Strolling through nature’s beauty
It’s been a long, cold, lonely winter (in all senses both literal and metaphorical). The arrival of spring has us all but dancing around with cartoon wildlife. Never has a return to normal life and pleasant temperatures been more highly anticipated than this year, I’m thinking.
And never has there been a happier canine than one Spoiled Rotten Licorice, who is reaping the benefits of our spring-drunkeness in spades. The nice thing about a tiny little mutt like her—12 pounds of terror, man—is that she doesn’t HAVE to have a daily walk. She’s not an insane breed whose brain goes berserk without proper exercise, plus (let’s face it), at her size, we can toss a ball in the house or let her out into her run and she can get all the exercise she really needs. Still, walks are ZOMGEXCITING and lately she’s getting a walk every day.
Is there anything more soothing, more American, more simultaneously meditative and invigorating than clipping a small animal to a rope and then alternately dragging her/being dragged around outside on a beautiful afternoon? THERE IS NOT.
It has gotten to where as soon as anyone starts putting on shoes, the dog starts dancing around in little circles. read more…
No, really
I guess this is the part where I’m supposed to tell you a fantastic made-up story and convince you that it’s true. I’ve never been a fan of April Fool’s Day—as much as I love a good story, the calculated intent to trick never sits well with me—but we may as well get it out of the way.
So: Licorice is pregnant! Also, Licorice is actually a cat. Who recently won the lottery. SWEARSIES.
We good? Okay, then. (I know. I’m not very good at the whole trickster thing.)
Instead of that nonsense, I have a VERY SERIOUS burning question which I urge you to consider carefully because this is IMPORTANT. If you like eggs, and you like hard-boiled and deviled eggs, can you please explain to me why it is now de rigueur for deviled eggs to be all fancified with weird ingredients instead of just being, you know, regular deviled eggs? DEVILED EGGS ARE ALREADY DELICIOUS. (This question brought to you by Easter dinner.)
Please discuss. I require enlightenment.
Things which are scary
When I was about Chickie’s age, I was busy chewing my way through everything Stephen King ever wrote. The freakier and scarier, the better. This came up when I tried to convince Otto to watch Bates Motel with me the other night; he’s not so much a fan of a series that is fairly unapologetic about the amount of blood and gore, whereas I love it. I found myself explaining that—for me—there is catharsis in stories filled with terror. I get to experience all the fear/loathing/panic my body can handle WITHOUT having to relate it to my own particular life, and afterward, somehow my brain goes, “Well, then. We’re fine. Thank goodness none of that stuff was happening to US!” And I walk away happier.
Apparently that’s odd…? Like, most people read/see scary stuff and it just freaks them out? I’m now wondering if I am the only person who enjoys freaking myself out this way and feels fine, after. (Example: I watch Bates Motel, I can happily move on with my life when it’s over. But I have a real-life encounter like the last one I told you about and I’m disturbed and squicked out for days.
This tells me that fear is relative (duh). So here are a few other recent frightening things: read more…
This post is NSFA (Not Safe For Anyone)
At first I was going to say that this post was NSFW, but upon reflection, that’s TRUE, but an incomplete caution. This post is not safe for work, home, in your car, with a fox, in a box, or with any breakfast product, rhyming or not. Honestly it’s not safe anyone at all.
If there are small children in the room, do not read this post. If you are of delicate sensibility, please do not read this post. If you are not in the mood to be completely horrified, for the love of God: I’m trying to explain to you that you should not read this post.
If you—like me—believe that the only redeeming value of being completely traumatized is in then sharing that trauma with others, and relishing in their anguished squirming and scream-whispers of, “No! NO! THAT DID NOT HAPPEN!!” then you might like to read this post. But you can’t say I didn’t warn you, because I did. REPEATEDLY.
Dare to read on? Alrighty, then. HAVE I GOT A STORY FOR YOU! read more…
Georgia makes you work for it
Far be it from me to complain about the south when, in fact, there is little I detest more than snow and coldness. I mean, yes, occasionally I need to whine a little bit about the bugs. Perhaps it is true that I have compared our little patch of land to a spot on the surface of the sun, mid-summer, when it truly feels like we will never be un-sweaty again. And ideologically speaking, it maybe wasn’t the very brightest move for this pair of pro-education northerners to find ourselves in a region where our congressman believes evolution to be “lies from the pit of hell,” true, but… hang on. I’m thinking.
Okay, yes. I complain about the south quite a bit. But it’s not my fault that we have cockroaches bigger than my dog or that politics here make my head hurt.
The thing is, working from home means that it doesn’t matter all that much where I live, because my job is largely unaffected by those in my immediate vicinity. Sure, I need to venture out for other stuff, but we’ve managed to find our niches. It’s all fine. I’m just so glad my work is unaffected by the… oh. read more…
Minutiae for your Monday
I have a variety of not-long-enough-to-be-a-complete-post stories which are either 1) still interesting enough for sharing or 2) mind-numbingly dull but I don’t realize that and insist you must know, and therefore that shall result in this, a disjointed mishmash of unrelated things all in one place. It’s just like my junk drawer! Only with more words and fewer pen caps!! (Moral of this story: If you need a paperclip and a button, I’m your gal.)
There’s a slight twinge of remorse here that I don’t have a more exciting life or whatever, but on the other hand, I got up this morning and brought up Facebook and was immediately presented with several hundred of my closest friends (haaaaaaaa) complaining about snow. And I’m not doing that! This is going to be WAY more interesting (to me)!
Though—speaking of weather—we had a gray, rainy weekend, and nothing makes me adore my spoiled rotten dog more than a few days of rain. While her lovable traits are numerous, the fact that she will leap at the door as if bladder explosion is imminent (ZOMG MUST GO OUT NOW NOW NOW OPEN THE DOOR I’M DYING!!!), then will poke her head out onto the porch once the door is opened, listen to the rain for a moment, and flounce back inside, all, “Just kidding, did you know it was RAINING out there? I just had my hairs did. I’ll just flop down on your couch and cross my legs for a while and take a nap,” is endlessly hilarious to me. This is a dog who was picked up as a stray, clearly in terrible shape. What have we done over the last three+ years that now has her convinced she’s far too delicate to even get WET? read more…
Poppin’ tags, suburban style
Know what Chickadee loves? Let’s take a brief quiz:
A) When I sing and dance along with Thrift Shop any time it comes on the radio.
B) When I refer to visiting our local Goodwill as “poppin’ tags.”
C) When I respond to any compliment on my attire—however slight—with a deep, booming, “I LOOK IN-CRED-UH-BULL!”
D) All of the above.
E) None of the above, and P.S., it’s not nice to taunt the teenager.
[Your quiz will not be graded. I am too busy cutting the plastic tag thingies off our latest haul. But here’s Licorice’s favorite video version as a reward for playing along.]
The thing is, I’ve been a thrift store shopper since I was a teen with babysitting money in my pocket. The fact that there’s now a popular song about it doesn’t automatically transform me into a hipster. (Especially when you consider that my most frequent purchases at Goodwill are t-shirts which still have their original store tags. I’m not after your “cool, old” stuff so much as I’m after the bargain on stuff I hope you don’t realize I got at Goodwill. Thank goodness I’m not telling the entire Internet that’s where I got my “expensive” clothes. Um. Oops?) Really the only thing that’s different now is that my kids think it’s cool instead of embarrassing. read more…
Unexpected
One of my least favorite things to hear about kids on the autism spectrum is that they tend to lack an understanding of humor, and nearly everything “official” says they don’t understand sarcasm. And really, as much as I would love to believe that my own particular little snowflakes are just that much more special than the world, no, really, I know a LOT of Aspies who get sarcasm just fine.
Monkey has been… well… a little off, lately. If you ask him something you’re likely to get a snippy, snarky reply. With an extra helping of sarcasm. I don’t know what’s up. I suspect it may be puberty. Puberty is known for kind of being a bitch, y’know? And he appears to have the beginnings of a BAD case of it. Poor kid. You’d think they’d have a vaccine by now, or something.
Anyway, the other day he seemed kind of down, so I asked him if he was okay, and he kind of shrugged, so I told him that if there was anything he wanted to talk about—then, or some other time, either way—that I am a pretty good listener. He nodded, so I asked him if he wanted to talk right then, and he said yes.
Then he put a hand on my knee, and speaking quietly to his lap, said, “Mom, it’s just that…” (I leaned in, ready understand and try to help) “it’s…” (he looked up with a mournful expression) “it’s my time of the month,” he concluded, barely able to hang on to his guffaw until he reached the end, throwing his head back and collapsing in laughter.
Yeeeeahhhh. My poor Aspie, what with his lack of a sense of humor and understanding of nuance.
The house still smells like bacon
I keep waiting for something BIG and EXCITING to happen, possibly because I’m still in the pinch-me-I’m-dreaming phase of delicious normality. The reality is that life has been mundane and I am not complaining. I am just… perplexed. Surely one of us is about to come down with Ebola, or the next time we run out of milk and I drive to the store, my car will burst into flames. I mean, that’s… just sort of how my life goes, no?
Well—hang on, I have to knock on some wood, throw some salt over my shoulder, and perform a rather complicated ritual with the tchotchkes on my desk—right now, things go pretty boring. It rocks.
Of course, Monkey would tell you that things have NOT been boring. Things have been TERRIBLE because he has been DEPRIVED OF FRIEND TIME while Lemur’s family was sick. It was AWFUL and he nearly DIED of LONELINESS. Apparently none of the rest of us were interesting enough to keep him alive. read more…
Broccoli + plumbing = small-scale havoc
First of all, thank you for all of the color suggestions and stories and cautions in the last post. I posted that all, “Yellow?” and what your feedback told me was that I needed to put down the crack pipe, as the odds of me selecting a suitable yellow were somewhere between slim and none. Alert (and pretty) commenter Elizabeth said something about full-spectrum paints and I immediately emailed her all “WHAT IS THIS PAINT YOU SPEAK OF?” and with her help I then fell into the deep, expensive rabbit hole of Ellen Kennon paints. Eventually I emerged, bleary-eyed, with a passel of samples on order. We’ll see how it works out.
[For the curious: At the moment I am enchanted by a color called Oasis, which is described on the site as: “… a darker version of Gustavian Grey (Ethereal Mists Color) which crosses that fine line between blue and green. Therefore, it is both healing and soothing, yet rejuvenating.” We’ll see if I like the sample as much as I liked it in the virtual room-painter thingie on the screen. Also the bathroom off my office is painted dark burgundy and now I’m all I GUESS I NEED TO PAINT THE BATHROOM, TOO and hello, they also make a paint called RAINBOW FOG, which: obviously. Is “full spectrum” just marketing hype? Probably. But I spend most of my life in this room and I want LIIIIIIIIGHT. Hello, my name is Sucker.]
Anyway. That’s the paint. But yesterday, there was cooking! And plumbing! And the intersection of the two, kind of. read more…