Druglord

I probably should have saved the shitty valium title for today’s pathetic diatribe but hey, whatever. I could be my very own title Nazi but I’m choosing to let this morning’s morphine injection rule my thoughts. Which means everything is followed with a ‘meh, whatever’ and then a disgusting giggle or dopey smile.

If you’re me, and you’re not, obviously, because I’m me, then you hate when people start conversations with sentences like “When I was on morphine this morning….” because that means you’re obligated to mentally sigh and say “Oh my! Why were you on morphine this morning?” It’s like people so desperately want to divulge their personal business but they don’t want to come across as the grandmotherly-type who talks about her bowel movements. So they dangle the carrot and wait for you to bite, and you do, but not because you want to. You bite because society has dictated certain behaviors as acceptable and you’re too much of a pussy to stand up to The Man.

The morphine came from a gallbladder test this morning, only I wasn’t aware there was a chance that morphine could be involved. So when my gallbladder proved mighty elusive and cantankerous, the nurse in pink scrubs came in with a shot of morphine to move things along. This information would have proved useful previous to the morphine insertion. If for nothing else, it would have saved me the mild embarrassment of rambling nonsensically about kitty cat heaven and my inexplicable dislike of peanut butter. And Amanda would have been much more prepared when I called her from the nuclear medicine lab to come get me, because as I was talking to her I was imagining that my voice sounded much like butterflies. Like that scene from The Green Mile where the guy spews forth all manner of creepy computer generated bugs. Only way less creepy, because butterflies are sweet and gentle. Unless you read books by Laurell K. Hamilton, and then the butterflies are mean little fairies who nibble off bits of flesh.

Back to the whole point of this, which is valium. Valium is useless. I’ve gotten higher pumping gas than swallowing four of those orange tablets in a six hour period. Ugh, and now I’m realizing that I never explained the reason for the spasming esophagus and the need for valium. I only alluded to contacting aliens via a radio transmitter, and this is not near enough explanation for someone as verbose as me.

The radio transmitter was implanted, not by aliens, but by my doctor. Who may or may not be working with the aliens. They’re supposed to sedate you while they slide the camera down your throat, cut off pieces of flesh for biopsies and then staple gun this eraser-sized contraption to your esophagus. Only as I’ve previously learned, I have the world’s highest tolerance for valium and demerol. So after my second injection and pleading, tear-filled eyes aimed at the doctor, he slid the camera out of my throat and patted me on the cheek, saying he was very sorry but he just couldn’t give me any more. My blood pressure was too low, so be a good girl and this will all be over in a second. Most of the time when women hear this phrase they end up pregnant. I got a pissed off esophagus. Same thing.

Normally this procedure is completely painless. You wear a pager on your right hip to receive the (alien) transmissions about ph levels for 48 hours. The transmitter falls off five days later and gets eaten by stomach acid. Or something. I also had a catheter inserted into my right nostril with a tiny ph-measuring bulb that hung by my tonsils. Not really that comfortable, but not painful, either. And it was definitely attractive having a plastic tube taped to the side of my cheek. I’m surprised the people at work didn’t have sex with me right then and there.

But obviously I’m a human reject, which means I spent last Wednesday night cranky and miserable. Upon calling the doctor the next day, he was only mildly sympathetic, stating that he had suspected I would be uncomfortable. While most people breeze right on through these tests, my symptoms indicated an extremely sensitive upper GI area. *insert technical doctor jargon here* As such, I was probably in quite a bit of pain.

I’m not sure what’s gotten into people lately, but there have been several times in the past few weeks where I’ve had mental screaming matches with myself about how very useful certain information would have been previous to these events.

To compensate, Senor Doctor called in large bottle of valium at my local Walgreens. Super, I think. I will take the valium and go into a lovely pain-free trance-like state. But four pills and six hours later found me sitting on my couch, wishing death upon the entire world. Still in pain, still cranky and slightly homicidal.

As such, my holiday season was spent popping valium. Lots and lots of valium. It takes four pills at a time to make me relaxed, and another two if I feel like sleeping.

The alien transmitter fell out late Tuesday evening. I feel much better now. Also, I have a new cat. Her name is Sugar Monkey. Or maybe Gidget.

Dear Santa: Your elves have shitty valium.

I thought about describing my pill-popping Christmas by going into great detail about my mental disintegration after the vet “accidentally” killed Llama (with valium, no less). I would describe the ever-increasing emotional hysteria, culminating in an office meltdown of epic proportions. Then on to the brief but stern admonishment from my boss regarding throwing sharp projectile objects in spaces that might be occupied by other humans. My story would end when a sympathetic coworker popped open a bottle of valium and force fed three orange pills down my throat, which left me comatose and slightly drooly. After which I was fired for my unsatisfactory conduct.**

But then I realized not everyone finds me amusing. Plus, this is the holiday season, and whether you sing that crazy dradle song or the one about a baby in a poop-filled barn, most deities hate liars, especially blatant ones. And while I definitely cried, okay, sobbed, on the phone with my mother after the vet called with his bad news, I wouldn’t describe my emotional state as unstable. Pissed off would be far more realistic. And maybe just a little sad. Oh, and guilty. See below:

By the time I finally managed to call the vet back, it was late afternoon. I’d spent my morning within the bowels of a hospital eating eggs laced with nuclear matter and reclining under what appeared to be a giant black drum. While it’s inordinately uncomfortable for me to lie perfectly still for any length of time, this was by far the most enjoyable portion of my day. Possibly because I hadn’t been able to eat anything since 9pm the night before and I’m not one of those kids who forget to eat. Forget my keys, maybe. Eating, never. As such, those nuclear eggs were like manna from heaven.

The only moderately cool thing from that whole ordeal was watching the little nuclear bits hang out in my stomach. They kind of resembled very busy microscopic ants with a tendency to stay in a giant dotty cluster. I’m using the word ‘cool’ very loosely, because while it was neat in that ‘look at my innards!’ kind of way, I’ll be the first to admit that I have very irrational semi-fears about things. Mostly they involve aliens, alien babies and bird noises. My greatest fear would have me standing next to a long-armed alien while I birthed his alien spawn from my stomach, all while they communicated via bird noises. So it shouldn’t have come as any great surprise that while watching the little nuclear bits move around in my abdominal cavity, the Crazy part of my brain was all “You know that’s how they breed, don’t you? The eggs are merely a vehicle for their alien spawn. Look at them on the screen- invading every molecule of your body. You’re going to be the Mary for the bug-eyed alien race.”

The non-crazy part of my brain, the one that deals frequently with my overactive and slightly paranoid imagination, responded by sighing in resignation. “You’re going to write about this on the internet, aren’t you? This is not how you get boys to make out with you.”

However, I’m going to blame low blood sugar on the brief (but stunning) coup by Crazy Brain. I’m quite aware that nuclear matter does not equal alien babies and should the previous admission diminish anyone’s desire to make out with me, I’m deeply sorry.

Following my nuclear morning, I was sent to another hospital building for a CAT scan. This wasn’t nearly as amusing as the egg test, mainly because I had to drink a gallon of pink Crystal Light infused with some unidentifiable substance. I was not to drink it too quickly, however, because it would make me nauseated. I nodded my head in acknowledgement when the nurse told me this, then informed her that everything makes me nauseated so this should be wicked exciting.

The scan itself wasn’t anything to write home about, with the exception of whatever drug was injected into the vein in my right arm. After the technician left the room, her voice came over the intercom and told me that I would probably feel like I was wetting myself and that my pelvis would feel abnormally warm. Personally, I feel that this is the sort of information that should be shared before the drug injection. But hey, who’s judging?

Now that I’ve run through my six hours of hospital visiting, you can understand why it took me five and a half hours to return the message left by my vet. I thought it was just a normal update on the declawing and shot-giving for The Demonspawn. Maybe letting me know that they were resting comfortably, ready for pickup after 5pm. Unbeknownst to me, Llama was definitely resting comfortably. In a fucking body bag. He’d died when the nurse had injected the kitty cat valium into his hind leg. Dropped dead right on the table, the vet said. I got to hear about that ‘dropping dead’ part about eight or nine times, which is exactly the mental image you want of your pet. Right next to the one of an ice-encrusted ball of fluff inside the confines of a plastic ziploc bag. Because I’d taken so long to return his call, he said, they’d had to put him in the freezer. To halt decomposition. Again, THANKS FOR THAT MENTAL IMAGE, ASSHOLE.

So I drove across town to pick up Lily, because one pet death was really all I could handle. Had I ingested more than Crystal Light and nuclear eggs that day, I probably would have had the energy to disembowel the vet like I envisioned on my drive over. But hunger and sadness hand rendered me weak, and instead I just held Lily’s furry little body to my chest and cried silently all the way home. Feeling like a horrible cat-mother for sending them off for an unnecessary procedure, just to save my new couch from frenzied clawing. Feeling horrible and heartless for shoving a normally docile Llama into his cat carrier, clawing and hissing all the way. Feeling even guiltier for thinking, over and over, you had to kill my favorite one, didn’t you?


Oh, and before you think I was kidding about the elves making shitty valium, I’m totally not. Tomorrow I promise to tell you how I made contact with the aliens via the radio transmitter implanted in my esophagus. And no, I’m not kidding. At least about the radio transmitter. The alien part is up for interpretation.

** Just so we're clear, I'm not terminated. Nor did I have a hissy fit and throw objects at humans. I did let a tear or twelve slip out when everyone at work stopped by to hug me, and it was all very Terms of Endearment-y.

Llama died yesterday and I'm unbelievably sad.

Where I continue to overshare

I had every intention of keeping my mouth shut about future health malfunctions because I finally reread a week’s worth of entries and realized that I was one whiny bitch. My throat hurts, I feel bad, my body is achy, my toe has a cramp, wah wah wah. It’s like someone opened the floodgates and instead of just calling my mother every night to complain, I had to open my laptop as well. Super.

But then Friday morning I woke up with the Stomach Death and I realized I was totally going to have to word vomit my experience into the bowels of the internet again, just like I vomited up a week’s worth of dietary intake straight into my toilet.

It started at three o’clock, a time when the majority of the greater Little Rock area was fast asleep in their dry comfortable beds. When I woke up, my entire body was covered with the kind of sweat that says “I just robbed a convenience store and sprinted for two miles to escape the police, pardon me while I pass out in your front lawn from exhaustion.” Obviously something was wrong, but I’m a stubborn one. I had a vested interest in keeping twenty dollars worth of pan-seared salmon below the Mason-Dixon line.

Four Tums (useless fruit-flavored crap) and an hour later, I was begrudgingly sliding out of bed, only to be hit with a wave of nausea so intense my legs almost gave out. The blood vessels around my eyes, the ones that always burst unattractively after a bout of vomiting, were already preparing themselves by puffing up in excitement.

And so my fifteen hour love affair with the porcelain goddess began. By seven-thirty I was confident I had expunged not only the pan-seared salmon and a gallon and a half of stomach bile, but possibly a kidney as well. I made a pathetic attempt at lightheartedness when I called and left a message for my boss, not realizing until the last second that the stomach acid had damn near ripped my vocal chords in two and I sounded like an eighty-five-year-old man with a four pack-a-day habit. Which meant the verbiage about dying alone in my apartment with two hungry cats who would eventually gnaw off my face sounded unnervingly real. And I was only half joking.

When eight o’clock rolled around, the early morning sweat attack had dried to little crystallized spikes all over my body. Obviously I was dying. Best to speed it up by drowning myself in the tub, where at least I could die warm. Only I’d forgotten to purchase a drain stopper during each previous grocery excursion, which meant I’d have to figure out how to drown myself in the shower. But this required standing, and countless hours of compulsive vomiting had rid me of any coordinated leg movements. So I flipped on the shower nozzle and waited for the hot water to hit my hand before rolling myself over the edge, red trackpants and all.

Unfortunately, my hot water heater is a useless, malignant oozing sore on the face of humanity. It provides about nine minutes of shower-worthy water before abruptly giving out. There are probably ways I could fix this, but I’d lay money on it being older than the invention of fruitcake and I have a strict no-fondling rule for persons and objects greater than twenty years my senior.

And though there was nothing left to give up, no semblance of liquid left in my body, The Goddess and I continued to have a face-to-face relationship until mid-afternoon. I’d covered the floor in soft fluffy towels, where I reclined in wait of the next dry heave, the next organ-loosening contraction, the next near-death experience.

By late afternoon I had the following conversation with my stomach- here is the transcript:

Me: Hi, Stomach. This is me, Robin. First, I want to say I completely and utterly to submit to the rule you have over my body. If I have slighted you in the past, I do humbly beg your forgiveness.
Stomach: As it should be.
Me: Obviously Amanda contaminated us with a virulent strain of Vomiticus, which forced you to expunge last evening’s choice of dinner- the aforementioned dinner shall remain nameless as I have come to the conclusion that the mere thought of it sends you on a well-deserved jihad against my esophagus.
Stomach: You are observant, my child.
Me: I wonder if I might run a few things by you- feel you out, so to speak.
Stomach: Please, go right ahead. I’ll be sure to inform you if I am displeased.
Me: Thank you, Stomach. You are most gracious. I was wondering how you feel about crackers?
Stomach: I believe this would be a hasty decision. Imagine what non-lubricated cracker bits will do to your esophagus on their way back up.
Me: Your opinion is duly noted. What say you about juice?
Stomach: What kind of juice are you suggesting?
Me: We have grape in the fri--
Stomach: DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A CLEAR LIQUID TO YOU?
Me: Um, no sir.
Stomach: Then perhaps you had best stay away from it.
Me: A pear, then? They’re awfully juicy. Very soft.
Stomach: That’s a negative, ghostrider.
Me: Where did you learn such colloquialisms?
Stomach: Please stay focused.
Me: My apologies. *pause* There are popsicles in the freezer. Cool and soothing....
Stomach: After the juice debacle, I’m afraid to ask what flavor.
Me: Well, they’re creamy coconut but you usually ADORE creamy coconut.
Stomach: Are you high?
Me: No, just sore.
Stomach: Stupid, then?
Me: So the coconut is a no-go. *long pause, cringing* How about some Sprite?
Stomach: Hmmm. Possibly. Maybe you should take a sip?
Me: Is this a trick? Because I did not like the previous revolt and-
Stomach: Do not anger me, missy. I will do as I see fit and you will like it. Do you understand me?
Me: Yes, Stomach. I understand you. So you’d accept a small cup of Sprite? Could I trade two sips of liquid for one cracker nibble?
Stomach: *thinking, thinking* Yes, provided the cracker nibble is extremely well chewed.
Me: *mentally shaking hands* Deal. Two sips for every cracker nibble. I will not disappoint you, Stomach.
Stomach: Let’s hope.

The Agony

On the way back from lunch, Nancy shot her arm across the span of the car to turn down the “puppy killing” music that Kimberly had selected to help combat our post-lunch slump. She then turned her perfectly coiffed blonde head towards the three of us in the rear and fanned her face in mock excitement, exclaiming that up here on the left is where Robin and I were attacked by the bee!

She was right. And as far as I’m concerned, it should be hallowed ground protected by pink forcefields and vicious attack kittens because it’s not everyday that you pop your Embarrassment Cherry in front of the entire lunch-going population of West Little Rock.

It started at Mimi’s, a relatively new addition to the generic restaurant chains that sprout up in under fourteen days. These family oriented establishments come complete with a uniformed and seasoned crop of servers just dying to read you the specials, smile firmly in place, because working at Mimi’s is totally going to increase their tip revenue and waiting tables at On the Border is just so passé.

Throughout lunch I kept finding the crispy remains of flies on our table in places that had been decidedly fly-free only moments before. Like the heavens confused fly carcasses for manna and dropped them liberally upon unsuspecting restaurant patrons. And then halfway through the meal I saw something small, black and winged fly just past my eyelash. I have no idea where it landed but judging by its trajectory, the French onion soup one table over might have received an unexpected visitor.

For whatever reason, the six or seven dead flies I was personally witness to didn’t affect my gross-out factor. Because, I suppose, they were dead. If they’d been buzzing around my face, this would have been an entirely different story. Obviously whatever was supposed to kill them was killing them, however unfortunate their crinkled little black bodies looked beside the bread basket.

Nancy and I had taken my Honda to lunch, mainly because we like putting as many vehicles on the roads during lunch hour as humanly possible. Also, global warming is just a scam and it’s not like we really need the rain forest, anyway. On the way back we cranked up the air conditioner because September in Arkansas is akin to placing your delicate, naked body upon a hard reflective surface at high noon on the equator. Only it’s more humid here.

About a quarter of the way back to the office, Nancy inexplicably stopped mid-sentence and I turned my head, confused, just in time to watch her blue eyes go from normal mascared size to the kind of eyes you see on dead people. Specifically, dead people who have just been confronted with an alien race that intends to drown you in festering alien pus while sharpening their razor sharp teeth on your tailbone.

The only thing she could get out was a breathless squeak of unadulterated fear. She pulled her suddenly frozen hand from her lap and pointed at the side of my head, finally managing to form her mouth around the words that nobody trapped in a moving vehicle with air-tight windows wants to hear: BEE.

As Nancy finally gained her breath and forced a scream out of her windpipe, I lost every ounce of my sanity and swerved to the right, narrowly missing a silver Toyota. When I realized that a twelve inch tall curb significantly prevented me from ramping into the median, I swerved again, this time to the right. I imagine that the people behind me nonchalantly let off their gas pedals because look what we’ve got here, another corporate junkie coming off a liquid lunch. Surprise.

I turned a space just barely big enough to fit a tuna can into my impromptu parking spot and jumped out of the car, not caring that my door was open and the chances of it being ripped off were pretty high. Also, there’s that whole human body versus oncoming traffic thing but that’s just not what crosses one’s mind when confronted with a vicious bee in one’s hair.

At first I ran to the front of the car, hoping to dislodge it and send it on its merry way. But Nancy immediately and shrilly confirmed that it was most definitely still stuck in my hair and if I didn’t hurry it was definitely going to eat my face off. So I ran to the passenger side and threw my head towards my knees, assuming the quick flurry of activity would rid me of my unwanted hair accoutrement.

Here’s where it gets even more amusing: After twenty seconds of head-flipped-over screaming and indescribable panic, I finally convinced Nancy (via more screaming and panic) that she had to help me and she had to help me right that very second. So she sucked up her courage and got out of the passenger seat, scrunching her nose and averting her face, hands pawing at my hair in the manner of a girl-fight circa 1975 Connecticut. I say Connecticut because hello, I spent the majority of my high school years in a place (Mississippi) where girl-fights meant somebody’s weave was getting ripped out and the sign of a seasoned fighter was a string of self inflicted box-cutter scars on the forearm. Those bitches did not play.

I finally flipped my mass of hair back over, only to be met with Nancy’s horrified eyes. The bee, it was still there. Which just launched more screaming and general ass-hattery.

Three hair flips later and Nancy deemed my tresses bee-free. After a moment of hysterically tinged laughter, I got back in the driver’s seat and drove us back to the office, where we diligently reenacted our embarrassing and irrational display.

Also? That bee? It was already dead.

What? More snot?

Let’s be honest- at this point I almost have no choice but to morph this blog from a spewing of mindless drivel to a spewing of health related dysfunctions, including examples of my patheticness when sickly. This is not to say I’m over being sick, because I’m not. We have officially kicked off week two in Robin’s Misery Campaign and what better way to make my proposed format transition than by notifying everyone that from this point forward, I will talk incessantly about bowel movements, mucus balls, eye goop, bloody snot and vomiting.

Only I hate talking about bowel movements, this is just where I draw the line. They shouldn’t be discussed with anyone outside of the healthcare profession or that one friend who talks openly about dropping the kids off at the pool. The friend who will openly and unashamedly tell you that now is definitely not the best time to visit the ladies because she’s about to go in there and coat the pipes. We all have this friend so it does you no good to deny it.

It’s just I’ve spent a lifetime of listening to my grandmother describe color and texture and frequency and suppository insertion and pain of poop removal. Add onto that another lifetime of listening to my mother bitch about how she has to smile and nod with concern or appreciation during these stories, and it’s like being tag teamed by herds of angry rhinoceros and gassy warthogs. The rhinoceros are pissed because they’ve had their delicate ears assailed with stories of poop carnage and the warthogs are oblivious to the fact that a) eating the crunchy caterpillars gives them lower intestinal difficulties and b) the rhino’s aren’t really that keen on hearing about the rectal expelling of the caterpillars.

Obviously I need to come up with better analogies. The point being that I’m not going to talk about poop. My poop, your poop or your girlfriend’s poop. I will, however, talk about cat poop. Because that shit stinks and it’s especially foul when it gets stuck in the kitty cat butt-fur. Besides, my whole goal in life is to grow up to be the cantankerous lady next door who smells faintly of cat litter. It’s just an added bonus if I get to smell like cat litter tainted with poop. It’s like asking god to strike a trifling whore with a case of chlamydia and instead he gives her a kid plus thirty pounds of stretch-marked baby weight.

Chuck Norris, come kick this mucus in the ass!

This past week has been an in-depth study in the inadequacies of hydrocodone and the sheer ineptitude of medical professionals. Barring the mono incident during my junior year in college, this is by far the most miserable I have ever been. And when I say miserable, I mean so miserable that the act of swallowing my own spit actually keeps me awake at night. The sheer pain involved in contracting my throat makes me want to tear the heads off helpless gerbils. Though obviously I can’t do much more than make paste-o-gerbil in my oral cavity. Like pate’, only not.

I made it into wok for a solid hour yesterday when I decided the world would definitely be a better place if I would take my cantankerous ass home to bed. Many hours of sleeping later and I was equally as cranky as when I left work. And my throat still felt like a breeding ground for unhappy scorpions.

This morning I made deals with myself: I did not have to wash my hair but I did have to shower. I did not have to shave my legs but I did have to brush my teeth. I did not have to dress in a professional manner but I did have to put on a bra. This made these accomplishments easier to stomach, simply because I had exempted myself from the more laborious tasks. Also, it’s winter. Who cares if I miss one day of leg shaving, anyway?

Once at work I realized what an awful, terrible thing it is to be cooped up in one’s apartment for many, many days in a row. It was abundantly clear to me upon sitting at my clean, clutter-free desk that my apartment had gone from meeting the definitions of those words to being an apartment that might actually collapse under the weight of stacks of leftover sherbert bowls and popsicle wrappers and half-eaten pasta frozen dinners. Much like cleaning the yogurt remnants from my three-day-old scarf, I apparently couldn’t be bothered with little things like putting the crusty dishes in the sink or picking discarded blankets off the floor.

And even though the thought of my living space sitting in such a mound of cluttered filth would normally send me straight home for cleaning, nothing short of a building fire and the smoldering remains of my belongings could illicit a greater reaction than ‘meh.’ And even now, thinking about the smoldering couch and charred shoes, my first thought is “that’s why you have renter’s insurance” followed immediately by “meh.”

Misery also loves The Real World

Much like yesterday, I spent the majority of my time today in heinous fits of misery. I rotated from the couch to the bed and from the bed to the couch roughly every four hours. Not because I really wanted to, but because I once watched a Primetime report about nursing homes and the horror that is an oozing bedsore. Obviously my bedsore risk rates fairly low, seeing as how I've only been confined to my apartment for three days. I never claimed to be totally rational.

I wish I could enjoy what is effectively a four day weekend but it's amazing how old forcing down popsicles and yogurt can get, especially when one's throat feels like someone set your esophageal area to the pureed setting. I also tend to doze off at the oddest of times, normally snapping to attention when my body has text messaged my sleeping self with 'Hey bitch. U have snot rnng dwn ur face and ur throte needs sum h20. Thnx!! xoxo.'

And then there are the really confusing moments, like when you wake up to two over-zealous Real World sluts performing a vicious oral examination when the last thing you remember is watching a polar bear documentary on Animal Planet. Just in case you're wondering, that's a whole twenty channels worth of flippage or some very coordinated channel selection, all while heavily sedated.

Tomorrow I'm going to make a concerned attempt to make it in to work. This requires that many things be accomplished before 7:30am, specifically, a shower. I'm not sure how that's going to work seeing as how I've had the same black scarf around my neck since Sunday at 2pm. That's going on fifty-five hours of crustification, including the mounting yogurt stains achieved by attempting to feed myself in a semi-prone position. I couldn't be bothered to do more than wipe half-heartedly at them, seeing as how I was conserving my energy for the next time I was going to have to get up and pee.

Misery doesn't love company, it loves mucus

I spent the majority of my day either huddled into a corner of the sofa or huddled in a ball on my bed, covered by copious amounts of polarfleece and down.

Amidst all my misery, I received the following touching message from a friend of mine:

Some people are like Slinkies... Not really good for anything, but they still bring a smile to your face when you push them down a flight of stairs.

There's really nothing like an inspirational pick-me-up to brighten your day. *tear

An apple a day

This morning I woke up with Tickle Me Elmo having a go at my throat. Which would be all well and good if I were a masochistic puppet but last time I checked I wasn't made of velveteen remnants or polyester hair. And I certainly don't require someone's hand up my ass to simulate strange hinged-jaw movements that showcase my delightful gullet-less orifice.

Also, I somehow managed to restick my Breathe Right strip to my right forearm in the middle of the night. As breathing rarely has anything to do with right forearms, this did nothing to curb the steady drizzle of snot making it's way down into my stomach. Breakfast of champions, it is not. I tend to rub my face a lot when sickly, so sometime between midnight and feeling healthy and seven and feeling an unfortunate weather condition of mucus, I appear to have rolled myself in a field of Agent Orange. I knew all those years in 'Nam were going to bite me in the ass one day.

I pushed on through four hours of nursery duty because the money's good and what better way to spread Christmas cheer than by letting a five-month old gum your dioxin-infected fingers? Besides, Tickle Me Elmo had deserted his voracious tickling of my throat, probably in lieu of the veritable gold mine that is a room full of two-year-olds.

After lunch I made my way home and climbed three flights of stairs that felt distinctly like eighty. All the way I cursed the Third Floor Walk-Up, damning contractors the world over for failing to install one measly elevator. Once inside I went immediately to the thermostat and moved it up to seventy five because my fingers had suddenly lost all blood flow and if I wasn't careful, I'd be dropping frozen appendages like Elizabeth Taylor drops husbands.

Two hours later I woke up from my fitful and drug-induced nap in a fit of shivers and in distinct need of some pliers to remove the glass spikes from my throat. These moments always make me want my mama, not only because I know she'll bring me hot tea but because I have some morbid need for someone to see me when I'm deathly ill. I need someone, somewhere, to fully comprehend just exactly how miserable I am in that current moment. I need them to reassure me that I really am sick and I have every right to moan half-heartedly under the covers. And they're really handy when it dawns on you that the bottle of hydrocodone that Doogie Howser gave you after your stomach tried to birth an alien baby is sitting in the depths of your purse. Which is sitting in the middle of the entryway, right where you dropped it on the way to your bed mere hours before.

The only problem with hydrocodone is that a whole pill puts me in a very vomitous frame of mind-- and while eating wasn't high up on Things To Do list, forcing acid coated vomit up through the bloody remains of my throat was even lower. So I forced The Demonspawn from their very appreciated spots on my feet and pulled all the covers from my bed, grabbing my scarf from the closet because I quite like my nose and what if it should get frostbitten? It'd be all black and crusty and nobody likes a girl with an icky, half-gnawed off nose.

I stood in my kitchen wrapped in four layers of down comforter and polar fleece and watched the microwave while it heated up my pasta, knowing if I went back to my bed to wait out the cooking time, I'd never get back up. And then I'd never take the happy pill. And then I'd never make it to the Pier One sale because I'd have up and died alone with my cats in my third floor walk-up. And that's just too sad for words.

Which brings us to now: HIGH AS A FUCKING 747 FLYING OVER THE ATLANTIC. Still cold, but in a very dreamy sort of way. I have a very squishy mouth. Specifically, my lips feel all poofy and soft and when I bite them they seem to just kind of spill over my tongue. At least the glass spikes have subsided to a sort of swollen spikey marble feeling. I will take a throat full of swollen spikey marbles over the rotating slice-n-dice of the glass spikes any day. And if you're the one who has been sending me the glass spikes, have no doubt that I will find you and I will cut you.

Dear MSN,

Seriously. This picture does nothing to put me in a Holiday mood. I do not care that it’s a “fun” parade float. I do not care that this is considered to be the french-fry dispenser by children the world over. I DO NOT CARE. It is early and I don’t appreciate being greeted by a building-sized air-filled clown whose expression is less “Happy Holidays, kiddies!!!” and more “Please, I beg you, get this light pole out of my ass.”

Sincerely,
[redacted]

I'm Feeling Happy, So Highly Evolved

This morning I drove across town to pick up my deposit check from my previous landlord. His acquiescence was ensured after I faxed and emailed a lovely document I created, one in which I visually detailed the rat population and the monochromatic display of mildew on my bathroom ceiling. I also pointed out that in the 18 months I lived in that apartment, only one major repair was completed. The kitchen window sill had rotted through and was allowing all manner of water and creatures into the apartment. After two months of repeated phone calls, emails, faxes and personal visits, my leak was finally fixed. WITH DUCT TAPE. As such, my deposit was expected in full. By today.

Late yesterday afternoon I received a response to my email, indicating that he’d be in the office after 9:30 and he’d have the check ready. I refrained from replying back, as much as it killed me. I desperately wanted to ask his pasty red-haired slimy ass if he had any intention of returning my deposit until I threw a giant fit. He should have known better, though. I can throw fits like nobody’s business.

On the way back to the office I pulled out the CD in my dash, half-heartedly looking through my lackluster collection of available music for a replacement. Feeling very uninspired, I made a blind grab for a disc in the middle, praying it wasn’t the soundtrack to “Sliver” I’d bought 1994. Instead, I’d managed to select a burned copy of the Highly Evolved album by The Vines. I know that absolutely no one is interested in how I came by this CD, but if you’re really that bored, click on Yoj to your right and read about man titties.

When I lived in New York I worked at a post-production facility. We took the footage from commercial and short film shoots and edited them down to the 15, 20, 30 and 60 second spots that aired across the globe. Ever seen those Valtrex commercials? The ones for genital herpes? How would you like to eat three weeks of lunches sitting in a room full of ad execs discussing whether they liked the “I NEVER let genital herpes get in my way” take or the “I never let GENITAL herpes get in my way” take. My god, the agony.

In the DVD production office was a tall, broad shouldered guy with a personality that could strip the varnish off a 100-year-old violin. I’m assuming it’s hard to take that varnish off, I have no idea. Point being, he was sarcastic and acerbic and caustic MY OH MY, that’s just how I like ‘em.

Late one night we were lounging in the kitchen, eating Ritz crackers and cream cheese, waiting on an editor to finish cutting the last bit of a commercial so Steven could transfer it to the final DVD reel and I could get in the Towncar outside and head to Long Island, DVD in hand. Amidst our bitching that it was ten o’clock at night and couldn’t these people wait until the morning, we got to talking about music. I admitted to rarely buying CD’s, or even taking the time to burn them. I was lazy at heart and there was just no beating that out of me.

In our discussion, Steven asked to borrow my Silverchair CD, one of the few newer albums I’d swiped from my brother without his knowledge. Obviously I agreed, as what better way to win favor with cantankerous men who haven’t the slightest idea that you exist as a female? I was almost giddy with excitement, as this meant I had a guaranteed conversation starter for the following day. Score one for me.

The next day Steven returned with my disc, as well as a copy of Highly Evolved that he thought I might like. I had the hugest crush on him from that moment forward--until he invited me to a movie with some friends of his and we went to some anime’ premier that made me want to stab myself in the eye, repeatedly, with a lit blowtorch. Suddenly I realized his cutting remarks stemmed less from high intelligence and more from a total lack of relevant social interaction.

Days left for my previous landlord to return my deposit before I light his ass on fire and key his car: 1

Notice

I added some links on the side. Please do not hex me if I didn't add yours. I was probably just too lazy to look up the URL.

In other news: My god am I hungry. Definitely a delivery kind of evening.

Why I should just burn more CD's

I realize I’m not really the person to ask about popular music. After all, I’m in love with The Cure, and have been for many, many years. This isn’t a Radiohead or Pearl Jam-esque obsession, because people who get all up in Eddie Vedder’s business are a little insane. Music by The Cure is always relaxing and happy to me, plus it makes me dance in my living room in spasmatic, uncontrollable fashion. Because I’m fairly positive my neighbors lead a boring suburban life and what better way to spice it up than watching the idiot cat-lady through the third floor windows?

It’s just I get confused by some forms of music. I spend the entire length of the song thinking about the circumstances that had to occur to get this idiotic representation of the human race a recording contract and by the time I’m done with my thought process, the song is over times four. Not all of it is bad, obviously. Take the 'popular' music stations, for example. Some of the music is nice, inspiring what I like to refer to as my non-death-metal head-banging antics. Some of it even makes me wish that seats didn’t have to cup your posterior so closely, thereby preventing the posterior from shaking it like a salt shaker should so obviously be shaken.

But the names, MY GOD, the names. A couple of years ago I was totally thrown off by a grown man who went by the name of Chingy. Maybe this is a perfectly acceptable moniker to you, I have no idea. But Chingy sounds an awful lot like dinghy (wee little boat) or dingy (see also: ding bat). These, in turn, make me think of dingleberry, which is what hangs off my cat’s ass after he craps in the litter box and a leftover piece of poo gets stuck in his butt-fur. Hence, I associate Chingy with fur encrusted poopage. Probably not what he was going for.

Now I know I’ve berated some of the more amusing songs on here, ones that verbally express their undying love for strippers with big, brown eyes who twirl around the pole. The song where female genitalia is, I assume, being compared to peanut butter and jelly. Fergie and her inexplicable lyrics about going down on her London Bridge. And now I have a new one to add to the list, per yesterday’s rush hour drive home: a song about a man who’s trying to get to you and that monkey. I’m assuming that, per usual, the never fully described “monkey” is referring to female bits (obviously these men are tired of having penises). Of course, he could actually be referring to a real live monkey, because he’s just kookoo for coco puffs, if coco puffs are the round bits of poop that monkeys will inevitably throw at each other. I seriously doubt he has such animal-preservation motives, however, because the line right before the monkey bit professes how he’s trying to get to you and that booty. This line I totally understand. He’s enthralled with a young woman’s backside and he’s been overcome with the need to get to it, like, right that very second.

Plus, he wants you shake it, shake it, later on tonight.

I'm funny how, I mean funny like I'm a clown, I amuse you?

I transferred to the new Blogger Beta last Wednesday, mainly because I was wicked tired of logging in and being greeted by a full page SWITCH NOW!!!! advert. It started off as a lonely little link in the upper right hand corner, quietly hovering, patiently waiting for me to choose the new and improved (and probably untested) version of Blogger over the comfortable and familiar home to which I’d become accustomed. Later, it was a slightly larger and only mildly obtrusive link above the dashboard. Then apparently they decided they’d had enough with this subtlety bullshit, let’s take up the whole page with our reminders about easy template editing, layout design and much, much more! Just click here to switch! Easy peasy!

Only it wasn’t easy peasy and little things like making my yahoo email address reappear on my profile were ridiculously complicated. It only wanted to show my secretive gmail address, and it’s called my secretive gmail address because IT’S A SECRET, DAMNIT. I finally gave up and used the layout design screen, which was alright and all, I was just super annoyed with the whole process by then and couldn’t think of anything nice to say.

Thanksgiving came along and that evening I decided to check out my sitemeter. It’s not something I do all time but it’s kind of festive to look at, especially when I see that someone in Tehran found my site by googling “hot girl but sex.” And yes, they spelled it without the second t. I’ve also enjoyed “fabrication sandwich roll ups,” “mormon hobby lobby,” and “fergie + every time my laundry.” I know I harp a lot on Fergie but she just makes it so easy. Big Bird-yellow ruffle dresses. Peeing on herself during a concert. Meth addiction. Spray tans. Plus, someone out there confused her lyrics of “every time you come around my London Brige” with EVERY TIME YOU COME AROUND MY LAUNDRY. This alone is priceless to me.

But as of 10pm on Thanksgiving, I’d had not one single visitor. Kind of strange, I thought. But it is Thanksgiving. Maybe the whole internet population is just doped up on turkey-sleeptophan. Then it was Friday and Saturday and Sunday, and still not one single hit on the sitemeter. I actually got a touch paranoid, thinking maybe there was some vast internet campaign to keep visitors away from the mindless drivel I spew forth on average of three times a week. Sometimes more if you’re lucky.

By Monday afternoon I’d had it. Something was very obviously wrong with the sitemeter and I was totally going to get to the bottom of it, what with my total lack of patience concerning things I don’t understand. Thirty minutes of my lunch break later, it dawned on me that perhaps when I switched to the festive little Beta version, the sitemeter folks just didn’t know what to do with it and, well, I don’t know. There’s probably some techno lingo I could throw in there but I only know enough to sound reasonably intelligent in my meetings and to know that there’s not enough money in the world to convince me to be a programmer.

Anyway. This is all very anticlimactic at this point, but installing a new meter fixed it. I can now go back to cross-state/country/continent stalking. All is right with the world.

Dragonflutters

Yesterday was one of those crazy days where the world stops spinning on it’s lovely diagonal axis and you get a second or two to understand what Mr. Clarke was talking about in ‘Childhood’s End.’ Obviously I’m overexaggerating, but that’s what I do. I say things like “This lotion smells like heaven” when what I really mean is “This lotion adequately performs it’s lotionizing duties but I feel I must be excessively exuberant in my appreciation of the lotion.” That may or may not be a good example but I’m counting on you not to judge me and to continue nodding your head in semi-agreement.

A friend of mine got married yesterday afternoon and another one found out she is having a bundle of joy that comes fully equipped with a sausage and meatballs, which means she instantly began debating the name that will accompany this little boy well into adulthood. Here’s hoping they don’t name him Rupert or Otis.

Both of these girls are like balls of hyper-rotating happiness, radiating fields of glowing human sunshine that thankfully does not require one to wear protective glasses to prevent the dancing sunlight from sneaking in and searing off your corneas. It’s a pleasant kind of sunshine, one that leaves chunks of sparkly glitter in their wake because they’ve got so much giddiness stored up they can’t possibly contain it.

On a different note, this means I am the last remaining single female in my office. If I think really hard about it, I may be the only single PERSON left in my office. This is neither good nor bad, it just is. Just like the love of Tom and Katie just is. And the lure of yellow post-it notes just is. And the thirst-quenching effects of water just is. That was all one potential grammatical nightmare but I had to keep going with my analogy. You understand.

So what I’m thinking is this: I’m going to start dressing my cats in clothing, like, really scary clothing. The best kind is usually made for dogs, so I think I’ll just repurpose it for the cats. Cats have four legs and a head. Dogs have four legs and a head. There’s no reason this won’t work. Then I’m going to double, no, triple my efforts to train The Demonspawn in the delights of walking on a leash. There’s really nothing delightful about it but with the use of many, many cat treats and the lure of an open can of tuna, perhaps I can convince them to go along with my plan.

Once we master the leash walking and the clothes wearing, we’re going for very long walks around the neighborhood. I’m going to start waiving at everyone in lieu of channeling my inner New Yorker and refusing to make eye contact with passer-by. So instead of Inhospitable Southern Lady Who Probably Has A Yankee In The Family, I’m going to be the Gracious But Distinctly Crazy Southern Lady Who Smells Faintly Of Cat Litter.

That or I’m going to get some religion in me. So when people ask for the thousandth time why I am still single at the ovary-shriveling age of 26, I can tell them it’s because I’m married to my lord and savior Mohammed Ali.

**Addendum: Just so we're clear, I'm truly not concerned with my ever present single status. Though if I listened to my grandmother, oh, I don't know EVERY TIME SHE SPEAKS, I'd have settled down and hence would have someone available who, theoretically, would readily volunteer to help me move roughly every 18 months. And Carl is right-- marriages and kids take a lot of time and energy, neither of which I'm willing to spare. if everyone listened to their mothers and fathers and truly believed them when they said marriage and offspring are hard work, no one would actually participate in the propogation of the human race. And if everyone listened to me ramble, no one would get married or let their ovaries accept the knocking of some traveling sperm. Unless you're that girl Erica from 'The Bachelor.' Then I will beg you to listen to me and strongly urge that should the situation arise when someone is willing to loan you their DNA, UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES SHOULD YOU BREED.

If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you

Normally I don’t watch the weird reality shows that force people to make-out on camera in tiny bikinis and perfect makeup while frolicking in the ocean surf. I also don’t watch reality shows that force people to hike or fish or swim or swallow living things with exoskeletons. And I really hate the ones that pretend that walking a low-quality metal structure with a camera strapped to your hard hat are meant to entertain me. They make me uncomfortable and they make me feel awkward. Not awkward as in I just burped in front of my boss awkward but awkward as in Holy Catpoop, Batman, did that girl really just eat an uncooked cow penis on national television? My heart hurts for her.

But last night was different. I was bored and feeling very disinclined to get off my couch and find the remote. Granted, I know that the remote is sitting on the left side table right next to the DVD and stereo remotes because this is where the remotes live and god help you if you move them. My arms aren’t long enough to reach them while stretched out on the couch, however, and short of training The Demonspawn to perform such useful acts, I was left watching whatever happened to come on ABC at 8pm.

As it turns out, the 8pm slot was reserved for some kind of catch-up show for The Bachelor. Besides the fact that The Bachelor holds some of the characteristics I mentioned above, I don’t watch it because it is by far one of the stupidest concepts I have ever seen appear season after season on the airwaves. I can’t even be bothered to explain why because it truly just annoys me that much.

Apparently not enough to force me off the couch and change the channel, though. I watched an hour of some reunion episode, where the “most memorable” girls came back to air their grievances and get a short generic statement from Senor Bachelor about why he didn’t choose them to be his most esteemed lifetime companion.

The real amusement came when some dark-haired Prissy McPrisserton named Lisa was asked to defend the fact that she WALKED OUT OF HER BEDROOM WEARING A WEDDING GOWN when Senor Bachelor came to meet her folks. Just in case you missed that: SHE WALKED OUT OF HER BEDROOM WEARING A WEDDING GOWN. Like, one she purchased before going on the show. I’m not sure what message she was trying to send with this display of commitment-readiness. And let’s not even talk about the plethora of wedding planner books and brides magazines and various other Till Death Do Us Part accoutrements. This one, she is scary.

The part I was really looking forward to was the discussion of Erica, the Texas-born rich girl whose comment of “I don’t see any maids around here and I’m a little concerned.” was played on various satirical radio and television broadcasts. I even once caught a scene of Kelly Ripa impersonating the little pointy-chinned twat, and I thought surely, SURELY, she was exaggerating just a wee smidge. But no, she was not. She was by far the most annoying human being I have ever seen on television, and that includes the creepy kid who played Urkel. Her vapid smile made my innards quiver in fear because someone, somewhere will breed with this idiotic specimen of a human being and those genes will yet again be watered down and passed forth to an unsuspecting and ill-prepared generation.

In the end I felt kind of sorry for these girls, and doubly sorry that I had not found the energy to change the channel to a nice viewing of Meerkat Manor on the Animal Planet station.

Sneezy and Dopey and STUPID

This morning I pulled my one pair of clean but excessively wrinkled jeans off the hangar and resigned myself to the ten extra minutes I was going to have to spend ironing out the crazy diagonal creases that the dryer should have removed, but didn’t. Because while this is our monthly Jeans Day, it’s not our monthly Homeless Lady Staggers In Building With Wrinkled Jeans And Wet Hair Day. For whatever reason I rationalize that if one presses their clothing, others are less likely to judge for walking in bare-faced and soppy-haired.

While the iron was heating up I decided that I would even go so far as to put pretty creases in my jeans. These are not the scary creases that people make on regular generic jeans or the really baggy kind with three cans of starch. These jeans are cut like nice trousers, only made of denim, obviously, because I just called them jeans. So basically I’ve got on the same kind of outfit I wear every other day, it’s just that this material happens to be outlawed during the majority of my work month.

Once I was satisfied with the nice clean lines down the front of my denim trousers I looked at the clock on my phone and realized it was time to get the fear of god and put my ass in gear. So as I’m putting on my pants and hopping around with one shoe and grabbing keys from the dresser and unplugging the iron, I’m also attempting to hook my pants. Like many ladies trousers, the maker has eschewed the button and the snap, going instead for a flat front look with two wide slider hooks and a zipper. I keep grabbing and pulling and attempting to find the hook catching things on the opposite side of the hook part and the thought crosses my mind that maybe I’ve gained some weight since I wore these pants last month. Maybe I need to cinch them tighter.

I pull so tight my belly button recoils in fear, telling me that it will not accept pants that will have to be worn so tight. Finally I put down my purse and keys myriad other accoutrements and look down, exasperated with the length of time it’s taken an adult woman to hook her pants.

It’s then that I notice that while the pants have the two wide hooks on the right tab, they are missing the hook homes on the left. Where is the hook to go, I think? What has happened here?

I give up completely at this point and just take the pants off, staring at the little tabs in confusion, still thinking that these pants are just more complicated than I remembered and everything will resolve itself in just a few moments. But when I bring the tabs under the microscope of my non-microscope eye, I realize there are four wee little holes on the left. Four wee little holes that at some point would have housed the hook homes, BUT WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Ultimately I had to scrounge around in my junk drawer for a mini snap and some needle and thread. It wasn’t pretty, but I spent three and a half minutes whipping it on because heaven forbid I have a safety pin. Granted, I could have just found some other pants but this is JEANS DAY, people. It comes around once a month, sometimes twice if you’re lucky. We can’t just waste it because of a little thing like keeping your pants closed.

Here's your one chance, Fancy

My parents are such lovely, law-abiding people. They’re good with their finances, they save adequately for retirement and they normally keep their vehicles through at least three presidential terms. They do things like pay off their auto loans and replace the clutch in the truck when it goes out. Even more specifically, my father is normally the one changing the clutch or the engine or the throttle body, because he’s all mechanically inclined like that. And if it gets down to it, he’ll even change the oil.

When I got my first car at sixteen I had to show my father that I was competent enough to be let loose on America’s highways. I’d miserably failed the ‘Driving a Stick-shift’ lesson and it wouldn’t be so much of a stretch to say he wasn’t terribly confident in my abilities. After all, I’d somehow managed to rip the driver’s door off my mother’s van less than six months before while reaching out to open the mailbox with the van in reverse and the door wide open. I still maintain that this is hardly my fault. Had they taken the van into the shop and had them replace the window motor, this would never have happened. I am so not to blame here. *cough

My father-created Driving Test involved me, a 1993 Ford Tempo (white), a lug wrench, a jack and one very hot concrete driveway. My goal: to remove and replace all four wheels by the end of the day. Looking back on this, it seems much more like a punishment and less like a Test. But that’s how we roll in my family. Why change one tire when you can so obviously change four?

I got through two of them before my then latent piss-and-vinegarness rose to the surface. I would not be removing any more tires, I decided. The first one proved I could do it and the second one showed that the first wasn’t a fluke. Statistically, I had a very small chance of blowing all four tires at once and should I someday encounter that kind of circumstance then changing them would not be my chief concern; escaping from the gun-wielding officers after having just run over a police barricade and making it across the Mexico border would be my chief concern.

I managed to stick with Tessa the Tempo until I was two months away from leaving for college. Then came Gidget the Jeep, a 1993 Daimler-Chrysler creation that sported a lovely, if enigmatic, sticker on the rear hatch that read simply: Please Use Tongs.

After that came Anabelle, a Mitsubishi Montero with leather seats. I don’t really need to go into what happens during an Arkansas summer when bare leg meets scorching leather. After my senior year in college, Anabelle languished at my parent’s house during my stint in New York. I guess she knew I’d come back for her.

Then Dulce, a Grand Cherokee that had no real problems other than the fact that gasoline had suddenly risen to a staggering price per gallon. Plus I became less concerned with carting friends around in a vehicle that had headroom. If you want to bitch about it, I decided, you can take your own car. It was time I purchased something sensible and sedan-like. Something that would boldly proclaim to the world that a) I had a steady, reliable income and b) that I was a steady, reliable adult.

I’ve never named the current Accord. Not from any lack of names, more from the fact that this reliable and sturdy sedan was just that: reliable and sturdy. Every other vehicle had strange quirks and dings and behavioral patterns. Tessa the Tempo used to activate her automatic seat belts when I was driving down the interstate. Gidget the Jeep used to fake you out with her lagging starter. Anabelle would screech her locking motors in a chorus of pain if you happened to touch the automatic locks from the driver side.

As of Saturday I will have added another one into the mix. This one will more than likely be just as devoid of quirks as my last one has been. I’m not terribly upset by this, however, because what this new car will lack in quirks, she will make up in gas mileage and warranty coverage.

Paging Dr. L'Enfant

I can remember standing in the lunch line at Wake Village Elementary School and feeling stomach pain like you wouldn’t believe a seven-year-old could experience. Short of impaling yourself on the see-saw or getting a dodgeball to the abdomen, that isn’t really the age for unidentified pain. Certainly a little young for ulcers or reflux, plus we can exclude the rogue ovary theory. Puberty came early but it didn’t come THAT early.

I finally gave in at nineteen and headed for the doctor. No real results, only some concern that I stay away from late-night Waffle House runs and cigarettes. I think I’m going to stop here and admit, much to the possible surprise of my mother, that I smoked for going on a decade. It got heavy in New York and even heavier once I moved back to Little Rock. I gave it up one day, cold turkey, when I finally calculated exactly how much it cost me to inhale two packs worth of cancer a day. That’s not the only reason I quit, however, and as much as I wish I could tell you, that deal is between me and God. Notice this is the capitalized form of God, not the normal god of which I speak. That’s because it’s my personal god and not the First Baptist Church of the One Who Has Risen and Redeemed god.

Over the years there have been barium scans and sonograms and more barium scans and lots of people who really enjoy pressing their fists into my stomach, asking me if it hurts here or HERE, how about over here? The last doctor finally did a scan with a nifty little camera that she slid right down my throat while I was vastly undermedicated. As it turns out, I have a hernia in my chest, which supposedly explains why I have strange pain in my stomach, pain that makes me want to shove a fork in my side in the hopes of having the little pain receptors move to the fork stab wound. I don’t know, a fork stab just seemed more manageable. At least I would have been able to verbally and visually indicate why I hurt in a particular area, making it much less of a guessing game for the medical personnel.

All of this culminated last Wednesday after a lunch of pizza and water. Really tasty pizza, I might add. I rarely eat it because every Sunday night for close to eighteen years my family ordered pizza. Specifically, one pepperoni pizza and one meat lover’s pizza, both with extra sauce. You could say it was because it was easy, that it meant my mother had one less night that she had to cook. In actuality, one of the adults in the household had to drive twenty minutes into town to pick it up. We lived so far out in the country even the pizza guys refused to visit.

As we were waiting on our checks I was completely overcome with the need to leave right then, as in right that very second. Had I been driving, I probably would have gotten up and just left my credit card in the hands of our waiter. But I wasn’t driving, which meant I had to wait for the general leaving consensus. I could have piped up and expressed my Leave Now feelings, but I’m a stoic one. Plus, my Actual For Real Boss was sitting at my table and one just does NOT discuss intestinal difficulties in front of Senor Actual For Real Boss.

After we’d pulled in the parking lot and I’d had to walk eight football fields back into the office, I decided I was definitely leaving. I was nearing the stage where you curl up in a ball of misery and cry, plus the pain was making me nauseated. Not the kind of heave-ho you get after a bad piece of fish, rather, the type of heave-ho one experiences when a bodily part has just been severed.

Unfortunately I do this really embarrassing thing when I have to tell people that something hurts: I cry like a little girl. I hate that I do this, I hate it I hate it I hate it. I could skin my knee and be perfectly fine until my mother asked if I was okay. I can bust my ass and crack my ankle in front of an arena of two-thousand people and not cry until my dance teacher pats my arm and ask if it hurts. Yes, it hurt. It all hurts. But the tears don’t flow until someone asks about it, naturally.

So upon telling my boss I had to leave for the day, my stomach feels like I’m being stabbed repeatedly, need to go to the doctor, I cry. Well, not cry. I tear-up. Which then completely muddles my speech and he thinks I’m telling him that there’s something wrong with my mouse. Obviously, he was a bit confused. I have to try again to form comprehensible words, make my mouth roll around sounds that should be relatively easy for an adult female. He understands, he says, and sends me on my way.

Here’s where it gets moderately interesting: On the way to my doctor I decide that he’s a raging douche and he doesn’t like to give medicine, which seems totally contradictory to being, you know, a DOCTOR. When I couldn’t sleep for months on end, he didn’t want to write me a prescription for Ambien or Lunesta because there was a chance I could get addicted. To which I replied: “Yes, but there’s also a chance I could sleep. Don’t be stingy with the drugs, little man.” So I bypassed the doctor’s office and drove straight to the ER. Almost straight, I should say. I had to pull over half-way there because a wave of pain so intense crashed through my abdominal region and I thought I was going to pass out.

The pain had dimmed from a 9.5 to a 7 by the time I was shown back to a hospital room and forced to don an ugly gown, one that I couldn’t figure out how to tie in the back and eventually just gave up and curled into a ball on the hospital bed. I know I said that thing about here’s where it gets interesting back in the previous paragraph and I may have lied. Because where it actually got interesting was when Doogie fucking Howser walked through the door.

I shit you not, this kid couldn’t have been over nineteen. Maybe twenty on a good day. My first thought was THIS is the guy they let dispense the valium? Plus, he had a wicked nasty scab over a zit he’d managed to perforate and pick at along with some very scraggly just-past-puberty facial hair. Inspire confidence, he did not.

He pushes on my stomach, makes me lift my legs, pushes on my stomach again and tells me he’ll be back. Thirty minutes later he rolls back in, telling me he’s only been at Baptist Medical for two days (really? I’m surprised!) and says he had to consult another doctor about my condition. He recommended a heavy dose of hydrocodone and some rest. Doesn’t want to put me through the cost of a CT scan. I tell him I have insurance, run any test he damn well pleases. He says no, you seem to be able to talk coherently and we’d rather just give you some pain pills.

SO WHAT YOU’RE TELLING ME IS, I’M BEING PUNISHED BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO ACT LIKE A MATURE, PROFESSIONAL ADULT AND NOT BLATHER ON LIKE A LUNATIC IN THE WAITING ROOM?

Whatever. I went home and took the happy hydro pills, cursed the infant doctor and slept like a kitten.

Take exit 5A and head straight into oncoming traffic

Lately I’ve noticed a sudden influx of newly painted, brightly colored vehicles with matching window tint. As in someone took a 1984 Caprice with an original paint job in the dusty brown category, painted it candy-apple red with a hint of glitter and then tinted the windows to match. Red tint. What purpose does this serve? Are you attempting to distract us from the fact that you have windows? It must be some new thing, some new thing that involves the population making an attempt to be more white trash/ghetto/redneck than the previous generation. Perhaps it’s just some interior design fad gone horribly wrong. Someone misread the part in the design book that said keeping the room in the same color scheme makes it look bigger. Or something. I don’t really know what those interior design books say but I’ve watched a hella lot of decorating shows and I’m absolutely positive this is a theory. But them something went horribly wrong and it was applied to a vehicle. In candy-apple glitter red and sparkling green sherbert and fiery crackling orange. ALL WITH MATCHING WINDOW TINT.

Transition

The only time I advocate smoking is when it’s a radio personality. Because maybe one day they’ll get throat cancer and never speak again. Never inflict their nasal laugh or grating dialectical nightmare on the general public again. Never throw in an endorsement for Big Daddy’s Pawn Shop in the middle of the traffic report. Never say that Big Daddy’s will give you cash for all your jewrrry, when it should so obviously be pronounced jewl-er-y. Three very distinct syllables, SAY IT WITH ME NOW. Also, I’d never again have to sit at a redlight and ponder, even for a second, about Deer Widows. And why a nightclub if offering free admission and two-dollar well drinks for the aforementioned Deer Widows. I know I had to have heard that term before because it’s not like my father didn’t spend half my life at deer camp. In fact, he used to bring home the carcasses and string them up to a tree in our backyard and let the blood drain out of them. This probably bothers many people, this image of a limp deer dripping blood into a backyard, and I could not possibly care less. Because my dad can make some killer deer sausage and that deer was going to good use inside my belly. So my first thought when hearing that Deer Widows got in free was “Holy shit, there are that many women who’ve lost husbands in the deer woods to advertise this on the radio?” Followed by, “That’s really kind of sick. Who thought up this promotional crap, anyway?” A few seconds later followed by, “Oh. They mean wives whose husbands have gone off to deer camp. Clever. AND FUCKING STUPID.” Granted, it has never escaped my attention that I live in Arkansas. But I live in a city of roughly 280,000 people and for whatever reason, sometimes I mistakenly get confused and think this is, I don’t know, someplace where people don’t celebrate the first day of deer season with head-to-toe camo and a celebration that outshines Baby Jesus’ birthday.

Also radio related: I keep thinking the Outback Steakhouse jingle is a for-real song and I’ll stop the radio dial to get in a full ten seconds of head bopping only to realize I’ve been conned by the Outback jingle AGAIN.

Another Transition

Last night I went to Movie Xchange and perused their television series section. I love this section, love it like I love cheese sandwiches. They carry everything from ‘Friends,’ volumes 1-infinity, to ‘La Femme Nikita.’ I almost rented ‘Nikita’ last night and, laugh all you want, rented ‘Moonlighting’ instead. Bruce Willis circa 1987, BE STILL MY HEART. I rented season four because that was all they had. Obviously I had no idea what I was getting myself into, though it did suddenly become blindingly clear why my father would casually change the channel during the show. I mean, I always knew what he was doing. Someone was doing something naughty on TV and I wasn’t supposed to see it. Like the tongue-kissing scene in ‘Top Gun.’ Or the part in ‘Troop Beverly Hills’ where the wishy-washy troop leader says “Screw you, Velma!” It must be some strange dad-instinct because he’d always change the channel just as David and Maddie made sexual reference number 5,678. IN ONE EPISODE. Also, and maybe she just went a little crazy in season four, but Maddie was such a raging bitch. Jeez.

The Chuck Norris of hair product

For whatever reason I feel like I should get a cookie or something, maybe a big fat one with coconut and chocolate bits and caramel drizzle. And some icing, white buttercream icing that tastes like creamy fairies in a blender.

I should get this cookie because I have converted yet another person to the wonder that is the fifty-dollar bottle of hair conditioner. I know, fifty dollars for hair conditioner, what kind of madness could this be? But I have hair that lands well below my bra strap even when I leave the blow-dryer under the bathroom sink in the morning. Hence, there is no screwing around with hair product selection. I say selection like I had a choice in matter, though obviously I did not. No one looks at a bottle of seemingly over-priced hair goop and exuberantly whips out their checkbook. We need affirmation that the week of ingesting cans of fifty-nine cent Campbell’s tomato soup is totally justified because our mane has suddenly transformed itself into hair-tossing, shine glinting under studio lights, Pantene commercial-type hair.

My hairdresser, who is also my friend (like the Hair Club president, who is also a client) gifted me with the shampoo/conditioner set for my birthday many, many months ago. That night I went directly home and smathered the new conditioner all over my head because obviously I have a rocking social calendar. And like the elusive Perfect Couch, I had suddenly found my Perfect Conditioner. It miraculously tamed my unruly locks into luscious waterfalls of dark silk and I found myself gently stroking the newly smooth strands for many days afterwards, still in disbelief that the lightly scented pink cream could perform such a mighty transformation.

Seven months later, when I’d finally scraped the last of the conditioner from the insides of the container, I happily drove over to my friend’s salon to hand her a fifty-dollar check. And then two weeks later I justified a thirty-dollar bottle of shine serum because when she fixed my hair with this product, the angels wept tears of baby kittens and sunshine. The pain from all those years of buying products even more generic than Suave had finally burst forth from my chest cavity and I felt the shame, OH THE SHAME, just melt away. I had officially crossed the threshold into a Person Who Can’t Quit Their Job and Move to Maine Because They Have Expensive Maintenance Charges. I must forever rely on my paycheck to keep me in the manner to which I’ve become accustomed, expensive hair products and all. Oh, and shoes. Mustn’t forget the shoes.

Dear Internet,

I SWEAR TO GOD IF YOU PEOPLE DON'T GO VOTE TOMORROW I WILL PERSONALLY BREAK YOUR KNEES.

And if you live in Little Rock and want to whine about not knowing where to go, then click here and shut your pie hole.

Love,

Robin

Pretty? Or Pretty Special?

The other night I woke up to the distinct sounds of the alarm sirens, the ones that go off every Wednesday at noon. Only this was Thursday morning. Specifically, Thursday morning, roughly 2am. For a solid five minutes I laid in bed and tried to comprehend the rising, falling, rising, falling sound outside my window. I even had one of those discussions with myself where I asked exactly how important it was to get out of my warm bed if a disaster was imminent. Because it would totally be easier for people to find my body if it was right where they thought it would be, rather than hanging over a tree limb somewhere. In the cold. Outside of my warm bed.

I’m very focused on this warm bed situation because the temperature has decided to take a sudden nose dive into the chilly region. So chilly, in fact, that my thermostat clicked on several times in the night just to keep it from going below sixty degrees. This is a sure sign that I should have turned up the dial a bit but I’m telling you, it just wasn’t that cold when I finally got to bed. I should know because I made three lengthy trips into the dark abyss of the basement laundry in my flip flops and never once felt the bone racking chills that attacked my body every time I pushed a nostril out from beneath the bedcovers. And that was at 10pm, so what happened to the weather in a mere four hours?

Eventually I decided it was probably in my best interest to get up and at least check the television for the inevitable anchorwoman, calm and collected, telling me to pack my shit up and get the hell out of dodge. I grabbed my robe off the hook, cursing it’s thinness and my avoidance of washing the heavy one that evening because it meant I’d have had to run to the store and get more quarters. Damn me and my laziness.

But as I flipped through each station I noticed a total lack of calm anchorwomen and a plethora of infomercials. This is very odd, I thought, that even the local stations refuse to run a ticker on the bottom of the screen. They run tickers if a thunderstorm in northern Missouri threatens to bring an extra gust of wind through the Ozark Mountains . I’m contemplating how I’m going to get two unruly cats into the back of my Honda and these newsie people don’t even have the courtesy to tell me why someone has decided to turn on the city sirens.

So I head back to my bedroom, where I can still hear the rising, falling, rising, falling siren. I crawl back in bed and point my still half-asleep eyes out the window. I feel my brow crinkle in confusion and a fleeting thought crosses my head that I forgot to rub on my moisturizing wrinkle-keep-away cream and what if my forehead gets too dry and permanently creases? Apparently I’m very vain during the wee small hours of the morn.

Not a single porch light, vehicle light, garage light is visible, which causes my brow to crease further in confusion. But I’ve moved on from my vain midnight wrinkle obsession and I realize I’m more awake now than I was ten minutes ago, which brings me halfway through my normal twenty minute awakening period. It’s then that I notice the sound I’ve been hearing is decidedly fainter than it was just a few minutes past. I focus more intently upon the sound, trying to make out any idiosyncrasies, half-heartedly attempting to remember if the siren has different sounds for Tornado Imminent warnings and Air Force Base Bombing, Time to Load Up On Out warnings.

Perhaps the cold was a factor in speeding up the awakening process, I really have no idea, but it suddenly dawned on me that the sound I was hearing was the slow moving street cleaner. Not the disaster sirens. Not even a chorus of tortured cats. Just the normal, average, weekly street cleaner.

Bloody smashing, dah-ling

On my way to a Halloween party last week I was listening to the radio, something I can’t stand to do in the morning due to all the incessant chatter and forced hilarity. But this was evening, obviously. Have you ever been to a Halloween party before noon? No matter. It was evening and I was driving and I wasn’t wearing a costume because moving is expensive and my bank account needs money for things like automatic car payment drafts and cell phone bills, not Slutty Cop costumes or Skanky Nurse outfits.

In lieu of a costume I’d paper-clipped a small note to my shirt with the previous date stenciled in my very best handwriting. All night long people asked what I was, to which I replied, “Yesterday.” It wasn’t really that funny, at least not as funny as the time in college when I stapled a note to chest that simply read “Thirsty?” Because I wasn’t sporting a toga or recognizable Star Wars costume, I got puzzled looks followed by a confused reading of the index card. “Thirsty??” they’d say. To which I’d reply, “Why yes, I am. Could you be a kitten and get me a beer?”

The ensuing party and my non-costume were the last thing on my mind, however. As previously stated, I was listening to the radio, one of the generic radio stations this town produces that spews out American Idol emoti-ballads and bleeped-out rap songs. Got to keep it clean for the kids, you know. *cough.

The song for the evening was one by Fergie, the lone female addition to the Black Eyed Peas. I don’t really have any problems with the Black Eyed Peas, besides the fact that their name makes me think of rubbery bacon stewing in a pot of actual black eyed peas. The bacon makes the peas taste good but it always looks pale and trembling, as if to say it had prepared itself for the hot crisping frying pan but this slow, painful and watery death is just more than it can bear.

Fergie apparently struck out on her own with this new CD and really, who can blame her? If someone is stupid enough to fund your debut solo album then by all means, take that check and run. Should I end up hating your efforts, I’m old enough to change the radio and you’re rich enough to buy a radio station. I’d say that makes us pretty much even.

What confused me about this song is that I finally took a moment to listen to the lyrics, lyrics that are a direct contradiction to the video I saw on MTV the other day. Those lyrics are: “How come every time you come around my London Bridge, wanna go down like London Bridge.” I’ve omitted many, many instances where words are used twice and sometimes thrice to fill the beats of the song because someone, somewhere was just too fucking lazy to write out a whole verse that made actual sense.

In the video we see Miss Fergie making clear intimations that her sole source of happiness stems from a certain act performed on her knees. The London Bridge Gatekeeper people, who have special English names and special furry tall hats, are oblivious to her groping and ass rubbing, but you can totally see the struggle in their reserved British eyes. Should I abandon my post of duty and allow this scantily clad American to fondle my private bits, they seem to say. And then we cut to lots of other scantily clad non-Fergie people dancing around and making more ass rubbing movements. It’s great fun, really.

My first problem stems from the fact that the video seems to say that the London Bridge she’s referring to lives on these lovely British men, the ones who repeatedly get her face buried in their crotch. But the lyrics imply she’s empowered with her female-ness and the London Bridge lives in her pants and that the men are so crazy about this bridge they want to, ahem, go down. Hence, I feel she should obviously fire her creative video director and take some lessons from Janet “Ms. Nasty” Jackson.

My second problem relates to dear Fergie and how she used to be such a cute little bugger. You see, I remember Fergie as Stacy Ferguson, the blond, annoying and slightly chubby kid on Kids Incorporated during it’s mid-eighties run. She was the one who followed Jennifer Love Hewitt around and always got into trouble because, dangit, she was just so fumbly and clumsy and cute. What happened to that Fergie? When did she take a turn for neon wearing, eyebrow piercing, heavy lipliner sporting Hoochie? WHERE IS THE FERGIE OF MY YOUTH? And why does she sing nonsensical lyrics that somehow manage to rhyme the following:

Grey Goose got your girl feeling loose
Now I’m wishing that I didn’t wear these shoes
It’s like every time I get up on the dude
Paparazzi put my business in the news

Not for those with a Low Ick Factor.

This is my bedroom from the old apartment. It's serenity belies the terrors that lurk beneath the surface.


Here's one of the living room. Pretty, no?



This is Lilly Monkey. She is very ferocious.


So imagine my surprise when this fell out of my laundry hamper:


Notice the malicious glint in his beady black eye. This one, he was a fighter.


Immediately following The Great Rat Hunt of 2006, my ceiling popped a giant zit, spewing roughly eight gallons of air conditioner water all over my bathroom floor.


And then came the mildew. Or mold. Really, it just wasn't my job to ask questions at that point. Also, I'd like you to play close attention to the random holes. This is what my douche of a landlord did to "redirect the water flow" into the bathtub, rather than the floor. Smelled great, too.


Here's another one of the rat, just because I know how much you wanted to see your breakfast again:

Crunchy Apples

After a fascinating Sunday morning with the babies I decided it was high time to get my move on, so I cashed in all my sexual favors and played them out as moving chips. As it turns out, I had so many moving chips that I was able to bribe some individuals to drive across town and pick up my first real full-money adult furniture purchase. And I must say, it is beautiful and stunning and worth every bit of the two and a half years I spent searching for The Perfect Couch. It’s so perfect, in fact, that Pier One sent me thank-you note for choosing the Chocolate Flannigan Sofa. This is also known as a credit card bill but we are so not having that discussion.

Before I get into the full Moving Day details, I’d like to make a little announcement: Should anyone tell you that Hell has something to do with fire and brimstone you have my permission to call them a liar right to their face. Hell has nothing to do with an eternity of burning flesh and everything to do with third floor walk-ups.

That being said, I have wicked nice friends, some of whom have wicked nice boyfriends and brothers, who quietly agreed to move every piece of furniture I own and never once threatened to disembowel me, even when they realized I’d omitted that whole ‘many flights of stairs’ bit until the day of the move. I repaid them all with pizza and beer and still I think my debt has not even come close to being repaid. This of course means they can call in a Move Day Favor at any point in time and so the vicious cycle of helping friends move begins.

Move Day marks my transition from free-couch-having individual to purchased-couch-individual-with-an-extra-bedroom-JUST-CAUSE. It does not, however, mark any transition that has something with me being less of a dumbass. Please see the following example:

After moving an especially heavy piece of furniture, Lilleee came bounding down the stairs and flexed her muscles at Amanda and myself, stating she totally has tickets to the gun show. I looked at Lilleee and asked her why on earth she wanted to go to the gun show, thinking she had some previously undiscussed fetish for flying metal projectiles of death. Lilleee says No, the gun show, like, for my arms. And still I am confused. Why are you going to the gun show for your arm? Do you have a gimp arm that needs gun protection? No, they both say, the gun show one goes to for having strong arms, also known as strong guns, WHY ARE YOU SO SLOW. At which point I told them I would need a memo if they were going to make obscure references to muscle strength, jeez.

Last night was my first night in the new apartment and I have to say I quite like being so far off the ground. While those last five stairs are almost enough to make me wheeze in pain, the simple fact remains that should someone feel like breaking into my apartment, they better have a jet propulsion pack or really bad projectile burrito gas. Because short of setting up a trampoline outside the house, there is zero chance of my kitchen window being confused with the Burger King drive-thru.

Long Hair and Knee Tapping

After throwing away just about everything in my Lazy Laundry pile (due to the aforementioned rat carcass contamination) I had significantly reduced my total laundry time but not so much that my mother didn’t roll her eyes heavenward as bag after bag of dirty clothes came rolling out of the back of my car.

And yes, I totally took my laundry to my parent’s house on Friday. First of all, it’s free. Second, I can put a load on and go take a mini-nap or have a cup of coffee in a building that isn’t crawling with random dryer-bunnies and cigarette butts. Third, well, I don’t know what comes third so just accept that it’s way easier to take it home when I’m pressed for time.

The original purpose of the trip was to visit with some family friends that I grew up with, one of whom is now in his late teens and making the rounds as a bad-ass guitar player. I was going to use the f-word in conjunction with just exactly how good this kid is but his mama would probably tell me to watch my language when speaking about her son. Because his delicate ears, they’ve never heard such language. *cough

Anyway, I stayed up late with my mama and Jolene and had girly chats, the same kind we used to have when I was like eight and they were, um, younger than they are now. Only I didn’t beg to braid my mother’s hair and I didn’t run my mouth about whatever it is that an eight-year-old will run their mouth about. My shining moment was when I yet again managed to make a total ass of myself by using the word ‘pussy’ in relation to me not dating people who have those. I can’t get annoyed with her for jokingly asking about my preference because hello, when was the last time I brought a guy home? Much like the Prince song it was 1999, only we didn’t party and I’m fairly positive that no cracked a smile. All together now: AWKWARD.

Saturday morning someone managed to set up the Play Station on the living room TV and I realized just exactly how silent my house normally is. And how silent it will remain, forever and always. The Play Station was for Jason, the youngest of the three boys at the age of ten. Josh is the bad-ass guitar player at eighteen and Jacob is the guy who used to own a ferret and now has a little boy of his very own. If you’re confused about the names, you should be. Because everyone’s name starts with J and no one gets called by their given name. Jake and JP and Jase and Joshie and Jay and really, just keep thinking of nicknames because they’ve got them all.

In the early afternoon we all bundled up against the blustery weather to watch Josh play with The Reba Russell Band at a downtown festival. I could lie to you and say they were good but in all honesty they were fucking unbelievably awesome. Notice how I used the f-word but did not use it in direct correlation to Jolene’s son, which should keep me out of trouble. Josh has been playing on Beale Street in Memphis since he was a wee young lad and as he’s only eighteen now, I mean WEE YOUNG LAD. Of course he’s not a wee young lass now, he’s all grown up with facial hair and everything. As such, I will never tell The Internet that I used to clean his room out of sheer boredom because Jolene was never nice enough to pop out a little girl for me to play with. I was just much too cool to play Thundercats with my brother and Jacob and Josh in the basement. I will also never tell anyone about what a cute little ball of diapered rolli-polliness ol’ Josh used to be, because that would be embarrassing and I’m a kind-hearted individual like that.

By mid afternoon the blustery weather had turned to searing heat from the roiling sun and I was wishing for a bucket of ice water to pour over my head. But still I sat, bouncing my knee to the music and the great singing and in total awe of just how good the whole band sounded, and that was with an incompetent sound guy who couldn’t figure out how to turn up the piano volume because look at all the pretty birds in the sky and maybe that girl over there has some weed and holy shit man! I’m supposed to be working all these crazy buttons for the sound and I really want some ice cream. That was a roundabout way of saying Senor Slacker was a bit distracted, but he was, and I stand by my appraisal of him.

At the end of the set I managed to convince my mom to give me some cash in exchange for my out of state check and purchased a CD from the vendor by the stage. I should add that I rarely purchase music because I have a short attention span and should I feel like singing in my apartment, that’s what The Cure cd’s are for. What I’m trying to tell you, and probably not doing a very good job of, is that this band rocks out with their Lego blocks out and if ever I was going to endorse something, THEY WOULD TOTALLY BE IT.

So just in case you missed my sneaky link above, here it is again. Not that I'm being a pusher. Or anything.