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Or not... they are making me do this so I can manage my account with them. 

It's almost like extortion...

Out of the frying pan...

Sometimes I need to vent.  Especially when I have oil burns on my neck and  face.

I think the phrase is 'Kill it with Fire'?

My husband is growing me strawberries.  They have been working their way up to actually producing fruit for the last 2 years... and now, I wish they wouldn't because this is what they look like:

Yes, we have terrifying mutant strawberries growing in my backyard.  I'm wondering if maybe there was a toxic chemical spill in that area, because the strawberry plants in the plot on the other side of the yard (that get the same amount of water, light, fertilizer, and love) are just fine, but these ones, all of them, about 6 plants, they have produced horrible alien strawberries and I hate them. It makes me feel queasy just knowing that they are there, in the yard, watching me... plotting to give me their space herpes.

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The Craptacular Day

I have several obnoxious and rather icky chronic diseases, which is why I am now trying to make a living by writing funny stories and drawing silly pictures on the internet instead of working "a real job."  Sometimes these diseases all gang up on me and make me not want to do a damned thing, which includes entertaining other people.  Sometimes, I force myself to do it anyway, and sometimes, those posts aren't very amusing because my heart is not behind them.  Today is one of those days.  Not that I mean my heart isn't behind this post, I just mean, I feel like crap and this probably won't be very entertaining.  And I don't mean, my darling readers, that you should to try to guess where I wasn't feeling very well in my blarg archive and let me know, because it might just insult me when you guess that a post I loved and thought was my best was crap but you know it's only because I was sick and you were just trying to be supportive by pointing out that I am not funny, and nevermind, let's just pretend like all of my posts are fried gold.

Anyway, when I am having one of these days, distraction is the best remedy for wanting to dig a hole and never come out. It helps me not to feel so guilty for not wanting to do my job, and for not getting out of bed, except to go to the bathroom 7500 times (this may be a slight exaggeration, which is clearly a symptom of my illnesses too, both the exaggerating and the bathroom trips, that is).

These are the things that are serving as my distractors today:

MTV's Teen Wolf
Yes, I know this is a show made for teens and I am roughly twice the age of the target demographic, but as a fan of the original Teen Wolf movie, I had to check it out, and since I feel about 14 years old most of the time, it appealed to me.  It is absolutely nothing like the movie though there are nods here and there, and it is ridiculously melodramatic, and I freaking love it. There. I said it. I'm a dork. Plus, Stiles... duh.

Looking up candies
I could have sworn that Whatchamacallits had marshmallow in them once upon a time. Apparently, I am completely wrong.  But there was some candy bar when I was a kid in the early 80s that had a wafer and chocolate cream and peanuts and marshmallow in the center, and damn it, I want to know what it was, because in my nostalgic memory, that was THE most delicious confection in the entire world.

And may I say, as a collector of Pez, I am really disappointed that there are no official Harry Potter Pez Dispensers.

Movie Clips on Youtube
UHF is one of my favorite movies from my youth. Weird Al is a comic genius. This clip never fails to amuse me.

By the way, "twinkie wiener sandwiches?" They're terrible. Please believe me.  It is a horrible waste of a twinkie, a hot dog, and easy cheese.

Reading

    

I'm currently reading an actual copy of  "City of Glass- The Mortal Instruments" by Cassandra Clare and "Spiderwork- A Post Apocapunk Fantasy Romance" by LK Rigel on my kindle. I don't usually like to be engaged with two books at the same time because it feels like I am cheating on one with the other, but I was reading "Spiderwork," which is the sequel to "Space Junque," both of which I downloaded for free from Amazon and am enjoying very much, when my friend loaned me the final book of the Mortal Instrument series (I mean, I think it is the final book... I guess I could research that, but I am afraid of spoilers, so I'll just not care instead) and since it is borrowed, I have set aside the other. But reading, of course, has the added benefit of making me sleep which helps with healing so I can write actual posts and not be a grumpy asshole.

Checking my emails a billion times and crying.
(I have no emails, hence the crying)
(except my mom, she writes)
(hi mom)

And that's about it.  Have anything you think might amuse me? Wanna tell me what you do to make yourself feel better when you're having a craptacular day?  I would love the distraction.

The Value of Pie

There are a few books from my early childhood that really influenced who I am as a person (and a writer, I suppose). Each taught me things that formed my personality and sense of humor.

The King Who Rained by Fred Gwynne

One of my very favorite books EVER.  Beautiful illustrations, and very funny. The King Who Rained is full of homophone humor that instilled in me a love of word play and of picturing things in the funniest way possible. I guess I stole my whole schtick from this book, looking back at it.

Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel

This book appealed to me because it had such beautiful stylized illustrations and a cute story based on repetition. I remember it being read to us in the library, possibly by my mom, possibly by the librarian;  It was a long time ago. I learned from it to be succinct in my writing and speech, to get my point across when it was most important.

Where the Sidewalk Ends 

So many people love this book by Shel Silverstein, so I do not really have to expound upon its appeal. I did learn from it, though, that poems are better funny than serious, and dear lord, if I had only remembered that lesson in my mopey high school and college years when I wrote terrible embarrassing beat poetry that I, at least, had the decency to avoid reading aloud at the many awful and painful poetry readings I attended.

Amelia Bedilia by Peggy Parish

I never actually read this book, but it taught me a very important lesson.  And that lesson is, some people are total jerks and suck at their jobs and will shirk their own professional responsibilities off onto first graders instead of actually taking responsibilities for their own mistakes.

Obviously, there is more to this story.

When I was in first grade at Maryland Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona, I loved reading and I utilized the school library as much as I was allowed.  Being the nerdpants I have always been, I was very respectful of the rules and always made sure I got my books back on time, because that was the rule of checking things out in the library, and you're supposed to follow rules.

Now this was a time when computers were things that took up entire rooms and were not available for frivolous things like library catalogs, and so everything was done by hand. You would write your name on the book's call card and the librarian would take the card out of the little pocket in the back and she would replace the card with a brightly colored piece of paper that was covered in rows of date stamps, and you would look at the last stamp on the page and that would be when you had to have your book back by... or else!

And so it happened one day, when the library sent their little slips to the teachers that kindly reminded the students that they had clearly not paid close enough attention to the OR ELSE caveat of borrowing books, and imparted to them that in their joy of reading, they had forgotten to bring back their books on time, that I found myself totally confused at receiving a slip that called for me to return "Amelia Bedilia" immediately.  I had never heard of this woman nor the book telling of her, and so I may have just ignored it, knowing it was quite obviously a mistake.

Until I went to check out another book.

The head librarian at Maryland Elementary was not the nicest lady in the world which is a nice way of saying, she was kind of a heinous bitch.  She was, in fact, the very same librarian who had been a terrible ogre when my dad had attended Maryland Elementary school 20 years earlier  And the problem was, she seemed to hate children, which is not the greatest personality trait for someone who works almost entirely with children, but these things happen.

Standing there with a book in my little hands, I pushed it over the checkout desk, eager to devour its story, only to have the crotchety old librarian cruelly tell me that I was banned from checking out books. I stood looking at her bewildered and then, she pulled out a call card. "Amelia Bedilia" she said, waving it in front of my face. I screwed up my face not understanding how this happened.

"But I never checked that book out.  I wouldn't know Amelia Bedilia if I fell over her!"

"Well, here is your name, in your handwriting on the card!"  And it was, it really was.

"But I didn't check that book out! The wrong card must have been put in the back of the book I checked out. I meant to sign for that one, and I returned that one, on time. I really did!"

And she looked at me, only considering what I said for a split second before she told me that it was my responsibility to check the call cards in books I checked out and that I would have to pay to replace Amelia Bedilia before I could check out any other books because I had signed for it, which seemed ridiculously unfair to me.  Even at that young age, I recognized that it was her responsibility, as the adult and the librarian, to make sure her library was in order, and her mistake was now costing me actual money (that is hard to come by when you are six) and was denying me the ability to fill my head with fanciful stories and beautiful illustrations and important information about narwhals that I would need later in life.


For many years, I held a grudge against Ms. Bedilia, which is a shame, because it was just the sort of silliness that I should have loved- a series based around a maid who had no grasp of idioms and so did exactly as told "dress the turkey for dinner, draw the curtains, etc." And THEN she manages not to get fired each time by making a super tasty pie.  Imagine the life lessons I could have learned from that!

The Wrong Number

Yesterday, as I was jazzercising*, my crappy borrowed cellphone rang.  Since I am currently out of the service area and it costs like 2 dollars a minute to take a call, I just checked the number, realized it was no one I knew and went back to my squatting jazz hip thrusts, ignoring the ringing, which is more of an ephemeral ghostly wailing than a ringing, but you probably wouldn't have known what the hell I was talking about if I said I ignored the ephemeral ghostly wailing without letting you know that that is my ringtone. I only chose it because it was the least aurally offensive of all the rings available, and because I was unable to program Hedwig's theme into this phone by hand, since I am certainly not going to pay for a ringtone for a phone I hardly ever use.

Anyway, the phone then made a tinkling shooting star sound, which is the sound it makes when I get a message of the textual persuasion, which I always get when I ignore a call or miss one by accident, which I also usually ignore if I am doing something else, but then... I got another tinkling shooting star sound and I wondered, 'well, what the hell was that?!' So I checked and the person who I did not know had left a message.  And curiosity beat out. My logic being, if it was actually an important call for me from a number I didn't recognize I should know what it was, or if it was something important for someone else like "Billy, it's Devon, mama's being mauled by a snow leopard, you have to come home from the bar RIGHT NOW!" I might wanna let them know that they dialed the wrong number, for mama's sake.

But it wasn't for me, and it wasn't Devon calling for Billy, it was Ron, calling for Josh.

Hey Josh, it's Ron.  I'm in Montana for a few more days so give me a call when you get off work, dude, okay?! I wanna hang out. See ya man!

I can only assume that Ron was in town for something having to with a medical marijuana convention because this was the rest of the exchange when I texted to let him know that Josh was not getting his messages:

Me: Wrong number- sorry!

4:40pm Ron: What is the #

Me (thinking, doesn't your phone have that feature where you can see who you dialed? I thought that was standard, but fine, whatever...): XXX-XXX-XXXX (only I put my phone number instead of Xs, obviously, although I can't see that it would have made a difference had I not used numbers).

5:09pm Ron: Got it dude thanx when u off work

Are you fucking kidding me?! You were asking me, the person on the receiving end of the wrong phone call, what Josh's actual number is... *facepalm*

Me: This really isnt josh. XXX-XXX-XXXX has never had a male owner. (Screw capitalization and punctuation for wrong numbers, let them think I am dumb, what do I care?)

5:59pm  Ron: Cool send me a pic so I know this aint josh

FFS... really?! Now I have to sext you to get you to stop calling? But I would have sent a picture if I had had the capability to send pictures just to get him to go away. It would have looked a lot like this:

Yes,  I would have hired a skywriter for the occasion.

But instead, I just ignored him, while being annoyed and partially amused. Until 8:46 pm when I received yet another call from Ron, which again, I ignored. And again, he left a message... and again, I was too curious and had to listen to it.

Josh- Ron. Dude, give me a call.

*blink*


If he calls again, I am texting him a link to this post.


 *fine, I wasn't really jazzercising, but that is more pleasant than what I was really doing, just trust me on this one.

I do have a magnetic personality!

I have a lot of problems with those fuzzy captchas that are quite popular on website these days. It is so difficult for me to read them, every time I encounter one, I become anxious and worried that I might actually be a spam robot without being aware.

How I learned to be happy thanks to Harry Potter.

Up until 2002, I suffered from a terminal case of "cool kids disease."  This is an affliction wherein you are WAY too cool to pay attention to anything that is popular to the masses.  In fact, instead of just ignoring these things, you actively hate on them and make obnoxious comments about how stupid everyone who likes anything popular is.  It is a terrible affliction that hundreds of thousands of teens and young adults still suffer from.

I, however, found my cure in cheapness.  See, I actively avoided Harry Potter, though many of my friends and acquaintances loved it, and so when "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" came on HBO, since I was PAYING for the dumb channel anyway, I recorded it to watch when there was nothing else on. And it was in that moment, when "Eh, it's on and I am paying for the channel so I might as well watch the stupid thing" beat out, "I'm WAY too cool to watch popular things," that I learned that sometimes, thing are popular, because they are freaking AWESOME!

And so I watched the movie, and then forced my husband to watch the movie, and then watched the movie a billion more times (every time it was on, East and West Coast). And as soon as it opened, I went to the library and checked out all the books and read them in rapid succession.

At that point, the series was only up to"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" and "The Chamber of Secrets" was just coming out in the theaters, and so I joined in on the Harry Potter mania with full gusto.  The next year, I pre-ordered "Order of the Phoenix" from a local bookstore and spent an entire family vacation worrying about whether I would make it home in time to get my copy. I attended all the midnight premiers from "Prisoner of Azkaban" on. I read the supplemental books, and re-read all the books each time a new one came out. I read Mugglenet everyday, and drew fan art, and read theories, and immersed myself completely in fandom. And I was happy. I was no longer avoiding things to be cool and missing out on things that had the potential to bring me immense joy.

So now, when some popular book, or show, or movie comes along, instead of willfully ignoring it, I investigate. I want to know for myself if this could be my next Harry Potter, or at the very least, just a moment of happiness I would have otherwise missed out on by being too cool to like things.

Sick Day

I meant to post yesterday, continuing my Harry Potter series, but here is what I did instead.  The aforementioned series will continue (and possibly conclude tomorrow, don't know... I'll figure it out as the fancy strikes me...) but I thought this was important to share today.  So without further ado, what I did yesterday instead of posting:

Whine about being hungry on the internet on the off chance that someone would feed me.

Get up, because I have to pee anyway and make a tortilla with some cheese on it, because it is the only savory food in the house that takes little preparation to make.

Sneeze x 112

Cough x 389

Get craving for spice cake. Ask the internet to get me some.

Wait for the internet to ignore me totally.

Make "should be" funny comments on people's Facebook posts

Take Thera-flu pill. Drink out of cranberry juice bottle. Realize I am sick and have just contaminated entire bottle. 

(p.s. don't drink the cranberry juice, it is contaminated)

Take shower while pill kicks in. 

Yell at shower curtain to stop touching me. Threaten to set it on fire. 

No, really, this thing is like a pervy guy on a subway.. 'oh I'm sorry, was I all rubbing on your butt... how silly of me, I didn't mean to do that. *rub rub rub*'

Collect the 17 used tissues that are on the floor and bed and throw away.

Notice I am starving . Go to eat bowl of Smores cereal. Realize I can't really smell... hope that the milk is still okay while sniffing in vain.

Take nap, a.k.a. fall into antihistamine stupor.  

Never Tickle A Sleeping Dragon.

Our Harry Potter series continues!

Today, in Hogwarts' Great Hall, Jen Yates of Cakewrecks  faces a Howler from an angry reader who is disgusted by her insensitivity when discussing Cauldron Cakes.  And she didn't even start on the CCCs (Cauldron Cake Cakes... ptooey!).

Go visit Cakewrecks, but go to the bathroom first. Trust me.  You don't want to have an accident.
And if you like nerdy and awesome things, including some awesome DIY projects, visit her other blog, Epbot!