I really didn't like The Virgin Suicides. My parents were exponentially more strict.

Ft. Hood Shooter Paralyzed From Waist Down

Good. Now he'll die a contemptible virgin.

Happy Veterans Day...

...to all our vets. I'm alive and happy and free in a wonderful country because of you. Thank you.

12 13 Dead, But Let's Not Forget To Thank Fucking Ken.

He is such a douche. Reminds me of his idiotic comments after the Virginia Tech massacre.

Oh, and they were killed by a Muslim. The media is twating out, as expected, but someone has to say it. There's a rumor that Muslims don't like us much.

Oh So Many Things

I was going to post about a certain present gifted to me by the resplendent Trashman (who is posting again like crazy fun) but I have contracted some plague that rendered me a font of spewing magnificence within earshot of my entire massage class, so I will have to postpone.

I apologize for the delay.

How Does One's Garden Grow?

I can never decide whether it's more fun to be cheerful or more fun to complain. Since I can't decide, and the last post was a complaint of sorts, I guess I'll post a cheerful one.




This is the view from my deck.




Since it faces directly west, we get to watch the wild Texas sunsets, which pictures hardly do justice. But they're my favorite part of the house.

I know the backyard needs a lot of work, but considering it was not taken care of for over a year, and we are just coming out of an extraordinary, extreme, mega-unheard of drought, I think it's manageable. I'm mostly going to put in vegetables and zeroscaping anyway. I've never seen the point in not using native plants in one's landscaping. Trying to keep a lawn of unnatural grass in the climate we have just seems like an exercise in futility and time that could be better spent on growing something productive. I intend to chop down and de-stump every last cedar tree (we're all allergic), replacing them with peach and orange trees and maybe a lemon tree. I would like some berries too.

Now I just have to learn about growing things in Texas. Every bit of knowledge I've retained as far as plant growing, is from my childhood up north. And I can't explain just how, but things grow differently down here.

Clotus

My massage therapy classes are boring. I think I've mentioned that. The only redeeming factor was the fairly cute instructor who could at least provide some eye candy while I debated the merits of poking out said eyes. So of course they fired him. There wasn't any good reason I could see, but the ignoramuses were looking for an excuse for their constant failure, and he was the scapegoat. I wonder what the school will say when their grades don't actually improve.

So as luck would have it, his replacement is a portly gentleman of somewhat less than average looks who regaled us on his first day with an exhaustive description of the surgery he had to correct his deviated septum, leaving out nothing including the removal of his nose tampons in all the bloody, stringy, mucousy detail. I don't hate him or anything, but he's constantly saying disparaging things about the other instructor, and he's certainly no beauty.

And I got into a heated argument with him after a test. He marked an answer wrong on my test that was technically correct. It was a multiple choice question and the correct answer was misspelled which made it an entirely different word. One of the other answers was 'none of the above' which was the one I chose. I thought it was a trick question. Apparently he had warned everyone of this question at a moment I was either not in the room or absent. He wanted to mark the answer as incorrect because I wasn't there to glean the information, and I argued that I shouldn't be held responsible for a misspelled test question since I had studied and not only knew the answer, but also knew how the answer was spelled. On top of that, the answer I chose was actually correct. He disagreed with me, and I disagreed with him in a slightly louder tone. He disagreed again and said he wasn't responsible for the test because he wasn't the one who had written it. I said that I wasn't either and I should get credit because I knew the answer. He said it was my fault that I wasn't in class to hear him tell everyone what the answer was, and I said that would have been a valid point had there not been an answer on the test that was correct given the misspelling. If there hadn't been a valid answer, I would have deduced that it was a misspelling. I further added, that it was ridiculous that there were any misspellings on the tests at all, and that it was extremely unprofessional.

He ended up giving me the two points and then shook my hand as if I was a man that he wanted no more quarrel with. That was kind of cool.

Then came the next class on the reproductive system. Judging by the ever changing hues of purple his face kept turning, I don't think it's his area of expertise. We came upon the term 'sexual intercourse' and he asked everyone what another word for that was. We all looked at him as if he was out of his mind. One girl ventured, 'um...sex?' "Sex?" he said, mockingly. "Come on. Don't you know the biological term? I'll spell it. C-L-O-T-U-S."

I was completely befuddled. "Do you mean C-O-I-T-U-S?" I asked.

"No," he said. "Maybe it's C-L-O-I-T-U-S. Spelling isn't my strong point."

"I don't think there's an L in that word," I said.

"No, I'm pretty sure there is," said he.

"I've never heard of an L in that word. And I've seen that word many times," I insisted brazenly and pointlessly.

"Well, let's look it up," he said smugly.

We whipped out our i-Phones, he looking up his version and me looking up mine.

I was correct, naturally. I tried to soften the blow by telling him there wasn't anything I didn't know about coitus, which I think didn't make him feel better because it made it seem as if he knew nothing by comparison. It's probably true, though.

Jethro's Been Eating His Wheaties

Or rather these new manly vitamins that make him, for lack of a better word, EXTREMELY HORNY.

Now I'm as game as the next wife. I am. Maybe more. But these vitamins don't have a female equivalent and sometimes I need to sleep. The second I get into bed, it's hands, hands, hands. The other night, after futilely defending myself for about 10 minutes, I exasperatedly reverted to cliche.

"You're like a kid in a candy store," I said, to which he replied, "Or a grown man in a pussy store."

You can't block teleporting hands when you're laughing.

New Topic:

Jim Treacher, a lovely, clever boy, and one of my favorite political satirists and just generally funny people of all time ever, got his Top Ten Reasons To Accept That Job Offer From David Letterman read by Mark Levin and Dennis Miller.

He also does funny things with cartoon bubbles.

Really, he's a treasure, especially for the right side of the political spectrum who tend to miss mockable moments in their haste to express outrage.

But Is It Art?

Hey remember when Mel Gibson said mean things about Jews and called a female cop "sugar tits" and everyone said he was a giant fucking douchebag?

He was.

Roman Polanski drugged a 13 year old girl and stuck his dick in her ass.

Funny Video

Quite possibly, I've never laughed so hard at a youtube video in my life.

I know I have a post in me somewhere. It's not as if amusing things aren't happening. For instance, Jethro and I were attempting a quickie this morning and the alarm went off blaring something with a heavy club beat just as I got mine. So it turns out that I can never again say I don't get off on hip hop.

And massage classes are going as well as can be expected given the fact that they are as boring as dust on a windless day.

I have discovered, however, that girls don't like me. Or I don't like them in a group, or something like that. Basically, the women I'm taking the class with don't like me much. I'm very much excluded on break, and in other more subtle ways. I can't decide if my feelings are hurt. I guess I think they ought to be, but I don't feel awkward or uncomfortable about it, so they really aren't.

I think it's one gal in particular. She's my age, but she hasn't been to school since high school and she seems to be reverting to high-schoolish patterns of behavior. She's made another girl her minion and she includes people in their intrigues at her discretion, as if it's an honor of some kind. It's been interesting to watch how power is gained through this scenario. Or at least it's more interesting than the endocrine system.

But I'm not sure how excluding me serves her purpose unless she just really doesn't like me at all, which is probably the case. Sometimes I feel like a boy with ADD in that class, and she seems like the type to be irritated by that especially since I can cut up and joke with the instructor and still know almost every answer.

That's a problem too. I'm not sure what to do. The instructor does a review of the information for each test and we're supposed to call out answers to the questions. I can answer most of the questions before he even finishes them, but it takes everyone else a long time. So I'm not sure what to do. Usually I wait what I think is a decent interval and then answer the question. If someone gets it before, then great. But it's mostly me answering them. This is annoying both to me and to everyone else. There was a guy in the class who could have given me some competition and wasn't afraid to answer all of them, but he dropped out. So it's just me.

If none of this is interesting at all, welcome to my world.

I also switched Gwennie and Emma's school. Emma didn't want to switch, but Gwennie didn't like it, and what Gwennie wants, Gwennie gets. I transferred them to the school they are zoned to at the new house. They started yesterday, and Emma, lucky little dragon-baby, got into the same class as our next door neighbor who she's already made friends with.

Gwennie, on the other hand, has a teacher I already detest and I'm sure Gwennie will come to detest. She's a manic blonde, probably a former cheeleader, and was rude to Gwennie when she couldn't decide where to sit after stupidly being given a choice. I grudgingly forgave that one, but she was rude again when I picked the girls up from school. Gwennie's attention wanders easily, but I'm not really keen on anyone snapping her fingers in her face, especially in my presence. I felt my deadly silence come on and I just stared at her in disbelief. The woman yammered on about what Gwennie needed to catch up to the class, and I did not answer a word. One more incident and Wrath will be my deadly sin.

Update: Just picked Gwennie and Emma up from school. Bitch teacher let everyone chew gum except Gwennie because she didn't have my "permission." That was really fucking nice. I'm about to get pissed off. If I think she has it in for my kid based on one moment of indecision over a stupid fucking desk, I'm going to make her life miserable. Just for fun.

Little Bit of Politics

The IAEA says Iran can now make a nuclear bomb.

I guess we scrapped that missile shield just in time.

Today is September 11th

I had no intention of going to ground zero while I was in NY. I don't need to go. I know what happened. I remember those buildings and the thousands of people inside. My daughters aren't going to get much out of looking at an excavation site because they never knew the buildings that used to stand there.

But we took the West Side Highway back to Brooklyn from Manhattan and we went right past it. So I snapped a picture and felt nothing.

My friend died trying to give these backwards death-cultists a chance at a better life, and we've elected someone who apologizes for our country and wants to prosecute the people who kept us safe.

So here's the picture and I hope it means something more to someone else today.

Back to My Old Back Porch

I am sitting here without my pants and I have no idea how that happened. One second I was wearing pants (shorts) and now I am not. And I don't even see them anywhere nearby.

Anyway, we're back from NYC. It was a really great trip. I stayed with my friend of 20-something years at her condo in Brooklyn. She lives near Brighton Beach which is now all Russian. It's so Russian, the shop signs are in Russian. It really was cool. So many of the ethnic enclaves disappeared as the city became more gentrified. And while I'm never one to render judgment on natural progression, pockets of diversity is what the city is known for, and it's a little sad to see them vanish in favor of the generic eclecticism every city seems to be striving for.

Anyway, it was a great time. My cousin's wedding was so much fun. They had it at this very, very Hebrew restaurant called "Bubby's" in Brooklyn, situated just between the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges. The food was fantastic. Salmon or fried chicken, with a side of baked macaroni and cheese, and green beans. You might think fried chicken is more of a southern dish, but you'd be wrong. It is that too, but the Jews make it as well and it's different. I can't quite put my finger on how, but it is. And it made it onto my list of all-time best wedding food at #2, #1 being my own wedding which was the best food ever.

And my kids got to see another cousin on the other side of the family who is just Gwennie's age and adores them. They all played in the Diana Ross playground in Central Park. We went to the Museum of Natural History which is always cool, we ate dumplings at the speed of light in Chinatown, drank all-you-can-drink wine at another Chinese restaurant by Central Park, toured the M&M factory (and bought fistfulls of M&Ms), rode the ferris wheel in Toys R Us in Times Square, took pictures of Radio City Music Hall (a special request of Gwennie and Emma), went to a Brazillian Festival, took the subways everywhere to the great delight of my daughters who shrieked with delight every time the train started and they got flung, which made even the jaded NYers smile, and even made it upstate for a day to visit my godmother on her little farm. I got to show my daughters the elementary/middle school and church I attended, the house I lived in, and the town I spent 6-9th grades in.

Our last night, we went out with my friend and her husband to a Russian restaurant. It was amazing. I don't even know how to describe it. It was a mix of Asian and Mediterranean and Scandinavian food. You eat, drink, dance, eat, drink, dance, on and on and on until you

And of course there were things I wanted to do that I didn't even get close to doing, like seeing Beth. I also wanted to visit a graphic design museum and The Met, but it was not to be. I did, however, buy a dress at Bloomingdale's for the wedding. I hadn't planned to, but my friend had to pick up a dress there for another wedding, and I thought I would look around and see if there was anything that had a chance of fitting me. There was, and I bought it. It's purple. I think I'll wear it for Christmas, New Year's, and any other occasion that might call for it. It was expensive. But gorgeous. I love it.

Now for a small pictoral:

The M&M factory (where else?)

Radio City Music Hall

Rockefeller Center

View from the subway station in Brighton Beach

Jethro, me, and my purple dress from Bloomies.

Jethro, the girls, two sisters, and I are in New York City until Tuesday. We had to move, start school, and leave for NY in four days. I love it and I'm dying to write about it but there is no time. Everything is great, though. See you on the other side.

We Closed, and We're Moving.

Finally. I'm sick of talking, writing, or thinking about it.

I have to get back to moving, but you must see this in the meantime. Hearty chuckles all around.




"Designed specifically for women" because men have no need whatsoever!

"Hey girls! I know how you can get paid to exercise! Send me $19.95 and I'll tell you!"

Feel free to add.

It Must Be Said

I'm going to admit something that is probably pure heresy to children of the '80s.

I hate Pee Wee Herman.

Even as a child, I detested him. I wouldn't watch his show, I wouldn't watch his movies, I just couldn't stand him. There is nothing about him I found even remotely funny, and I'm not anxious to suffer through a retro resurgence, which I fear is coming. My 14 year old sister sent me a Pee Wee Herman link and asked if I remembered him from way back when.

Updated: New Topic:

I yelled at the girl at our mortgage company. I told her if we did not have documents today, then I wasn't signing at all. And I mean it. I told her two months of her life will have been wasted if we do not have docs today. I realize they're now at the mercy of the lender, but I don't care. If they don't have the clout to get those docs from the lender, then I am not closing. I will rent a house and buy something else using a competent mortgage brokerage firm. They will not get their fee, and I will spread the news of their incompetence far and wide (which actually I'm already doing).

To go into the details of how incompetent they are would take a very long time and might make a useful artery of mine explode. One of the more minor details was misspelling my name, and putting the wrong address on the initial docs. You can extrapolate from there.

Which brings me to just how stupid Jethro and I are. Especially me. I knew better than to use someone we knew nothing about. I knew better. I worked in real estate for years and have seen firsthand how people get fucked by mortgage companies they use because a friend works there, or they were promised something fantastic and unreal.

Jethro and I used this guy because he was part of Jethro's business network. We felt a certain sense of obligation and took a risk. Any amount of critical thinking on my part and I would have never taken that chance, but I have this bizarre altruistic tendency that rears its ugly head every so often, and I will find myself concerned with someone else at my own expense.

And it really was altruistic. Referrals from this douche weren't nearly as important as actually closing on a house, and we knew it. But the guy was new to the group, and seemed nice (probably is nice) and eager to work. The clinic was doing really well and we thought we'd spread the wealth around.

Such a bad, stupid, moronic thing to do. And I really did know better. I don't like learning lessons and I hate learning them the hard way. But what I hate most of all is learning lessons that I've already learned the hard way.

Typical Life

I don't want to post depressing things, but that's part of what's going on, and it's part of life.

First, we simply can't close on a house. Our loan hasn't been rejected, but neither is it fully approved. We've been in this limbo for months now. And we have to be out of the house by the end of the month. I don't really know what to do.

The 2nd anniversary of Charles' death/murder was on the 12th. Our friends in Houston went out to commemorate and the evening was hosted by one of Charles' former roommates. I'll call him Cade. He was a wild guy and I have a few funny stories about him, but he is, from what I can tell, nearing the end stages of Lou Gehrig's disease. I suppose it was bittersweet. He wouldn't talk to anyone after his initial diagnosis except Charles. I know people would have been there for him, but I have no doubt he didn't want to be slobbered over. I remember Charles telling me about it and saying that Cade would want people to remember him in better times. I know I would.

But Cade came out of his self-inflicted exile to remember his friend. A whole lot of dust gets in my eyes when I think about it. I saw the pictures. He looks not good, and I can understand someone with any amount of pride refusing to be seen in that condition. But he came out for his friend. I hope death might not seem as frightening to him with someone like Charles waiting at the end. I'm just sad that it was Charles who had to pave the way.

Anyway, it's too misery-inducing to write much more about it.

I'm trying to think of something more cheerful.

Jethro and I got drinks with a former blogger who is somewhat local to us last weekend. It was fun. I felt like getting my drink on, and I did. The $3.00 jack 'n' cokes at the local Coyote Ugly did their part. There were some hot chicks dancing on the bar too. They were neat looking. But there is the ugliest trend occurring. Tube socks with cowboy boots. I saw two girls wearing them, and it was not cute. You have to have one hot little ass to pull off that kind of ugly, and I'll give them some credit there.

Anyway, it was a fun night.

And I'm losing weight again, I'm happy to report. I can't believe I went on a diet at such a stressful time since food gives me such joy and happiness, but Jethro says if I can withstand it through this stress, it shouldn't be so hard when all the stress is over. I see his point. And the healthy eating is probably helping to keep the stress from killing me. And an even bigger plus, I've experimented with some new recipes and they're freaking delicious. And healthy. For example. Shepherd's Pie. I love, love, love shepherd's pie. But it's pretty fattening and full of bad bad carbs from the potatoes. This recipe was different. The South Beach diet calls for cauliflower to be used instead of the mashed potatoes, but I don't really care for cauliflower no matter how much sour cream you use, so I used Great Northern White Beans instead. I heated them up, put in two (heaping) spoons of sour cream and an egg yolk, then fluffed them up with a mixer. I had no idea how they would turn out, but they were really good. Very similar to potatoes, but healthier apparently. For the ground beef mixture, I sauteed onions and garlic in a wee little bit of olive oil, then added the ground beef. When that was browned, I added two cups of edamame instead of peas (which have a lot of sugar), added two table spoons of balsamic vinegar in lieu of Worcestershire sauce which has sugar in it, one can of beef broth (that was too much) and let it simmer awhile. Then I put it in a casserole dish and spread the mashed beans over it. Then I covered the top with low fat shredded cheddar and baked it for 25 minutes. It turned out really well. The only problem was that there was a lot of liquid from using too much broth. I'll just reduce that amount next time.

So big problems are always there, but the little things are good.

I started massage therapy classes. I don't want to go into the whys and wherefores, but suffice it to say I have good reasons. Unfortunately, they're very boring. The hands-on part is okay - you get a massage each class - but the anatomy and physiology class is going to kill me. I don't care about any of it. It consists of the instructor (who is actually pretty cute) reading the textbook and then getting tested. The highlight of the class is reading ahead waiting for the cute instructor to say 'vagina.' What? You all know I'm not right.

And we're still waiting to close on the next house. I'm afraid. I don't know what is going on and I don't want to talk about it.

So I'm just going to watch lions eat a antelope calf on Animal Planet. I think that will have a calming effect.

On Motherhood and Such

Sorry for not writing much. The main happening in my life is waiting anxiously for another loan to go through on another house. Until it happens, I'm awash in crippling anxiety manifesting in dizzy spells, ennui, and irritable bowel syndrome. In other words, I'm not much fun.

But for good news, my little nephew is pure sweetness. We were back in Houston to see him two weeks ago, and we got to my sister's apartment just as they were getting back from the hospital. Gwennie, Emma and I were pushing and shoving to be the first to hold him. I won. Finally. They're small, but scrappy.

We spent some time there and then left to go out for the evening with some friends. The next morning, I got a call from my sister who was crying very hard. My heart turned to burning ice and the adrenaline flushed out my hangover but swiftly.

"IS THE BABY OKAY???" I bellowed.

"Yeah, he's fine," sobbed my sister.

Turned out she was just overwhelmed with learning how to breastfeed him. The nurses at the hospital had been such psycho, Nazi bitches about it, telling her that if he didn't eat every three hours, they were going to keep testing his glucose (which involved pricking his heel), so she better cooperate and give him a bottle. I really thought those days were long gone, but apparently not. So my poor sister was terrified that he wasn't eating enough when all the poor little thing wanted to do was sleep.

Jethro and I still drove over as fast as we could and I spent the day just trying to be calm and assuring her that her dear little baby was just fine.

Now I'm not trying to brag here, and I'm not putting my sister down at all for her panic, because she really did have a bad experience with those nurses that I never had, but when I look back to how I did with Gwennie at 23 years old, I'm pretty proud. It never occurred to me that I had done a good job. I have always been sure that I had done a mediocre job. But I actually did well. I didn't enjoy breastfeeding, but I did it until I got pregnant with Emma which was a solid 9 months and I nursed Emma for a year. I have plenty of faults as a mom, to be sure, but I also have strengths. And the best thing I ever did was to ignore every piece of advice that came my way once the baby was born. It's probably the strangest notion, but my rationale was if crack addicts can raise their children past infancy, then I can. And it worked. The thought kept me confident.

Anyway, I'm done here, and must now feed my children as the law dictates.