human race dying out but....holy moly there's a lotta babies popping up..er..out...around the blog world lately.
I think it's actually some sort of mini baby boom and we should all satisfy our voyeuristic tendencies by counting backwards 9 months or so to see what was so baby making fantastic back then. I could be wrong but I am gonna guess that all the baby making madness occurred during that dry spell that happens between the seasons of good tv viewing.
That little window of time when one block of shows has their season finales and the next block of premieres doesn't start for 3 weeks. There's nothing on tv, sooooooo a whole new generation of little humans was created. I am secretly going to call all children conceived during this time period "Re-run-lings" in my head.
Do not get me wrong, kids are great (at a comfortable non birthed from me distance) and like I said some one needs to keep the human race going but I feel a little superior at times cause NAHHH NAHHHH aint gonna be me. I'll be sipping Margaritas with the only kids I need. Fuzzy four legged ones that can only sass back in "Meow" language. (Okie, now that was just bragging. And everyone knows the unspoken rule that you can't diss the *beauty and wonder* that is creating life nor can you extoll too much the benefits of forgoing the *beauty and wonder* of creating new life because it'll make all the new Mama's jealous.)
We are not going to have kids.
And there are not many things about that decision I could regret except maybe the mini sandwiches that baby mamas get at baby showers. You can't convince me there aren't a few women out there who got knocked up just for the wee tuna on whole wheat cut in to tiny triangles. Those sandwiches alone are what got me through many a relative's baby shower. Those tiny little minuscule bready delights stuffed with cheddar and ham are what lured to me to neighbor after neighbor's baby shower where we sat around with strangers playing weird games (and not Nintendo based ones) whilst waiting for the food to be unveiled. Those sandwiches alone are also what my Mother hauls out of her Mama torture bag of tricks and takes photos of at all the Canadian based baby showers I can't attend so I can see the sandwich nirvana I'm missing.

(evidence of torture by own Mother, plate after plate of beautiful teeny tiny sandwiches that I can't have)

She's no fool and we've got a good thing. I thrust plastic grandchildren in her face and she tortures me with miniscule food. It's a fair trade.
There's a lot of reasons FOR having kids. Someone to work the farm when you're old and grey..er..or keep you company in your golden years and love and affection etc. BUT in all fairness there's a lot of reasons NOT to.
I couldn't begin to list them all, and I am sure for every one I have, there's a Mama out there who needs no argument against any of my reasons other than the sweet and pure love that only a child can bring. I don't think one decision is really better than other EXCEPT one is better than the other for ME. :)

Reason number 382 why we are not having children.
The *pretend* child we have, aka the only grandchild the folks can expect from us, was given a lovely hair cut the other night. You see I was in the middle of creating the un-dead and realized I didn't have the right shade of blonde hair in my craft supplies. So I fetched our darling plastic daughter that we keep stored in the closet and only bring out at Christmas (reason number 291: storing your children in the closet is probably a no-no) and with hardly any hesitation hacked off a long hank of blonde hair...muah ahh ahh. If there's no rule about butchering your children's hair for making zombies then there ought to be.

Reason number 4587 not to have children. I've never been good at sharing. Seriously, the new Nintendo Wii game.....lets say I could even afford the new game..or the Wii system AFTER all the expense of creating a human being there's no way in hell I could sit idly by and let some one else beat the new Zelda game before me. That's not mean...that's honesty right there. Also, I'm pretty sure there's some Motherhood rule that says parents shouldn't devote 50 plus hours of gameplay to the new Zelda game if they have children...something about matches and cleaners and world domination...I dunno for sure I was only half listening to that parental lecture cause I was distracted by how many rupees I'd collected.

Reason number 784 not to have children. Schedules. Holy fricking Hannah it would seem the entire freaking universe lives by the clock..EXCEPT my sweetie and I. Our schedule slowly rotates around the clock, Slowly pushing further a little later every night, sleep a little later every day. We have no set pattern. Just when you think we are getting up at midnight we're actually getting up at 4 am, or 4 pm. I am thinking kids and a schedule like that don't mesh.... I have heard rumors about the youngins needing stuff like sunlight.....

Reason number 32, I hated school, or at least large chunks of it. I can't imagine creating a human and then sending them off to the very institution I so very much un-enjoyed...and as for home schooling..um, did I not mention the 50 plus hours of game play? Plus margaritas. How many margaritas do parents get? Pbbbt, suckkkkas, y'all work on long division, my hubby and I are gonna make brownies, eat half the pan and then do dangerous things with a lighter we can leave laying out in the open because our cats have no interest in playing with it....muahh ahh ahh.

(Dangerous things we can leave in the middle of the living room floor forever and always should we desire because we don't have children. I'm not saying it's the BEST perk of opting to go childless...but it's definitely one of the more interesting ones.)

Reason number 7, adults who said "Oh you'll change your mind some day" with that knowing smirk on their face as if they knew for damn sure a switch would go off when a woman hits 30 and she will wanna help increase the earth's population. It's almost worth it for that alone. Sort of an "in your face" rebellion, ha HA no grandkids for you!

Reason number 9876. The other day we stepped out on to the patio to stare at the lovely, artistic billows of smoke from the fire way off yonder at the military base. Of course we wanted to snap a photo and of course I ended up flailing my arms and smacking a 500 dollar camera out of my husband's hands to bounce off of the house and onto the patio floor........ I fear children. If I could manage to do that on accident to a tiny camera.....a full size kid? Yikes. I'm pretty sure they're worth more than 500 dollars....

Reason number 17, We don't need to make any kids. The friends and relatives are doing a fine job of it on their own. Producing such wonderful little persons that one could not even hope to compete. (But lets see em produce a pair of cats who can occasionally tolerate each other long enough to bump noses though! Now there's a feat!)

Reason number 865, Babies don't use litter boxes. So far as I know.

I fully realize the Universe is gonna punish me for even thinking up such a list by making me have 19 kids in my next life time. Most likely all of which I'll name variations on the theme of Mario and Zelda. It'll be little Links and Luigis running all over the place and I'll be bewildered why such names appealed to me. The Universe is just sneaky enough to do such a thing. In the mean time I'll baby my cats and make my OWN little sandwiches. It's not just Mamas-to-be who can cut a square into 4 triangles ya know.

Disclaimer: Children are wonderful. I am very happy for all the proud parents out there, but I am happy and proud of our un-parentage as well.
To each their own.

Ma poubelle

We have some kind of luck.
OR, as I prefer to think of it, we have some kind of strange guardian something or other floating about like a very specific skilled wish granter. Ask for a million dollars? Nothing doing. Ask for a piece of electronics to fix itself after being broken for several months, poof. Granted.
World peace? HA! It laughs in our faces. Have a mugger return a stolen wallet? Sure thing.
To clarify though, I have been reaping the benefits of said ghostly wish granter/protective spirit of odd and un-related things only through marriage. I certainly never had such luck. I really only get to stand under the umbrella of weird protection with my husband.
It's his eyeglasses who go missing in Maine and given up for loss only to be found, after miles of driving, hanging undamaged outside the car door. I don't mind that it's not personally my guardian object angel, marriage does have it's fringe benefits besides the hottie blue husband. :)
It's good to lead gently into one's chaotic thought process with illustrative descriptive mental images of a ghostly character hovering about our old printer. It's a good fake out for what's really on my mind.
Trash cans.
Again.
I either have a fetish, am very trash conscious or need to get out more and expand my horizons. A fourth and more creative option would be to start a whole new blog, Trash Talk, but I am fearful of the sort of readers one might draw near with a title like that.
The connection between a strange aura around our possessions and my trash cans is this. After several cans went missing, presumably stolen...one came back.
After more than a year one of our trash cans turned up at the bottom of our drive way and I am tickled pink, green and a light shade of iridescent blue.
The guardian has struck again.
The questions that bombarded my mind after seeing our lonely little bin we purchased from Lowes, sitting down by the mailboxes, almost left me speechless. Almost.
"What the..? Seriously? Look! LOOK! It's our bin! Is it? How..huh? I...er....."
These questions were just my brain's way of trying to process an almost impossible situation. Our stolen bin had come back. It did not have the look of a plastic trash can possessed by a sentient spirit so I assume the bin thieves returned it themselves. Unless....unless the guardian of inanimate objects has been working out and has managed to develop a few corporeal muscles and pushed the bin back all by it's invisible self. I am actually leaning really hard towards that possibility. I like to picture the expression on the bin thief's face when our can started hauling itself out of their bin thief hide away and began bumping it's way along the road towards home.
We stood that day. Staring at our long lost member of our trash sorting family. Warm afternoon sunshine played over it's dull grey brown features. It's shadow stretched across the road as if reaching for us.
"Is it really our bin?" We asked, not wanting to hope and have our hearts broken.
We looked around, peering into the bushes and neighbor's driveways for possible bin thieves with nefarious n'er do well intentions on their faces. We were alone. Me, my husband, the guardian of inanimate objects and our garbage can.
There was no mistaking it. It was OUR can.

(exhibit B, pull made from plastic handles off of boxes, how many other bins identical to ours would have an identical extra handle for long armed husbands to hold when pulling the bin up and down the steep driveway?)

It still sported the fashionable little pull we'd made from plastic handles off of some boxes. It was missing the lid, which we very well knew was in our garage, lonely and useless as the cruel bin thief didn't take it when it had taken the bin.
I marched over, ready to take my bin back to where it rightfully belonged. Thoughts of neighbors *accidentally* not noticing they'd taken a bin from the communal trash area, that in no way matched any of the other bins down there, had a special handle and kept it for over a year...accidentally....washed through my mind.
I stepped close, victory so close. Score one for justice....
"Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."
I will save you a description but suffice it to say the....bin-napper....for lack of a better word, had apparently tossed a half can's worth of perishables in the bin for goodness how long and left it.
Perishables, no lid plus Southern California heat is a pretty nasty math equation.
I was tempted though...to retrieve what belonged to us, to clean up some one else's careless and disgusting mess just to return the bin to it's rightful place.
I stared hard at the can....and I sighed.
"I guess it's their bin now."
I was only sad for a moment, it actually seemed like pretty good instant karma. Leaving the mess where it was. As it turned out the garbage men didn't even touch the can, and who could blame them, I'm not sure they get hazard pay.
BUT...
I did get one teeny weeny extremely power packed moment of satisfaction from this whole peculiar bin experience.
I took the garbage can lid that belonged with the bin, and the very day we saw its return, placed it lovingly and a little sadly on the can. They might as well have the lid too.
Then...I cackled all the way up the driveway. Rubbing my palms together in a seriously evil genius sort of way. Imagining the mind trip that was gonna do to them, if they even noticed.
And they did.
Perhaps just a little bit of justice and a tiny sliver of shame. As later when we walked down to check the mail, still that same day, we saw the bin had been moved to the other side of the cans. As if to hide it from view.
They'd need much bigger bins to hide their shame though.
I like to wonder if that messed with their minds...knowing that we know....and yet didn't take the bin back? Ah well.
Maybe they're not jerks, maybe they're actually some forgetful old lady who accidentally took the wrong bin home after gathering her cans in the middle of the night and then maybe she lost track of it in a garage full of junk and cats and old lady belongings for over a year until finally she spied it through her dusty spectacles and declared "That's not mine, oh golly!" and promptly returned it.... Yeah, it was probably that.
I find most of life's annoyances go down smoother if I pretend they're perpetrated by forgetful old ladies.
In the mean time the bin remains, they apparently not claiming it and neither are we...unless I actually break down and reclaim what's rightfully mine and clean the heck out of that thing whilst half sloshed on rum. A person would have to be half sloshed, at the very least, on something before attempting such a chore.
Ah well.
But kudos to the guardian object angel, I am seriously impressed. I do not suppose many people can claim their garbage bin was stolen for a year and then returned...what a strange and oddly satisfying experience that is.

All that's brown and steaming is not coffee.

And so I learned a valuable bit of information about myself on a recent mini road trip. Some time during the past few years a slow and subtle change must have been taking place within my very cells. So soft and graceful was my dna overwriting itself that I did not have an inkling as to what was happening. And I suspect that if I had actually committed to the hermit lifestyle and just never visited any one, any where, ever again I might even have remained ignorant of this change for years, or forever.
I'm a coffee snob.
I admit this with the same slow grudging tone one uses when they admit to any peculiarity like a thimble fetish or cravings for human brains.
I don't like the idea of being a snob but connoisseur just isn't the right title. When I read the description on my coffee beans packaging when I am at home I raise an eyebrow over terms like "fruity notes", "chocolate finish", and "a hint of that vanilla creme brulee you had that one time at that restaurant when you were half smashed on southern comfort".
See, I just don't *get* all of that from my coffee experience. I just know I like my coffee strong, I like it jangling merrily with caffeine and I like it sweetened with stevia and topped off with raw milk. I prefer French roast, but if any other nationality roasts my beans that's fine, just as long as the little icon on the packaging indicates something like, "DARK! These beans are darker than Satan's soul. Good for espresso!"Not that I'm picky. It's just that I have come to know what I like. And apparently, as my taste buds have informed me loudly and with much protest on a that recent road trip, what I don't like.
Perhaps I was expecting too much from the coffee they had available at the garage we stopped off at for fuel. I know for sure I was swayed by their insanely huge coffee section that looked like it was trying to rival a Starbucks. With whipped that, vanilla the next thing and a half dozen kinds of coffee the rest, I was salivating. We had 2 more hours of driving and that garage coffee was looking and smelling mighty fine. When I emerged from their restroom I found my husband walking in confused circles around and around and around their coffee bar.
"So much....soooo much..." He whispered. So we shared a look of avarice and swooped in on the coffee cups. We squirted and spritzed to our hearts content and when I carried my as yet too hot to drink concoction back out to the car my taste-buds were dancing with un-restrained joy at the imagined bombardment of pure taste-buddery delight that was about to befall them. French roast coffee with dulce de leche creamer and vanilla creamer on top.
Maybe I was expecting too much.....maybe anticipating liquefied coffee infused dessert was wrong. Maybe I shouldn't have drank my coffee out of the little plastic stirrer like a straw but....Holy crap, it tasted like un-holy crap.
How can something that smells so good taste so wrong? You would think I had learned my lesson from the tropical mango shampoo from back in my teenage days. They should put a warning right on the bottle, "DO NOT EAT, WILL SERIOUSLY MESS WITH YOUR MIND! SMELLS LIKE HEAVEN, TASTES LIKE THE INSIDE OF A CHEMIST'S BOOT!" (by the way I am not at all embarrassed about tasting that shampoo because not only can I live the rest of my life peacefully with that little nugget of curiosity thoroughly squashed but I see so many jokes made about tasting good smelling soaps that I know I am not the only one. What I really find disturbing is what if it had tasted good? What if I had found myself glugging down a whole bottle of tropical mango shampoo whilst in the shower? It might have started me on a life long course of soap slurping and closet shampoo sucking.....a much worse thing than being a coffee snob)
Arriving at our destination, coffee cravings un-quenched we settled in to our hotel and tried the coffee in their restaurant. We might as well have scooped up some of the muddy water from the nearby Colorado river for all the coffee intensity it had. I don't like to toss words like "bland", "boring", "pale", "diabolically weak" and "disappointing" around but to heck with it. Consider them tossed and free falling about your feet. Am I spoiled? Yes. Was it coffee? I think so, if I searched hard through the brown liquid filling my restaurant mug I could catch a faint echo of coffee. Maybe they were having an off night or maybe, and I suspect this is really the case, my tongue is too accustomed to the strong dark coffee we make at home in our beloved little Bialetti and unfortunately most others pale in comparison.
We tried one more time.
We refused to go 3 days on our mini road trip with out a good coffee. We got clever. We eyed the in room coffee pot the hotel provides and unassuming little coffee grounds pod.
It was 9:30 at night and we starting to get the shakes. We needed a decent cuppa joe and we were willing to go MacGyver style to get it. Shunning the plastic cups provided by the hotel we dug out two mason jars that we had filled with tasty road snacks and already consumed. These would be our glasses.
Because we are us, meaning a little odd, we had brought our cool new portable water filter with us on the trip to show off to the in-laws. So we started filtering hotel tap water. I got extra clever and started a pot of coffee BUT assuming the worst about the grounds I only used half the water so as to make a really strong pot. We had the stevia for sweetener, never leave home without it, but now all we needed was some sort of dairy product. Once more Alan's and my eyes met and spoke the ocular language of coffee love. We tugged on our shoes and faster than you can say "did you remember to take the hotel room keycard" we were downstairs in the food court ordering up a double scoop of Dreyer's ice cream from the ice cream cart. We cackled in the elevator, cold icy cackles flavored with vanilla and mint chocolate chip. Then, like a well oiled machine Alan and I parted ways, he dashing down the hall to the ice machine to get the ice and me ducking into our hotel bathroom where this entire mad science coffee experiment was un-folding.
The tiny room smelled like the inside of a coffee shop. Alan returned with the ice and the coffee pot finished burping and bubbling the last drop.
We were ready.
Mason jar. Check. We filled it half way with dark, delicious smelling coffee.
Stevia. Check. We carefully metered out an eye dropper full, just the right amount of sweetness we knew from experience.
Ice. Check. We dropped in a handful, straight into the coffee. We were making frou-frou iced coffees in our slapped together bathroom barista bar.
Ice Cream. Check. We each ladled a small scoop of our choice on top of the chilling iced coffee.
We grinned at each other in delight. We raised our mason jars and sipped at the same time.
We grimaced.
Holy Crap, it tasted like crap.
Down the drain it went with my disappointment swirling after it. I hate to waste, I hate to be a snob but good Lord who replaced the coffee in the hotel rooms with dirt. Actually I am half sure that dirt would make a better cup of coffee than that coffee.
The next day, bleary eyed and sniffling like children who were denied their treat we hit upon a brilliant idea. We'll go to Starbucks. We'll pay the extra coinage, we'll get a strong cup of coffee, we'll consider it a vacation treat. What could go wrong? I mean besides having to listen to the lady on the cell phone behind me in line give a waaaaaay too detailed account to whoever she was talking..er....make that yelling to, on the phone about her dog's indoor bathroom habits when she is not home, what could go wrong?
Severely shaken, desperately craving a coffee I waited the eternity with a pleasant half smile that was beginning to wilt at the edges for the employee to end her marathon conversation with the customer before me and ordered our coffees.
Once more Alan and I raised our hopes like flags on a pole and sipped our coffees in tandem.
Once more we sighed. The cloud of disappointment slid over our sun of hope and our flags went limp.
Holy crap, it tasted like crap.
If it were not for my father-in-law swooping in with a bottle of instant coffee that we were able to doctor our beverages with I think we'd never have finished them.
I have a theory.
Somewhere between California and the Colorado river people only like weak coffee. That's the only way I can explain it. Either that or I have officially trained my taste buds to only be receptive to my own coffee. Either that or I have some sort of freaky super power that enables me to seek out and discover the worst coffee around.
*sigh* Let's just be truthful here....
I need one of them stickers: "My name is Tace, and I am a coffee snob."

Garbage Bin %#$#$%^!!!!!!

I can't very well title this post garbage bin bastards, but I can dang well think it.
Politeness and manners dictates I use caution with my words, temper my temper with a dash of sanity and not just say '"oh bugger it all" and curse the blog air blue with inventive phrases that would have my Mother warning of the minister hiding in the bushes.
If there's 2 things my Mother taught me, it's not to point (I still wave with a fist to indicate something, which can make people think I'm starting a fisty cuffs scuffle) and also not to curse because you never know who might be listening. Meanwhile since I am obeying the "no pointing" rule I curse a little more often than is strictly lady like. But you can be sure I do an impressive imitation of a horror movie creature, head swiveling 360 degrees to see if any one, including ministers in the bushes, heard me.
But all of this is besides my point, which I admit I am either very good at or bad at.
Getting beside my point I mean.
There are times I look to the right and left of me and my point is sooooooo far down the line of things I am yakking on about I can hardly see it. Sometimes we wave at each other and my point will shrug in an embarrassed sort of way, wordlessly asking "how did I end up here?" I'll tell you how point, it's because I got side tracked thinking of curses when I was meaning to expose the seamy dark underside of a garbage bin crime world.
Our bins have been...stolen....no less than 3 times.
Now, call me crazy, but a full bin seems more interesting than an empty one.
Should I be embarrassed that the bin thieves don't think my garbage is good enough for them? Should I be grateful that they don't dump the bins out, thank goodness, but rather wait until after the garbage trucks have come and gone and apparently mosey on down our private road and load up on bins to their little heart's delight as if we're hosting a fricking bin buffet, an all you can steal blue bin special, ya bunch-o-thievin-buggers. The bin thieves not you.
I no longer cast suspicious glances at the neighbors, having learned they have been victims of the bin thieves as well.....so they say......I suppose they could be ultra clever and are eluding my accusing eye and finger of judgment (the pointy "j'accuse" finger, not the middle one) by including themselves in the barbaric bin business going on around here, but meanwhile every night they go out to their secret bin hideaway and glory over their stash of stolen plastic containers.
I shudder when I think of that...of some stranger running their fingers over my grey garbage can....or worse....the brilliant blue plastic of the recycling bin.
WHY THE RECYCLING BIN?????? Are ye thieves with an environmental conscious? Does that make me feel better or worse? How do the scales of justice weigh that out?
On the one hand they stole private property, on the other hand they might be recycling. Does that even out? Aggghhh...
So anyways I've been trying to figure out how to install a gps device on my new bins that were dropped off by Edco. I think this is a brilliant idea. I make my bin trackable, wait for it to get stolen, then I locate it using what ever doolybobber-thing-a-ma-jig one uses with their garbage can gps, (hence forth called gcgps) go to my poor abducted bin and NOT only steal it back but....but.....
This is where my plan falls apart. I am not sure what I want to do, something heinous like unleashing my look of supreme disapproval that clearly states through nothing but facial muscles and exquisite eyebrow control that says, "You are going to hell buddy. HELL. Pitchforks will be jabbing your azz for eternity and you shall choke on the fumes of melting plastic, surrounded by all the bins you've purloined."
OR something subtle like just start watching those people for the REST OF THEIR LIVES. Waiting, biding my time until one day I introduce myself, make friends with them, get invited to their bbq's and birthdays, wait for years to go by and then when they least suspect it I will tell them I hate them, take back all of the Christmas presents I've given them and spit in their face. See, it'll hurt more if they don't understand why AND they care. Muaaaah ahhh ahhhh.
In the mean time life goes on.
I have not taped a row of thumbtacks with their pointy parts poking out under the edge of the garbage bin handle.
I have not set up a secret spy web cam in the bushes so I can see the comings and goings on around my precious, precious bins on garbage day.
I have not joined the volunteer sheriff's program in my community, though if truth be told that's ONLY because it's for seniors and I don't think they let you arrest people.
In the mean time I gather my trash and take it down every week. And try not to obsess over how I can attach a gps doolie to my can so that it remains hidden as well as active.
I also no longer name my bins. I do not let myself grow attached......
But...if truth be told, on Fridays when we go down for our cans and we round the end of the driveway and walk past the cactus that conceal the bit of road where we place our bins...my heart speeds up...just a little. And I find myself holding my breath, and when my bins are there, EXACTLY where they should be, I feel relieved.
And so should the bin thieves........

A selfish grain of sand.....

Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty

Poverty......I had to look up the definition.
Am I going to hell for admitting that? Heaven's no, I'm going to hell for all those uses of God's name in vain. Now look, I'm not an idiot, I know what poverty is, but when I really thought about it...I mean quelled the inner hamster of my mind, racing in circles, distracted by sitcom laugh tracks, coffee and the looming decision of a Halloween costume, I found myself a little stumped. Muddled.
Where there should have been clarity, meaning my brain, one topic to ponder, clear concise opinions should have made them selves available to me. Instead there was confusion and chaos. It made my head hurt.
Perhaps part of it is that poverty, the very idea of people out there starving and dying from horrible diseases with no place to live, is so hard to believe.
Though I do believe it. I see the commercials. Right between mascara and a wonder drug for your libido you can learn all about saving lives for just pennies a day.
I've also been appalled and horrified by the sight of people sleeping on the side of the road. A handy bush as their roof and a shopping cart apparently the house of all their worldly possessions.
Is that real? That really happens?
I do not believe I'm the only one who feels like their life is cushioned by a fog of surreality when it comes to things like war, natural disasters and poverty. There's even a tiny part of my brain, the part that hides it's face from the idea of death, of scary things that are too big for the mind to grasp like what if there's no God.....or what if there is...? This little part of grey matter tries to argue it.
Sad little portion of the brain that it is, trying to convince me there is no poverty. People can not be homeless. There can not literally be thousands and millions of starving people because if there were we'd fix it.
WE, the rest of us.
US, the un-poverty stricken.
The ones who buy 6 dollar coffee drinks, 50 dollar Wii games and 80 dollar shoes.
WE, the ones who inject poison into our faces to reduce wrinkles, put stripes on our cars, cell phones in every pocket and people in to space....
WE surely would not do any of that if there were starving, dying children in the world...would we?
My brain hurts. I think it hurts the most because I know we do, more so because I do. ME.
The guilt of having credit cards and a fridge full of food and gas in our car and the good kind of cat food for our kitties can weigh pretty heavy on my mind.
Then another layer of guilt handily belly flops down on the first and snarls cruelly at my quivering mind, "You think you feel bad? How about not having any food, how about your family not having any food? No bed to sleep in, no house, no car, no work, bad water.....you cry baby."
So my brain does what any cornered animal does, it goes on the offense.
Billions of dollars in space crap?
Problem solved. Lets funnel it in to all things poverty-wise. Lets not see what Mars rocks look like, lets not give a rat's ass if there's water on other planets and deal with the water on this one...and the fact that some people don't have any that's safe and clean.
See how that worked?
See how I managed to tap into a little righteous anger without doing anything personally myself to help the world?
See how it's not my fault and how I can't really do anything?
See how the few dollars I could spare doesn't make a difference, not when there's such a big need and the space people are blasting millions of dollars up to the moon and beyond?
Pretty clever of my ol' noggin eh?
The brain, it's a beautiful thing...and it's evil.
If it weren't we'd have no issues with poverty. If the area a large group of people lived in was horrible, they'd up and move to a new location. Borders schmorders, we'd welcome them with open arms. (The kind that hug, not the shooting kind.)
Bad brain.
See how it twisted it up again? Yes it would be lovely if the world was all about free love and peace. But it's not. Unless every single person immediately decided to completely alter the way humanity exists....it's not gonna be that.
See how my clever little brain made it about people? Not me...but people. Bad, bad baddddd brain.
There's a part of me that wishes I was strong enough to open my doors and invite any who needs a shelter to come and stay. But I'm not. I am admitting that. I like privacy, I like my life. I love the quality time I have with my husband. I am selfish. Most of us are. Even when we do good things, it's not EVERY thing we could. I see the homeless person on the street but I don't bundle them up into the car and invite them to live with us. I don't move from a house to a one bedroom apartment and donate the difference of rent to a worthy cause. I am selfish.
BUT, tricky, tricky, tricky brain....Oh how you like to twist my thoughts into knots. Large, pulsing, blood red knots that squeeze my insides until I feel I am too exhausted to think any more, and I want to escape into the mindlessness of some frivolous book or tv show.
It whispers how I can't really make a difference with the world. I think that could be true. BUT, you naughty brain there is ONE thing I can change. ONE thing I have control over.
ME!
If I was meant to have power over the actions of everyone. To make great decisions about where people could live, how we would alter the every day runnings of human life to save others, I suspect I'd have that power already....so far this hasn't happened. And yet I have this teeny tiny speck of power, nearly drowned out in the crowd of human life. Power over me.
ONLY me. Each of us has the same speck I think. Power over ourselves. And I can make it so I do not hide from fear. Or escape the responsibility of a wounded world and hurt people by shrugging my shoulders.
Instead of doing nothing, I can do something. I can change me. If I throw dollars at a problem that continues to exists, at least I did something. If I think about a problem and my brain starts a slow leak out of my ears, my eyes cross indefinitely and still I'm no closer to the perfect solution to fix the world.....well...at least I gave it a thought.
And maybe, call me a rose colored glasses, glass half full, pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow kind of person but maybe if I do my little bit.....teeny tiny as it may be....and every one else does there little bit, maybe things will change.
Maybe some day some one in the future will look up the definition of poverty too....but they realllly really won't know what it means.
Because maybe all the itty bitty teeny weeny minuscule things we all do, and keep trying to do, will erode away the insanity of the world. If not in this generation...maybe in the next one...or the next...or the next...or....

Dear great great great great great to the power of 57394757494758495 grandchildren of humanity, I will try and do something, I will be the best little grain of sand I can, even if it makes my brain hurt. Love me.....

p.s. having made a conscious effort to try and find some thing I can do to help, even in my own tiny, grainy sand way, it was as if the universe presented me an opportunity to follow through with my good intentions.
And I did.
And it felt good and bad.
I can admit that throwing a few dollars at a greater problem, POVERTY, knowing that some one out there has had it sooo bad, that even a few dollars can make a difference...it's humbling, scary and heart breaking. But knowing I did something, anything, instead of nothing.......what's that I see? Would that be a tiny spark of hope? A glimmer or a shiny future filled with peace and equality for all?
Damn right it is.

All Fired Up!

I have more than a chip on my shoulder.....
You know how a person can rant and rave about how inanimate objects defy them and how the Universe is testing their patience, their will and their sanity?
And how if a person keeps blathering about things like coat hangers that nearly cracked the fragile and tenuous hold some one has on their mighty reservoir of frustrated anger how other people start to raise their eyebrow, just the one ala Spock?
And how it's pretty damn hard to gather evidence of these inanimate objects etc to bring before one's peers to shine the light of truth upon their evil little ways?
Because throwing a handful of coat hangers, carpet tacks and miscellaneous spilled trash before one's friends doesn't prove that they did you wrong. The stuff not the friends, they didn't do me wrong yet but I keep a careful eye on them. If the old adage "keep your friends close and your enemies uncomfortably closer" is true then doesn't it stand to reason that some of the people I consider to be my closest friends must actually be my enemy, or at least I theirs?
It's something to ponder when life hands you small moments to reflect on the weirdness of the world...
But anyways I was rambling on about the defiance of things I face. People with kids think they have it tough? Ha!
Finally I have proof that either the fates are in cahoots with the Universe, or the Universe is in cahoots with the inanimate objects or perhaps I have an alter ego type personality that is constantly trying to undermine my smooth sailing through the day or.....and this isn't just the conspiracy crazed voice of fear just talking here, maybe they're alllllllllll in it together......
How else can I, or you for that matter explain THIS?
(Please read that last word "this" as dramatically as you can ala your favorite mystery movie when the culprit is revealed with much dramatic finger pointing, British accents and Shakespearean flair. Thanks)
These are my corn chips....or they WERE....
Let me take us on a slight detour from my point.
Corn chips are a staple in our household. In fact if there could be some sort of blended cornchip coffee concotion I am pretty sure my husband and I would drink it and enjoy it and never have to eat another thing but said concotion. (I exaggerate for the purposes of expressing how important corn chips really are. We don't like name them and treat them like salty members of our family but we do panic when there is only 2/3 of a 1 lb bag of the delicious lil devils left. They call the 1 lb bag "family size", we call it "barely big enough to get us through the week-end." I'm not going to tell you if I was exaggerating that time.)
So about corn chips and me.
I like em warm and toasty. This is actually a fairly recent discovery on my part. That if you take store bought corn chips and spread them out on a cookie sheet and stick them under your broiler for a few seconds then magical corn chip deliciousness happens. Your home starts to smell like your favorite Mexican restaurant, the chips gets toasty brown and they are so crispy and delicious you will actually risk burning your lips to nibble a few right away.
Well............I am here to confess that in the eyes of every one who is not in the *know* about defiant inanimate objects and Universe ploys to trip me up, I have carbonized our favorite salty snack. Reduced those pretty little golden chips to a fiery pile of ashes. Literally FIRE. It was quite exciting, you can't eat flaming chips by the way....bad, bad BAD idea.
Accident?
Forgetfulness?
Just leave them chips under the broiling hot broiler for a little too long?
Perhaps......
BUT If this is so then explain to me THIS!
(You can apply the same dramatic reading of the last usage of the word "this" as you did to the afore mentioned dramatic "this". Thanks)
NOT ONCE BUT TWICE in one week have I completely destroyed a beautiful pile of corn chips. Watching them burn, burn away their corny goodness and salty exterior as my own face is salted from my tears.
I might accidently set fire to a cookie sheet full of corn chips once....but not twice. AHA! J'accuse you Universe! I accuse the stove, the cookie sheet and...dang it, even those chips if I have to because I know dang well I am not responsible for carbonizing TWO batches of corn chips. I'm just not. The Universe slipped up there, now I have more than two useless piles of inedible corn chips (I tried them they taste like ash...darn it).....Now I have proof.

*****Corn chips really are tasty when they've been lightly toasted....LIGHTLY being the key word here. Do NOT turn you back on these guys under the broiler, they are just waiting to burst in to flame and make you cry. In fact if you do this do not walk away from the stove and check them literally every 5 or 10 seconds for *done-ness*. Seconds make the difference between a "happy meal" and a "muttering bitter infused obscenities at the Universe" meal........

Attack of a tack....

Dear person who invented the patented torture thingies that are used to hold down the edges of the carpet.
I hate you.
Smiles from me

P.s. O.k., look...it seems like a brilliant idea in a short sighted, get the job done, sort of way. The job in question being, holding down the loose edge of carpet that runs along a wall etcetera, wherever carpet runs out and other flooring begins.
We couldn't have loose carpet flapping about like a loose tongue now could we? No.
Why?
I do not know. Maybe because the carpet oversee-ers probably fear that us lower carpet user non-installer types would break our fool necks on the edge. So, they brilliantly hide a strip of metal with pokey up things...which in my world they also call TACKS, NAILS, SCREWS AND INSTRUMENTS OF PAIN, under the edge of the carpet. Which I suppose I can see from my pain filled seething view point that the padding and under side of the carpet is gripped by these little spears of cruelty, thereby holding the carpet down.
*hangs head and whispers* I hate you...I can't help it.
Look it's a lot like trying to be friends with the bully at school. How many times do you have to have some meany kid smack you in the face with your own hand before you declare "Ya know what? I don't like you. You are just not right."
The thing about carpet is it doesn't always run along a wall, or other non-walkable surface...though I'd like to LOUDLY point out that if I wanted to walk with my back pressed tight against the wall, Spy style, I damn well oughtta be able to do so...and I would...if it were not for the hateful little slivers of metallic evil that lay under the carpet edge..... But here's the thing...carpet....does NOT JUST RUN ALONG A WALL.
Sometimes it runs right up to the linoleum that covers the kitchen floor and sometimes that merging of floor materials must be crossed over and on a zillion and a half times a day.
I am not exaggerating, I counted.
Between the cooking, the getting of coffee, working at the kitchen table, feeding the cats and impromptu gleeful slides across the slippery linoleum floor, I cross that nasty little area a zillion and a half times a day.
Sometimes I can feel the slight poke of the carpet tack nudging my foot cruelly as I walk over to fill my glass with water. I can ignore that, shrug it off the way a person shrugs off strangely intimate phone conversations people blare loudly in front of you at the super market.
But some times...when I least expect it, mid meal preparation, pot of quinoa boiling on the stovetop, bowl of half prepared accompanying salad fixin's on my cutting board I swing round in a lovely poetic move (I think) to grab one of the newly bought red onions from the table behind me, a few short feet from the counter. And sometimes, as my foot lowers on to the merging of carpet and linoleum that just happens to line up with my table's legs I feel the full force of the brutality of those....*sighs*....I don't have enough good swear words to describe them little frickers....(I really oughtta hang around with more bad influences so I can cuss better)...anyways....my foot and the carpet tack that must be 3 fricking feet tall merge....it pierces my poor foot skin....but my momentum has my foot turning, red onion in hand, pain blossoming, spreading, horror growing in teeth baring leaps and bounds, scream of pain and disgust bursting free as my poor defenseless foot hits the mate to the first evil carpet tack and gets jabbed good and hard as well.
Cursing, bloody foot, pain, hobble to the bathroom, pot of quinoa boiling dry......equals.....one very VERY annoyed woman at the inventor of carpet tack edging.
O.k....
*Another sigh...this one of frustrated disgust* So look, I try to make it a policy not to hate any one, the world has got enough of that so hear me, and hear me good carpet tack inventors.....I shall take all of my hurt feelings and disgust for you and funnel it into my general displeasure with inanimate things that defy my will. Inanimate things ye shall feel my wrath.
By the way, carpet tack people.....there's two less of your little minions standing at attention now...muahh ahhhh ahhhh.
Pounding them with our little hammer...that felt fine. It felt very fine.

Biting the bullet about dust eaters biting the dust...just bites.

If you're anything like me you've spent many an hour agonizing over your dust buster. You haven't? Umm......well this is awkward.
Let me restart the beginning of my blab-fest with this then....I have this friend...um..yeah...and SHE (who is NOT me) has spent many an hour agonizing over her dust buster. Because that's the kind of person she is.
The kind of person who'd always thought a dust buster was a frivolous, extravagant purchase but none the less eyed them with something akin to lust in the department stores. Never daring to let her gaze linger too long, lest her husband suspect her desires. She had a vacuum cleaner did she not? She reasoned with herself, why would she need a second apparatus that sucked?
Was she enamored by the delicate pastel hued plastic body?
Was she tickled over the idea of a teeny weeny cleaning machine she could keep in her kitchen? Was she just sick?
Yes, yes and no. She was in love, and afraid to admit it...until......
I'm sure you know where this is headed.
An "until" so heavily laden with passion and intrigue can only lead to one thing.....an explosion of gasping, girlish delight in the middle of a Linens n' Things as she was brought to her knees by a display of dust busters for only 14.99.
Ignoring one's secret desire is easy...until....you're faced with your secret desire only costing 14.99. Also, stuttering and stammering and clutching the unit they had on display in a childish "mine, mine, mine" sort of attitude goes a long way towards shattering the illusions that you're a cool, sophisticated woman who doesn't swoon over dust busters. My....HER husband was surprised.
"You really want one?"
And he asked it in such a casual way that implied he wasn't shocked, or disgusted by her needs, just surprised that she was hyperventilating over the 14.99 price tag, and manically searching for crumbs on the store floor so she could play with the demo unit. Lifting her husband's feet and knocking dirt onto the floor so she could feed her little beast.... crooning "There's a good plastic baby, mama's gonna fix you up good."
They bought one.
She cried the first night. Not realizing the new addition to the household had to charge first for 24 hours. It sat there happily suckling electricity from the plug whilst she eyed the little piles of crumbs that seemed to have miraculously appeared on every surface, as if sensing the arrival of the chosen one. Crumbs she could not, in good conscience, clean in any other way but with her new dust buster.
Finally, the next day....the day that took for-fricking-ever to arrive, she and her dust buster were united in the full glory that is a woman and her little sucking device coming together in holy house cleaning union.
She buzzed about the living room and kitchen, sucking up crumbs. Where there weren't crumbs she MADE crumbs, so as to test the little sucker on every surface available. Her husband was delighted by her strange and baffling joy that a little tool could bring.
When it's battery wound down she didn't howl. She just bit her lip and held the dark cloud of despair at bay by screeching, "WHY DID IT STOP?"
"It's not meant for cleaning an entire house." Her husband rationally explains. "5 minutes is a pretty good run time for picking up crumbs, if you think about it. If you have more than 5 minutes worth of crumbs to clean up maybe you need to use the big vacuum right?"
He made a lot of sense. And eventually the cloud of despair would retreat far enough that she could see this logic and not just stand and stare at her little plastic baby slurping electricity from the plug, belly full of coffee grounds, bits of tortilla chips and scraps of paper she'd ripped and scattered across the carpet for testing purposes.
Life was rainbows, sunbeams and lollypops for a while. Until......
Damn them "untils"........everything life changing happens after an until, have you ever noticed?
Well...all was perfect...UNTIL......she noticed she couldn't suck all the crumbs under the edge of the counter PLUS the coffee grounds around the stove all in one go......how odd.....it was as if the little plastic baby was growing weaker......she couldn't admit it until one day her husband innocently said, "It sounds like that thing is dying."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Why would you say that? Why? WHY?????? You don't like my dust buster do you? You've never wanted me to have a dust buster, you'd let coffee grounds just pile up till we lived on nothing but coffee grounds, and wore nothing but coffee grounds, I suppose you think I ought to just quit spilling coffee grounds huh? HUH?????????????? "
He forgave her. As he understood the depth of love she had for the dust buster, having had such a relationship with a harmonica himself.
He suggested she time it. Cleverly realizing lets not have HIM destroy her dreams but lets have MATH do it. Numbers never lie, they may scar your soul with mind numbing cruelty, revealing truths that are too big for some minds to grasp....like the number of pints of ice cream left in the freezer, the number of poisonous snakes in the world or that your dust buster that used to run for 5 minutes at a time and now runs for only 40 seconds....but they never lie. Math will break your heart time and time again but it never lies.
40 seconds.
And every day she unites in cleaning joy with her plastic companion the time is less......Death hovers over the plastic dust buster with every hairball it consumes.
So fine, what ever, death is the inevitable conclusion to life, well that's just FRICKING PEACHY.
Is there a funeral service for the dust buster?
A final resting place?
Is there reincarnation for the dust buster?
Are batteries, life giving batteries, easily and readily available for the poor wee duster buster whose clock is running out?
*sigh*
The funeral services for most people's dust busters involve a complicated and scary process of smothering the plastic tool in yet more plastic, having it carted off by strangers in a loud rumbly truck and buried amongst everything our society considers too disgusting to keep. No loving embrace of sweet mother earth should ever be given to the dust buster, I feel very certain it goes against it's religious beliefs.
It's like a mummy, but instead of put in a museum on display where we put all the other old timey mummys that refuse to deteriorate, it's discarded. Hidden deep in our garages....IF it's lucky....and if it's not, it's sent along to the garbage heap. And a shiny NEW dust buster comes in to take it's place but like a pet...you know...you just KNOW you're going to outlive it......that some day, a hell of a lot sooner than you'd like, you will be faced with the same situation all over again....
Poor little dust buster, and poor she who longs to keep using her little cleaning aid and yet knows the time is drawing near. A decision will have to be made.
Which is more important to her? Hearing the gentle purr of a NEW Mr. Sucker-upper as he happily gobbles up the day's mess under the edge of the counter....or the environment? Will she start a collection of dead dust busters to join the blenders in the garage? Or will she realize that by keeping her kitchen counters garbage free by mechanical means she might actually be contributing to a larger garbage problem on the earth.....
Crap.
Seriously, why do I.........of course, just a slip of the fingers, why does SHE even have to think of these things?
Why care about the future generations? Why give a rat's ass about her legacy to the earth?
Why think about what she'll have to do with the old, dead dust buster when it finally bites the dust? Why can't she just throw it out and never think about it?
WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHY?
Is this cause her Mother was talking about goats whilst in labour with her? It all goes back to that doesn't it? She's a fricking hippy wanna-be because her Mother had to be running her mouth off about goats whilst giving birth. Something like that's gotta scar a child ya know?
So......she thinks about her dust buster, but enjoys the time they have together in the here and now.
Maybe by some miracle of miracles it won't die. Maybe it will forever run for 40 seconds at a time, just enough time to whizz through the kitchen chasing dust bunnies.
I hear too that she wonders how people cleaned up crumbs before dust busters? There's this thing called a whisk broom, like a regular broom only tiny........tiny is cute......though she doesn't dare speak of such things as whisk brooms around her Mr. Sucker-upper, lest he hear and ask uncomfortable questions she can't answer. Like what happens if some day....there's not even 40 seconds?
What if there's not even 2?
Will Mr.Sucker-upper be given a place of honor as art amongst all the prized possessions that are jammed in every corner, crowding every surface of the house? How valuable is he to the household when he can't work any more?
She might steal side long glances at him as he sleeps, recharging for the next hopefully 40 second cleaning spree and acknowledge.....he's beautiful as a dust buster....but as art? Hmmmmmm.....
Hope stirs, I know this for a fact. She has hope. One can't spend endless hours worrying, and agonizing over their dust buster and not have some hope.....a new battery? A new life? A new purpose?
She can't predict what the future holds but I damn well know this....he won't be garbage. He will NEVER be garbage.
He might become the world's funkiest flower vase, or secret compartment to hide valuables, weirdly shaped doll, strange little planter or the world's clunkiest cat toy that never gets played with....but he'll never be garbage.

Hmmmmmmmm...do you see what I see...would that make him..Dirty Smurf?

An inanimate rant.

(myself, in the closet battling my enemy...obviously turning the air blue with cusses)

I care not for inanimate objects defying my will.
I'm not asking for much here.
Well actually, truth be told I AM asking for much BUT I'm satisfied with so little.
In my wildest dreams I would like some super powers that let me exert my will upon more than inanimate objects.
I'm not talking God-like or anything. I'm not looking to take over the world and install flags bearing my face on every roof top...I don't think of things like that...do I?
I know not to assume I could get omnipotent powers, like some people (usually evil genius types in movies) set their sights upon.
I'd settle quite happily with one itty bitty power, a smidgen of power you might say. Like a one one hundredth of a fraction of a single iota of power.
I've even got it picked out too, a nice innocuous seeming power that I call....skin. If you so much as begin to look like you're even thinking something dirty I'm gonna go biblical on your ass.
By skin, I mean that should I see evil doers, qualified as evil by myself of course, I would be able to immobilize them, for 30 seconds in a non-harmful skin.
That's all.
That's not so much really.
I'd even settle for as little as 15 seconds, see how accommodating I am oh ye whose in charge of handing out such powers?
Think of the good I could do. Evil, swerving truck on the road who I suspect has a moron at the wheel, Pzaptafa! (sound of skin power in effect) and voila, frozen truck, covered in a glistening, translucent membrane of energy that prevents it from moving, or other things from hurting it, but ultimately allowing me to scoot on by. Afatpazp! (sound of skin power turning off)
OR, say I'm at the second happiest place on earth, Disney Land, and kids keep cutting in line because for SOME reason the little rug rats think they are immune there. That Disney Land is solely there for their amusements and adults are nothing but speed bumps and cash dispensers. Well the next time the little.......darlings......barrel through the line, taking cuts, almost knocking people over and causing one great pains from biting one's tongue so one doesn't say something that will land one in Disney jail....Pzaptafa!
Place in line is secured. And if the little...........darlings.....should miss the ride you're getting on, bonus.
My favorite place to use skin power would have to be at the theater though. Perhaps it's a sign of the early onset of crotchetiness but I can't stand the yammering of fellow theater goers during the movie. I can not tune it out, I hate having to change seats and fisty cuffs just aint my style.
Pzaptafa! I could immobilize the blabber mouths, stick my tongue out at them without fear of retribution and perhaps dissolve their minds into quivering puddles of fear by popping out of my seat and racing past them to sit on the other side of them, stealing their popcorn along the way.
Afatpazp!
Skin power turns off and NOT only have they..hee hee, this is too good..not only have they missed 15 to 30 seconds of the movie (depending on the strength of skin power that gets bestowed upon me) BUT it's gonna blow their little minds that I'm on the other side of them. Because obviously whilst immobilized by skin you see nothing, as if you're on pause.
And then, whilst they're all "Who? whaaaa? Huh-ing." I shall zap them again, Pzaptafa! And run to the other side once more, thereby cementing the mysterious, awesomeness of me in their minds and possibly purloining their soda along the way.
Not, that I have given any great thought to this or anything.......
As of yet, many will be relieved to know, I do not have skin power.
In fact I seem to be lacking even the basic power that every one else seems to have over mastering inanimate objects. It would seem simple on the surface, I have a brain, the plastic coat hanger does not, therefore I am God of the coat hanger, but does it obey me??????
DOES IT KEEP MY FRICKING SHIRT ON IT'S FRICKING PLASTIC SELF WHEN I PUT IT THERE?
No.
Does it let my shirts slide off to the floor time and time again..?
Yes.
When it does deign to do it's one fricking job in life, hold a shirt on it's self does it let me tug my shirt off it with ease?
HELL NO.
Does it instead somehow mysteriously bite into my shirt with it's stupid little hooky thingy and force me into an embarrassing tug of war, me against the coat hanger?
*sigh* Yessss.
Coat hangers should obey me.
The concept is rather simple but time and time again an abrupt dash of reality is thrown into my face by inanimate objects that gleefully defy my will.
And the coat hanger is just the evil minion of my closet.
I have noticed this defiance, spreading like a disease, amongst more and more of my possessions. Doorknobs, keys, forks, even sweet precious little forks have been infected. Glass jars filled with tea somehow expel their contents all over the stove causing me to invent new swear words, because apparently I don't know enough to satisfactorily express my dismay at TEA defying me.
Things, non-thinking, non-sentient, non-alive things will fly from my hands and mock me with their tumble through the air. Gull dang it, a jar lid has NO RIGHT to take a dive like that from my fingers, landing sticky side down on the carpet. No right.
*sigh*
Until the day I am bestowed with my skin powers, finally once and for all making up for the genetic hole that's preventing me from dominion over my stuff, I shall continue onwards.

I may massacre my coat hangers in the mean time, but really, they have it coming.

Hot Headed!!!

(you'll have to just use your imaginations for the sounds I sort of screeched after prancing and dancing my hot footed way back inside to the house after this photo. Patio HOTTTTTTTT, owie! Also, when the temperatures read THAT high the *F* no longer stands for Fahrenheit...)

I just love hot weather.
Yep, love it.
Me and skin blistering, face melting, hair wilting weather get along like two peas in a pod. Well.... more like two peas in a pot of boiling water, far far far removed from the sweet blissfully cool serenity of their little pod.
L.O.V.E. it.
*bares teeth in an un-holy grin*
Yep, love that hot weather..... love it just like an un-invited guest who shows up on your door step and makes themselves entirely too comfortable on your living room sofa, wiggling THEIR ass into your ass's indent on your side of the cushions and lets loose a long hot winded sigh of contentment that foretells of a long, long, lonnnnng visit.
From hell.
And you can't say anything, ohhh noooo you can't dare let it know it's uninvited, unwelcome and needs to get the heck off your back cause 96 degree F just aint cool with you.
In fact, screw all of those high pressure, low pressure easterly south west winds mumbo jumbo. I know all about hot weather, when it's so hot that walking through the living room is like easing my legs in to the oven on broil, I know where that weather comes from.
Hell.
Yep, it's the warm breath of Satan sweeping across his fiery pits and up through the cracks in the earth, whipping across the oceans, up the mountains, down the valleys, across the plains and finally through my living room window. Where it finally trickles in, a limp, stagnant breeze that promises summer's gonna be one hell of a cranky bitch.
Excuse the language, it's just that the crushing, mind numbing heat that presses me further and further in to my chair until finally I feel as if I've been strained through the very fabric of the seat and am even now looking up through a sweaty cross hatched net of what's most likely polyester causes me to lose a bit of my vocabulary.
Once in 11th grade English our teacher said that people who use swear words just didn't know any better words to use. Implying I guess a lack of creativity, schooling and manners. Like I really ought to be saying, "well gosh darn it, it's like a deep hideous vat of 3 week old, fast food joint, deep fryer fat, out and about today isn't it?" That might be polite-er...but in all honesty...it just feels like hell.
Don't worry though I'm taking advantage of the weather...working on a tan? Goodness no.
This isn't tanning weather, this is crisped-to-a-golden-crunchy-exterior-that's-heading-quickly-towards-charred weather. No tan for me, I'm taking advantage of the heat by making it work for me.
You hear that never ending beating rays of sun?
Do my bidding and I shall laugh from the relative discomfort of my sweaty office chair at your huge and mighty self being relegated to menial chores like making my tea. Why don't you brew my coffee while you're at it?
And ya know what? It does!!!!!
I sit here moaning about the weather and the heat and my chair and about being too lazy to look up alternative words for hell and the sun is out there, even as my heat addled fingers fumble across my keyboard, brewing my beverages.
*muahhh ahh ahhh ahhh*

(sun coffee on the left, sun yerba mate tea on the right)

And I shall call said beverages...sun tea.....and sun coffee. So that forever more all who partakes of my iced down beverages on this day and the next shall know who had to make it.
I mean it's like getting to say you're eating Queen Elizabeth toast. Wouldn't that just be the grandest to get up and have some lovely buttered toast made by the Queen????
Ohhhh man it's too hot for toast....can't.....think...about...toast.
I just can't think at all.
Later I will slink out on to the patio, bowing under the mighty weight of heat that wants to crush every bit will power outta me and I'll snatch my bottles of steeping tea and coffee, scramble back into the shade of the house and pray like mad I remembered to refill the ice tray the last time I stuck my head in the freezer for a 5 minute snooze, aka checking to see what to thaw for supper.
Supper? Who am I kidding?
That involves solid foods, and the only supper we're having tonight is an entree of iced sun tea followed by a dessert of iced sun coffee.

(Sure it looks pretty and inviting outside but trust me...it was hot as...well I'm sure you know by now....)

The Cycle of life....

It was a daring sort of day.
The kind of day where you blow bubbles off the patio, the breath of wind replacing your own and filling the wee valley before you with rainbow hued orbs.
The sort of day that has multiple brownie and coffee meals in lieu of vegetables and fruit.
The sort of day where you dare to wear your inside clothes OUT. You know, the sort of clothes you only wear at home, the stained, comfy, stretchy mismatched clothes that are the ultimate in comfort and only your true love thinks you look super hot in.
We giggle like school children in baggy stretch pants and tshirts, sloppy hairdos that look like a monkey styled and head off to the bank. Utterly delighted in our inside clothes out extravaganza, secure in our knowledge we wont actually get out of the car. The sun is shining and we're merrily driving along to deposit a check in the drive up atm window, chattering like the good companions we are, my sweetie pulls into the turning lane...and it happens, a bicyclist zips around the corner of a monster SUV, there's one of those heart stopping moments where you realize you could be about to run over a human being, he zigs, we zag and there is no sound but the roar of my pulse, all the blood in my body stops so abruptly it sloshes to the rear of me, pauses for what seems to be an eternity then finally rushes forward, blood slamming through my veins like a tidal wave.
The bicyclist continues on in a zippy sort of way across the lanes of traffic, weaving amongst the cars, and into a parking lot. We of course follow, flag him down and proceed to beat the living day lights out of him.
I wish, I mean no of course we didn't beat up a fellow human being even if he did need a beating as bad as I have ever seen any one need one. But I wish.....because I'll tell you right now a 30 year old Canadian's fists are gonna hurt one hell of a lot less than the front end of our sweet little Honda civic. My elbow to his gut would be a tickle compared to a fender and my foot up his ass would be a joy compared to a permanently installed bicycle.
Angry much are we?
EAaaaggggghhhh!
This, this is why being a part time hermit makes sense. It's the thing that keeps us securely on the other side of the dividing line of life, the line that keeps relatively sane couples from tracking down idiot grown men on bicycles who zip through traffic across no less than 6 lanes and expect all the cars to yield to him.
It's the line that keeps me glued to my seat in shock and horror instead of wrenching open the car door and darting through the afternoon traffic in hot pursuit of what is obviously FAIR GAME at this point. If he gets to act like a frigging idiot than all bets are off...right..RIGHT????
All I hope is that dude made it safely to where ever he was going, with his life flashing before his eyes and thanking what ever God he believes in that he didn't get a face full of car today. Maybe next time he needs to cross a busy intersection street at rush hour he'll use the proper lane and respect the traffic like he's supposed to. But for the record, Mr.Bicyclist average looking grown man dum-head, you came this close to the wrath of a mean Maritimer today and her ass kickin' husband. Like anyone we're gonna snap some day, maybe not today, maybe not with you. Maybe it'll be just over one more canceled tv show we've hopelessly fallen in love with and had ripped from our hearts, but it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen.

I Scream.....

I like shock value. It's thrilling, we the people, we like thrilling don't we. Who cares about a walk down the street we want diving behind trash cans, rolling away from the wheels of an oncoming semi and hurtling through the air over grey haired grannies and their walkers as you skid to the cross walk and THEN...cross...against the red light.
Excitement we love it.
But I don't get bacon ice cream. Is that wrong of me? I don't get it and I'm a wee bit heart broken to hear of so many people apparently *getting it*. I think what they need is an ounce of reality up side the head. Bacon is meat. Therefore IT NEVER TOUCHES ICE CREAM.
I don't get this sudden rash..make that rasher (ha ha) of bacon ice cream recipes etc. It's every where, I can't turn around the ice creamy goodness parts of the world wide web with out bumping up against bacon ice cream. It's worse then accidentally opening an email that your relative sent out to every one in their address book that was obviously and graphically intended for their significant other only....Worse than innocently clicking on a web link for a site that seems like it's going to be about striped mittens but it turns out it's people who like to wear striped mittens...and that's all. Hey, what ever blows your bubbles, but it don't blow mine and I don't like the idea of bacon in ice cream.
I'm ok with it touching pancakes (bacon that is) as that love union was made ages ago. But it shouldn't even enter in to the thought of ice cream. Some things are scared. You can make all the jokes about God, your Mother and the President/Prime Minister but you sure as hell don't F*#K around with ice cream.
I mean I don't care if it tastes good, it's wrong. And I'm fully admitting that it might taste good, bacon ice cream *shudddddddders* to some people but I'm sorry it's still wrong.
If I want ice cream that means I'm having a dessert, a sweet treat not an astronaut-ish all in one meal kind of thing.
Hey here's an idea if bacon is so damned great why don't y'all slap some in your shampoo, cause mmm bacon smells good and we want it every where we can get it. Do they make bacon scented personal lubricants? Well apparently they ought to. Bacon flavored baby teething rings? Genius!
And ladies, nothing says romance like a triple layer chocolate wedding cake with copious amounts of bacon sprinkled through out. Why even crisp it up? Why not just leave it all fatty and nasty, so you can get a real good bacon experience. Why sugar coat it and pretend it's something it's not. Let it retain a little slime factor if you really want the bacon experience.
Hey, I like bacon. But we have rules in this household, no hitting, no hissing at our cats and NO PUTTING BACON IN THE FRICKING ICE CREAM!
Have they made a bacon flavored vodka? Go ahead ya bunch of sickos go ahead, whip up your bacon flavored vodkas see if I care. It makes more sense than ice cream I can tell ya that. Maybe, just maybe I could sort of come to an understanding with a bacon flavored vodka but my ice cream is precious to me. Ice cream is a treat, if done right it's a bit of a pricey treat. Pricey compared to the artificially flavored, preservative filled .33 cent candy bars I could get instead at a grocery store check out. Why would I need to add bacon to that?
When I have ice cream I'm not just filling a void in my diet I'm having an experience. I don't eat/gulp ice cream. I don't want to be so dazzled by anything while I'm having it that I mindlessly shovel it in and forget to relish every taste. Are you telling me that if you eat bacon ice cream you're not gonna be constantly going,
"wow, bacon ice cream, I'm eating bacon ice cream. Who'd a thunk it? This taste better than I would have expected. It's funny, I don't feel weird at all."
Clank. The spoon hits the bowl, treat is over and you've haven't truly experienced a oneness with the marvel that is ice cream because you were so damn focused on eating bacon in it and not gagging.
There's a good slogan
"Bacon Ice cream : It doesn't make you gag!"
I'm all about experimentation, I too have heard the siren's call of the kitchen muse who whispers sweetly in your ear. Try a little salt on that chocolate, try a little cayenne on that strawberry...what will happen if you switch white flour and use whole wheat instead........ Usually I'll give the kitchen muse a whirl around the dance floor and try the suggestions, as extreme as a little dried pasilla pepper in a mega chocolate cookie even....but the day she comes slithering up to me slyly suggesting I put smoked pig belly in my luscious homemade ice cream is the day I bitch slap her ass back to muse-ville where she can dang well stay until kingdom come and I sit back here savoring REAL un-tainted ice cream.
I don't mean to sound harsh and unforgiving like a total kitchen bitch who thinks every thing should be done her way.........that's what I am, but I'm trying not to come across that way so my point can be sharped to a fine honed bit that will pierce the veil of infatuation with bacon.
In a sandwich...good....in a pie...maybe..IF it's a potato pie, in a sweet pie, helllll no. In a sandwich, yes, in a cookie.....have you learned nothing??????? NO NO NO NO NO!
Maybe it's because I have such special memories of ice cream. Maybe because when I was a kid we were far from rich and ice cream was reserved for special occasions, birthdays and...ummmm...that's about it for the most part. We did have ice cream at other times and it was like a miracle, ice cream and no body got born-ed on that day that we know? Hallelujah. Non-birthday ice cream tasted ever the more sweeter for it's rarity and surprise. You EXPECT to get ice cream on your little brother's birthday, you DON'T expect to get ice cream on a Thursday night in the middle of May.
Oh poor me, only getting ice cream on birthdays, well there were other occasions like I said the rare Thursday plus I aligned myself early on with fellow ice cream addicts who appreciated a non celebratory cone in the summer as much as I did. I thank my lucky stars I had such an addict in my life who made ice cream an event, the way it ought to be. Buying a 2 liter tub of it to eat, scooping it up with cookies, no dishes or utensils of any kind. Sitting on the side of the road over looking a lazy river. Silence but for the occasional crunch of cookie. And every crunch was an accidental bite cause no one in their right mind eats the cookie spoon on purpose, it literally was the transportation unit to allow ice cream to travel to our mouths with out freezing our fingers. We were at once with the ice cream, we savoured every taste, letting it melt in cool, sweet glory on our young tongues.
What sort of ice cream does one bask in on a lovely grey day on the side of the road with a fellow ice cream addict.......Liverwurst and onion.
A HA!
Did you flinch???
Of course you did, that sounds disgusting doesn't it. It was Neapolitan, a simple and humble flavor that satisfied every kid, as there was something there for every one....apparently though there were some kids who were jonesing for a little bacon to be tossed in the mix as they grew up and created just that.
Maybe that's the problem, they grew up.
Maybe they forgot how special ice cream is.
One time, actually one of the last times I visited my Grandma while she stilled lived in her home she had an ice cream cake. One of those super hard, pre-made sorts that has an eerily good layer of chocolate crumble between the top layer of vanilla ice cream and the bottom layer of chocolate. You hear that? Vanilla ice cream, chocolate crumble, chocolate ice cream. There was no layer of BBQ steak anywheres at all in there. If there had been Grandma would have raised an eyebrow and flung the thing out the kitchen window...ok she has more class than that but I don't. I'd have flung it. Then I'd have cried.
Another time when I was a really young kid my Aunt and Uncle took my brother and I to get an ice cream cone at a local joint. I ordered something creamy white with swirls of pink and big gobs of red in it. I ordered based on what I saw in the tub not the label.
"Are you sure that's what you want?" My Uncle wisely asked.
I was undeterred, it looked marvelous, it looked rich and delicious, a little fruity and oh so decadent I was practically drooling like a mad dog on the display case.
The scooper handed me the cone and I took that first lick and my heart literally broke. I can still remember the pain. It actually hurt to have another bite. I was a half decent kid so I didn't sob and whine for another cone. Nobody we knew was rich so there was no "buy me another cone cause I decided this flavor doesn't suit my palette."
I was stuck, trying to eat this weirdly sour...crap.
I couldn't understand it. What in the hell sort of ice cream did I get? Finally I did what I should have done in the beginning and I read the label.
Strawberry yogurt.
For a kid, whose ice cream cones were much too scare for her liking this was literally the most painful ice cream experience of my life. I ordered YOGURT ice cream. (As an adult I acquired a certain taste for it but it's not ice cream. Who are we kidding, it's tasty as all heck if you get a good brand but it's NOT ice cream)
I will never order frozen yogurt if there's the option of ice cream. That's like choosing a tootsie roll over a homemade fudge brownie. Nothing wrong with a tootsie roll...but it aint no fudge brownie.
By the way before I forget, how about a nice batch of bacon yogurt? Maybe it ought to be bacon strawberry yogurt. Breakfast in a tub. Friendly bacteria for your innards with a dollop of fried bacon in every bite. Oh boy.
If there's one thing I've learned in life so far it's that every one is different. Every one has different tastes. And I've learned mine sure as heck doesn't run to bacon flavored ice cream.
Y'all go ahead and enjoy it, if you really, truly are enjoying it more power to you.
I'll save my bacon for a BLT and I'll have a bowl of sweet homemade chocolate fudge ripple ice cream afterwards. Or maybe I'll have a scoop of rum raisin. Of course it's always hard to choose between cookie dough ice cream and Irish cream liqueur ice cream. There was that peach pie ice cream that was pretty tasty, that and an accompanying scoop of raspberry cheesecake ice cream would be soooo satisfying.....oh shoot I forgot about the pecan praline..hmmm...oh man pecan praline and a double scoop of coffee ice cream with a drizzle of hot fudge sauce and a wee scoop of pure vanilla ice cream on top.
Mmmmmm
but y'all go ahead, have your bacon ice cream.
More of every other kind for me!