Friday, July 10, 2009
It appears that the sole breadwinner in our house will survive this round of layoffs - YAY -In my BAWWWWW-ing of my last post, I neglected to post one story from my accidentally strenuous nature hike the other day.
My kid and I find the route that we wanted to take and start tromping through the lovely green forest. Over the first hill, we come to a clearing and realize that *gasp* we're less than 10 feet from a whole flock* of deer. All of us freeze.
There's a stupidly cute little baby deer, all huge ears and white spots, munching on a plant right to the left of us. As I'm fawning over the fawn and reaching for my camera, I realize that the fawn is alone on that side of the trail. This means that its mother must be on the left side of the trail.
Sure enough, Doe a deer, a female deer steps from the left side of the trail onto the trail and is facing us. Then she takes a couple steps towards us.
We're still between her and her bebe and just days before, I'd stumbled upon an article about a mommy deer who had kicked a dog's ass because it got too close to her baby deer.
Now, I'm thinking that I may not be able to outrun her, but I'm pretty sure that I could take her since she's all skinny legs and inferior intellect, right? But in the back of my mind, I'm just thinking that I'm going to have to write a blog post about getting my ass kicked by Bambi.
She takes a couple more steps towards us and I push my kid behind me.
She takes a couple more steps and I consider pushing my kid back in front of me.
Then my kid tosses out a piece of the Pirate's Booty he's eating towards her. She leans down, sniffs it, picks it up, eats it and looks at him for more. He tosses her a couple more which she eats. Her baby finishes whatever it's eating, then they all skip off into the forest. And we survive to tell the tale of the possibly homicidal deer.
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Also, isn't social networking weird? I've already blogged about my dislike for it, but isn't it weird? Within the past 2 days, 3 friends have "found" me on Facebook - there's the initial OMGI'MSOEXCITEDTOHEARFROMYOULET'STOTALLYCATCHUP, then ten minutes later we go back to ignoring each other like we have been for the last 4 - 15 years. Weird, right?
Or is it perfect for someone like myself who happens to be socially retarded and generally more comfortable with passive relationships like that?
*yes, I know it's not flock, I'm not a complete troglodyte
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
a couple summer tips from me to you
For the first time in 11 or so years, I live in a place where walking outside during the summer months doesn't make me want to kill myself. So I've been spending a bit of time outside - hiking, gardening, walking, tennis-ing - all kinds of shit. So I'm somewhat of an expert on this stuff now, I thought I'd share some tips -1) While it's a good thing to remember to bring sunscreen when venturing out, it turns out to not be effective unless it's actually applied to your pasty-ass skin. (Who knew?)
2) When you go to a national park and the ranger gives you a map with all of the trails, it's best to read all the information on the map - ie: how advanced the hike is, how long the hike is - instead of piking hikes with cute names. Especially if you're NOT A FREAKING OLYMPIC ATHLETE.
2a) you know you're on the wrong level of trail when there's a vulture circling your wheezing, pink-faced self for the entire second half of your "strenuous" hike. And when your ridiculously athletic child keeps stopping begging you to turn back.
also, we find out within the next week or so (possibly tomorrow) whether or not there will be layoffs at the husband's work. this is decidedly not awesome hopefully they have wifi at the local homeless shelter.
Friday, June 26, 2009
so, because I live a couple of hours away from where the King of Pop died, our local news coverage of this has been ridiculous - cameras camped out at his home, at his family's home, at his star on the Walk of Fame - with nothing new to say. He's still dead, it's still a shock, and there are still no definitive answers. The worst, though, was this afternoon when the local news showed footage of people leaving flowers at a makeshift memorial in England and the newscaster stated that it was "possibly saddest for those in London who had tickets to his comeback concerts"... Right, that's the real tragedy, that some people in London won't be able to go to a concert. Screw the friends and family who are completely gutted by his unexpected death, we should really be mourning the profit that Ticketmaster is going to lose here.I've never considered myself a Michael Jackson fan - I know all of his songs, his music was everywhere when I was growing up. To be honest, though, I've never been able to understand why people were so batshit insane over him. But I get that people were/are batshit insane about him and everyone has their own ways to mourn, but where does it cross the line from mourning to morbidity? Do we need to see footage of the ambulance that transported him to the hospital? Do we need to see pictures of his body being transported to the coroner? Do we need to see footage of friends and family driving in to the family's property?
I'll admit that I'm all kinds of infatuated with the wealth of information available on the internet, but sometimes it's a little bit like one of those giant ice cream sundaes - in theory, it's a cool idea, but if you don't watch yourself, you'll end up feeling like shit for the rest of the day.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
what kind of a mother lets helps her child do something like this?
fresh out of the shower, it's dried to much brighter like the below pic
and, yes, it's a permanent color.
and, no, my husband isn't thrilled.
and, no, my husband isn't thrilled.
the same kind of mother who takes her kid to Ostrich Land and spends half an hour cooing about how cute those freakish birds are with their ridiculous necks and fluttery eyelashes, and how she wants to hug them, then buys a pound of ground ostrich meat in the gift shop to make burgers. Yum, cute animals!
Basically, an awesome mom.
Friday, June 19, 2009
A while back, I mentioned how no one in my house can eat the last cookie (tm), but it seems to extend further than just baked goods - this week alone, I've thrown out a bottle of mouthwash with half of a teaspoon of mouthwash in the bottom, a jar of shampoo with the faintest shampoo residue in the bottom, and two empty granola bar boxes.This drives me in-freaking-sane.
Of course no one in our 3-person household will ever cop to having used the last (or almost last) of something.
Tonight, though, we have reached a new low. My husband pulls out the gallon of milk (with maybe enough for one or two bowls of cereal) smells it, announces that it's bad and mentions that we might want to throw it out soon.
soon.
Then he puts it right back into the refrigerator.
If it's bad, why the hell wouldn't we throw it away NOW???? Is it going to get better overnight? Is one of us going to miraculously develop a taste for chunky milk?
And, you know, if I hadn't emptied the last of it and put the container out in the recycling can, it would have been there, taking up valuable fridge space until the end of time. Because throwing things into any of the trash cans conveniently located throughout the house is HARD.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
in our backyard, we have 3 apricot trees. After taunting me with hard green fruit for-fucking-ever, one of the trees has begun to ripen. Apricots aren't even something I usually consider at the grocery store, but these are some spectacular pieces of fruit - seriously, they're delicious and the first couple days we started plucking them, we hardly got any into the house because we were eating them straight off the tree.The ones we could reach had already been picked, but there were way more ripe ones waiting to be nommed, but not being a tree-climber, I couldn't figure out what to do. Finally I got the brilliant idea of giving the branches a good hard shake to dislodge the fruit (I saw a Food Network show where they did that with pecan trees) - it's great, grab a branch, jiggle it a little and hope you don't get bonked on the head.
In addition to being a great way to get fruit out of trees, this is also a spectacular way to piss off bees. I'm officially a genius.
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The other day, I'm in the middle of dyeing my hair when there's a knock at the door - I open the door and see the neighbor from across the street... well, she's not even really our neighbor anymore since her parents decided that their house was no longer worth what they paid for it, so they stopped making payments and got foreclosed upon. They've been moving out for 3 weeks.
We make small talk about hair dye and she's being all friendly and nice, which, in itself is odd since in the 4 months that we've lived across from each other, she's never made any effort to speak to me. Then she asks if she can have some apricots. She says something about how the people who lived in our house previously used to give her apricots all the time and how she loves them so much, blah blah blah. I tell her that only one of the trees is ripe so far and we don't have any today, she asks if I'm watering them, and tells me that I really need to get to them before the birds, blah blah blah, then she says "I can just go pick some if you want, we used to do that when the Millers lived here."
Sure, lady I've never spoken to before, head into my backyard and harvest yourself some fruit, why don't you?
I reitterate to her that there aren't any ripe ones today, but tell her that if she wants to swing back by tomorrow, I'll grab some for her. She pushes for the picking thing again and I tell her that the dogs are in the yard (not a lie, but it's not like they'd do anything to her) and just ask her to come back another day.
That was 3 days ago, I've got about 20 in a bag for her and she hasn't come back. If she doesn't come get them by tomorrow, I'm making jam, fuck her.
Am I rude for not inviting her into my yard to pick her own fruit? She seemed a little taken aback that I didn't hand her a basket and throw open the back gate for her.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Who says the healthcare system is screwed up?
I know I should be happy to have insurance at all BUT...I found out today that I need a referral from my primary care physician to get an appointment with an eye doctor for my annual eye exam.
huh?
My doctor doctor needs to see me to confirm that I need to see an eye doctor? What's he going to do? Make me take out my contacts and try to read something?
And better than that, I've never seen this doctor before, so it's 3 weeks before I can get in to see the doctor.
So we're waiting 3 weeks so I can waste a $15 co-pay and waste how much of the doctor's time? What a freaking model of efficiency. I kind of feel like I should be trying to get something wrong with me before the appointment just so I don't waste the copay. Any suggestions?