The Devil Ain't No (Facebook) Friend Of Mine

Does anybody else think that Bridal Showers are the less preferable alternative to a fiery eternity in the depths of hell? Because I swear to god, when I sat through a bridal shower this weekend, I totally would have sold my soul to Satan himself if I could have jus t gotten up and walked out of that thing.

And if I could have punched the Bride-to-Be in the face on the way out? Not only would I have sold my soul to the Devil, I would have gift-wrapped that beeyatch in a basket with some overly-priced chocolates and a smoked salmon.

But I guess that’s another story for another day, involving an honest, hard-working man and a woman who is, literally, ruining his life (but maybe I’ve said too much)

In fact, I distinctly remember a point during the shower when I squeezed my eyes shut and conjured up Beelzebub and said, “Now’s your chance, big boy. Take it or leave it.”
And then I felt this draft of air behind my right shoulder and I was SO CONVINCED that he had taken me up on the offer.

But instead of the Devil, it was the creepy maid of honor. She caught me with my legs crossed, and according to the game, that means she gets to “steal” my gift.

Damn, I really could have used that crappy hand lotion.

You see, for those of you who are not aware, at a Bridal Shower you are forced to play games.

Horribly stupid games like, “if you get caught with your arms or legs crossed, the person who catches you gets your gift.”

At this particular shower, this game was followed by “guess how much toilet paper it takes to wrap around the bride.” Which was trailed by “I’m going to call out an item, and the first person who digs this item out from their purse and gets it to me wins.”

Me? I didn’t play the games.

I sat in the back and drank mimosas and attempted to make a pact with the Devil to trade my soul for freedom and possibly an opportunity to physically assault on the guest of honor.

And when they handed me a card to write advice for the Bride-to-be, it was all I could do not to write, “Don’t throw any more stupid bridal showers, or I will cut you, bitch.”

Of course I didn’t. I wrote something along the lines of “treat your husband how you want to be treated” in a thickly veiled attempt to accuse her of taking advantage of him.

Because if have to play nice, I should at least be able to throw in some coded messages, right?

Thankfully, I had come with the baby.
Not my baby – the baby of my friend, who thankfully was invited too or I might have stabbed myself in the eye with a salad fork.
And when the baby needs a nap, you HAVE to leave, right?
And if they’re my ride, then I have to leave too.

What a shame

So I managed to leave just as she was settling in to open the 43095433492094387 gifts that she had received for doing nothing other than forcing a good man to support her fat, lazy ass for the rest of her life.

Wow, congrats on being a piece of shit. Here’s a toaster.

So that was my Saturday.
Being surrounded by adult women playing childish games and oohing and aahing over the crappy Bride and not once – not ONCE – did the Devil show up to bail me out.

Wow, I knew he was mean and all, but that’s just CRUEL man.

Dear Satan,
Good job dropping the ball on that one.
Don’t bother leaving me a Facebook message – I already deleted you as a friend. And I blocked you phone number too.
So the next time you need help harvesting your tomatoes on Farmville, find someone else to do it.

Yeah, that’ll show him.

How you like THEM (rotten Farmville) apples?!?

The Dust Bunnies Might Be An Indication

Hey y’all.

My apologies for not posting yesterday. I had a sicko husband at home to care for, a fire that needed tending, and a couch that needed sitting on.

Apparently there was a house that needed cleaning too, but this little fact was lost on me until Milo so graciously pointed it out.

***********************************

So, Brian and I are in the bedroom.
Don’t get all Bow-chicka-bow-bow on me, we weren’t doing the horizontal polka or anything scandalous like that.
We were just…yanno…gearing down to go to sleep. Brusing the teefers, changing into jammies, and talking about how much it’s gonna cost to get new tires on WonderBread Ted.

Because our relationship is a magical.

So we’re hanging out watching TV – I think it was some show on the ocean, because I recall commenting that sperm whales look like giant pickles.

What?
They do!

…and suddenly, we hear some sort of clunking and snuffing going on in the other corner of the bedroom.
Noticing that Milo isn’t on the bed (aah, so THAT’S why I don’t have giant paws digging into my kidney), Brian immediately jumps up to see what he’s getting into.

“What’s he doing?” I ask
“I dunno. I can’t see – it’s too dark”
“Well turn on the light, then”
“Hold on, let me go over there”

So he stumbles over the laundry basket full of clean clothes that has been sitting in our room for 2 months now and the suitcases that have been 90% unpacked since our honeymoon to get a better look.

“Milo, what the hell are you doing?”

He bends over to inspect the situation, and I’m waiting for him to tell me that yet another shoe has lost its mate, when suddenly Brian starts chuckling.
And chuckling harder.
And then he’s full out laughing.

So I sit up and am all, “WHAT is so funny?”

He turns on the light and points to the ground.

Milo, it seems, was trying to hide his bone.
That, in itself isn’t terribly funny – he does it all the time.
He shoves them in couch cushions and jams them under piles of clothes constantly.

But this time?

He was trying to hide his bone by covering it in…

Wait for it…

Dust bunnies.

DUST BUNNIES!

Yes.
Apparently, we have enough dust bunnies floating around our bedroom for Milo to gather up and use as camoflague for his bone.

Am I embarassed?
Sure.
Am I a little proud of Milo for being so creative?
You bet.

And THAT, my friends, is when you know it’s time to clean your house.

Happy Friday everybody!

You Call It Lazy, I Call It Patriotic

So I hear it’s Veterans’ day.

I was reminded of this little bit of trivia this morning, when I woke up and Brian was still in bed. Because Brian is off today, as are most government employees.

Of course, it is difficult to celebrate one’s veterans when one is seething about the fact that she has to get up and go to work when her husband, who already works a meager 4-day-per-week schedule, has yet another free day to do as he pleases.

In his defense, he has to finish moving all of that wood today.
Plus, he made me coffee.

But still…yanno?

And now that I’m at work, I’m finding it even MORE difficult to honor our veterans. And by “honor our veterans,” I mean “read a book and possibly take a nap in front of the fire.”

Because, really, I can’t think of a better way to honor our fallen soldiers than napping.
After all, isn’t that what they fought for?
For the right for us to nap when we please?

And by that logic…

Isn’t my job - by not allowing me to nap – actually violating those very rights for which our brave veterans gave their lives?

So one could argue that by coming to work today, I’m essentially disrespecting every veteran, dead or alive, who fought for this country.

And you know what?
That ain’t right.
Clearly, this company is run by terrorists.

So I’m going home, lest I stay here and continue to disregard our local heroes. Because I’m an AMERICAN, dammit, and these colors don’t run.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m about to go home and change into my jammies.

I think the veterans would want me to.

Got Wood?

Oh, yeah, baby.
I got wood.
Lots and lots of big, hard wood
Wanna see a picture of my wood?
You know you do…

What?
Were you expecting something else?

Yesterday, on his day off (because Firefighters work less than trust fund babies), Brian ordered 3 cords of wood to be delivered to the house.

If anybody is unsure how big a cord of wood is:

A full cord is a large amount of wood. It measures 4 feet high by 4 feet wide by eight feet long (4' x 4' x 8') and has a volume of 128 cubic feet.

In other words, we had 384 cubic feet of wood dropped off in our neighbor’s driveway yesterday that needed to be moved and stacked.

Of course, I was at work, stickin’ it to the man in between facebook visits and coffee refills. Brian, suddenly realizing that he might have bitten off more than he can chew, was faced with the task of moving all this wood by himself.

Needless to say, when I got home last night, he was sore, exhausted, and 4 beers deep.
Poor baby.

Having a fireplace insert is a great thing. We went from spending about $600 per month to heat our house (oil heat), to spending $600 in wood to heat our house for the entire winter. Seriously, think about it. One month’s heating expenditure now gets us through the whole winter.

Awesome-sauce.

Of course, there are some drawbacks. For one thing, the front of the house, where the insert is, gets sit-around-in-your-underwear toasty, while the back of the house is akin to a nuclear winter. To solve this dilemma, Brian and I are planning on literally cutting a big hole in the wall that separates the living room from the hallway to the back of the house, so the hot air can mosey along to the back bedrooms.

Another drawback is that fire requires a great amount of attention to start and a moderate amount of attention to maintain. But then again, it’s kind of a cool chore to have. I’d rather come home and be faced with the task of lighting a fire than, say, emptying the dishwasher or cleaning the bathroom. Kind of makes me feel like a pioneer or a caveman. It’s a welcome change from staring at a computer screen all day.

The thing about a fireplace insert is, you kind of start obsessing about wood. Like, you stand in front of a beautiful oak tree, which has probably been around since the revolutionary war or some shit, and all you’re thinking is, “I bet that tree could heat my house for a long time.”

And then you kind of stare at it creepily with Deliverance eyes and push your fingertips together and calculate ways to chop it down, and all I can say is it’s a good thing that trees can’t A) read minds, or B) move around, because I would have been squashed SO FAST by the first mighty oak I encountered since installing that bad boy.

It’s also kind of comforting to know that, no matter what goes on in the world, we will always be warm. Like, the power could fail and we could run out of gas and society could cease to exist as we know it, but we would still have a way to heat our house through the winter. Granted, we’d probably be eating the pets at that point, but I’m willing to bet that Milo would actually be pretty tasty if roasted over an open flame.

(All kidding aside; seriously, Milo, get your shit together or I’m totally going to eat you)

So with this latest delivery of GINORMOUS proportions, we will have enough wood to heat us through the winter, and then some.

It feels good.
VERY good.

But then again, I wasn’t the one who had to move it…

A Story That Has Absolutely Nothing To Do With Me

It’s hard to be funny when you’re surrounded by idiots.

I want to laugh today – I really do.
But I can’t. Because there are so many stupid people in this world, I can only assume that Natural Selection up and quit this bitch a long time ago.

That, or Darwin was wrong.
Which, really, would explain the duckbilled platypus.

And of course, I have to speak in these vagaries, because if I got all specific and shit, certain people might have my head on the chopping block.
Because that’s the problem with having a public blog, and as much as I sometimes want to make this thing private so that I can have a safe venue for ranting and raving, it’s just not going to happen.

Because I love you guys.
And I love the people who haven’t discovered my blog yet, but one day will. And they too will follow my ridiculous path through life, and it will inevitably make me feel a little less alone.

Which is what you guys do, and for that, trust me, there is much love.

So I guess today is kind of a wash, because I’m full of rage, but not in the fun way.
More in the defeated, throw-your-hands-up-in-the-air kind of way that Condy Rice must have felt when she was trying to have a conversation with Dub-yah.

“So, that meeting with Iran went pretty badly”
“What d’ya mean? Ah think it went fine. Jus’ fine”
“They refused to let us tour their nuclear facilities.”
“Oh, what’s the harm in a few nuke-u-lar plants anyway? They SAID they weren’t gonna make no weapons or nuthin’”
“It’s just that…oh, nevermind.”
“Besides, that Iraq leader guy seemed pretty nice to me.”
“Iran. We were speaking to the president of Iran”
“What?”
“Nothing. Nevermind. Look! Something Shiny!”
“Ooooohhh!”

So instead, I’m going to tell you a story.

It’s about a squirrel who works in a nut factory.

You see, Squirrel works in the Acorn department. His job is to find acorns and bring them to the factory to be processed. He’s always been good at finding acorns, and even went to school to learn how to find them better and faster than most of the other squirrels around.
So Squirrel is running around, finding acorns, and bringing them to the factory. He is doing a good job, and is content in his work.

Problem is, the foreman, Raccoon, doesn’t really understand what Squirrel does. He knows that the Squirrel works with other squirrels in the Acorn department, but beyond that, he doesn’t have a clue. To him, it seems like the acorns just appear out of thin air.

One day, and order comes to the factory. It’s for twice the amount of acorns that the Acorn department usually brings in.
Of course Raccoon, believing that the acorns just appear out of thin air, agrees to supply this order. He tells the Acorn department to produce twice the normal amount, and they protest, saying how they can only collect so many acorns in one day. Raccoon tells them to “figure it out” and goes home, leaving the squirrels to work though the night collecting acorns until they are exhausted.

One day, a few weeks later, the Raccoon goes to the Acorn department. He proudly announces that he has finally brought some help for the Acorn department, and introduces Rabbit.

Unfortunately, Rabbit has never collected an acorn in his life.
In fact, he’s never even SEEN an acorn.
And he’s certainly never been to Acorn Collecting School.

So they send Rabbit out on his first day, and by the end of the day, he has returned with a carrot.
The squirrels show him what acorns look like and try to describe the best places to get them, but Rabbit doesn’t understand the difference between acorns and carrots.
In addition, he doesn’t have the right kind of paws to dig up and transport acorns.
Because he’s not a squirrel.
He’s a rabbit.
And no matter how they try to teach Rabbit to collect acorns, he continues to bring back carrots.

Raccoon, noticing that acorn production has not increased and has, in fact, decreased slightly, furiously marches to the Acorn Department and demands an explanation.

The squirrels try to tell him that the Rabbit doesn’t know how to collect acorns, and in trying to teach him, they’re losing valuable daylight in which to search for acorns.

But Raccoon doesn’t understand why.
He doesn’t understand that squirrels are designed to collect acorns and rabbits are not.
He tells them to work harder and train Rabbit better, and then goes home for the day.

But all the training in the world won’t make up for the fact that Rabbit is not a squirrel, and will never be able to collect acorns as well as the other squirrels.

So, if you were Squirrel, wouldn’t you be pretty pissed off?

Yeah, I would be too.
In fact, I would be pretty damn sure that Squirrel needs a new job.
Good thing that I’m not a squirrel, right?….

Friday Featured Follower

First, a brief monologue, if you will (oh, stop your complaining, I'll get to the good part soon enough):
Ahem...

There is no doubt that the past week has been a lousy one for me. I’ve been moody and bitter and all kinds of shouty, and I kind of knew why but kind of didn’t. I think it was an amalgamation of worries and doubts and feeding off of other peoples’ frustrations that left a big ole’ black cloud trailing me like a leopard trailing an injured gazelle. Great for my blogs (because my humor is fueled by my unquenchable rage), but not so great for my sanity, which at any day is iffy, at best.

Regardless, today I feel like I’ve turned the corner. Maybe it’s because it’s a beautiful, sunny Friday. Maybe it’s because I have a great weekend ahead of me, full of fire pits and dogs running on the beach and horses that need riding.

Or maybe it’s the crack I smoked this morning…

Either way, things are really looking up today, and I couldn’t be happier about it.

Moving on…

It’s Friday (Yessssssss!)
And you know what that means.
Time for a Friday Featured Follower.

Today’s Friday Featured Follower is Carrie over at Brick City Love.

Now, there may be a few of you out there who are saying, “No fair! She's, like, one of your best friends! That’s cheating!"

And to those people I say, Shut it. It’s my blog and I am the blogtater and I make my own G-D blog rules.

But seriously, for those of you who are able to look past this blatant favoritism and check out her blog will see, in an instant, why her blog is featured on my site today.

Why I want to do sexy times with her blog:

Here’s the deal with Carrie:

I’ve actually known this little blondie since the day she was born. As in, literally, the day she was born, my parents took me and my sister to go visit her in the hospital. My mom watched Carrie and I every day before we were old enough to go to school, and her parents are my godparents.

Hell, this chick not only attended my wedding, but practically ran that bitch.

To say we’re tight is an understatement.
It’s like saying Nicole Kidman and her Botox doctor are tight.

Anyhoodle, watching this lady grow up has been something all kinds of special. When she was a teenager, she was sort of creative, in this arts-n-crafts, home-ec kind of way (and with a home-ec teacher for a mother, is it really any surprise?). In short, she could sew and she could cook, and that was really, really handy if I needed something hemmed or ingested.

But since that time, she has seriously come into her own. Her creativity has gone through the roof, but not in the way I thought it would, like making sweaters for her dogs or decorating cakes. She got all strange and wild and passionate and bizarre, and the more I saw it, the more I knew that this chick was TOTALLY ON to something.
She was the bright, independent, totally confident, slightly off-kilter individual whom I could only HOPE to become one day, if I played my cards right and didn’t succumb to the conformity of an office job.

And this wonderful personality is completely evident in her blog, which started as a way to track her progress while she and her husband (another dear friend of mine) renovated a bajillion-year-old house in Newark, NJ. She still writes about the renovations, but she has also added another dimension to the blog that displays her eccentrically wonderful tastes and reveals tidbits about the awesome person she has become.

Plus, she’s a hottie (as if you guys needed another excuse to go check her out…literally)

One of my favs:
All of the posts that proudly display her unique tastes are fun, but today’s post takes the cake.

Only THIS WOMAN would:
A) Dream of owning a vintage dress form
B) Find a vintage dress form and proclaim how beautiful it is
C) Take awesome pictures of said vintage dress form so that, when you’re looking at it, you’re all, Hey, I can kinda see it!
D) Walk away from this dress form, get in her car, and get on the highway only to TURN AROUND, GO BACK, AND GET IT.

This woman?
She LOVES her dress form.

And because of this, I love her.

[interesting aside: she also decorated a wall in her former apartment with giant gas station numbers and has a doll head mold collection. At this point, are you thinking, WTF?!?!? Good. That’s exactly what I thought when I saw it.]

So go visit her blog, and I promise you’ll be hooked. And you might learn a thing or two about home renovation in the process.
But you can’t be her best friend because that’s MY job, and I called dibs, suckas!


So that concludes this little love-fest. If you want a shot at becoming the next Friday Featured Follower, make sure you’re 1) a follower of mine, 2) have a great blog that you update pretty regularly, and 3) are not above blatant commenting and sexual favors.

Have a great weekend everybody!

Sunday Can't Come Soon Enough

Oh my god, you guys. This animal situation is getting completely out of control. Now, if you are a frequent reader, you know that Brian and I have enough furry animals in our house to assemble some sort of small, fuzzy, domesticated army (if only I could motivate them to do anything other than sniff each others’ assholes and ruin my life).

Our Cast of Quadrupeds:

Jericho: The wise old dog who knows everything about life, yet continues to take his morning piss on my euonymus plant, knowing full well that I will chase him down and scream in his face for doing so. Also known to poop in inappropriate places including (but not limited to): Petsmart, a crosswalk in New Brunswick (as the light was turning green), and center field at the annual Firefighter Turkey Bowl. But NOT at my wedding, and accordingly, is the house favorite. By a long shot.

Skittles: The deranged, serial killer cat who will cut you if you fuck with her, or even if she’s just in a mood. Known to be handleable only when her surface temperature reaches 3462346952234 degrees Fahrenheit after sitting in front of the fire for countless hours. Is anticipated to kill us in our sleep one day.

Tiger aka Pumpkin aka Fat Girl: World’s fattest cat. Can be found sitting on my laptop case 24 hours a day, exposing her lady bits and licking the fur off of her engorged tummy. Believed to be the incarnate of my Dear Aunt Peg (may she rest in peace), and as such, is alleged to speak with a throaty voice developed after years of chain smoking, and probably calls everybody “doll.” Also has a testicle-stomach.

Milo: The scourge of our house, and the bane of my existence. Is 11 months old, not yet fully potty trained, and 100% untrustworthy when left alone for even a second. Exuberance is matched only by his ability to digest anything and everything, including books, crown molding, antique chests, windowsills and window frames, shoes, bras, pillows, blankets, dog beds, bills and other paper goods, and various plastic sundries. Has been known to scooch his crate through multiple rooms in our house and run six miles at once without tiring. Will likely be the death of me.

So, considering this menagerie, is it any wonder that the addition of another animal is seriously giving me a heart attack?

Enter Bandit.

Bandit: Beagle belonging to in-laws. Neurotic, spastic, clingy, and prone to baying that will make your ears bleed and your eyes pop out of their sockets when he is left alone. Has a serious Napoleon complex and thus, splits his time between staring down and attacking Milo and running from Milo with his tail between his legs. Designated “Weirdo” and habitual shedder. Not even that cute, to be perfectly frank.

Bandit is staying with us through Sunday while my In-laws go on vacation somewhere in NY.

Oh, joy.

When he’s at his home, he sleeps in my In-Laws bedroom room on the floor (I think). Sleeping arrangements are already tight in our house, so you can imagine that adding an additional…eccentric…animal to the mix is not conducive to sleep. Or sanity.

At first, Bandit was determined to sleep on the bed with Brian and I. Unfortunately, that piece of prime real estate is already monopolized by Milo and trust me, there ain’t room for one more. So Bandit jumps up and theres all kinds of whining and staring and a few snarls as Milo and he negotiate the terms of his lease.

When the grumbly growling doesn’t stop, I make an executive decision to boot Bandit to the floor, and would you believe it? He GROWLS at me. Like, seriously snarls. I saw teeth and crazy-eyes. So Brian shoves him to the ground and then…
The pacing starts.

Back and forth across our wood floors. Bandit is trying to figure out where to sleep.
*click click click click
Like the Tell Tale heart, but VERY MUCH NOT MY IMAGINATION.

And for the record, I was seriously considering burying him below the floor boards at this point.

But finally everybody settles down for the night.

Unfortunately, Milo decides that 2:00am is a GREAT time to wake up and stare down Bandit from the top of the bed until they resort to fisticuffs.
So there’s more growling and snarling and you know what?
Don’t fuck with my sleep, you little hairy bastards!

Milo gets the boot out of the room, and I crawl back in bed and try to sleep.
Thing is, I keep imagining all the stuff he’s getting in to out in the living room.
So I sleep, fretfully, until Milo throws himself at the bedroom door, barking, around 3:00am.

So in Milo comes and he’s back on the bed, but he’s all squirmy and wanting to play and I had to beat him...er...pet him until he acquiesced to stay still and “go the fuck to sleep,” as I so tactfully put it.

So that was my night.
And we have three more to go.

Bandit is also unable to regulate his food intake.

In other words, he’s a fat, greedy bastard.

So Milo and Jericho’s food, which is usually down 24 hours a day, has to come up. And Bandits food has to be measured and put down twice a day, without allowing my dogs to eat it.

It’s fucking retarded. So what if he want to eat himself to death? I say sit back and let the process of natural selection occur.

Brian put down Bandit’s food this morning while me, Milo, and Jericho were sleeping in the bedroom. Sure enough, it’s still on the floor when we emerge, and as soon as Milo gets a whif of it, he runs to the kitchen and FLIPS THE ENTIRE BOWL OVER.
Then he starts eating it off the floor.

(I hate this dog).

So I clean it up and put it back in the bowl, and I have to watch Bandit eat to (slowly, nugget by painful nugget) make sure Milo or Jericho don’t sneak a bite. And then I have to put Milo and Jericho’s food down to make sure that Bandit doesn’t eat it, and they’re all, “What is this shit?” Because they’re used to eating at their leisure.

Ugh.

So I’m pretty sure Jericho didn’t eat at all, Milo ate half of Bandit’s food, and Bandit ate the other half of his food this morning.

I seriously don't have time for this when I'm struggling to make it to work by 8:45 am.

So if anybody needs me, I’ll be at a hotel until Sunday.

Brian,
If you’re reading this, Bandit gets a cup of food twice a day. Oh, and Milo’s shock collar is in the closet.
Have a great weekend!