There's Not a Line That Goes Here That Rhymes With Anything

I took a bunch of pics of all the artwork up at my Kris' shop while we were in there for Coadster's tattoo. You'll probably be seeing more of it than you want, but it should be a nice break from my garden pics.

I tried to make today as relaxing as possible. Work is busy with all the final transcripts from high schools and colleges and all the orientation kids in and out of the office. So, I figured it would be nice to just rest up when I'm home for a day or two.

I did find out that my protein levels are still one point too low to donate plasma. I have to wait until the 29th to go back and get tested again. I asked the nurse if she thought it could be the running depleting my protein and she said definitely. She suggested I take a day or two off from running before I get my next blood test. It might make me a little itchy, but I'll try it and see if that helps.

I keep thinking I'm going to bake cookies after work, but then it keeps being humid and hot and I keep not having air conditioning, so it doesn't happen. Maybe tomorrow night...

Keeping up with the randomness of this post. I just found out through FB that there's going to be a book festival here on my birthday weekend. I don't know who all else, but I know Jane Smiley and the chick who wrote the Time Traveler's Wife will both be here to read. What a great gift for me.

You all were right. I'm loving reading Frankenstein right now. I was going to read the book Angelology after that, but then a friend suggested Jonathan Franzen and a grad student in my office let me borrow his copy of The Corrections, so I want to finish that as soon as possible so I can get it back to him.

Okay. That's probably more of my ADD than you can handle in one post. Come back tomorrow, when I might actually finish a whole thought..Or maybe not.

For I Toss and Turn, I Can't Sleep at Night

Look! My seeds have germinated. It normally takes about 7 - 10 days but mine are overachievers and made it up in 4. Good, good seeds.

Oh, kids. I've got Spring fever and I got it baaaaad. I can't sleep and my attention span went AWOL again. I have all this crazy false energy that makes it so I get about 4 hours of sleep a night if I'm lucky, but I'm so exhausted that I can't get anything practical done either. Tonight I rode my bike home from work and then went on one of my longer runs. I hadn't tried to run that route since before I moved, so I had to figure out the best way to go. I ended going a little differently than I used to, but it made it more of an 8 mile run than a 10 mile and I didn't think I was quite ready to run that far yet. It felt great.

So, now I'm going to end this post and finally try to get some sleep tonight. I figure I'll give myself time to relax and read and see if that helps. If not, I'm sure tomorrow's blog post will be even more erratic and hard to read. Sorry. Hey, Happy Spring!

It's a Wonder I Can Think at All

Another recycled picture of me. Sorry, I don't have all that many kid pics of myself, so I have to use the same ones over again.

So, hey. I finally got my XBox back from the shop and it seems to be working just fine again. Stinky worked on her carpal tunnel by playing Guitar Hero for way too long, and I figured out how to reset it so it would work with my wireless router. I'm awesome. Anyway, it seemed like a good night to steal a post from my old blog. So, here goes:

When I was in 4th grade, I was desperately trying to get diagnosed with a learning disability. Both my brother and my sister supposedly had one and they got to see Mrs. Sanchez. She was a big proponent of positive reinforcement, so my siblings were constantly coming home with super balls, candy and best of all, stories about their lunches at McDonald's. Back in 1974, you were still allowed to use food as a reward. My plan was to get diagnosed, have my class in Mrs. Sanchez's room and then be so good that I used up her entire budget on McDonald's lunches every week. The school indulged me a couple of times, but the third time I asked to take the test that should have led me down my Mccheeseburger path, I was denied.

I don't remember specifics, but I think the principal sounded like this; "Listen kid. You don't have a learning disability and you're not gonna get one by taking the tests over and over. So, scram." Actually, it was the seventies and we lived in Mesa so I'm sure he spoke less like Nick the bartender from It's A Wonderful Life and more like a progressive Mormon worried about my self-esteem.

What I lacked in a learning disability, I made up for in a speech impediment. I had a lisp up until that year. Lisps are adorable until you reach that awkward age and unless you're moving to Barcelona, you want to try to lose it and fast. Which meant I had to meet with a speech therapist. Unfortunately, she was no Mrs. Sanchez. She was so boring, I don't even remember her name. I sat in her room and recited, "Sammy snake, Sammy snake, Sammy snake..." into a tape recorder.

I know I can't make it through a post without mentioning my short attention span, so I figured I'd bring it up again. Sitting down for very long is difficult for me as an adult, but as a nine year old, it was torture. Finally, one day my teacher went out and left me to my recitation so she could smoke a ciggie in the hallway and chat with some of the other teachers. I continued on and she told me she would listen to it later. Halfway through, I belched very loudly into the microphone. I felt so rebellious. But instead of listening to the tape later, my speech therapist came back early and decided to go over it with me. I couldn't look at her as the tape rolled on. "Sammy snake. Sammy snake. Sammy snake. Bwaaap! Sammy snake..." My teacher was sufficently horrified.

"Chur-LEE-ta!" I was so busted. I didn't even laugh uncomfortably like I normally do in awkward situations.

"I'm sorry, but it was soooo boring." She wasn't sympathetic. She was, in fact, very annoyed for the duration of our classes together. I once heard her relating the incident to another teacher when they were standing outside the door. The other teacher said,

"I guess there's one in every bunch..."

The good news is, that I lost my lisp that year. Maybe the therapist had a plan all along. Her strategy was to bore the lisp right out of me. And now I don't even have to consciously think to put my tongue behind my teeth when I say Sammy snake. Which is good, because you know how often I'm always talking about Sammy snake.

Then Like a Distant Scream

Here are some pics I took last week while I wandered around my neighborhood. This a photo of a grown-up chair that fell over and a kid chair that's still standing.

I guess I'm going to be a little scattered tonight. I stayed up way too late last night for this one reason, and you know how I get when I'm sleep-deprived - my self-diagnosed ADD runs wild. Who knows what the hell I'll say.

This is some kind of garage like building with windows. I like the whacky color combination.

Stinky went to a haunted cornfield outside of town called Field of Screams. (have I mentioned lately how much I love Iowa?) One of the kids who went with, lives a block over. He's a good kid, but he's a total Eddie Haskell. Every time he's over, he just keeps kissing up and it's so obviously fake, that it annoys me just a little. Anyway, Stinky said when they were out at the haunted cornfield, at first he kept trying to be all tough and say, "Bring it. BRING IT!" And then when someone jumped out from the cornstalks with a fake chainsaw and a mask and indeed brought it, he ran down the field, screaming like a five year old girl. Damn. I almost wish I was there to see it.

Here is my favorite tree on my street. I'm also a fan of the 70's looking wagon type vehicle in front of it.

My daughters work and hang out with a girl who's dad graduated from high school with me in Ottumwa. It seems so weird. I remember running into him and his wife when our kids were little. We were all laughing (until we cried) about having kids so close together in age. My girls are sixteen months apart and his kids are about that same distance apart, except his wife had twins with the second pregnancy. So, when we saw them, they had three kids under the age of two. Shoot me. Anyway, if you had told me that our kids would grow up to be good friends, I'd never have believed you. Since I never lived anywhere longer than four years straight when I was a kid, the concept of knowing someone my entire life besides kin, is entirely foreign to me.

This house is also pretty seventies. My neighborhood is kind of retro like that.

I do this thing. Some people find it annoying. Of course, I think it's kind of charming, but since I know I'll never be able to stop, I kind of have to. I change the words to songs to fit the occasion. And just for the record, I did it long before Weird Al made it famous. In junior high, there was a kid named Sam. I'm not using last names anymore, because in the past, guys I knew from junior high have googled themselves and found my blog. It's actually been cool, because I hadn't heard from them since 1979, but I don't want anyone to take the shit I write the wrong way. So, Sam used to call me flea, since my hair was all wild and crazy and messy. Sam was a little heavy, so I got him back by changing the words to Foreigner's, "Hot Blooded", to "...He's fat blooded, check it and see. His pinky finger weighs a hundred and three...." Yeah, it was bitchy, but then I was fighting a guy who would sit behind me in class and take his finger and wave it all around my head and make a buzzing sound, like I had bugs in my hair, so I like to think we're even.

I continued with the Foreigner theme when the girls were little, and I used to sing "Juice Box Hero" when I got them their liquid refreshments, after they woke up from their nap. I also changed the Backstreet Boys song to, "Everybody, wash your body..." when it was time for their baths, until the guy I was dating at the time, put a moratorium on that one. What?

Today, my co-worker John was being particularly annoying, so I had to change the words to Barry Manilow's "Copa Cabana" to, "His name was John. He was a loser..." And then he threw a handful of rubber bands at me over the cubicle wall and it helped me get through the day.

What songs do you change the lyrics to, and what do you replace them with?

It Scares the Daylight, Making Nightmares

I took a photo of this guy in Chinatown because he was taunting everyone walking by saying, "Boo hoo. Boo hoo. Go home and cry to your mommy." I guess he had some issue with Americans in general and the Dalai Lama in particular and I'm sure if you talked to him for very long he'd probably get around to telling you that Ghandi and Mother Theresa were total assholes too. Which, if I weren't with my girls, I might have tried to introduce myself, because those kinds of whack jobs really crack my shit up.

Oh, kids. I hate to break it to you, but I'm feeling a little random tonight. Yeah, it looks like you'll get another peak at what untreated, adult ADD looks like. As you probably remember from my other random posts, it's not pretty. So, let's start flinging crap, shall we?

1.) I've been having these horrible night terrors lately where I'll think I woke up and walked into the living room because it sounded like someone had broken into our house. When I enter the room, the fan kicks on and the skirt I'm wearing (only in the dream) flies up and sticks to my face covering my nose so I can't breathe and there's also some horrible presence in the room. I usually wake up all freaked out and it sometimes takes me hours to go back to sleep. Stinky said the other night, she heard me pounding the wall in my room presumably trying to get the imaginary fabric away from my nose. How bizarre is that? Yeah, maybe one of those soothing cricket noise tapes wouldn't be such a bad idea after all?

2.) One thing I noticed about my girls when we were on vacation, is that they had their guest personalities on the whole time. You know how when your kids go to their friends or families houses, and people tell you how wonderfully behaved they are and how they helped clean up and were very polite? And you wonder what the hell those people could be talking about because their rooms look like a bomb went off and they had a huge screaming meltdown in the car on the way over for their visit? Well, on vacation, my kids act like they must at other people's houses. They would unpack the car without waiting for me to ask them, let alone complaining. They'd help set up the tent and make the fire at our campsite and ask me if I wanted anything to eat or drink while I was driving. Of course, the minute we pulled up in our driveway, they both went straight into the house empty handed. Apparently, whatever pod people my kids are possessed by on the road, refuse to follow us all the way back to Iowa. Damn it.


3.) Stinky's locker number at school is 666. For real. It really couldn't be more perfect.

4.) Remember how I told you that we hung out with my Uncle when we were in California? Well, after I got back, I was talking to my Aunt who was my legal guardian when I was growing up (the California uncle's sister) and she was laughing about how sheltered her brother was. "He doesn't read the paper or watch TV or really know what's going on in the world. I even tried to make a joke with him once and he didn't get it because he didn't know what a ho' was. I had to explain to him that it was another name for a prostitute..." Did I mention that my Aunt is 70? I never thought the day would come when my Aunt, who is so decidedly NOT street that she lives out in the country in Southeast Iowa, would be going on about how much hipper she was than someone else. Wow. No wonder I'm having night terrors lately.

5.) I got to see my girlcrush after I got back into town and she was even wearing her Coco Puffs t-shirt. It sure is good to be back in Iowa.

6.) On Friday when I was talking to Mr. B., he brought up one of my exes. He's known that particular ex for years, and he thought it was weird that not only were we still friends, but that that ex and I talked to each other about people we either date or have crushes on or whatever. I have a feeling the real issue is that we had talked about Mr. B. before. He said, "I'm not saying that you shouldn't be friends with your exes, I just think it's weird, that's all." Then I asked him if he wasn't friends with any of his exes and he said, "Hell no. All my exes are so fuckin' psycho that I try to stay as far away as possible."

I'm actually friends with most guys I've dated except the couple icky abusive ones. It usually takes me about three months to get over all the bullshit after a break-up and then I'm fine and I wish them the best. The guy I dated this Winter even called me this weekend out of the blue and left me this message: "In Fast Times at Ridgemont High", which three actors went on to win academy awards?" I called him back and said, "Duh. Sean Penn, Forest Whitaker and Nicholas Cage." Then we talked for close to an hour about a bunch of other stupid stuff.

So, here's my question to you blog readers: Are you friends with your exes, are you done with them as soon as it's over, or does it depend on the person?

I've Just Closed My Eyes Again

Here is a picture of a Bears flag. You know, just so you don't forget them this year that they're not in the Superbowl. Feel free to forget them from last year though.

Well, kids. I'm almost all ready to go. I have a road trip playlist. T. (who is driving down with me) emailed me and said she wanted songs she could sing to, and so I took care of that. I'm meeting my sister in Mt Pleasant and she's taking the girls for the weekend. I still have a few things to pack, but I'm almost done with that. I still have to print out my Mapquest directions and then I can finally go to bed.

Now, I'm going to stop relating annoying details and tell you about my dream last night. And yes, I'm aware that it's just as annoying to go on and on about your dreams, because no one give a shit but you. I just think if I write it out, I might be able to get the weirdness of it out of my head. So, please indulge me, okay?

I apparently, only had one day to go on a trip, so I decided to go to Kenya for that 24 hour period (who wouldn't right?). While I was there, I took a nap in a desert right outside where people were ransacking a village and making a bonfire out of dead bodies. These same people, woke me up from my nap and helped me get on my plane. I had that weird conflicted feeling I have with people who suck, but then can be nice. Once I got on the plane, it was full of my neighbors and their kids, going to a soccer game. And then I woke up. So, what the fuck was that? Wait, don't answer that. I'm sure any analysis would put me standing right on top of the crazy again.

Sooo, ADD much, Churly? Why yes I do, and now I'm going to change the subject again. If the weather isn't too crazy, I will be off to St Louis right after work and won't see any of you (except T. and Erik) until I get back on Sunday. If the weather is too bad, you're all stuck with me for the weekend. I think we'll all now pray for clear skies.

You Ball Like The Baby in Eraserhead

Here is a picture of a dirty old wash tub.

Today was kind of funny in that weird and/or nerve-racking way. Because we live in Iowa, we are at the mercy of the elements. Today the elements decided to fuck with us. So, all my plans from yesterday totally fell through, which was still fine. I got off work and couldn't run because it was all rainy and I really didn't want to leave my house anyway. Coadster's powder puff game got canceled and Stinky didn't have anything going on either. It was the first night in about a hundred millions years that we were all home at the same time all night. I couldn't think of one thing to make for dinner, so I asked the girls if they were okay with ordering a pizza from The Wedge. Because they are in high school, they are always okay with ordering a pizza. My friend K. invited me over to her place for a bit, but I declined because I wanted to spend some time with the girls. Later, I was very glad I did.

I still wasn't sure if I was going out later in the evening so I decided to take a bath to wash the stink of the office off of me, just in case. I was in the tub for about five minutes before Coadster flung the door open to tell me that I jinxed us. Apparently, there was a tornado warning and it was headed our way again. If you don't already know my history with tornadoes and bathing, you can read a post from my old blog here. We had a few tense moments before the storm finally passed and many phone calls from friends and family checking in. I won't gush on about how hard my friends and family rock, because I've said it a million times and I'm sure you all get it. Needless to say, I didn't end up going out with my girlies. The rest of the night was spent geeking out in my happy, happy, tornado free, comfort zone.

So, now how's about we talk about boys to divert our attention away from potential natural disasters. Today when I was carrying my little red basket to go across the street to give stuff and get stuff from another office, I saw one of the young boys who hit on me at a show a while back. I'm usually good at doing what my friend Ondine calls the Iowa City stare, where you fix your gaze at a point furthest away from the person and pretend you don't see them, but he was heading straight toward me so there was no way to avoid him. I think I told you about this kid, he was the one who made a big point to tell me he was writing a novel. It was all I could do at the time to restrain myself from saying, "Yeah. You and everyone else in this town."

I have nothing against him. Yes, he was a little pissy to me because I didn't take him up on his very generous offer to hook-up, but he was drunk and in his early twenties. If everyone judged me on the mistakes I made when I was young and trashed, I would be shunned by the community and made to live in an abandoned shack in the middle of a corn field somewhere. It was just awkward at first. As we passed, we looked at each other and gave each other an embarrassed smile and then went on our ways - no harm, no foul.

Okay. I have one last thing to write. It has nothing to do with the rest of my post, but it's funny and as you know, I'm not above using my self-diagnosed ADD as an excuse for anything I want. The other day, a friend who I won't identify and I were talking about boys and sex. Weird...Or not. We were discussing having drunk sex, and my friend was saying that it always seemed like a good idea before you did it, but then once you were in the middle, you would be too tired and stupid to focus and just want to ask the person, "Hey, could you turn into a pizza instead? Oh wait. Could you get off me first and then turn into a pizza?" Amen.

Heard it From a Friend Who, Heard it From a Friend Who

Here is a cute little pony.

Well kids, I'll just warn you that I'm feeling a little random tonight. Who knows where the hell we'll go in this post. This was a total ADD evening and I'm still going with it. I had a little time to kill after work while I charged my iPod, so I played a few quick games of Centipede. Then after I ran, I picked Stinky up at the junior high and we grabbed food and came home. I remembered that I had to get a few things at the store, so I ran there and back. I received a text message in there somewhere from my friend K. saying she and some others were at the Dublin, but they were coming out right as I was getting there. They were headed to someone's house for a bit, but I didn't think I had it in me to hang out and not be fidgety, so I went home and washed some dishes and then messed around downloading and organizing songs on my computer. Yeah, so please pass the Ritalin.

The IT people cleaned up my computer today. While that was going on, I had to sit at the empty desk next to my friend John. He can't hear very well, so if you speak to him and he's not sure what you're saying he makes fun of you, and says, "Ack, ack, ack, ack?" Like it's your problem for not speaking clearly. It reminded me of this guy from Nicaragua I worked with at a restaurant that I not so affectionately called La Caca. One time the Nicaraguan guy was trying to sing an REO Speedwagon song, but he didn't understand the lyrics, so he sang it, "Fummalumma friend who, fummalumma friend who, fummalumma another you been messin' around..." I loved it so much, that whenever anyone says something I can't make out, I say, "Fummalumma?" It made me curious if everyone does this, or if it's just the weirdos I know.

In the afternoon after my computer was all cleaned up and I could move back to my desk, I realized that I kind of missed the sicko ads that had been popping up. After two days of my imaginary friends from the internets flashing me pictures of their nether regions, just sitting at my desk and actually doing my job, felt kind of lonely and boring.

Okay, now I'm going to try this new thing where I get more than five hours of sleep tonight. I thought about taking cold medicine if I couldn't fall asleep again tonight, but then I remembered how stoopid it makes me for much of the next morning. Instead, I thought I'd try to remember what it felt like at about three o'clock at work today and I figure that should put me right on out.

I "Cloud Nine" When I Want to

Remember how random yesterday's post was, and I was so aware of it and made fun of my negative patterns and all? Well, apparently my self-diagnosed ADD knows no bounds and seems to be even worse tonight. It's okay. I know how I am, so I just put myself on lock-down tonight and saved the whole world from myself.

Unfortunately, I'm not considerate enough not to blog, so I'm going to be all over the place (as Evil-E said about yesterday's post) once again tonight.

1.) So, hey. You wanna see the notes I took at my last work meeting?:


Yeah. If it had been a meeting about how to draw cheesy cartoons at work, I would have been fine. Alas, I have no idea what the meeting was about. All I got from it, was that I needed to bring some different colored pens so I'd have more options for doodling.

2.) I've been kicking around the idea of getting a cell phone lately. Both the girls have one, but I didn't think I needed one because we still have a land line. I was talking about it with Mr. Dateman this weekend and he suggested that I get rid of my home phone altogether. Duh. I don't know why I didn't think of that myself. It would definitely save me some money. It will just take some work getting my new number out to everyone. I've had my old one since I split with my ex-husband over ten years ago.

3.) Since tomorrow is the last work day for me this week, I've been fantasizing a lot about what I'm going to do with my time off. Of course, I want to run a whole bunch. And now that I have our family season passes and my new swim suit top, I want to devote some time to lounging at the city pool reading comic books. There's nothing like it to bring me right back to Summers when I was a kid. They even play the local classic rock station, so the music is still the same.

4) WARNING: NERD GIRL ALERT - This point kind of goes with the last one, so I better make it my last. It's pretty sad when my ADD gets so bad that my randomness corrects itself. I'm going to the comic book store this week to get some more intellectually stimulating reading material. The last time I was there, the guy behind the counter was telling me about a new Hulk series. Then a week or so ago, some nameless/faceless guy on Myspace messaged me about the same thing. I've never been a big fan of The Hulk, but I do like to follow the advice of complete strangers, so I'm going to see if the graphic novel is out yet. I'm sure you'll all be waiting with bated breath.

Okay, okay. I better go. There are so many other things to obsess about before I go to sleep.

Earl's Playing by Himself, Man

Kids, I've had kind of a weird headache all day and it's made me a bit cranky. I finally took some drugs for it around 6:30 this evening and now I can stand myself again.

I don't have much to say, which is about par for the course. The girls went to the Quad Cities with their dad. Mr Dateman has some stuff to do before I go bug him, and so I'm doing my total ADD thing. I'm eating some Chinese take-out, half-assed watching a movie and geeking out on the computer. See? I really don't have much to say. The good news is that my headache is almost all gone and my crankiness is subsiding. Whew!

Now, I must go and bore you no more...At least not today, anyway.

Bits and Pieces

Well, hey there. Lookee here. We got us some sepia toned stalks of corn.

Kids, I think I'll make this short. I've had a weird and hectic day or two and I'm going to try really hard to actually get some rest tonight. Plus, there are some storms rolling in, and I may need to go find my bag to breathe into very soon.

I am happy to say, that things are going to start slowing down here pretty quickly, in the next week and I can't wait. My ex's play goes up this weekend and once that happens, I'll actually have a few nights off from the girls during the week. I love my girls, it's just nice to have time to do my own thing or hang out with adults every now and again too.

After work today, I had the privilege of sitting outside on metal bleachers in the rain for an hour and a half watching Coadster play soccer. I would only ever do that for my girls. I'm sure you are all very nice people, but don't bother asking me to sit in the rain and watch you play soccer, because I will definitely say no. Soccer games are so much more interesting when it's sunny and in the seventies and I can sit on a blanket and get a blotchy sunburn because I am apparently sloppy about applying sunscreen.

Since I'm already totally scattered here, I'll just mention that there was a bomb threat in one of the buildings on the campus where I work. They brought bomb sniffing dogs, and didn't find anything, but it was a fun little scare while it lasted. The offices across the street from us, decided to lock down and I'm so glad we didn't. If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times, the real danger in my office, always comes from within.

I'll go One-On-One Against the World, Left Handed

So, kids. I've been on the tired side lately. Mostly it's my own fault, because, while I am busy this time of year in general, I still spend too much time either obsessing over stupid shit on the internets, (I'm looking at you YouTube) or just plain dicking around. I thought I might try this new thing called, getting at least four or five hours of sleep in a night to see if it improved my dispostion and my ability to hold a thought for more than two seconds. It seems my attention span went on hiatus, and my severe abandonment issues are causing me to stress out that he will never come back. Sure, he was a little short, but I still miss him all the same. I might have to start tacking up "wanted" posters around the neighborhood to see if anyone has seen him.

Originally, I was going to make this a photo post, but then I couldn't get any photos to upload here. I have no idea what's to blame, whether it's my photo program, or Blogger or the storms on the East Coast, but I'm too tired to figure it out tonight. I might do that thing where I turn the computer off and hope that things magically start working correctly again tomorrow.

So, instead I'm putting up a link to a video. The college kids in my office played it about 87 times in a row, while our bosses were doing performance reviews in another area. It's called "The Landlord", with Will Ferrell. You may have already seen it, but if not, check it out here.

I've also been pondering something else, and I thought I'd see what you all had to say. What happened to the novelty song? You know how in the seventies, there were about a million novelty songs? There was "Dead Skunk" and "Basketball Jones" and "The Funky Worm" and pretty much anything by Ray Stevens. Who is the Ray Stevens of the new millenium? Don't say Paris Hilton either, because she is actually trying to be serious, and she doesn't count.

In case you were wondering, this isn't the kind of thing that's been keeping me up at night, so you don't all need to come running to my house with the commitment papers and a stun gun at the same time. It's just something I thought about for two seconds, before it was gone again.