Memo to self.

This morning, before I left for work, I made this note to myself on a Post-It of things I wanted to talk about, and stuck it on my wallet:

- “Don’t miss Puddle of Mudd”
- Funeral
- Cardinal player’s dad suing everyone on Earth

Confusing, huh. Let’s break it down:

1) This morning, when I checked my email, there was an urgent notice from Ticketmaster that said “Quick! Buy tickets now! Don’t miss Puddle of Mudd!”

Oh, I assure you, Ticketmaster, I will be missing Puddle of Mudd.

2) Steve and I had to go to a wake this past Friday night, and a funeral Saturday morning, for a family member that Steve hasn’t seen since he was about 9. I won’t get into many details, out of respect for the man’s sister, Steve’s aunt, who I know and love and would probably have move in with us when she’s old and can’t live alone. Maybe I'll keep her in a bed with my parents and Steve's parents, like Grandpa Joe & Co. in the original "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory".



But I will say these few things about these current family events:

a) Guess who had to be a pall bearer? My man. Like always. There doesn’t seem to be one family death that we’ve gone through where he hasn’t been one. He could make a blanket out of all the white gloves he’s taken off and placed on top of caskets at gravesites (Catholics, you know – the funeral isn’t over until that casket is in the ground).

The kicker with this particular family death? The deceased weighed 400 pounds and some change. My poor, poor pall bearer of a boyfriend. At least none of his uncles were pall bearers with him, because, according to Steve, “they fake it.”

b) Know what footwear is obviously not made for graveyards? Heels. Just an observation. I almost sunk into about 4 graves. Next funeral? Flats.

c) I may have flicked off a cab that cut us off while we were in the funeral procession. It may not have been a nonchalant flipping of the bird, either. Maybe more from the “roll the window down, stick the bird way out of the car, and shout something along the lines of ‘Yoo Hoo! I’m flicking you off, you f’n bastard!!” school of Middle Finger-ing.

Good news: according to family member accounts, I guess the deceased would have gotten a real kick out of that. The cars in the procession behind us sure did.

3) Oh yeah, my final thing, about Cardinals player Josh Hancock’s father suing everyone in the world. This rant is courtesy of my Main Man, who religiously reads Sports Illustrated online and showed me the article. I don’t read Sport Illustrated online, because a) I take very little interest in sports (well, non-Chicago teams I guess is more accurate), and b) I can’t stand the total ADHD format of the website – there are about 9,000 different things to look at ALL AT THE SAME TIME. MLB! NFL! NBA! NHL! Nascar! And that's just the actual sports, we're not even mentioning fantasy ones. The site makes me want to take a nap.

But I digress.

Come on, Dean. It's not enough for you that your son was found with two times the legal limit of alcohol in his system, had a wee bit of weed in the car, AND was on his cell phone when he crashed? So you sue the restaurant he came from (including the server and hostess, separately), the tow truck he plowed into, AND the owner of the Geo Prism for, allegedly, "letting his car reach the point where it stalled on the highway?” What? Come again? I’m not following, you....Finger Pointer, you. You're son's gone. No amount of money from innocent people will change that.

What a silly legal system we have, that he was even allowed to file a lawsuit like that.

****

In other news, I’ve been watching my boss’ dog since last Friday. She’s a Yorkie, and she’s crazy. But in a cute way.



That's us, sleeping in on Memorial Day. My actual bedroom has been annexed as a Puppy-Free Zone, to give Babe a bit of a respite from the Yorkie constantly staring at her (she’s never seen a cat before). This is how much Babe cares about dogs in general:



So, yeah, Babe's not that fazed by the little interloper. Who, by the way, woke us up at 4:30 a.m. today, all set to begin her day. My day doesn't begin until, at the absolute earliest, seven. Mojo and Babe were equally as appalled. Then they curled up in a ball and went back to sleep, while Steve and I hauled our exhausted selves to work.

It’s going to be a long trudge towards vacation week.....

Proof.

Apparently - judging by Sharyn's pictorial evidence from this weekend, it is virtually impossible to get a candid shot of me when I'm not suffering from what we call in my family "diarrhea of the mouth:"

Example 1
Example 2
Example 3

I may look like I'm not talking in Example 2, but I know I was, because I was yelling to the couple that asked me to take their picture that the light was shining into the camera screen and I couldn't see what I was doing, so most likely the photo was going to be crap. Hey, if I'm going to take a crappy photo, at least I'm going to be up-front and honest about it.

Come on, though. I mean, really. I know for a fact that most times I don't have anything very interesting to say, so who knows what bullshit was flying out from between my lips.

****

The last few days have involved several almost-naps while at work, and then going home and getting into bed around 8:30, all third-grade style. I think I have a summer cold. Or it could be allergies, since there has been practically no rain and all sorts of little bits of everything are just floating around my person, threatening to take up residence in my nostrils.

So, yeah, can't say that I've been that productive in any facet of my life lately. The plants I spent days planting? They're holding on to a wing and a prayer that Mother Nature might pour some rain on them, because that Bitch that planted them sure as Hell isn't doing it. My friends? I can't even remember their names. Boyfriend? He's just that Guy that happens to have a key to get into my apartment. To drop off the Frosty that I had requested.

****

This stuff doesn't really get me down, though, because in about a week the family and I are headed off to Wisconsin for our annual vacation. What do we have planned? Nothing! I might bob around in the pool, ride on the pontoon boat, or go hiking.* Or I'll do none of those things. The vacation is my oyster!

*Forget the hiking part. Last year, we saw four of these and about 400 of these. I think I'll just sit on the screened-in porch with my OFF! Deep Woods and bear bell, thanks.

Beatdown.

Oh Holy Hell, I am falling asleep at work today. I could still be getting over my awesome and utterly exhausting weekend, or it could be from that needless fight that Steve and I had last night for no reason other than we were tired and testy. Actually, I was tired and testy. The argument ended when we fell asleep. Is that a truce?

Really, though, I think I'm double-fisting a Cherry Zero and my third cup of coffee because my body has begun it's descent into hibernation. As soon as the weather gets slightly warm (50 degrees), the four post-menopausal women and one sweaty man that I work with make an executive decision to turn on the air conditioning in the office. As the only fertile, albeit blue-lipped and goose-bumpy, chick in the bunch, I promptly get voted out, and spend the rest of the summer in sweaters. That person with the tank top layered under a turtleneck? Hi, that's me.

Today is such a Tuesday.

Squee!

I had such a fun time with Sharyn and James this weekend.

I'm still high from how much fun I had. So much so, that just now I was dancing to Steve's rendition of Salt-n-Pepa's "Push It" in my birthday suit, while I did my before-bedtime skincare regime.

If that's not a sign of a good weekend, I don't know what is.

Photos of the weekend:


Much, much, MUCH better photos of the weekend (and more to come, once she gets back to her Normal Life):

Hey, know what's the opposite of awesome?

When you're writing an email to someone, and you realize that a word you used in the email didn't mean what you thought it was, so while it's taking forever on your work computer to process you hit "Stop," and everything appears like the email was never sent.

Well, now you're thinking Ho HO HO - you have beaten the email-sending machine at it's own game!! So then you merrily change what you said - and add some more witty quips for good measure - hit Send again, and all seems right with the World until you check your "Sent Mail" box, and find that the original email actually did, in fact, go through. So now you've sent two emails.

The second with edits.

So you send that "Hey, sorry I sent that twice" email, and you sheepishly add a witty quip about how your work computer is a vile beast, or some shit like that, and hit "Send" again. Then you proceed to writhe, knowing that right now, at this very moment, if someone were to look in a thesaurus for antonyms for "awesome," "hip," or (gasp) "witty," your face would probably be there.

Christ.

Aww holy Hell, did I ever blow my "Try and save money" credo today. It started with just needing something nice to wear to a christening on Saturday.......to an Oh, I should probably create an ensemble here.......to Oh, those are cute shoes.......to Wow, that purse is really cute. A little while and 300 bucks later, and I'm trying to reign in my inner Lindsay Lohan. Son of a bitch.

Couple that with the money I dropped last night on flowers for the back deck, and oh, I'm going to be saving up money until the end of time.

But I'll look cute doing it. And I'll have a little flower-ful haven in the backyard where I can balance my checkbook and weep about the fact that I will never actually own a house of my own, or pay off that credit card.

****

SO let's forget about that whole thing I mentioned up there. Instead, let's focus on some things that have me smiling lately:

1. Shit, I almost peed my pants twice at work.

2. Jeffrey's post wherein he goes all Bitchslap on the Helvetica font.

3. Sharyn comes in a day. A DAY. Squee! Now, if I could only make this place look somewhat liveable. She gave me the old, "Oh, you don't have to clean up for me" line in her email today, but Sharyn, really, I don't think you want to kick a pair of Steve's underoos on your way to the bathroom. I mean, at least not on the first day.

And, finally, number 4:



He spent the evening with me at my boss' house for dinner, because in a week we're going to be watching her ball of fluff at our apartment, like we did over Thanksgiving, and we wanted the dogs to mingle* a bit.

*sniff each others' asses.

Moj was such a good boy while he was there tonight. Which is good, because I was getting pretty tanked from my seemingly neverending glass of Carlsberg, so one of us had to Represent.

Video.

The Daniel Johnston show this past Thursday was just great.



Sadly, I think my camera might be on the verge of death, so the photos from the show are really crappy. I also couldn't take any without a flash, because sadly Daniel's medications for his bi-polar disorder give him a serious case of the shakes.

However, I shot a short video of the experience. If you can look past that one part where I was busy jammin' and didn't notice the camera was pointing at nothing, it came out pretty alright.

Slow day at the office.

From a conversation at work:

"Yeah, she was, you know, 'a couple crayons short of the 64 box.'"

"The 64 box? Shit, she was a couple crayons short of the 8."

Keeping occupied.

Holy crap, this week has been insane. Every single night I've had something going on:

Monday - Tuesday: stayed at my sister's because Tuesday I attended a seminar in the 'burbs.

Wednesday: my sister had one of these parties, which I normally would not enjoy, but I love the Body Shop, and they use all natural ingredients and don't test on animals nor buy anything from vendors who do, and blahblahblah....basically I spent alot of money to begin a "face care regime." And I'm having a party of my own where we'll test out the latest in foot care. Fabulous!

Tonight: the B.F. and I are going to go see Daniel Johnston. We're totally exhausted from the week, but it's like a once-in-a-very-long-time chance to see him, so we're heading to Lincoln Park. We're going to the 7 p.m. show, though, not the late show, which is the show we would have gone to in our youth (you know, like 2 years ago).

Have you seen his movie? If not, oh my, you should. I really enjoyed it. Then again, I seem to always greatly enjoy documentaries about people that can't completely handle life, such as Henry Darger and Big and Little Edie Beale, so maybe that opinion is a little biased.

****

Speaking of biographical-type stuff, I started this book this weekend. Please look past the fact that Kirsten Dunst is on the cover, because WHOA-HO-HO. The pomp! The circumstance! The intrigue! I haven't gotten very far - Marie's only 14 and about to be married to the Dauphin - but....wow. If I ever get depressed about how fickle and mean the human race can get, I just need to remember this book to realize that they've been that way for a very long time.

****

So anyways, I'v spent way too much time having fun and not staying home last weekend and this week that:

a) I actually have grown tired of shouting small talk over loud music to my friends at bars; and,

b) I have let my apartment fall into ruins.

I'll be recovered from "A" by this coming weekend, but I should probably get off this machine and try to make some sense of "B."

But not before I show you a picture of the Elvis impersonator that was at the taqueria across the street from my house at 12:45 a.m. last Saturday:



Yeah. I don't know why, either.

Thursday sadness.

Today, I saw the aftermath of a dog that had gotten hit by a car. Alot of people standing around, and a dog with a big, bloody gash on his back left side. He was just laying there. I went around the block because I was stuck behind a parking car, and while I was driving back I called my dog's vet and then Animal Control to see where to bring the dog.

When I got back, the dog and everyone that had been standing around it were gone.

I feel like I should have done more, and I didn't.

****

Later on, I took a bike ride that was so long - and I am so out of shape - that twice I thought, Dear Lord. I am going to die. Right here. On Damen Avenue.

I didn't, though. Die, that is. And that made me feel a little better.

Hurrah.

Wednesday musing.

People don't give Wednesday much love. Neither do I, usually, but today I kept on thinking it was Tuesday, and then I realized it wasn't, and it was pretty sweet. So keep on rockin' it, Wednesday.

****

I don't have much to tell you. I'm also a little drunk from the fine Canadian beer that I was drinking at Lula just now, a beer whose name I can't remember because it's so great, but let me assure you, it was fantastic.

It's been a bit of a roller coaster of a week.....health scare with a family member, a family member of a friend dying, and various friends being sad for various reasons. So I spent alot of my time this past weekend with my dog at the Wicker Park Dog Park, which is really less of a park and more of a little sliver at the end of a baseball field, but it's a very therapeutic place, I think. I mean, how can you not be happy with guys like this running around?







That French Bulldog in the last picture there is named Rambo. Rambo has seasonal allergies, so was sneezing snot everywhere. But in an endearing way. He also might have a little of this, too, because he was not pleased when any other dog got attention. Which, you know, was happening all over the place at the dog park. Rambo is a dog with an attitude that sticks out about 5 feet in front of him.

Man, I loved Rambo.

****

Some great things:

1) Sharyn comes to town in about two weeks.

2) SARK has just recently come out with a new book. Watch her explain the premise of Fabulous Friendship Festival here. SARK is amazing. Her books have been like my friends over the past years, especially during those "dark place" times.

3) Last, but certainly not least, the interviewer - and hardcore Spiderman enthusiast - in this commercial looks exactly like an ex-boyfriend of mine. I can't even begin to tell you how much this commercial makes me laugh.