I needed beef yesterday. Protein! Iron! BEEEEEEF.
I was down a few units of blood after taking part in our office blood drive, and it turns out I kind of needed that blood. They were wrong to take it away from me. It was MINE. I MADE it. Sure, it was a nice altruistic thing to do-- give up some of my precious red lifefluid so others could benefit -- but that was just on the surface. I didn't think it through. It turns out, sometimes it's just so much better to keep your blood safely contained in your own veins.

First, they poked my right arm and couldn't get the needle into the vein. It was in my skin, but no blood was coming out. That was fun. Every now and then as the nurse was wiggling the needle, it would "bump" into something and it felt like that sensation you get when you hit your funny bone, but inside my arm. Eeee. Her supervisor came over to assist after a few minutes of this mayhem, felt around a bit and determined the problem: the vein they were attempting to puncture was situated right next to a tendon in my arm. They had been bumping the needle into the tendon itself. Now, come on. That's just not cool.

So, they asked me to switch arms. They stuck it into my left arm, and luckily that one was no problem. I flipped through a magazine as the bags filled up relatively quickly. I was all done, and I went to the back of the bloodmobile for my much-deserved juice and cookies. I sat down first, just to see how I felt, and within a few seconds I knew something was wrong. My hearing went funny (all whoooshing) and my face felt hot, and I felt bile rising... and then it went gray and I slumped over to my left. The next thing I know the nurse was helping me up to sit on one of the chairs, where I collapsed into the cushions like a dead body. They made me stay there for almost a half an hour with my feet elevated. I think I was the only person in my company to have this reaction yesterday. I felt kind of embarassed.

Plus, I have NEVER passed out before. I didn't like it at all. It's not graceful like it is for those turn-of-the-century ladies in the movies who gasp and swoon over the littlest things. Well, screw that... I am no delicate goddamn flower. The vapors are not regularly something I catch. I'm a big, strongish woman of German descent. I might be clumsy but I am not a swooner.

I came back into the office and felt a lot worse. I was woozy and had to put my head between my knees a couple of times sitting at my desk. The nausea hit big time and I ran to the bathroom... and finally my friends offered to drive me home. It was a good thing, too, because if I had tried to drive my own car I am not sure I'd have made it home. As I was walking up to my house, I turned my head to wave goodbye to my trusty co-workers, the gray-whooshing feeling came and slammed me hard. I went down right on my sidewalk, my face planted in the grass. I wasn't out long at all, since I sat up and Diane was coming back over the lawn to see if I was OK. I was, thankfully... no more blood was spilled, and nothing was hit too hard. I finally managed to get in the house, call my Greg, and flop down and feel miserable in the privacy of my own home for the rest of the day.

I feel better today, and with the exception of one very gross-looking arm ('internal bleeding' is visible), there are no lasting effects of the weirdness of yesterday. The theories for why it happened include:

* I didn't eat enough breakfast, and I scheduled my donation appointment too late in the morning. A full four hours had passed between my last meal (a tiny bowl of rice chex and a glass of OJ) and the blood-sucking situation. And I should have immediately ingested juice and cookies after the donation rather than taking that minute to sit and relax first.

* I went into it with a slight fever, for me (98.9) and that was probably a signal I was fighting something off and shouldn't have donated. I guess I needed all of my blood cells if I was dealing with some underlying little illness.

* My blood pressure was already low going in, another possible sign that God was trying to send to me in order to get me to keep my blood volume as-is. But the technician didn't say anything when my reading was done, and I didn't think about it much myself.

Either way, the whole thing made me realize I should NOT donate blood ever again. I've done it before without a single complication. No dizziness, and not even much bruising. I went into it this time all cavalier and arrogant. "Oh, nothing's going to happen to me because I am healthy and robust, dur." I just don't know about those bloodmobile blood-stealing sons of bitches. I am so over the United Blood Services. See if they get to poke my sweet ass veins ever again.

The kicker is that everyone who donated blood yesterday gets their name entered into a drawing for a 2007 Saturn Aura. I told my Mom about that, and her reply was, "They had better damned well give you that car." So ya hear that, bloodbastards? Give me the car! My mama said you have to give me the car. I went through trauma and suffering. If some wise-ass, no-bruising son of a fuck wins that car instead of me, my mother and I will both go into a rage. And no one wants that. We are not to be trifled with.

The moral of this story is: Don't be a hero. Don't give blood. Save yourself.

Today's just dumb. I am busy and tired, and I have yet another headache. I get approximately four headaches a week these days. Maybe I should see a doctor? Eh. That would mean arduous 'calling' and 'making appointments,' which would then be followed by the inevitable 'drive over to the office' and then sitting there waiting for an 'appointment' and then... umm, just thinking about it makes me tired.

I dyed my hair yesterday afternoon. It has been so long since I did it that I can't even remember when it was. Possibly January? Anyway, I did it, and I like the way it came out, but while applying the dye to the back of my head yesterday I somehow managed to dig a fingernail into the back of my neck, HARD. And then the dye got into the wound. Which hurt, a lot. Today, the spot is still sore and I am keeping my hair down for awhile until I know the big dig-mark in my flesh is healed a bit more.

I left my cell phone home, but the day took a sweet little turn when Greg showed up at my office to bring it to me. It definitely cheered me up and made me forget about my maladies for a spell. I love the stealth-visit-to-the-office thing. I love seeing him like that. Even if it was only for 5 minutes.

So now, I am hoping that the headache will cease and I can enjoy a quick run to Goodwill, where I will drop off the bags of clothes I unsuccessfully tried to sell at Buffalo Exchange last night. (The girl with the spiky hair and aquamarine eyeshadow told me the following: "We aren't going to take anything this time. Thanks anyway for coming in." As I started to just take my stuff back and say thanks, she continued: "See, we really need CURRENT styles. You have some good labels here, but a lot of your clothes were really OLD or outdated. And there were issues with wear and tear on a lot of them... we can't really take shirts that have been overwashed." I could have done without the commentary, to be honest. Now I feel like my clothes are completely old and retarded looking, and that all my colored shirts are faded and overstretched with huge crusty pit stains or something. Thanks, trendy chick. You helped an OLD woman in her 30s feel a lot worse. Douchebitch.)

Anyway, that's my blog post for the day. I better go to Goodwill now. They won't say no to my shit at Goodwill. If they do, I will just run into traffic.

I was in the pool a lot this weekend. On Friday, my sister came over after work and we floated around in the pool and did some sister-babbling for awhile, and then on Saturday afternoon Greg and I were in there for a couple of hours. It’s been so hot out these days -- no big surprise -- but in the pool, I can’t really tell. The water is warmish, too, so it’s easy to get in, but the longer I am out there, the air feels cool when I rise out of the water so it’s always refreshing.

It turns out the pool is a really great place to sit around and bullshit. It must be the relaxing, laziness of the entire pool experience, or something. Sure, I could do laps or tread water to up the exercise factor, but that’s not why we got a pool. We got a pool because we wanted to relax in it. And do laps and all that, sure...but mostly to do nothing and float around. Maybe have a few drinks; maybe hit the volleyball around if we have the net up. It’s not a high-impact, stressful place in our yard.

One of the topics that came up was pennies. I told Greg that one of my favorite things to do as a kid was to throw a handful of pennies into the pool and dive for them. We had a pretty decent-sized pool back then, with an 8-foot deep end that sloped down into a “pit” and a small three-foot deep low end. I’d close my eyes and toss the pennies a few at a time in different directions all over the pool. Then, I’d set off to find them all.

Most of the time, I used my swim mask so I could see better underwater, but sometimes I did it without. For whatever reason, I always liked the challenge of trying to focus underwater, and realizing I couldn’t see what I was looking for until I was on top of it. This didn’t work so well in the deep end, though, because my body would always want to float up before I had given everything a good look-around.

Either way, I could keep myself busy with this for a very long time. One summer, I got kind of nerdy about it, and would try to beat my “one breath” records; in other words, how many pennies I could grab while underwater with one breath. I put my towel near the edge of the pool, with a spiral notebook and a pencil. I’d go down, maybe gather five pennies out of the 20 I’d thrown in on one breath, and come up and write “5” down in the notebook. Then I would try again, and attempt to get 6.

I wish I could play this again, but now that I am a responsible homeowner and we are paying a second mortgage off for the lovely pool, it seems remiss to go out there and throw pennies in and possibly damage the white plaster. (The pool we had when I was growing up had a vinyl liner with that “pebble” pattern, which made it more challenging to find the pennies, for sure...if they landed on the dark spots, they were so much harder to see.)

So I was wondering...what else could I throw in the pool that might not damage the plaster yet would still offer a satisfying dive experience? My "great" idea on Saturday was nickels. Perhaps nickels wouldn’t rust? Or heavy buttons? The one thing I do not want to use are those queer plastic diving rings or sticks. What’s the challenge in that? They are day-glo underwater and besides, they cost a lot.

I welcome your suggestions so that I may once more, dive for something. I have to make some attempt to reclaim my lost youth, and I guess this is going to be it for me. If it can’t be pennies, perhaps it can be gold dollar coins. This would also reflect inflation, which is good. You’ve got to take inflation into account when playing these pool games, for sure.

Well, the stupid bastards did it.

They changed formats on one of the only stations I listen to. If you're here in Phoenix, I'm talking about 101.5 FreeFM.

I am upset because the Adam Carolla Show will no longer be broadcast in Phoenix. It comes a big surprise to me, because I was under the impression that it was a hit show in this market. I had hated morning radio until maybe about six months ago when I got into the ACS. He's a funny dude. He gets great guests on the show, and his rants were great. (Of course, there was the problem of Danny Bonaduce being on the show... I mean, that guy is an ass and he really is not funny in the slightest...but I could overlook it since Adam and Theresa Strasser were so good.)

This morning I got in the car expecting to perhaps hear Joel McHale talking about what will be on The Soup this weekend, and to my complete horror, what came out of my speakers was this terrible dance music playing and a guy came on the air who was doing a completely offensive impression of a gay man and playing Paris Hilton songs. I wondered if it was a joke, until I checked into it online just now and realized it was a done deal. The station has changed formats, and the talk shows are all history. Now we get crappy music and a guy talking in a bad queer voice and giving 'snaps' to the callers?! Because yeah...the radio dial in Phoenix really did need one more dance-hip-hop-R&B station because we didn't have enough of those already. Maybe next they can eliminate a few other stations to make room for a few more Spanish stations, perchance? Muy bueno!

I am really glad that I got out of radio very early. It's hard to believe what it has become; of course, it's been most dramatic in the last 10 years even though the changes were already happening when I was in college learning to cart up station promos. I know how I am, and I could never really deal with all this changing formats/ station buyouts and all the other crap without losing my mind.

RIP, Adam Carolla Show. And fuck the hell out of you, new 101.5. Seriously.

MUTT and JEFF Before I say anything else, let me make it clear that up until I did an image search for this picture, I had no idea what the hell Mutt and Jeff looked like. I never saw one of their comic books, or viewed one of their cartoons. Yet, the phrase "Mutt and Jeff" gets in my head from time to time for no real reason. Why is that, and how does it happen?

I think I recall someone's mother referrring to two kids this way, "Oh, those two are like a regular Mutt and Jeff." I always took it to mean that they were a couple of goofy troublemakers who were kind of stupid. My memories of when I heard this, and why this is the association I made, are super hazy. It could have even been my own mother saying that.

Anyway, I don't have much of a point to this, other than I am thinking of the names "Mutt and Jeff" right now and totally wishing I had a situation at hand in which I could call two people "Mutt and Jeff." I don't know why, but it would be funny!

That's my blog for today, I guess. Now go and do something productive, because frankly your tallness is making me want to call you Mutt. And you! Yes, you over there, pretending not to be reading this blog but I know you really are-- your short stature is downright Jeffish, if you want to know the truth.

God. This whole place is loaded with Mutts and/or Jeffs!

Dog Post alert!
If you don't want to read about the dogs, you might want to go click on some other blog because it's time for me to bitch about ours. Again. (Look at this adorable bastard. Do not be fooled. He is a Destroyer of Worlds in cute-dog clothing!)

Dogs are so awful sometimes. I mean, they are awesome! They shower you with unconditional affection, they are great exercise partners, they protect the house, and they do cute or goofy things to make us laugh. But don't be fooled! Dogs are actually huge assholes!

I say this because no sooner did I write the post on Monday about how Indy has been "better" than he screws it all up again. I went home, worked on a little training with him with his new harness, and things appeared to be going well. He was sitting around with his submissive ears-back face on and everything. Greg and I were eating some pizza, and we left a slice on the kitchen counter. Indy took it upon himself to go in there, quickly jump up and knock the pizza to the floor in an attempt to steal it.

We caught him, and he was punished right in the act. Such a brazen little dickhead!

Later that evening, we loaded Indy and Hailie into the car to go to PetSmart, for it was time for a nails trimming session. We can't do it on our own because of the spastic fits our dogs have; I thought Indy broke my nose last year when I was holding him while Greg trimmed. Dogs have very hard skulls. Anyway, we had a coupon for a free nail trim, so we'd only have to pay for one at $8.00 Based on our experiences, $8.00 is a bargain to have someone else handle this arduous task.

Hailie WHINES like an idiot when we are in the car. Every time. She freaks out and gets super-excited that she is going for a ride; in fact, they both do this. If one dog loses it, the other one is guaranteed to join in the fun every time. Hailie is the queen of squealing-whines in the car, though. It's kind of cute, but after about a minute I just want to reach back and strangle her. We turn the radio up to mask the noise, but there's limits on what the radio can accomplish. Indy will whine as well, and there are moments when we have two very loud dog voices whining and yelping at the same time.

At PetSmart, they both lost their cool. They conveniently forget how to heel or listen to us at all. We can spend a long time just inching towards the doors only to have everything fly out the window once we are inside. They're skidding all over the place, panting and pulling. I can get SO embarrassed of our retards.

Indy went first, and he got his nails trimmed with some squirming and whining, but overall it was a piece of cake compared to Hailie's behavior on the grooming table. She looked like she was having seizures, the way she was bucking around like a rodeo horse. Greg went back and helped hold her still, and even that didn't help. It took a really long time for the poor groomer to get through all her nails, and she even called in a third person to help hold her steady and talk reassuringly to her. People were looking in the window and pointing at her and laughing.

So yes, that's what it has come to: we have the out of control dogs people LAUGH at. Honestly, this just makes me drop my head and shrug in shame.

We do everything right, or at least, we try damn hard to do things right every time. Greg is still better at being consistent than I am, but when I compare how spoiled I was by my past dogs (and Malcolm) and how they had been so good and well-behaved on and off leash... I realize how difficult these particular two really are, and that I have a lot to learn yet. But you know, I do think we are pretty good at how we handle them. Yet, here we are, dealing with two boobs who act like Roger Rabbit on speed when we go out somewhere or when we try to cut their nails.

I never thought I'd go to this extreme, but I'm starting to think about contacting Cesar Milan. I wonder if we'd be a case he'd consider.

And I wonder if he did come out and film a show, if the producers would be OK with blurring out our faces and disguising our voices.

Sugar is evil. This past weekend, I was surrounded by sugary temptations, and I gave in. It was Trish’s surprise party that started the whole thing… I had a slice of chocolate birthday cake and a couple of cookies. Then yesterday, we had another birthday cake for Trish with my Mom, and I had a piece and a half of that one. And now, today, I am hungrier than I have been in weeks. I’m just wondering if the reason I feel so much hungrier than usual is because of the sudden increase in sugar? I don’t really know. Well, either way, I hate this.

I’ve been successful at cutting sugar out of my diet. It’s actually not hard anymore. It’s been over a month now and I have dropped some weight as a nice side effect. Not a LOT, per se, but enough to make me feel happy and to register some concrete evidence that cutting back on sugar is changing me. It’s just so weird what certain foods and substances can do to your body over time that you just don’t notice until you quit ingesting that thing and feel the difference.

We had a nice weekend, overall. Lots of birthday goings-on for Trish, but it was fun. It was cool to see her face when she was surprised by the crowd of people standing in her living room unexpectedly.

I had the pleasure of ordering 25 tacos from Taco Bell when Greg and I ran out for a taco run halfway through the party. It felt funny in a stupid, simpleton kind of way to say “15 tacos and 10 soft tacos, please.” Like Greg and I were going to take that sack o’ tacos and go sit out on the curb in the parking lot and eat our way through them all ourselves, snickering and wiping taco juice off our greasy little chins.

Seriously though… when did tacos go from 69 cents to 89 cents? It’s still a decent deal, but I guess I never noticed the price hike until Saturday night. That says a lot about my fast food spending habits… order it without looking at the price, get that food, and go eat it without thinking. I am such a typical American, am I not?

I think this post is all about food because of the way my body is suffering today as a direct result of the eating sins of the weekend. Maybe I should go take a walk or waste some time online to distract myself from my angry, twisting stomach.

Things to be happy about today include:

• The recovery of two much-loved bathing suits that I’d thought were long gone from my possession. They were found recently in a banker’s box in the top of our hall closet, where they were inexplicably stashed along with some other random items. Now I can push that ugly Wal-Mart suit I grabbed last year to the bottom of my drawer. I won’t throw it away because you never know when I might misplace the good suits again with my shoddy packing skills.

• Those damn dogs of ours. I just cannot get enough of them, especially Indy and Hailie and how close they are. Plus, Indy is showing some signs of calming down, which is awesome in 1,000 different ways if it is really true. I think it’s because he is feeling better than he used to now that he’s been treated for his Valley Fever for several months now.

• I was the winner in a tense game of Operation yesterday with my Mom and Trish. I suck ass at games, so winning this one was relatively neat.

• Finishing some assignments at work that killed me all last week. I love that feeling of “I’m done.”

• Now reading “Son of a Witch” and enjoying it. I’m steadily moving through my Pile of Unread Books and cutting back on purchases of magazines. I’m hoping to see an intellectual payoff any day now.

• Even though I have never met her in real life, the adoption blog Leezer has been keeping to document the journey to bring her new daughter, Anna Song-Song, home to the U.S. has been riveting. I just sit there and savor each post Leezer writes on A Song Heard Far Away and feel inspired to dream of adopting my own little girl someday. I am just incredibly happy for all of them right now…not to mention, the photos on that blog are perfect. Congratulations, Leezer!

Don't get too excited. It's not really fireworks; it's nothing but super-imposed, 1982 crappy graphics in the sky: "Wow, we are having so much fun. We can hardly contain our joy."

I admit that since writing the post on Wednesday, I've been stuck with songs from "Annie" in my head. It's really not cool.

This morning in the shower, it was "I Think I'm Gonna Like it Here."

On the drive home? "We've Got Annie!" A song that really sounds kind of sinister when you hear it... they are singing all conspirator-like about the fact that Annie is now in Daddy Warbucks' clutches:

I sometimes think about this song and imagine they are singing about "getting Annie" in terms of, well, cooking and eating her. (I never once--ONCE--claimed I was a normal person.)

Now, tonight, I'm singing "Sandy"... which is basically just Annie insulting her new dog for the length of an entire song. "Dumb dog, dumber than they come, dog!"

GOD, Annie, stop it! He's just a scraggly old mutt, probably infested with ticks; I'm sure he has enough problems without some asshole kid with an orange 'fro telling him how stupid he is on top of everything. CHRIST. Why don't you just kick him while you're at it, you mean little troll?

Anyway, in thinking about this movie, I remembered a part towards the beginning when Grace, Daddy W's assistant, comes to the orphanage to pick out an orphan to spend a week in The Mansion; it's some sort of PR stunt Oliver Warbucks (um, that's "Daddy" to you) is doing to show that even though he is loaded, he really cares for the poor folks who are down n' out, being that this is the Depression and all.

When Grace gets there to the filthy, germy orphanage, she talks to a boozy Miss Hannigan and spots Annie, who has been shoved into a closet as punishment. Annie gets all sassy and begs for attention, and Grace falls for it and wants to take Annie, when she could have taken the mean, cranky future lesbian, Pepper, or adorably unintelligent baby Molly...but, whatever, man. You want a loud, jerky little scamp? Take her. BUT...oh, no...Miss Hannigan does NOT want Annie to get this week in the lap of luxury! And this is what has been stuck in my head ALL NIGHT:

A tug-of-war match ensues, right there in Miss Hannigan's office! Grace is yanking one of Annie's arms THIS way and Miss H is yanking Annie's other arm THAT way and Annie is all "Huuuuhh?" But the best part...the very best part... is when the following dialogue is uttered:

MISS HANNIGAN: You can't have Annie!
GRACE: Why not?
MISS HANNIGAN: Annie's cheeky!
GRACE: Mr. Warbucks LIKES CHEEKY ORPHANS!

OK, so what the hell does that mean? What does "cheeky" mean? And, ewww. If it's what it sounds like, why does Mr. Warbucks "like" them so much? In this case, maybe Miss Hannigan was right to pull Annie's arm out of the socket and keep her 'safe' in the smelly orphanage. You don't want to be staying at some old guy's house all alone for a week when you know he's into you because a) you're cheeky and b)you're an orphan.

I haven't seen this movie in way too long. Have I lost my childlike innocence and become a cynical prick? Maybe, I guess. But come ON. You can't go around saying a phrase like MR. WARBUCKS LIKES CHEEKY ORPHANS and not expect people to write sarcastic blog posts like this.

Me and Kristen say that phrase above a lot, and one day we are going to get it on T-shirts. Mark my words. When we do it, I'll get some pictures of it up here so you know I am not joking about how seriously I take the phrase MR. WARBUCKS LIKES CHEEKY ORPHANS.
"CHEEKY! "Cheeky cheeky cheeky. Now go get me more bathtub gin before I beat you and all your little orphan friends again. Hic."

Oh, and one more thing-- this is the totally scary picture that came up when I did an images search on the word "cheeky": Watch out for crazy black-block eyes! She'll come at you in the night and rub her spotty skin on you and your loved ones. Nail the windows shut tonight!

Today is my sister’s birthday. She’s 28, which is really funny to me, because that means she is ‘catching up’ to me by being two years closer to 30. Once we are both in our 30s, then it will be fair again, somehow. I can’t explain why; this is my fuzzy logic at work.
Little known Lisa and Tricia fact: We originated the phrase "check yaself before ya wreck yaself." This photo was taken moments before we invented it at the pool club's Halloween in July costume contest in 1983.

From the time we were little, we always had a lot of fun together. We both cultivated our strange senses of humor early on, and used to stay up late laughing about something stupid that we’d just thought of. Before she was even in kindergarten, she was making up weird voices and playing messed-up games with me. I’ve written about it before, but our games were often kind of dark and involved death. We played Cabbage Patch Kids hospital, and most of the time our patients did not make it. We pretended our bathtub was a crematorium. Our Annie dolls were constantly reliving that scene in the movie where Annie is hanging off of the big metal structure and Punjab has to fly in and save her… only a lot of times when we played it, Annie fell and the other dolls gathered around and talked about how sad it was that she was dead. Ah, memories.

I could go on and on reliving some of my funniest memories of her, but instead I will just list some stuff here:

* I tried to take her to a walking labyrinth in Sedona for her birthday one year. We drove up there and on the way, I realized I’d left the directions to the labyrinth at home. So I tried to remember where it was from my memory of the one time I had already been to this labyrinth, and couldn’t find it. Finally, I was so confident that this one street was where it was. I drove down there, getting her all psyched up as we sped down this road, saying things like, “This is it! You are really gonna like this!”…and we got to the end of the road and it was the City Dump. We never did find the labyrinth. And that was the year I took Tricia to the City Dump for her birthday. How can I possibly top that? (I like capitalizing City Dump!) I knew Tricia was really gonna like this.

* She’s good at doing accents, and one of my favorite things is when I make her use her old Native American Indian man voice. She says, “Spirit of the Wind! Please leave me alone!” in that voice and I crack up every time.

* We’ve had some car adventures, like the time she choked on an ice cube while I was driving and I pulled over into the parking lot of some school we were driving past, and ran around to her side of the car, pulled her out, and hugged her from behind and screamed, “I don’t know what to do!” in her face. That’s how I found out I suck in times of stress. Luckily, she coughed up the ice cube and then just laughed her ass off at my lack of tact. Screaming “I don’t know what to do!” is not the way to perform the Heimlich maneuver and calm the victim. Trust me on this one.

* We directed a play together a few years ago as co-directors, and it was a lot of fun because we think the same way about a lot of stuff, so I would start giving a direction and Trish would finish my sentence or add to it, and vice versa. It was cool because we scouted out an actor for the show, and he accepted the part and was the most grateful, sweet guy in the world about it. Plus, she had to jump in and take over a part when one of the girls in the show just stopped showing up for rehearsals, and she did a great job. In one scene she played a mentally-challenged girl who did nothing but sit in a chair with a scowl on her face and yell “NO!” while eating popcorn. During one performance, the popcorn was pretty dry and she inhaled a piece and had to cough it out on stage—and she did it in character and it was hilarious. Poor Allison was acting opposite when it happened, and I was watching from the side of the stage and it was the funniest thing to see the two of them trying so hard not to laugh and keep the scene going.

* The other night in Target, I was waiting for her to pick something out when I spotted the shelf where Uristat was displayed. I said, “URINARY TRACT INFECTION” in a loud, robot voice for no real reason. She started laughing and we kept talking about urinary tract infections in monotone robot voices the rest of the night. Stuff like, “Please do not swim downstream of ME. The bacteria in my URINARY TRACT could hit you.” And it is because of things like this… totally nonsense mutterings, stupid voices and gross humor…that my sister is still my best girlfriend in the world. Plus I can call her and bitch about stuff, or ask her opinion on whether or not I should dye my hair a certain color.

It’s really cool being your sister, Trish. Now if we could just work on your halitosis problem, and finally teach you how to read, you just might become a productive member of society yet. Happy Birthday, you old whore!


(Gratuitous movie quote: “All right, Joanne Greenwald, you horrible thing. Here’s your chance to go out with a real stud.”)

The Matador We just finished watching this movie and I really liked it a LOT. It wasn't my Netflix pick, it was my better half's pick (I'm the one who puts crap like Jesus is Magic in our queue), and it was a fun movie. I had heard awhile back that it was a well-done movie, but I honestly can't remember where I heard that...or read that...but I know it has been said. That was why when Greg added it to the queue, I was intrigued.

I've got a head cold right now that has me carrying a tissue box around with me, and I was very busy with work today so I didn't get a chance to rest at any point throughout the day (I worked from home today). I finally knocked off when Greg got home from work, and lasted just about an hour or so before I had to cave in and go take a nap. Before I went to sleep, I'd told him I wanted to lie down for awhile, but I also was hungry and wanted to eat that frozen pizza we had out in the freezer. I ended up not eating...just going to sleep.

This has a point.

When I woke up, it was after 8pm already. I was starving. I went into the living room, where Greg was eating some pizza. He'd cooked the pizza I'd wanted, and saved me my share. It was still hot. He had put a movie into the player, and it was "The Matador." I felt really nice right then and there. I mean, he made what I wanted for dinner and now, we could sit in the darkened living room and watch this movie and relax together. He probably doesn't know how much, but there was something in this whole scene that just made me feel so lucky and so content and...home. (It's just frozen pizza and a DVD, for God's sake, right? Maybe. But it was simply all I wanted right then and there, and that's what I am attempting to get at here.)

OK, so, we settled in and watched the movie. I thought the script was excellent, and the story was unique and somehow, it felt very believable. The cast was perfect. Greg Kinnear (he played a salesman named Danny) continues to amaze me with his easygoing acting, and Pierce Brosnan as the Julian the assassin was a fantastic idea. Add to it that the movie was shot beautifully, with vivid colors in every scene... it was just a cool movie to watch.

I was affected by many parts of the story, but one thing stood out for me: the relationship the script gave to Danny and Bea, the husband and wife. I liked that they were happy together, and were best friends who shared everything. I don't think movies do that much. I'm sick of the predictable 'problem' marriages we usually see all the time, with someone cheating or someone miserable and empty as their partner moves further and further away for some reason, or there is a tragedy and they don't know if the marriage can survive this drama, etc. It was awesome to just see a couple of characters who enjoy each other and never lose sight of how wonderful their partner is, through good and bad.

Interestingly, these characters were coming up on the 4-year anniversary of the tragic death of their son in a bus accident. I say it was interesting because rather than have it be a very recent event, it was something that they acknowledged as being in the past... and even though they were still hurting over the loss, their lives had gone on in those four years and at one point, they are talking in their bedroom and the wife says a great speech about being the ugly duckling at school and how no one had ever told her she was pretty or sexy-- until her husband came along in 12th grade and changed everything. I dont have the exact phrasing, but she says something like: "You came along and you told me I was pretty. You told me I was sexy. And when he died, you told me we would get through it. And we did." It was a sweet scene. It was nice to see a couple--in a movie-- who made it through the unthinkable. They were changed by the experience, but it definitely didn't change them for the worse. That was nice, for a change.

As I have been writing this, I was looking up the movie at the same time in another window as I looked for script excerpts to paste here. While I was looking for that, I saw that a lot of people actually panned this movie and thought it didn't work. I read that people thought the character transitions weren't done well (how can an assassin suddenly turn into a remorseful guy overnight? Why would a typical suburban guy like Danny be OK all of the sudden with helping out with a hit?), and that the sidestory with the dead son felt tacked on and unnecessary. To that, I just shrug and think of my Granny saying, "Eh. To each his own." It was a good movie in my opinion. I would watch it again. I am recommending it to whomever reads this.

And I can go to bed happy now, albeit with a sniffly nose. I'll probably snore tonight. Poor Greg will have to hear that. But you know what? It was a good night, a good movie, and at the end of the day, all that matters to me is that I have what I think is a fantastic spouse and I can't wait to see what we get through together as the years go by.

I have to go and find my box of tissues. Nighty night.

I like to think that I have evolved, if you will, when it comes to dealing with pain.

After I went through some major health issues in the past 15 years or so, I realized I can handle a lot of pain. Up until I was in college and my back went out, I was terrified of just getting a shot; flash forward to me getting a cortisone epidural into my lumbar spine to help me deal with a ruptured disk. I'd get crazy-bad cramps and searing pains in my stomach for years on end before I went into the hospital for a minor laproscopic procedure and woke up with a five-inch scar in my lower belly. So yes, after those two things I really have been able to put pain into perspective better.

Granted, I am still sensitive and a little thing like pumicing my toes can make my teeth clamp shut as the stone pulls on my skin. But overall, I really thought I was better at getting over pain in a faster manner than I used to before everything happened.

I'm not so good at it, it turns out. On late Saturday night, I tripped barefoot into the side of Indy's wire crate. My fourth toe on my left foot got caught under one of the bars and bent upward, and something cut into my skin there, too. I just freaked the hell out. I screamed and cursed and fell back on the bed in a fetal position, crying like a little bitch. (I should mention I was kind of drunk at the time, which probably didn't help anything at all.)

If memory serves, I think it went down like this:

* I stumbled across the room to get ready for bed, barely lifting my feet in that lazy, dragging way one walks when one is tired and has had some of the devil's elixir.
* My toe came in contact with the crate.
* In mere seconds, I was over in the doorway of my closet, howling like a banshee as I slapped the top of our floor fan. Yes. I SLAPPED the FAN. Kind of like a punctuation to all my screaming. My hands wanted to hit something, I guess, out of anger and pain. Poor fan had nothing to do with it, though.
* The dogs look concerned. They do not, however, attempt to help me. They just fell asleep.
* I hopped backwards and let myself fall down on the bed, where I let some tears escape in between "god damn it"s and "fuck"s and "shit-ass stupid metal crate"s.
* I finally gained some composure; checked the toe for movement and saw I could still wiggle it, although it was bleeding.
* Cleaned the wound with straight alcohol. That's how you do it, kids.
* Band-aided the motherfucker up.
* Whimpered, and went to sleep.

You'd think from my big, ridiculous reaction that I'd suffered a severed toe. Or a broken toe. Or even a sprained toe. Nope! It's still sore today, and I can't wear a shoe that hits the sore spot yet, and the little tear of skin is still raw-looking... but there doesn't appear to be massive damage.

Ever since this happened, I have been forced to confront a truth that is not so awesome: I am a big fucking wimp. Try as I might to deny this fact, it's the reality. I can't blame a handful of beers on that reaction.

Everything's changed now. I had created a mental image of myself in which I was strong, tough and completely capable of doing ANYTHING. I wasn't a prissy girly-girl who cried a lot. I was certainly not afraid of getting sweaty, dirty and maybe a little bloody. Sadly, it turns out that my mental image is nothing but mental smoke and mental mirrors! A banged-up toe is apparently all it takes to reduce me to a quivering, snotty mess. Wow. What a wake up call. I better cancel my body suspension classes.

The scary thing is what this all means for the inevitable future. What sort of old lady am I gonna make? If that's how I act when my toe gets a cut on it, will my head just explode from the force of my screaming when I fall and break my old lady hip? Probably!

Well, I'm afraid it will be difficult to top yesterday's photos. But I can share the only two pictures I took while I was in Las Vegas this time last month.

A lot of people take pictures of the many Elvises, fountains, the lights on the strip, hookers, whatever. Me, I managed to snap just two lovely photographic gems, and here I will share them with all you fine people. (My grasp of the english language is astounding, is it not?)

First, this is what was on my hotel room TV every time I turned it on. It was an in-house station that was meant to teach the tricks of gambling. Or something like that. What they did was get a bunch of crappy celebrity impersonators to play out these retarded little scenarios to demonstrate how to do stuff down in the casino. I really liked the Katherine Hepburn impersonator, but unfortunately I only caught her segment once. The impersonator was downright terrible, and she was seated at the slot machines and saying things like, "Ohh-kay, now that I see three CHERRIES in a rooooww, what does thaaaaht mean??" in a very bad shaky voice. It was so stereotypical Katherine Hepburn it was almost offensive on some level. It really made me laugh, though. Maybe because I was overly tired, I don't know.

Anyway, I also enjoyed the Fran Drescher impersonator. I don't remember what her little gambling scene was all about--probably poker-- but this woman was also awful. All she did was that laugh, and go, "AWWWWWWW look at me, I'm playin' POKAH!" and shit like that. But for me, her facial expressions were the kicker, and so I captured this for all time:

The other picture was taken when me and my co-worker John were walking down the strip looking for somewhere to go to dinner. We spotted this metallic gentleman and stood and watched his little statue/robot act. I think he had a beatbox with some old-timey rap tunes comin' out of it, and he was roboting around, looking for tips, I guess. I wanted to take his picture because there, in front of the Fatburger, he just looked cool. But then he saw me and noticed I was taking a camera out, and he started motioning to me to come over there. I was kind of horrified, actually. I did NOT want to do the robot with the silver man. I was tired! It was a long day! And besides, I only have the courage to do shit like that when I'm with those with whom I am very, very close. Or when I have a wee bit o' booze in me.

Anyway, in this shot, you can see him gesturing to me. Kind of creepy, but oddly reminiscent of the kindly Tin Man (in some way...maybe I'm just a little weird): You know what I just realized? This guy was sort of short and fat.

"OK, guys. Let's take a nice picture of all three of you. Everyone, look at the camera."

"No...no, Malcolm, don't turn around, you'll spook them!"

"...sigh."

Anyone else miss Buffy? I was just reading the newest comic book and thought I'd waste some time on YouTube. I found this, which made me chuckle. Can't go wrong with a South Park/ Buffy mix.

Fun weekend!

My guy took me to dinner on Friday night to a cool Italian restaurant we haven’t been to before. The food was good and they had an old man that walked around the dining room playing an accordion. I don’t know why, but old men on the accordion are just so cool in so many ways.

We had a lovely night at the drive-in on Saturday… a cooler full of High Life and a huge Old Navy shopping bag (half) full of homemade popcorn. The weather was nice, and we sat behind the car in our lawn chairs and enjoyed “Knocked Up” and tolerated “Vacancy” in a fun double-feature experience. Knocked Up is funny as hell and even manages to be kinda sweet without being cloying or stupid; Vacancy was just Luke Wilson and Kate Beckinsale being snippy to each other for the first twenty minutes of the movie, which was shot very dark, making it a poor choice for a drive-in screen because we couldn’t see ANYTHING for many scenes. And then it just wasn’t scary. It could have been scary, but it was predictable and lame.

I enjoyed “Rest Stop”, a silly little SciFi channel movie about a girl who is terrorized at a remote rest stop, more than this malarkey. Plus, Rest Stop has Joey Lawrence, and Joey Lawrence plays a cop whose legs are crushed multiple times by a truck so he begs the heroine to shoot him in the head--and she has to shoot him twice to finally kill him-- so that's amazing in and of itself. But anyway, regarding Vacancy, it could be worse. It was still the drive-in, and it still rocked to be at the drive-in.

Yesterday was actual birthday-day, but since the entire week has been filled with cool stuff courtesy of Greg (my favorite person in all the world, by the way), I was happy to have a low-key, sleep-late kind of day. We had dinner with my Mom, Trish and Kane at a nice little Italian restaurant (yeah, guess what my favorite type of food is) and they gave me presents (gift cards and new shoes) before we went across the street to another restaurant for cake and beer. Maybe cake and beer isn’t the greatest combination, but I didn’t care because it was my birthday and that was what I wanted.

I should mention that I had gone 12 full days without eating extra sugar. In honor of Birthday Weekend, I voluntarily went off the wagon and enjoyed the following: *a slice of carrot cake on Friday; * big hunks of delicious homemade frosted brownie on Saturday and for breakfast on Sunday; * slice of chocolate mousse cake last night. With beer.

Today I am back to what I had been doing. It was fun to eat that stuff again, but I am giddy with the personal knowledge that sweets just don’t seem as satisfying as they used to. Already. I know it hasn’t been that long; my diet hasn’t been altered for any big stretch of time, but somehow something is working.

You know who has been eating extra sugar? Damn Indy. On Saturday, when Greg and I were enjoying the brownies (Greg made them from scratch, too, making them extra good), we each had left the room for mere seconds and Indy had helped himself to the rest of Greg’s brownie. Took it right off the coffee table. He KNOWS better. We have him trained that when we’re eating there, he is not to come near us. We say “BACK” in a loud voice and he moves away. Usually. Saturday, he saw a little window and he dove right through it like a little devil.

He did the same thing yesterday afternoon, when he stole the top of Greg’s sandwich when Greg stood up to do something. He got caught in the act for that one, and he was punished. Trish reminded me that last weekend, Indy also stole the rest of her hamburger. I’d forgotten about that because I was a little drunk at the time. But the fact remains that we have a food burglar on our hands. And now we must break him. Again. It never, ever ends with this dog. God, I love him, though.

Maybe we shouldn’t be eating on the coffee table, you say? Whatever. We like it there.

Food tastes so much better while watching TV. It’s all good. I replace my television-eaten brain cells with delicious Dorito-nutrients. And I am a better person for it.

I've finally discovered the joys of that "cheezburger" site; the one people use to lift pictures to throw onto other people's MySpace comments. I am grateful to Brianna for sharing it with me.

I feel like I is sitting at the cool kids' table at lunch, at last.

Once spring hit, my Mom would take us down to a little pond in Navesink to feed the ducks when we were little. The pond was on one side of a narrow side street, and the ducks and geese that lived there were completely spoiled by the people coming by and giving them food. When we pulled up in the gravel alongside the pond’s edge, a small army of ducks would spot us and come waddling over, making noises as they came. I vividly remember the distinct image of several ducks gliding across the pond to come to us, and how they left trailing V-shapes in the water behind them. I wish I could go there right now and try to draw that. Or at least, just sit there and watch for a really long time and take it all in again.

I love thinking about the simplicity of going to that pond and throwing crumbled-up pieces of stale bread to the ducks. It was such a pretty spot; a calm little pond (maybe it was considered a small lake, I don’t know for sure) surrounded by bright green, swaying trees and vegetation. At the far end of the pond, there was a white building that was either a greenhouse or an old home. In that neighborhood, several of the houses were built in the 1700s, and until I moved away I didn’t realize that it’s very hard to find old, unique buildings that are still standing in Arizona. It’s just not that old of a settlement, and I know I am not the only person longing for a place with deeper roots and layers of history again. If you grow up surrounded by tall trees, acres of ancient cemeteries with crumbling gray headstones half-hidden in weeds, old rickety houses with wood-slat front porches and wavy old glass in the windows, I think it seeps into your personality intrinsically and you just feel more comfortable in old places for the rest of your life.

When we went to that pond, very rarely were we the only people there. Sometimes someone would be set up in a lawn chair near the edge of the pond, doing some fishing. Usually another car would pull up to feed the ducks, or someone was already there. (Thinking about it now, how overweight and unhealthy were those poor ducks, anyway? Maybe no one worried about it as much in the early 80s as they do now.) We might talk a little bit to the other people there, but mostly it was just a quiet, still place filled with quacking ducks and little-kid giggles.

At the far end of that street, where it intersected with a busier road, there was a stretch of farmland surrounded by one of those white pole fences. Just behind that fence, and centered squarely in the opening of the trees at the end of the street, was a gigantic old willow tree. That was a fantastically gorgeous tree. It was just sweeping and graceful and monstrous at the same time. It had pretty cracked bark and its roots popped out of the ground in brown knobs alongside the road, and it was clear that the tree BELONGED there and I don’t think it had any intention of ever going anywhere. The good news is, several years ago when I went back home for a visit and I brought my then-working video camera to document my favorite spots, it was all still there!

The pond, the ducks, the huge old willow tree. I can’t explain how cool that was to me, and it gave me hope that maybe we won’t all just pave over everything and let the modern world take over even the quietest little spots in the world. I like to think that because that pond and that tree are still there, that there is some sort of hope left that the world today and in the future can still be serene, natural and real in little pockets hidden down small, half-forgotten side streets.

(The picture is just a cool one I found of the Navesink River; which is very close to the pond I'm talking about. THIS is the NJ I know.)

Memorial Day weekend is now over, and I am back to work like everyone else. We had a nice time just relaxing a whole lot and getting things done around the house. Plus, we got to swim for a long time on Saturday, and had my sister over for a quick barbecue that night.

Greg got me a great birthday present: surprise tickets to Body Worlds 3! We went on Sunday, because yesterday was the very last day of the exhibit at the Arizona Science Center in downtown Phoenix. I loved the surprise element of it, and I truly appreciated Body Worlds itself. I was hoping to see it, but it seemed like the tickets were a little pricey and besides, it kept slipping my mind. It was very cool that Greg remembered me mentioning how much I wanted to go and then got tickets.

It might seem odd that I'd want to look at dead bodies for my birthday, but honestly, it was awesome. It's amazing and humbling to see this exhibit. I'm very intrigued that people have donated their bodies for this, and then I think about the process of plastination and preparing these bodies for display... and it just overwhelms me in some way. It's hard to word what I am trying to say. I just think that the human body is simply incredible and the fact that it works the way it does seems like a miracle. I was particularly struck by the display of a man sitting at a desk looking at a head lying on the desk... only the man and the head were nothing but the blood vessels and arterial systems. It looked like a man (and head) made out of blood from a distance; but up close you could view the complicated, intertwined webs of the circulatory system and it made me stop and think about blood itself, and the fact that our bodies contain all of it through this huge web that winds its way throughout every inch of our bodies. It was beautiful.

There were other striking displays as well, and people were crowded around the lungs display. They had a healthy set of lungs, and the lungs of a smoker. The smoker's lungs were just pitch black from the tar. They had cross sections of the lung lying on a lighted surface, and you could see where the deposits actually sat in the bronchi. Kind of scary to think that's what people are walking around with everyday. At the end of the exhibit, there was a big sign that urged people to quit smoking, along with a clear box where people could drop their boxes of cigarettes off as a sign of their commitment to quitting. The box was almost full. Pretty cool.

All in all, Body Worlds was a good time. I liked it so much, and only hated the crowds of people crammed in around me. So many damn people in there, all milling around and getting in the way. I can't tolerate crowds anymore; I have gotten crotchety in my old age. But at least they were there to be educated so I couldn't hate them too much. (Yeah, I say that, but do I mean it? Nah. I still hated them.)

I'm feeling psyched because today is officially Day 8 for me in my No Sugar Challenge. I set this challenge for myself last week. I decided I would not eat any extra sugar (candy, cookies, baked goods, ice cream, or anything with lots of sugar added) for one full week. I wanted to see if I could break my addiction to sugar, and also I wanted to find out if I felt any different after being off the shit for several days in a row. I am happy to report that I was able to do the full week without giving in to temptation even once! I was tempted very badly around day 4 or so-- my boss' birthday meant a huge, yummy cake was sitting there in the break room for hours and hours, and my co-workers all went to get slices of it and they ate it at their desks right next to me-- but I gritted my teeth and resisted the urge to go snarf down a slice or two. My sister brought over strawberry shortcake for the bbq, and I skipped on the cake and ice cream part, essentially only eating the strawberries themselves. I had to resist. I was already about 5 days along and if I could pass up the birthday cake, I felt like I could do anything.

I am talking about this so much because it's really a big deal to me, and something I have been thinking about for a long time but never had the willpower to do until now. I have always felt kind of weak for being such a slave to sugar, because man...I really do have a problem with it. Now, the fact that I know I have gone all this time without it definitely makes me feel a lot better. It's cool!

Of course, there is a little room for sugar in the long run: I WILL eat some birthday cake on my birthday. That's just too much to give up. I love birthday cake.

Well, that's my blog for today. I am off to do something amazing and headline-worthy. Watch the news, because I just might be on there today. And yes, when you see it, that IS my real ass. I'm au naturel when it comes to my buttocks, cellulite and all. And yes, that IS the White House I'm in, not just some weak cardboard painting of the White House. Fuck this war.

I'm going to be 8x4 next week. Aging is definitely a funky thing. I am amazed at how differently the passage of time feels now than when I was younger than 20. Once I hit 20, everything sped up. Either way, I need to come up with some potential birthday presents that I might want.

Here are some things I want for my birthday:
* Big old fishtank, covered in algae
* Pieces of tires found on the freeway
* Chandelier decorated with sweaty jockstraps
* A surprise buzzcut
* Framed close-up picture of Nicolas Cage's hairline
* Poo candy
* A pet otter with horrible flatulence
* Tongue-pulling (with tongs)
* Gift certificate good for one free dingo at Dave's Dingo Farm and Dildo Shop (dildos not included with dingos).
* Wooden underpants lined with cactus quills
* A couple of bags of old bananas, since I love them so much.

Sorry if I seem a little greedy or materialistic there. But birthdays only come around once a year, and I figure it can't hurt to just put it all out there, as they say, to see what I end up getting.

Oh, yeah. That list up there? It's not actually a list of things I want. It's a list of things I DON'T want. I hope I didn't get you all excited, since you'd already purchased me something from that list. If you did, go put whatever it is in the driveway and run it over with your car. Or just cancel the appointment or the rental of the electric shaver; whatever is applicable.

Thanks for thinking of me, though! I don't care what anyone else says or what the police report reads... you're sweet.