Do Not Underestimate The Power of The Random Text

It was an all-too ordinary day. I was silently bemoaning the fact that I'd worked so hard in college only to become a glorified copy-paste monkey—and a Corporate glorified copy-paste monkey at that—and willfully wallowing in the twisted mire of overlying deadlines.

Loud Guy down the hall was carrying on as if the world were truly coming to an end, and I'd not only had to put my headphones on to counteract his jarring verbal spurts and spasms, but I'd had to turn it up to phone-jamming level as well.

(Not that anyone ever called me. At least, not that I'd really need to respond to promptly for some dramatic copy-paste emergency, anyway.)

In short, my imaginary friends, it was—as I said at the onset of this blather—an all-too ordinary day. And then the text message buzzed in, sending vibrations through my computer's docking station (atop which my cellphone rested), and breaching the audio moat that protected me from the interferences of the outside world.

I did not turn off my music, so I'm not really sure how loud my laugh was, or if it interrupted Loud Guy's rhythm for even a moment. But when I flipped open my phone and read this message from a dear friend:

Whenever im constipated, i think of u.

Well!

The all-too ordinary day became delightful, original, and fun. And the moment—that tiny, silly, spur of a moment—returned to me at irregular intervals throughout the day, making me giggle when nothing was funny, and easing the sting of its predefined ordinariness.

And it's STILL doing that.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Because I'm an erratic spaz—and a redundant erratic spaz, at that—my tales of Corporate Bathroom Woe contain a rather impressively huge GAP. Which is to say that I haven't written about The Puker yet. But because that story has more of an overall tone of desperation to it—and desperation just isn't that funny—I'm going to move right along, past the molehill mountain I manufactured out of this little incident, skipping over The Puker, and on to a more personal episode.

While I could just come out and TELL YOU that this here blather only happened as it did due to MENSTRUATION, I am really quite uncomfortable being that direct. Seriously. There are SO MANY WORDS in the world; why would I reveal my entire agenda for this post with just one? So instead of coming straight to the point with a straightforward—but suitably genteel, introductory CAUTION—I would instead like to suggest that those of you who are happy pretending that the female orifice otherwise known as "The Happy Place" is always pristine and ready for fun (you know, as opposed to GET THE HELL AWAY FROM ME, THE AMUSEMENT PARK IS CLOSED DUE TO EXTREME FLOODING AND BY THE WAY I WOULD ALSO LIKE TO KILL YOU FOR LEAVING THE @$*%$%@^&@$ TOILET SEAT UP AGAIN, YOU @#$*#@&%^$, GOD WHY DON'T THEY MAKE INDUSTRIAL-STRENGTH MIDOL®?), well. This post may not, in fact, be for you.

(Mind you, I'm not going to go into excruciating detail about THE MENSES—no more than I just did, anyway—but the fact remains that without this particular facet of BEING A GIRL, I would have a story to tell here. Or here, but that little episode was supposed to be a surprise.)

ANYway, not long ago, in a Corporate bathroom not far away, I had occasion to use the feminine hygiene disposal unit situated handily in the stall. If you are unfamiliar with the stunning array of styles of such units—and if you are a BOY, you might well be—I shall briefly describe said device as, in this case, a metal box situated between the stalls, with flappy, swinging lids accessible from either stall, lined with plain brown paper bags. In this way, you see, efficiency of space is maximized, although a little assembly is required to cut a hole in the wall and install these ugly—but necessary—devices.

Anyway, there I was, with something to dispose in one hand, my stunningly unfashionable Corporate-approved pantaloons in some disarray, and one free hand. It's a typical issue for us females, so do TRY to have some sympathy for the awkwardness of the moment, while I rejoice—YET AGAIN—at the fact that The Pill permits me to experience these anti-joyous moments only FOUR times a year now, and then imagine what would happen if, in such a moment, one discovered that the swinging flap-door of the aforedescribed between-stall feminine hygiene disposal unit DIDN'T SWING.

Huh, I thought, grateful for the deadly silence of the bathroom (I was alone, thankyouverymuch), it's stuck or something.

It wasn't really even a conscious thought, being SOMEWHAT PREOCCUPIED as I was with the task at hand (so to speak), and so I rather distractedly and not-at-all thoughtfully prodded a bit harder at the non-swinging lid. Hello, I just wanted to trash the trash in my other hand and return to the copy-paste coma that WAS my task du jour! So in a matter of about a second, I went from a standard tap to a bit of a poke—certainly nothing to write the Ironman competition abot—and then, with a sound that can only be conveyed accurately as a SUDDEN SHRIEK, LIKE THE LAUNCH OF A GREAT AND POWERFUL ROCKETSHIP ...

... that entire between-stall box blasted out of its between-stall resting spot, flew into the commode in the next stall, and clattered to the floor with an UNHOLY metal-to-porcelain-to-tile racket that HAD to have transcended the hallowed, quiet, sanctity of the phone booth bathroom stall.

I crouched a bit, to peer through this new window—with intense and renewed gratitude for the resumption of crypt-like silence, and saw the formerly between-stall box lying haplessly on the floor directly in front of the next stall's toilet, which appeared to be injury-free. In fact, it had a bit of attitude, like, "Oh yeah? You think you can take ME? Why, your flappy doors didn't even have the balls to COME WITH YOU on your stupid attack, you dumbass feminine hygiene disposal unit."

As for me, I still had a problem. Well, now I had several problems, and it's surprisingly hard to concentrate when your pants are askew and you have something to dispose of but can't quite reach the garbage, because it went and JUMPED THE FRICK OUT OF YOUR STALL. My other problem was that, after briefly sputtering for the right invective for such a situation, I could NOT. STOP. LAUGHING. That's right, despite full-onset of menstrual mortification—also commonly experienced when a tampon falls out of your purse—and a rising tide of introvert embarrassment avoidance—OH MY GOD DON'T LET ANYONE COME IN HERE NOW—I was laughing like a hyena at the dentist. It was tear-inducing laughter, no less, which is the only thing that makes it possible for me to commit this tale to cyberspace.

Anyway, I did manage to one-handedly pull my pants together, wrap the other THING up in a wad of toilet paper, and zip into the other stall unseen. I made a deposit in the on-floor disposal unit and then shoved it somewhat crookedly back into place, not stopping to confirm that the flaps were flapping or that such a power-shift would not occur again.

And now, I'm on the hunt for a DIFFERENT Corporate bathroom. Because one's got The Puker and one's got Unstable Disposal Units, so despite a fairly major case of trepidation, I'm thinking there's got to be quite a range of bloggable features in the various other bathrooms on campus.

Who knows? Maybe one of them is even a NORMAL BATHROOM.

On a Certain Special Day, I am Awarded a Certain Special Cup

I have a little pop quiz for you guys today, and it doesn't really require its own title, which is a good thing, because I can't think of one that's appropriate and yet doesn't totally give the answer away. Although maybe stating the obvious would be just fine here, because I don't think there's anyone unfamiliar with Murphy's Law or its direct application to the days of the week.

Anyway, the object of the quiz is for anyone who so wishes to correctly identify the day of the week upon which the events I'm about to hyperbolically describe took place. Are you ready? Good, then wipe the sleep out of your eyes and the drool off of your chin and let's begin.

So there I was, class, heading straight to my very first physical therapy appointment for my fuckered-up shoulder. It was a lovely day, with a light breeze and a hint of itchy-eyes/watery-nose in the air—happy spring, and gesundheit!—and I'd never been to the Bent Building, but I had me some highly adequate directions from my referring physician and I was eager to make some progress away from not missing a single allowable dose of anti-inflammatory medications and sleep constantly interrupted by each and every ill-advised roll-over.

Up the stairs I went (and up and up), because there wasn't anything wrong with my legs, and into my appointment I was promptly ushered. My therapist was bright and smiling and efficient, and she showed me stuff to do and told me what was wrong—regular readers may recall that it was basically, "Your posture sucks and you could have dealt with the strain of that, but bashing your shoulder into concrete was just the last straw for those poor, abused muscles."—and then she massaged it. The massage was deep and intense, and it brought tears to my eyes as the therapist easily identified the tense, mottled ball of muscle that I'd been whining about for weeks.

Suffice to say, perhaps, that it was a very productive—if somewhat painful—appointment, and when it was over, I hauled ass back to work because I had a lot to do, fresh from my very first Corporate-sponsored business trip, where I'd done a LOT, but none of it the routine, mind-numbing, soul-depleting busy-work I was typically paid to do.

And there, dear snoring readers, on my keyboard, was a note. The note was from Boss Lady. And the note said: "When you get back, see me."

Being a sensible person and a mature adult, I experienced a moment of sheer panic, rapidly overwhelmed with anticipatory pissed-offedness. She's going to tell me I'm laid off again! I'D BETTER NOT BE FREAKING LAID OFF AGAIN! What? Common sense? I would have none of that stuff, thankyouverymuch, but I had no interest in prolonging this unexpected, shoulder-tensing, stress-laden moment, either, so I promptly made my way through the Cube Maze and stopped inquiringly at the entrance to Boss Lady's substantially-proportioned workspace.

"Hello!" she said with a warm smile that I copied with only an entirely overt air of suspicion.

She folded her hands and continued to force a grin, which didn't do much to ease my concern—nothing, in fact, which is rather less than "much"—and she offered me a seat, which I promptly took.

"Well, you're it today!" she said.

"It?" As in, "TAG, YOU'RE IT?" I hope I won something. Because I'D BETTER NOT BE FREAKING LAID OFF AGAIN! I thought, as I continued to grimace grin.

"Oh?" I said, with unstated benignness, and I neatly folded my hands on the table in front of me. And then forced my knuckles to unwhiten by methodically relaxing my hands.

"Yes," Boss Lady nodded, her smile still in force. And then she sighed, and I could finally smell the hint of wryness behind the smile, JUST as the Boss Lady got down to the task of Revealing The Truth:

"You've been selected for a random drug screening."

And I tell you—HEY! WAKE THE HECK UP! This is where it gets funny!—I was never so happy to have my civil rights trampled upon by Corporate's Self-Righteous NEED To Know What I'm Ingesting On My Private Time. Because, HEY! I'M NOT GETTING LAID OFF AGAIN!

Yet.

I was smiling now in earnest, but I quickly shook off my sudden and over-happy relief, and paid attention. Which was good, because Corporate had quite the well-structured "random" drug-testing procedure, of course, and I had a mere hour to accomplish my second Pee-Test inside of my not-quite-six-months of employment. At which point I was intensely grateful for my on-going Morning Diet Pepsi habit.

"Do you know where the Bent Building is?" Boss Lady sweetly inquired.

"Actually, yes! I just came from a physical therapy appointment there."

Whereupon Boss Lady—who was already aware of my graceless, shoulder-smashing incident and the flurry of medical follow-ups—kindly inquired how that had gone, and I briefly but enthusiastically answered her.

"You just need to go up to the Xth floor ..."

"I just came from there!"

"... and go to the Occupational Therapy desk ..."

I truly couldn't help myself now, and I laughed.

"That's right across from the Physical Therapy desk!"

Boss Lady laughed, too.

"I could have called you there!"

(And she could have, except I hadn't given her my personal cell phone number, and I still haven't.)

"Well, I'd better get going, then," I said, still chortling, and obviously not concerned with the fact that Corporate had their suspicions about me.

(Little Girl's daddy, when I relayed the story to him, simply said, "They must know what music you like. Hell, I'd drug-test you, too!")

And so, off I went. Back to the VERY BUILDING I'd come just from, back to the VERY FLOOR I'd just been to—though I'd never, in 39 rather odd years, been to that building OR that floor before—and at the desk across from the desk where I'd just been, I marched up and grinned at the guy behind the desk, and I said:

"Hi! I just won the prize at Corporate! Do you have a cup for me?"

(He laughed, and not even in a "Oh great, another freak that thinks she's funny" kind of way.)

AND NOW, class, pray tell ... what day of the week was it?

(As if you didn't already know, but the answer's in the comments just in case.)

Class dismissed.

Cat Scientist

Old Lady Cat was a dignified sort of beast, with a tendency to perch atop the highest surface she could find in the vicinity and then stare down upon her minions haughtily, as we scurried about in ant-like fashion under her supervision. For, you know, the entire expanse of five minutes, after which she'd be thoroughly bored with us.

These sorts of behavior are, of course, not exactly unheard-of for snooty cats—is that redundant? I think it is!—but Old Lady Cat was not just any snooty cat: she was also a scientific-minded feline with a penchant for research. A particular favorite involved water glasses.

For as long as I can remember, Old Lady Cat was a hazard around glasses containing water. I'm not sure if it was water, specifically, that drew her attention, or if it was simply that other beverages tended to not be abandoned, and therefore water was "just there."

At first, Old Lady Cat would simply study them, sitting primly in front of a glass, staring down into it, and occasionally tipping her head this way and that, as if memorizing the very molecular structure of water in its liquid state. I sometimes imagine that, had we been able to extract a movie-like thought-speech from her at such a moment, that she would have said, in a female—though still inflection-free—version of Star Trek's famed Mr. Spock, "Fascinating." And then promptly returned to her observations.

But it wouldn't take long before she'd move on to the experimental phase of her investigations. Up would rise one delicate, furry paw, to the very top of the glass, over the rim, and juuuuuuust into the interior space of the glass. And then—I imagined with a little "oop!" not unlike that which Gloria Stuart's character in Titanic dropped that delicious, sparkling bauble she'd kept all those years into the dark depths of the ocean in the last few minutes of that hyper-grandiose film—Old Lady Cat would flick her foot with perfect force to tip the glass over.

Her immaculate fur was never splattered with so much as a single drop of water, at least not in any such experiment that I observed. And I did watch a fair number of these events, as long as the glass wasn't more than a quarter full and was situated in such a place that its contents would drench anything more than the surface of the counter or the like.

Old Lady Cat seemed to get such a kick out of tipping water glasses, you see, and it was just the funniest thing to see her, apparently driven beyond reason to repeat her glass-tipping trick time and time again: "Hmm. A glass of water—fascinating. I wonder what happens if I do ... THIS!" And then lower her paw to sit regally as the water spilled out in rivulets before her: "Oh. I see."

And then, tired by a full schedule of glass-tipping, go take a nap.

At This Time

When I was unexpectedly laid off last year—as opposed to when I was somewhat-expectedly laid off some 7.5 years prior—the first thing I did (after lather, rinse, and repeating my way through the disbelief, sorrow, and rage post-job-loss stages) was apply for all open jobs in my field within a hundred-mile radius. I think there were two.

Because the very first job I applied for was something that was entirely suitable to my skills—if not my tolerance for long commutes, being, as it was, oh, about 1.5 hours away from my home—and I was quite sure I'd receive an opportunity to interview with the company. That was, in fact, the main reason I'd applied: seven and a half years between jobs had left me feeling a bit rusty in the interview-skills department, so a realistic practice session, I thought, could only help.

So while this far-away company of the excellent benefits and reasonable pay rates was on my radar, it was only just on the fringe edge, and once I progressed from applying for actual job openings to stalking the remotest possibilities of potential employers by writing to them after finding their name and address in the telephone book, I admit that I forgot all about that first application. I knew it had been received, because they sent me an entirely unflattering form e-mail to tell me so, but I knew not what had happened after that.

With this in mind, then, you can imagine my surprise when I got a letter from these fine folks just about 250 days after I applied. Holy crap, Batman, if I hadn't found a "real job" by then, I'd've been working two half-jobs to scrape by, as my unemployment benefits would have been exhausted to the point of DEAD roughly 120 days prior. In neither case could I have possibly summoned any enthusiasm for this note, either, but I guess at least they had the decency to follow-up, albeit in a ridiculously delayed fashion.

I considered including the entire text of the message here—with specific details neatly obscured, of course—but only until my paranoia reared up and flailed about frantically, shrieking about "IDENTIFYING INFORMATION IN THE TEXT" and so traumatized was I that I could not even bring myself to state the exact date on which I received the letter. Because, you know, job recruiters obviously have lots of time to troll backwater blogs like this one looking for big-mouthed—or large-fingered, as the case may be—whiners to put on a company-wide, anti-hiring blacklist. Hey! It could happen!

Suffice to say, words like "canceled" were used in describing the position for which I had applied, phrases like "updated daily" were used in describing the source by which I had located the position in the first place, and something remarkably like "good luck" appeared in reference to my job search. Which, I guess, was nice of them, although it would be a lot nicer to hear back from a company in a time frame appreciably less than that which it would take to GESTATE A HUMAN BEING.

Although, when I think about it, perhaps there was a method to their madness after all, because receiving such a letter after so ridiculously many days was certainly much easier to take than had I received it while I was still in the desperate, thrashing throes of joblessness. This way, I got a good laugh out of it.

Going Gray

I could blame The Exotic Neurotic for my current fixation with gray. It was, after all, the fashion magazine she loaned me—pure fluff, for an obsession-free half-hour's reading, or so I thought!—that started it all. But I don't need her to point out that I'm plenty obsessive all on my own, so I don't think I really want to go there.

She'll tell me what she thinks. I must be prepared if I want to invoke the dreaded honesty!

Anyway, so The Exotic Neurotic loaned me last month's issue of this magazine, and it was fun to laugh at pair after pair of impossible shoes, each set of which cost more than my whole working wardrobe, and butt-ugly dresses, some of which cost more than my car. Hey, if you can't laugh at the foibles of people who are rich enough to look Damn Good but just end up looking Damned, who can you laugh at?

Right. There's always Rat and Pig. The Apocalyptic Refrigerator series? Best. Comic. EVER.

But I digress. Which means I'm doing a reasonable impersonation of my "normal self," which I guess is good. So. About that magazine!

Things were going along blissfully fine until I got to the page that had the giant-ass bottle of spilled-out nail-polish in what looked to be a deep shade of gray, which I had never before seen in a nail polish. Light gray, sure! Verrrry, very light, which is pretty much not gray at all, but more of a special shade of white. Which hardly seems daring at all, much less worth featuring in the same issue that includes shoes that have a heel designed to look like it's on sideways.

But a deeper gray, a really GRAY gray—now THAT was unusual. And I thought, Wow. That's stupid. What kind of ninny would wear something like that? And yet, I couldn't get it out of my head, and much later in the night, I found myself looking for this odd shade of gray online. Which was where I found out it wasn't actually a deep gray at all, but more of a shallow, light gray, the likes of which the world had seen many times before—or at least once or twice.

See?

The problem was, you see, that I'd been reading the magazine while wearing sunglasses. Therefore, the light gray had appeared darker—substantially darker, in fact—than it actually was. Which was all rather funny, but of course, not being able to get the shade I thought I wanted (nevermind that it was going to cost $18 to get it, because OH YES, I was really, seriously considering GOING THERE, and nevermind that it had originally struck me as just plain dumb) made me want it more.

Why? Because I need a hobby, obviously. It's a distraction, people. A distraction from the winter blahs, the doldrum of gray skies, and ... wait. Okay, so maybe I was just trying to blend in. Reason has OBVIOUSLY been long-since surpassed by obsession here, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?

My point was that I was going to get the gray I thought I saw, and that was that. After establishing that such a shade did not exist in unnature (aka, the local mall), I found myself in the local Walgreens, which OH MY GOD, is a story unto itself, but it's pretty gross, so let's stick to the bit where I found Sinful Colors—a great name all by itself—"Black on Black" polish sitting right next to "Snow Me White" polish, at which point a little night-light went off over my head and I thought, Aha! I WILL MAKE MY OWN GRAY NAIL POLISH! And it will be good!

Or something.

In the process of researching the gray I sought—a matte-gray, mind you, NOT a glittery one, for I am not four years old, despite all mental appearances to the contrary—I had happened upon a delicious description of a shade someone else possessed (at only $8 a bottle, it was a relative steal, but by this time, I was not about to WAIT for it to be shipped to me from who-knows-where), and it was this: "gun-metal gray."

Due to my now compoundly-fractured brain, I had taken this as my cause ... my new quest ... MY HOLY GRAIL OF FINGER-NAIL POLISH, if you will, and what a stupid expression, because even if you won't, I will, so who cares if you won't? Well, you do, but I digress again.

Naturally, once fully committed—yes, I really should have been—I did, in fact, succeed marvelously at creating a shade of gray that very much did match my good old .12-gauge shotgun's metal barrel ... after I dusted it off, that is. The problem this time was was that this shade is virtually indistinguishable from BLACK, once applied to one's nails and seen under normal lighting. Even though if you put your hand next to something that's really, truly black and squint, you can totally tell that it's actually gray.

Being far too lazy to remove ye olde "Too Gray" polish, I waited a week before dumping a strategic quantity out and pouring a similar amount of white into the formerly "Black on Black" bottle. Much mixing ensued, leading me to conclude that if I ever do have my dream "Build a Nail-Polish Workshop" kiosk in the local mall, it eally will have to include one of those AWESOMELY VIGOROUS paint-shaker things—scaled down to size, of course, because nobody needs THAT much nail polish (well, maybe elephants do, but I don't think they'd be looking for shades of gray anyway).

But then. Oh, then! My quest hath ended, and I am now sporting a nice, deep, really-GRAY-but-also-definitely-not-black nail polish, the likes of which THE WORLD HAS NEVER KNOWN BEFORE! Unless somebody else had this idea first, which kind of pisses me off, so let's pretend I'm special, shall we? Great; thanks.

In conclusion, I will admit that the irony of the fact that I put so much time and effort into getting gray ON my fingernails while I have been known to put similar time and effort into getting gray OFF of my hair follicles does not escape me. Just so you know.

And my gray? I will name him "George." Because, while I cannot HUG him and SQUEEZE him and PET him and PAT him, he has amused and entertained me, and that's good enough for now.

Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!

I know there are dog lovers out there who think that Bad Dog's blog moniker is nothing more than the unfortunate by-product of a disturbed, cat-loving mind. No dog, they think in cuddly-puppy thought-bubbles, could be bad—perhaps misunderstood or misinterpreted, but certainly not "bad."

While I certainly don't put Bad Dog on the same red-hot pedestal as Cerberus, neither is she the simple by-product of my cat-centric world-view, or Little Girl's daddy's training (or lack thereof). No, from the moment we arrived at the Billings, Montana airport to claim—as the weary service-counter attendant described her—"the whiny one," Bad Dog was distinctly different from other dogs I have known.

She has always been brilliant: I don't dispute her intellect. But she's also always been less interested in pleasing people than in using them to further her own interests, most of which revolve around filling her belly or exercising her jaws. And she seems to be of the same, mistaken belief as many politicians in that she thinks that next time, she's not going to get caught.

"Next time," not unlike tomorrow, never quite seems to arrive, but that does not concern her.

I've become more adept at dealing with Bad Dog's transgressions than anticipating them. As I've said before, as pessimistic as I typically come off, I'm really not that good at it. I explain her—particularly to Little Girl—as more of an imp than a devil, because in my increasingly rare, kinder moments, I do believe that she doesn't intend to cause us people pain ... we just get in the way of her own desires and she forgets about our feelings.

But it's really hard, when confronted with the circumstantial—but overwhelming—evidence of Bad Dog taking very blatant advantage of Little Girl's kind offer to sleep on her bed, to gently advise a screaming-teary Little Girl that "Bad Dog didn't mean to make you sad."



It's also hard, especially now that several weeks have passed since the demise of so many of Little Girl's treasured Littlest Pets, to prevent my warped sense of humor from overtaking me. So I just gave up and let it.

It started when I saw this lobotomized cat figurine:



and thought: "You know, we could use this to sprout some of Little Girl's daddy's prairie plants this spring."

This sort of stupidity naturally led me to ponder how the rest of these creatures could be recycled, or (failing any silly brainstorm in that vein) what they resembled, or (because, while that got me farther than recycling did, it didn't get me all the way to the end of the line), what Bad Dog might have been thinking when she was downing them.

Just be glad I didn't take pictures of the bits that came back up, eh?

I thought that this bird's body:



could be combined, Frankenstein-like, with this dragonfly's head:



to create the world's first DragonBird.

That's as far as I got with recycling. One very small planter, and one freak-creature. Hey, I never said this was Einsteinian in its brilliance! Give me a break: you see what Bad Dog left me to work with here!

This pancake-creature was the one that we saw most often in the barf-piles that returned to haunt Bad Dog—you know, should there really have been any doubt about who was to blame—over the 24 hours that followed the slaughter of the leaders in the "Littlest Pets" gang:



All I could think of when I saw this one was "Tragic-Accident Persian." Which, sadly, is what I think of when I see Persians in general:



This mangled sled led me to wonder where in the "Littlest Pets" world the vicious, Venus-Flytrap of a tree that it obviously hit was located:



And this mostly-reassembled dog brought me back to the transporter accident with which Star Trek: The Motion Picture opened (and seriously, that traumatized me SO BAD when I saw it—at age 11 or so—that I could not imagine how any of those characters ever managed to set foot on one ever again ... holy shit, Captain!):



I figure the edging on this one looked like floss-potential, because if there's one thing Bad Dog insists up at the end of a fine plastic meal, it's good dental hygiene:



Little Girl, I must tell you, was not AT ALL amused by my planter idea, although I did wait several weeks to bring it up to her. (Needless to say, I didn't mention any of my other thoughts concerning the remains of the other brutalized "Littlest Pets" to her.)

However, she was charmed by—and eagerly assisted in—my idea to "book" the canine mastermind (or not) behind the crime.

At first, Bad Dog didn't take it very seriously:



But by the time we got to the profile shot, she realized she was in some pretty deep shit:



(Although all you soft-headedhearted dog lovers should know that the only sentence she got was to be banned from Little Girl's room. Because the judge assigned to the case—that would be Little Girl, and don't whine to me about bias and prejudice and that kind of nonsense, because frankly, I was ready to sentence her to a return to Canada when I heard her whining clear across the freakin' terminal the very day we picked her naughty dog ass up—is a softie herself.)

Meeting The Other Me

Yesterday, I finally met the other me. I've known about her for some time now, but we'd kept missing each other at the pharmacy where we both get our mutually-exclusive prescriptions filled.

I first learned about the other me several years ago when I appeared to claim a new prescription, and Cheerful Pharmacist Chickie-Boo—believe me, it's appropriate—launched into a story about her.

"You've got the EXACTLY same first name," she said, "and your last names are very similar."

"That's odd," I said. I didn't really care at the time, being more concerned with the potential interactions of my new prescription with old ones.

"I had to check several times before I saw the difference," she went on, shaking her head as she shook a few pills out of the bottle for my inspection.

That wasn't, apparently, the first time our pharmacy tried to pass my meds to her—or mine to her—and it wouldn't be the last, either. Which puts on the board yet another point in favor of these annoying "consultations" with the pharmacy, and given my general paranoia, I'm surprised I didn't get a chill when the pharmacist so chipperly told me about the other me's fairly narrow miss with meds she didn't need.

After that first, casual fly-by of a non-meeting, I became occasionally accustomed to peripheral encounters with the other me, and her medications. It didn't happen every month, but it did happen often enough that I was not at all surprised by it.

"No, that's the other me," I'd say nonchalantly, although I'd say my first name instead of "me," and then spell out my last name again, more S-L-O-W-L-Y this time.

But yesterday, as I stood all spaced-out in line with a lot of other inattentive Friday-night prescription-picker-uppers, it so happened that the other me was in line right behind me. And she had such a hearty laugh that I'd swear now she had to have been snickering when I oh-so-routinely spurned her medication, but I didn't hear her, or even really look at her, until I was tucking my wallet back into my purse, and she stepped up beside me and I heard that laugh for the first time.

And she said, "I'M the other me."

I looked up in shock, and she smiled at me.

"Oh, HI!" I blurted, my self-unassurance inexplicably absent. "It's really nice to finally meet you!"

And it was nice, I thought, there in the mundane, unhealthy environment of the pharmacy, to be surprised by someone whose name—something that seems so unique, but isn't, really—was so close to mine, and yet I'd never know if I passed her on the street. It made me consider that similarities can be as superficial as differences, and yet, a good joke of fate can be easily recognized.

To judge by the goofy grin the other me shared with me before I turned, still smiling myself, to leave, she got it, too.

She's Baaaaack!

As I recall, that particular Friday morning began innocuously enough, although I did oversleep. Apparently, it's harder to hear an alarm when you're running an industrial-strength humidifier because you're on the third day of a running sinus headache and it just FINALLY occurred to you that, d'oh, winter does this to you, and it means you need moisture in those horrifically-painfully dry cavities. Surprise! Yeah.

Anyway, at such time when Little Girl's daddy was in the shower (of course), I ambled off to make the bed, as per usual. Unusually, though, FRISKitty was prowling around the head of the bed in a heart-droppingly familiar pattern, her head lowered and her eyes focused into the tiny space between the bed and wall with the intensity and radiative power of high-powered lasers. Oh yes, I knew when I saw her pointedly hunting stance that there was at least one mouse in that there crevice.

And I remembered that we never did have conclusive evidence that Momma Mouse was finished off in the infamous "Mouse Count" incident that had taken place a month or so before. While my husband did find and block a hole—apparently, the mouse got in around about where the propane pipe comes in, and did you know that the stuff they use to block the extra part of the hole does NOT last forever? now you do!—and FRISKitty did escort the momma mouse into the bedroom at one point, the rodent otherwise known as Harriet Houdini escaped into the bathroom, never to be seen since.

So, suspicions aroused, I pulled the mattress back from the wall and started jiggling the support boards underneath the head of it—it's a non-standard bed structure, but bear with me. Sure enough, a mouse, which I presumed to be the long lost Harriet, shot out of the area like a little gray vermin rocket, zipped past a VERY thrilled FRISKitty, and hid behind a night-stand. Around the bed I went, and yanked the night-stand—a monstrously heavy old thing—out from the wall, sending Harriet scurrying back under the bed. More scuffling ensued, beginning with me disassembling part of the bed structure and ending with me pulling pretty much every piece of furniture in the bedroom away from the wall, FRISKitty going cat-crazy with delight, and Harriet, once again, escaping to parts unknown.

Later that day, and still with my joy-and-sanity-crushing headache, I arrived home early: I was due to pick up Little Girl from school some 20 minutes hence, and I was scheduled for a 5:00 parent-teacher conference thereafter. So I was really feeling quite enough pressure, thankyouverymuch, when—even before I entered the house—I heard the alert: a piercing, powerful, incredibly annoying beeping. The otherwise deadly silence in the house led me to the quick and accurate assessment that the power was out, which was just super, as what with all-minus-one of the bedroom furnishings conveniently removed from their usual sentry wall posts, what I'd planned to do between picking up Little Girl and attending the conference was vacuum behind all of those things.

Thus frustrated, I was changing from dressy work gear—which I still loathed, and loathe—to still quite parental but much more functional jeans and a sweatshirt when FRISKitty showed up. She materialized next to the ONE dresser I hadn't moved and fixed a lusty gaze on the space between it and the corner wall next to which it sat. And I knew, Harriet was back. Or maybe she never left, but regardless, my attention, too, was instantly redirected from both my redressing and the still-beeping backup power box next to the computer upstairs.

Still, I thought, "I should really finish putting on pants and shoes before I look." And truly, these were some of the wisest words I've ever not-said to myself. But wisdom, while fine and good, doesn't eat at you like the knowledge that there's an escape-artist of a mouse sitting snugly next to your dresser, and so I dropped my pants on the bed and looked over FRISKitty's head. Sure enough, there was Harriet, cozily crammed into the back corner, seemingly secure and content to be there despite her looming audience.

"I really should put my shoes on," I thought, wisdom reasserting itself but jeans apparently downgraded in importance. True to form, however, I did not, but instead promptly and suddenly wedged the dresser out. FRISKitty shot in one side and Harriet blew out the other side, at which point I yelled, "GET IT!" While I meant the sentiment to be encouraging to FRISKitty, alas, like my pant- and shoeless state, my shout was also a mistake of epic proportions. My elevated tone of voice in the formerly silent—except for the invisible bleeping robot—scared the crap out of the cat (though not literally), and she bailed out of the bedroom like the First Legion of Hell Demons were after her, leaving me alone with Harriet.

By now, the mouse was running along the perimeter of the room—all nice and open, since I'd moved everything out of her way—like a marathoner just off from the starting line, but nonetheless, I swooped down upon my tennis shoes, and holding one in each hand, I dove at Harriet as she dashed along the bedroom borders, smashing wildly with my shoes in every direction. I think I hit Harriet once, and I even managed a fleeting realization of how hilarious this would have been on film, but with my head throbbingly full of sinus pain, ten minutes to go until I had to pick up Little Girl, INCESSANT BEEP-BEEP-BEEPing serving as an entirely obnoxious soundtrack, and HELLO, MOUSE RUNNING FREE IN MY BEDROOM, I was just simply out of my freaking mind.

Harriet, after hurriedly inspecting the outer edges of the bedroom, zipped out the doorway and leaped nimbly over the various obstacles in her path until she found the nicely mouse-shielding pile of crap in the entryway closet. I did not pause in my pursuit for a moment, but frantically yanked things out of the closet and threw them willy-nilly around the entryway. Still pantless, I might add, which surely wasn't pretty, but at least neither the UPS dude nor meter-reading man showed up, because that would have been the straw that broke my non-weight-bearing brain.

I saw Harriet a few times, and attempted to smash her with the broom that I'd stupidly exchanged for my shoes when Harriet had run right by it on her way to the closet. I'd only managed to remove about half of Little Girl's daddy's hunting supplies—boots, a(n empty) gun case, jackets, a backpack, a duffel bag or two, etc—but as before, Harriet got away, and this time she ran down the stairs to the basement. Or, as I like to call it, The Giant Dirty Hole Packed With Shitloads Of Crap (redundant, I know, but accurate). Harriet actually fell down two steps, so frightened was she by the pantless screaming banshee behind her, but she righted herself with ease and adrenaline and continued to streak down the stairs all the way to the bottom, where she turned left and stopped. I guess she couldn't decide which mammoth, unstable pile of boxes and "antiques" she wanted to hide in (we've been cleaning out my mother-in-law's house this summer).

I seized this incredible opportunity to inaccurately but enthusiastically smash at Harriet again, SHRIEKING all the while—FRISKitty had long-since abandoned me, after all, so it wouldn't have helped to be quiet—and of course I was unsuccessful. My mom later—and not particularly helpfully—pointed out that a broom wasn't my best choice of weapon, but I WASN'T WEARING SHOES, so obviously I was already poorly armed. And panted. But whatever. Harriet was many things, but she wasn't entirely without decisiveness, and so after the broom rearranged the tail end of her butt fur, she exited into a protective pile of boxed china and other breakables, so without either enough time or a shred of patience to disassemble the structure, I was left entirely without recourse. Still clutching my ineffective broom, I AUUUUUGGGGHHHed out my fury and frustration, and followed it with a very loud, very sincere, "FUCK!"

(You know I've been working on creativity in spoken words as well as in written, but it appears that my finer vocabulary abandons me like an old refrigerator in a ditch at times of rodent invasion ... that means it pushes me off the edge of a hair-pin turn in them thar hills.)

I'll spare you the rest of the day, except to say that I did get the beeper turned the hell off, the power eventually returned, and YES! Conferences went exceptionally well. It wasn't, however, until the following morning when I would receive some semblance of closure: I awoke at an ungodly hour of the dark to pee—uh huh, 'cause why should I be able to sleep six hours in a row in peace, even on a Saturday?—and when I stumbled back to bed, I practically stepped on FRISKitty, who said "Mrrrt!" in a quite pleasant way, especially for having been very nearly killed, or at least pained greatly.

"Sorry," I mumbled, and only upon hitting my pillow did I realize that FRISKitty was ... playing with something.

Yes, the telltale sounds of feline frolic and fun got me back out of bed like I'd been bounced off a trampoline from a cannon. I grabbed the flashlight off the night-stand—now back up against the wall and atop a newly-vacuumed floor—and flicked it on. And in its eerie beam, FRISKitty's eyes occasionally sparkled as she played with a certain something. A certain small, gray something. With a tail.

"MOUSE!" I screamed.

"Gzzntdtblb," muttered the USELESS LUMP OF COMATOSE SNORING that remained otherwise silent and MOTIONLESS on the far side of the bed. (Little Girl's daddy can sleep through anything, and come to think of it, that's going to be a handy thing when I have to KILL HIM for not JUMPING UP and getting rid of RODENTS IN THE BEDROOM.)

I ran to turn on the light, and only then, under full illumination—which, no, also was not enough to wake the sleeping undead—did I realize that Harriet was no longer amongst the more-or-less living. I got a glove and took poor FRISKitty's toy away—not without much praise, mind you, and sincere promises of Little Girl's daddy's lunch-meat supply—and threw the carcass out the front door. Where apparently, some hours later, Bad Dog happened upon it while supposedly attending to her morning pottying, and promptly ATE IT, because Little Girl's daddy didn't think to not let Bad Dog run free in the vicinity of the body. Because he conveniently DIDN'T REMEMBER IT.

Ah, yes, the wanna-be trailer-house o' wyo: it's a fun place to read about, but you wouldn't want to live there!

What It Lacks In Context, It Makes Up For In Funny

It's been awhile since I checked out my blog stats. When you're as unfamous—not to be confused with infamous—as I am, the importance of how people find you just doesn't rank up there with, say, making sure you have enough Riesling on hand for the upcoming week. And anyway, back in the days of dial-up service—that long, dusty era which just ended a week or so ago—just getting to the main page of my stats could take a full ten minutes, which I'd frankly rather spend engaged in my own bizarre Internet quests.

But now I can go pretty much anywhere on the web I like, and within a decent time frame at that, so after I'd been everywhere I normally go, I started trolling my bookmarks for places I hadn't been in a long time. And I went blog-hopping, too, but that's not where I found my bookmark, so back to the subject at hand.

Invisible readers don't seem to register too well, and thus my chart o' visitors was still unimpressive, but what I really wanted to see was over on the page of search terms by which people had located my dark little corner of the Internet. Because I've been very nicely amused by these things in the past. And I had yet to compile a list of weird searches since my move here to Blogger.

A lot of people—relatively speaking, that is—were searching for information about johann falkenburg riesling, which was good but not especially special, in my unrefined opinion. (I'm talking about the wine, not the search itself.) And at least as many people found my blog by looking for other Rieslings, like banrock station riesling, forestville riesling, powers riesling 2004, and bloom riesling. So that was drunkenly cute, and easily classifiable.

There were also some lingerie fans, fascinated by thongs in general, and a spotted thong in particular. Plural searchings for both of those, by the way, because I know you were wondering.

Believe it or not, there were some scientific-minded souls stumbling across this blog as well, throwing out search terms such as thermopolis etymology and queries like is a boy mealworm darker than girl mealworm with wild abandon.

I was a bit worried about the various and sundry (un)health-related searches that pointed towards my blog. No matter how you look at it, armpit blackhead can't be good, "butt cheek" "stabbing pain" stress has got to be bad news, and itchy oozy bump numb fingers sounds like it needs prompt medical attention. And for God's sake, QUIT TYPING.

A number of questions were posed that I have to say are probably best left unanswered, such as did marilyn monroe refuse to use tampons, or were flat-out impossible to answer, like in japan what kind is it and entertainment. (I think that phrase might have a   word there. Somewhere.) I'm confused by why deer carcass in pond is it safe to swim was asked in the first place, because even if you find a site that claims it's "safe," I just can't imagine that there's ANY reason good enough to put yourself into a body of water in which the decaying head of Bambi is festering.

However, I wouldn't mind knowing the answer to this question: has the power of the subconcious mind ever been used to cure raynauds. Although if it were answered in the affirmative, it would be necessary—and tricky—to demonstrate that the claimant had the condition in the first place.

So that's all well and good, right? And aside from how Marilyn Monroe did or did not deal with her menses, not TOO awful weird, right? Okay, the gender color-codings of mealworms and the armpit zit are kind of wacky, too. But you must remember that these are just the search terms I felt I could classify here—oh yes, my preciouses, the unclassified class has yet to be presented. Let's get to it then, shall we?

• staple jewelry Diamonds might be a girl's best friend, but a it takes a MAN to wear a staple.
• "her rotten teeth" Probably need to be pulled.
• "imaginary stressors" What, real ones aren't enough?
• black camouflaged bunny At night?
• queen of jackshit peeps Distinguishable by the crown, and legions of jackshits behind her.
• devil peep Hey, how did this one get in here? This one actually makes perfect sense!
• eagle poop Uh oh, this one makes sense, too.
• my dogs belly is spotted What of it?
• snow demons Don't worry—they're after the black camouflaged bunny.
• dog ingests plastic baggy This too shall pass. But making sure of that isn't going to be pleasant.
• pinecone looking armadillo As opposed to ... ?
• enumerate the components of physical fitness Say please.
• what's the u stands for temporary sins Temporary Sins University. Duh.
• does snorting pieces of eraser make u lose brain cells Are you asking this before or after the fact? Never mind. If you have to ask if an activity causes brain damage, you probably shouldn't engage in it.

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling a whole lot better about my last Googling escapade. Even if it did have something to do with boy dogs having "man trouble" with their dangly bits ... what? It makes perfect sense in context!

Good WTF Times

I'm having a fair number of "WTF?" moments at Ye Olde New Job, which is, of course, a common hazard of most every new job. Although, because of the errr, "non-standardized" nature of some of my quandaries of terminology, I haven't actually shared many of them with my coworkers, who have been almost obnoxious about letting me know I can ask them ANYTHING about the corporation by which we are all blanketed—nearly to the point of smothering.

I guess I'm just not sure when they say "anything," they really mean to include the warped observances of a perpetually adolescent mind.

Anyway, I discovered one of these issues within the first eight hours of work, though I can't say "on my first day," because fully half of THAT time period was occupied with forms. And more forms. And forms that clarified that I'd been handed still other forms, not to mention their attending explanatory documentation. Truly, if there were any more forms, this place would graduate from corporate status and slide right into governmental territory.

I was on the receiving end of a certain division/complementary organization—it walks a fine line, if you ask me—and even though it HAD been spelled out for me early on, I had that little precursor-to-a-snicker lip twitch every time someone mentioned the acronym, which was POD. You might think that my association of the term would be to the band of the same abbreviation—theirs stands for Payable On Death, which isn't as grim as it might sound, for it is directly tied to a core Christian belief—but no. In my mind, POD means, first and foremost, Princess Of Darkness, which is the nickname give to me by Mr. X.

In case you're wondering, POD in corporate-speak means a much more mundane—and socially-acceptable—Print On Demand.

But truly, even this silliness could not compare with what I discovered later in the week, as I reviewed some non-demand-printed technical information, and I actually snort-barked with only slightly-suppressed laughter—not unlike Beavis and Butthead, but with just a bit of self-consciousness. For there, following page after page of product specifications and variations and sale prices, was a chart, and this chart was conspicuously and—I thought—hilariously titled: "Orifice Chart". Because, you know, if you're going to do, ummm, pretty much anything with an orifice, you'd better know darn well exactly which orifice you're dealing with. And that there chart, well! It could help!

It went especially nicely with the "Unit Size" column.

If I could just encounter a few more "WTF?" moments like this, I just might forgive them for making me dress like I cared about ironing. Good times, I tell you; good effing times.

Beautiful Seasoning

I meant to write about this some time ago, but when one's blog-subject ideas tend to be jotted down on everything from actual paper to sticky notes to the back of one's hand, it doesn't take a genius to surmise that the cataloguing system of such notations, too, is likely to leave much to be desired.

Anyway, if you're not familiar with the many and varied fine products produced and distributed by The Pampered Chef® and its many, party-holding, prize-lured "hostesses," allow me to enlighten you: it's high-priced, high-quality cookware and the like, and one of its leading contenders for top product is a flat baking stone that is descriptively called the "Flat Baking Stone."

I actually had one of these beasts long before I was obligated to attend one of The Pampered Chef's product-pushing parties, because The ListMaker very kindly gifted me with one, upon learning that I not only didn't have one of my own, but I had never even heard of such a thing. And while I admit I was skeptical of this particular baking implement in the beginning—The ListMaker wasn't worried; she knew I'd be converted once I tried it for myself, because flat baking stones are like The Bible that way to me, except that you can bake a pizza on top of flat baking stones—it certainly did do a nice, even job of cooking, and it was totally a breeze to clean.

Which brings me to my point, mostly, because the instructions for cleaning these things are as follows:

It is important that you DO NOT USE SOAP OR DETERGENT when cleaning your Stoneware. The soap can flavor foods that are baked in or on the Stoneware. For the same reason, Stoneware should not be washed in an automatic dishwasher."

And in case you're wondering how the hell you bake something IN a flat baking stone, I will add that there are stone muffin pans and pie pans, too, but I don't have enough room to add those to my collection. Plus, they're heavy as hell and I don't have much upper-body strength.

But back to the point, more or less! Aside from "seasoning" the surface of the flat baking stone before its first use—by "baking a high fat item on the Stoneware"—there really is precious little maintenance required. If you've ever had to soak a pizza pan to get the chunks of crud off of it, you will be delighted to know that this is not a problem inherent to the flat baking stone, because if a stone gets crud on it, you just take a knife and scrape the residue off with one non-muscle-straining, scrub-free, fluid motion. So that's fine and dandy.

I did not find the following quite so reassuring, however (emphasis mine):

This hand-finished item is made from a natural clay product that may have subtle variances in color and texture that will not affect its baking performance. Each piece is unique and will darken beautifully with use.

Umm. With my old metal pizza pans, this "beautiful" darkening with use was not exactly a desired feature, see? It was less like "seasoning"—beautiful or not—and more like an accumulated, adhered layer of seared bio-matter that even concentrated effort could not remove. This was, in fact, one of the reasons that I eventually discarded and replaced such metal pans; it was not something I'd write down in a brochure attached to the highly-charged term "beautiful" and use as a selling point!

But, when I eventually did attend a party promoting the products of The Pampered Chef, that is exactly what I heard some of the other participants discussing, as they gasped in shock and horror at the tale of some poor woman's husband, who BLEACHED his wife's flat baking stone in a misguided attempt to "clean" it. Not only was a decade's worth of "beautiful seasoning" irretrievably eradicated, but the stone itself was rendered temporarily useless, having absorbed all that bleachy goodness of the water in which it had been soaked, and thus scenting the oven in which it was placed with the same, high-traffic swimming-pool fragrance.

I thought, at the time, that it was quite the marketing ploy, to replace the long-standardized term "dirty" and/or "old" with "beautifully seasoned." I think I actually rolled my eyes at the dismay with which the bleach-happy husband was met, and while I'm certainly no fan of the nostril-flaring odor of bleach, I didn't see the dark patterns emerging on my own flat baking stone—because yes, I read and was following the use and cleaning directions—as "beautiful" or as "seasoning," and when I tried to, I found the entire idea rather, well, GROSS. But it didn't take long for me to realize the multitude of reasons why I should reverse my opinion, and not only that, campaign for the increased utilization of the terminology employed by The Pampered Chef for its Stoneware products.

Think of the possibilities! Graying hair wouldn't prematurely age you, it would "beautifully season" you! When confronted by a person who found your clothing to be wrinkled, you could hold yourself proudly and proclaim how "beautifully seasoned" it was! Your house would not be dirty, your car would not be messy, your age-spotted skin would not be unsightly, your sweat-stained shirt would not be icky, your shower would not be mildewed, your under-eye insomnia bags would not be exhausted-looking, your matted-hair cat would not be problematic ... all this, and MUCH MUCH more, can be BEAUTIFULLY SEASONED, with only a tiny little, Pampered Chef-approved change in terminology!

Behold: the power of WORDS. Or marketing, whatever. Either way, it's a Good Thing.

A Delicate Little Question of Etiquette

The perils of corporate employment are like entering a child's room: you know there are going to be nasty things in there, but you never know exactly when you're going to walk right into them.

And so it was that it came to pass that I had to enter the corporate women's room, again. This zone had already proven problematic for a number of reasons; for example, I don't know about you, but I'm still not certain of the etiquette involved when you discover that the stall you favor is the same one preferred by your boss. Obviously, entering a stall that's already occupied is not an option, but should you then eschew that stall altogether? Or would that be overthinking a non-issue?

Anyway, on the occasion about which I intended to speak when I began this entirely pointless insomniacal interlude was this: I'd entered the bathroom and was immediately assaulted by loud, rapid-fire conversation that was both annoyingly animated and inconveniently incomprehensible, as it was being conducted in a language with which I was entirely unfamiliar.

Not being a fan of stall-to-stall discussions, particularly when the participants are not located in adjacent stalls, I nonetheless assumed a position between the two closed doors. While preparing to do my business—hey, dressy pants aren't as easy to undo as jeans, what with their multiple means of closure—I couldn't help but notice that aside from a very brief pause or two, Loud Talker #1 had not given Silent Participant #2 a chance to get a word in edgewise.

There was also something else bothering me about the entire scenario, but I couldn't quite figure it out ... I searched my limited repetoire of visits to this particular bathroom, trying to isolate the niggling concern, and that's when it hit me: the other closed door had been the handicapped-accessible stall at the end of the row, and due to the outward-swinging nature of its door, it was always closed, regardless of its state of use or non-use.

The full horror of the situation hit me like a slap on the cheek—no, not THAT cheek—a moment later when, during a very brief silence in Loud Talker #1's stream of foreign language consciousness, I heard the small but unmistakable sound of a slightly tinny version of "Silent" Participant #2's voice emanating from ... the cellphone in Loud Talker #1's stall.

Now I was not only reluctant to attend to the actual, room-appropriate reason I'd entered this bathroom, I wasn't entirely sure I could do it if I tried. The idea of taking a leak in the echo-y confines of a bathroom—corporate or not—that was already in use as a telephone booth was both ooky and uncomfortable. But as I pondered my options, Loud Talker #1, without skipping a laughing, loud-talking beat, did a little business herself.

Oh yes. She "went" there.

My decision instantly and irrevocably made (however silly), I stood, reattached the buttons, hooks, and zipper of my very businesslike pants, and exited without passing "Go." That I had to walk past the still-talking and occasionally going Loud Talker #1 was, I felt, more than close enough, and not having accomplished anything but the dropping of drawers, I did not even feel the need to wash my hands. My own BATHROOM needs were attended to quickly on another floor of the building, thanks to the standard structure of large buildings which tends to stack bathrooms in direct vertical proximity to one another.

But I still don't know what would possibly pass for the proper etiquette response to an utterly improper and rudely presumptuous reassignment of a bathroom stall as a communications facility. And goodness only knows what would Silent Participant #2 would have thought if Loud Talker #1 would have had her statements punctuated by an industrial-strength roar of a FLUSH—hell, with a noise THAT loud, she could have driven right off the road!

No matter how you look at it, or what the "right" thing to do is in a wrong situation, I think it's safe to say that talking on a cellphone in the bathroom is not only a bad idea, but it's a downright crappy thing to do. (Yes, I know that's bad and obvious, but it's also justifiable: you gotta work with the material you're given. Because otherwise, well, you're writing fiction, I guess! Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Cleanliness Is Next To Headaches

Little Girl's daddy recently inherited a large, mostly glass display case. I don't know what the name for such a monstrosity is, given that we aren't exactly fine-china-displaying individuals, but I do know that its very existence in my home is a giant pain in my ass. It took a great deal to transport this sucker in the first place, and it's taking a ridiculous amount of work to keep it shiny-clean, as it sits, entirely devoid of fine china or any damn thing else, empty and glistening, in a rather inconvenient place in our living room.

There was some disassembly and reassembly required, too, to transport this beast. And by "some," I mean a GREAT FREAKING DEAL. There were glass panels in the sides, glass shelves in the innards, and mostly-glass doors on the front. And that last bit didn't get redone until just this past week, when Little Girl's daddy was sent on an impromptu overnight trip for work.

With the lead procrastinator of the house safely in absentia, Little Girl and I were unaccountably and irrationally seized by the demonic urge to CLEAN. CLEAN, as we'd never cleaned before, and move furniture! And rearrange rooms! And scare the feline population to fully-fluffed tail status with our strange movings and odd shiftings and sneeze-producing dustings and terrifying vacuumings!

And then, one evening when Little Girl was safely dispatched to Neighbor Girl's home—and thus not available to witness whatever disaster might occur—I decided I would rehang those damn doors myself. There had been a long and frustrating chain of events leading to the non-hanging of the doors, starting with twelve misplaced screws—and I was NOT the one who misplaced them, either, I'll have you know—followed by my failed attempt to procure replacement screws, followed by the miraculous rediscovery of the original screws, followed by a whole lot of apathy about screws, glass display cases, and cleaning in general, to which the smudged bumblebee remains on the back of the case clearly attested.

But that night was different, and after I'd cleaned the glass parts of the case from top to bottom and back again, I assembled a somewhat precarious pile on which to perch a door for proper screwing alignment. The base was FRISKitty's upended play box, the midsection was my overturned dish-drying rack, and the top was an old towel, folded precisely 3.5 times. Upon this unlikely stack, a door could be neatly—and halfassedly securely—placed, aligned, and rescrewed, and it actually took very little time to complete the process, once I'd created the stack that reduced a two-person task to a one-person plus pile chore.

And when it was done—without injury to myself or others—I was inflatedly pleased with myself. I congratulated myself aloud, repolished a few smudges in the (still empty) case, and decided that as a reward for accomplishing a long-overdue task, I would sit on my ass until Little Girl returned home. And read stupid entertainment news on the Internet.

It was getting dark outside, and the house was very quiet without a raucous child bouncing off the (non-glass) walls. Thus, it was very peaceful for me, engrossed in the rumored goings-on of people I do not know and never will, and my mind was nicely imitating inert vegetable mass when a sudden, loud, reverberating *THUD* evicted me from my gleeful perusal of some truly gruesome "fashions" with a violent and alarming shake.

I knew the sound, and though it was a wee bit louder than I was accustomed to, I couldn't elude the niggling thought that there was something very ... wrong ... about it. But birds hit the large glass windows on the side of the house with sad frequency, so it wasn't like it was unusual, except ... except for some reason I couldn't quite put my mental finger on ...

... until I DID, and rocketed down the stairs in a manner I would scold Little Girl for most soundly and loudly, rounded the corner, and found poor FRISKitty, a bemused expression on her kitty face, staring very hard at the crystal-clear, mostly-glass door on the front of the empty display case. The case she'd become quite fond of sitting in, there on the lowest shelf, which was easily within jumping range for her. The case she'd just smacked in to as definitively as any bird had smacked into the windows behind us both, though thankfully not at all hard enough to render her unconscious, or worse. Unlike many birds.

Where my initial reaction had been terror, my reaction now was laughter, and while I apologized profusely to the cat, I was also giggled as I carefully checked for any injury other than to her feline pride. But she was generous enough to promptly live up to her blog-world nickname and frisked right out from under me, tail back up and alert and playful, despite her collision with nothing whatsoever that she could see. I eventually caught her long enough to show her the chairs I'd moved in front of the case, where she could explore the invisible barrier to her preferred seating with a stretch and paw-pat instead of a pounce and head-bang.

Unfortunately, she forgot that the cloaking device on the display case is now fully engaged, and mashed into it again this morning, all leading up to the inevitable moral of this story, which is that cats who live in glass houses shouldn't throw themselves, and/or the title of this piece.

And also, that I shouldn't try to write stories with morals in them without providing barf bags to readers. (Sorry about that.)

Chapter 574, In Which I Kinda Sorta Follow Directions

Granted that it's been a long, long time since I've purchased what are, for me, "fancy pants," so perhaps I should have been prepared for what I found in a pair of such pants, but me being me, you know I wasn't. So what did I do? I made a big deal out of nothing much and now I'm blogging about it.

OF COURSE.

The pants in question, while very nice and even fairly budget-friendly, were not even all that fancy. The Exotic Neurotic helped me find them for my first in-person interview of the summer, which is also known here in the sad, sad world of MY BLOG as the hideous sweat-fest. They were very nice pants, mind you, but just basic black and neatly straight-legged.

I noticed the scratchy tag, of course, because it's difficult not to notice anything that scratches against one's heiny. But I presumed it was something unremarkable, detailing the composition of the fabric or perhaps the country of its origin. Thus, it was not until I arrived home and attempted to dewrinkle the pants from their bagged journey that I discovered that the tag said only this:

-----------CUT HERE-----------


REMOVE
BEFORE
WASHING
OR WEARING

And as you might guess, instead of just reading that and following the effing directions? I proceeded to consider several highly unlikely and entirely ridiculous reasons WHY such directions were being given in the first place.

Maybe it undergoes some gruesome decomposition if it gets up to body temperature, or if it gets wet. Maybe it's like an anti-mattress tag, so it's not even supposed to make sense, but at least it provides balance to the tag removal/non-removal quandary. Maybe it's a misprint but they used up the tags rather than just have them go to waste. Or maybe it's the fashion world equivalent of an Easter egg!

I had dumber ones, too, but I'm shy and reserved, and would rather not share those here, which is totally obvious, because shy and reserved types always go on and on about SWEATING. No, really, I forgot them. On purpose. With wine. But I digress, so nevermind.

Eventually, I did get a scissors and follow the directions, and when I held the tag up to the light, I could see what appeared to be a computer-style circuit, which I presume to be a somewhat sneaky improvement on the GIANT plastic alarm-setting-off tags that more traditionally—and clunkily—attached to clothing to prevent its being stolen. And while that totally took the fun out of my speculation, at least it had the virtue of actually making some sense. Except ...

... while I can see the logic behind removing the tag before wearing the garment out of one's home—lest one return to the store from which one purchased the garment at therein SET OFF THE DAMN ALARM—I can't see the harm in washing the little bastard. What would that do to it, make it NOT WORK? Umm. So what? Also, I can't help but comment that whilst trying these pants on, I was, in fact, wearing them, so if I'd been paying attention, I would have had to CUT THE TAG OFF IN THE STORE to follow the instructions to the letter. And you know what that means, don't you?

Yup. The tag really should have said, "REMOVE AFTER PUCHASE." (I know what you're thinking, and while I do think too much, that's really not the point. Good, succinct directions ... THAT'S the point. Well, it's my point, anyway.)

Hello? Cousin?

Little Girl's school has been very busy slaughtering forests during this barely hatched fall term, and I've already reduced to just skimming the pieces that are addressed to me. I'm not even very cautious about it, with my mental conversation going pretty much exactly like this, "PTO? NO! Book order? Maybe later. Carnival? OMG, I am so NOT baking a cake for the freakin' cakewalk again this year! Box tops? Already on it."

I feel pretty secure in my irresponsibility, too. For one thing, I know from past experience that the mere presence of one paper-committed edict on a subject means that there will be at LEAST one more related copy to "remind" me of the thing I was so dedicated to forgetting. Which I'll also promptly discard, because there's at least a 50/50 chance of there being a second reminder. And? My brain is full as it is.

But school-related information that comes in the mail is another matter. Clearly, stuff that rates a stamp is of vastly more importance than that which is haphazardly stuffed into Little Girl's laminated parent/teacher Communications Folder. So that stuff, I actually read.

Thus it was that I came to read the letter in which us parental types are informed of the school's "easy" way to keep up-to-date on students' academic progress and remaining lunch funds. Although, I'm not exactly impressed, because I've used this system before and know that 1) "academic progress" at Little Girl's age means "anything warranting detention" and nothing else (and I'm only guessing about detention, because last year, there was NOTHING related to Little Girl's grades or behavior available via this portal, and she didn't get detention, but hey, maybe that's not in there, either), 2) it doesn't e-mail "low lunch funds" warnings, it only e-mails "OUT OF lunch funds" alerts, and 3), there's no way to change the heinously unfriendly username or password that are assigned to me by the school.

And that last bit makes the SHOUTED note at the bottom of the letter that much more funny, because YOU'RE DAMN RIGHT I'M GOING TO NEED TO KEEP THIS LETTER FOR LATER REFERENCE. D'oh! Anyway, while I'll certainly check to see if there have been any improvements made to the system since last year in these three critical—to me—areas, I'm not exactly holding my breath. Still, because the letter came in the mail, I read it carefully, just in case there might be something new or different described in this postage-worthy missive.

What I found instead was a few little things that had me laughing out loud, so even though they are not really all that funny—just to me, and this is why it's so important to be "easy" when it comes to humor ... you have so much more fun—I'm going to share here anyway.

For starters, I was warned in the letter that my username, #####, was Case Sensitive. This would be very important except that as you may have surmised from my strategic use of the NUMBER symbol, my username was comprised entirely of numeric values. I do hope that at least one other parent's username includes letters, because otherwise, this notice is just plain silly. Then there was, of course, the hilarious—but considerate—aforementioned suggestion that I should "KEEP THIS LETTER IN A SAFE, SECURE LOCATION FOR LATER REFERENCE, IF NECESSARY." Which, of course, I shall do, assuming that "in that bigass stack of stuff I always meant to carefully classify and store in the filing cabinet" qualifies as "safe" and "secure," and I suppose as long as gravity is in the picture, it doesn't.

Finally, there was the Pièce de Résistance of silliness, and that was this, introductory sentence in the final paragraph of the letter: "The attached brochure will hopefully assist you with any questions you may have regarding your parental access to <Specific School Software System Name>." And I know you're halfway to dreamland now and probably wondering what the hell could be funny about that, and maybe thinking what a snarky whiner I am, and all of that is fine and TOTALLY your right—even if you ARE wrong—but the thing is ... there wasn't a brochure, attached, unattached, or even detached. It just plain wasn't there! Much like my maturity.

But the good news is, I feel MUCH better about my own inadequacies now. Because THIS school administration? They are obviously people I can relate to.

Saved By The Sign

Waiting in lines with the hoards of other attendees at Little Girl's school's "Open House" last week provided her with a prodigious quantity of time in which to irritate me and me with ample opportunity to fruitlessly battle against utter boredom. Of course, in devising innovative new ways to annoy me, Little Girl was waging her own war against the inherent dullness of being trapped in the line to have school pictures taken—the only reason I'd conceded to this pre-school-season pilgrimage in the first place—but even knowing that couldn't help me feel more charitably to her as she repeated slammed her back against the hallway wall, slid slooooowly down until her butt impacted the floor, and poked my ankles with her feet.

"Little Girl," I hissed grumpily for the 45,431st time and stepping out of range (or so I thought), "That's. ENOUGH."

Giggling, Little Girl stood up, went down, and stretched again. And successfully proved that she could stretch that far anyway, because apparently the rules of play here were adaptable enough so that she didn't actually have to have her BACK against the wall or even any body part at all in contact with the wall when she prodded my feet with her own. Which I should have known, it being HER game and HER "rules" anyway.

When rolling my eyes and attempting to shoot stinging lasers out of them failed to impress the seriousness of the situation upon Little Girl, I finally gave in to the inevitable and responsibly and maturely directed her to STAND. NEXT TO ME. and study the all-too-familiar surroundings of her school with me.

"Is that new?" I asked, pointing to a brightly-colored "Welcome Back" sign on the door to the art room and not caring about the answer in the slightest. After all, either "yes" or "no" was going to get me pretty much the exact same amount of ankle-kicking free time. "Oh, hey, is that a menu? What's for lunch on the first day of school?"

Alas, "chicken nuggets"—despite being much more enthusiastically delivered than the preceding answer ("yes")—didn't go very far towards accomplishing my goals, either.

As it turned out, Little Girl herself broke the thrall of her own parent-torturing game when she spotted a new sign on the wall.

"Look, Mommy!" And she pointed towards a bright yellow, well-intentioned, Bully Free Zone™ sign.

And I snickered, squinted, and studied the design closely before concluding that THIS, I had to preserve for posterity. And I scrounged my little black notebook out of my purse and made a note therein.

I can hardly complain about the general idea behind the posting of such a sign, because certainly, I don't support bullying unless someone is prepared to take such action against my former employer. (I kid, I kid. Sorta.) Kids can be cruel in the best of circumstances and it's important to stop such behavior in its tracks wherever possible. If posting a sign to this effect is going to help, even a tiny little bit, I support it. Plus, it killed a few minutes in the long-ass picture-taking waiting line, so WTF, right?

But although I'm not even suggesting I could do better, the pictures on these signs leave a helluva lot to be desired. In fact, it reminded me of one I came across in the warehouse adjoining my former office, wherein a hand was clearly depicted, but the associated star-like shape next to it—over which a red circle with a slash was drawn—was so ambiguous to me that I actually went so far as to ask the Pretzel Logician whether that sign really meant, "Do Not Drop Ninja Stars," which was all I could make out of it.

For the record, he rather dryly retorted that it was "Do Not Stick Hand In Moving Machinery." Huh. Boring, and not AT ALL accurately conveyed by the illustration.

Anyway, while misinterpretation of the image on the new sign at Little Girl's school was neatly precluded by the addition of WORDS—something the illustrators of ninja stars should bear firmly in mind—I couldn't quite see what the picture had to do with it all, either. Because it looked like a big girl leading a little boy along by the hand, which was fine, except the girl had a ponytail that looked disturbingly like a double-headed hatchet. I mean, really, what's supposed to be conveyed by having a hatchet-head? If she was the bully, I would think she'd be raising a fist over a cowering kid, or something more bullyish than apparently taking him for a walk, but then there'd be a circle with a slash through it over her and her dangerous hairdo, right?

On the other hand, if the girl in the picture isn't a bully, then what's the message there? That activities not constituting bullying are primarily focused on hand-holding whilst strolling along to no apparent destination whatsoever? Not that there's anything wrong with having a big girl with hatchet-hair hold your hand, I supose, but if I was that kid, I'd be scared! After all, because he's shorter than she is, HE'S RIGHT UNDER THE PONYTAIL OF DEATH!

In case you're wondering, I didn't share these speculations with Little Girl as she peered interestedly at my effectively illegible chicken-scratchings in my notebook, although I do recall commenting that I thought the design of the "Bully Free Zone™" sign was "weird." Nor did I point out that the sign had actually helped me, preventing me and my non-axe-like hairstyle from being bullied by a bored child who's still somewhat shorter than me.

But I thought it. Oh yes I did.

Yet Another Reason To Hate Murphy

Having recently survived—although not so much aced—my first telephone interview in eight years, I felt marginally more at ease in preparing for my first face-to-face interview—not with the same company that I'd telephone-interviewed with—in about that same time frame. I'd somehow convinced myself that given: 1) my general loathing of telephone conversations with people I don't know, 2) my supremely appropriate