today, from the refrigerator

the narrative:

my friend felt like a girl under worship

trudge together through delirious and hot chocolate


the imperative:

death of a mother by sausage

please stop shaking the fluffy fiddle puppy at her breast

smear sweet lather on your shadow

always incubate repulsive language

yes you may beat up a drunk wet purple honey finger

watch their peaches

the philosophic:

a languid flood would recall my power

sleep after a bitter vision

random ponderings

There are definite disadvantages to being female when you live in an old house...


...especially at five in the morning when your bathrooms don't have heat.

Just sayin'.

And there you have it, the deep thoughts which took an entire month to brew.

Wasn't it worth the wait?

fuzzy logic

There is a cardboard box in my kitchen. It isn’t an empty cereal box or the packaging to ravioli or canned fruit purchased in bulk. It has no kitchen-like function.

On Monday, I received a few relatively small books by way of the U.S. Postal Service. Of course, they arrived in a box five times larger than needed – the extra space consumed by brown packaging paper. Well, I guess that’s better than Styrofoam peanuts.

The box sits on the floor of my small kitchen. It is empty except for two small “bouncy balls” and a piece of junk mail. The lid flaps are rather unwieldy and will not stay flattened because it is a sturdy box.

Tell me, please, why this box remains in my kitchen when I trip over it every single time I walk through the room.

Maybe I should blame it on the Harvest Moon.

ode to a working computer

Ah, sweet peace doth grace my heart
As fingers touching keys transmit
Their binary tendrils of understanding
Onto the screen
So recently blank and white!

Such dread fear did dare to fill my veins
As screen following screen fell ill
In grandest domino-tian homage -
Upstairs and down -
A single technician to share.

Oh horror unimaginable upon my back
As insult and injury combined
In vicious scheme of foulest battle drawn -
No ping was heard.
The interweaving net had fallen down.

But, joy! Sweet joy reigns now within me deep
As pressing publish will result in post
Drawn nobly from within the delayed stress -
So hard to bear -
Of several days without the blogosphere!

silly walk

Your Brain's Pattern

Your mind is a creative hotbed of artistic talent. You're always making pictures in your mind, especially when you're bored. You are easily inspired to think colorful, interesting thoughts. And although it may be hard to express these thoughts, it won't always be.

What Pattern Is Your Brain?

fear tactics

So, I almost made a row of old ladies have heart attacks today.

I have this habit of pouring coke from a can into a bottle for drinking (cheaper, resealable). Upon leaving for church this morning, I couldn't find an empty soda bottle, so I opted for a water bottle. This was not a smart idea.

Being a detail oriented person, I have noticed on previous occasions that the caps are smaller on most water bottles than on their soft drink counterparts. Unfortunately, the common sensical side of me stayed in bed this morning.

After the church service, as we were leaving the sanctuary, I pulled out my drink. Being an impatient soul, I decided to unscrew the lid before completely exiting the sanctuary.

You know, lower thread count on a screw top translates directly to higher pressure?

Imagine my surprise (and everyone else's) when said cap explosively detached itself from the bottle. Fortunatley, my husband is tall enough that I could effectively hide - and I only have a small bruise.

treasure hunt

So I got up this morning in a somewhat grumpy mood.

Sleep was slow in coming last night. Okay, so I fell asleep at around 4:30 AM, so I guess that is an inaccurate statement. Grumps not withstanding, I was bound and determined to locate my sense of humor under the pile of rubble I so affectionately call home.

I figured I'd try the refrigerator first. I've found many unusual items in there before, and I could kill two birds with one stone as gnomes were climbing all over me in effort to bring forth the inner breakfast chef. Since my humor wasn't to be found, however, the predators had to content themselves with Pop Tarts and cereal.

I looked in the pile of laundry next. I did manage to find a marble, a rubber band, three half eaten tortilla chips, a W-2, and countless legos, but no trace of comic relief.

Off I trundled toward the hall closet. After I managed to dig out from under the assorted coats, scooters, and power tools which avalanched upon opening the door, I did a thorough search. Nope.

The upstairs was beckoning. I stalled - knowing as I do that the upper reaches of this domicile are more likely to contain nuclear waste and biochemical weaponry. Soon, however, I could delay no longer.

No humor. I did locate a pile of mismatched socks. Does that count for anything?

If you happen to find the more lighthearted side of my nature, feel free to leave it in the comments section of the blog. My family would be most appreciative.

one more for the road

sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep deprivation

flesh melting into puddles of ooze in peripheral vision

fingers sliding off keyboard

coherent thought unlikely

Why do I do this to myself?

Oh yeah, this is supposed to be interesting, isn't it?

Hmmmm.

I could regale you with tales of football, cleaning, and packing. I could run a comparative analysis of late night infomercials. I could dust off my harmonica and play you some blues (except for the fact that I don't have a harmonica or play one, nor do I know any blues tunes by heart). I could make up new lyrics to some pop song including references to a gopher and a slurpee. I could slink off into the scary realm of coca-cola induced hallucination. Or, I could just start packing the car and hope I get some sleep on the way.

Ooooh, oooh, oooh, I see daylight.

dear mr. trashman

I am so sorry to inconvenience you by actually having garbage. It was not my intention to make your life more difficult when I didn’t starve my children and pets to avoid extra consumption on a week when a holiday took away one of our regular pick-up dates.

I appreciate the fact that you only left one of my cans in the street. I am sure the elderly pedestrians are also grateful that you only chose to throw one can and the lids onto the sidewalk, thereby affording them the possible opportunity of circumnavigating the bins without bodily harm.

I am sure you have gone above and beyond the call of duty by actually dumping the contents of the cans into the truck as opposed to taking only those items which are bagged.

It is not an envious job that you have, and I am just ever so thankful you see it as your mission to carry out your menial duties with such flair and thoroughness.

proverbs eleventy-twelve

"Thou shalt not paint walls chalkboard green lest those of youthful countenance be tempted unduly."

the invasion of random thought

Remember word association? Phychologists use it as a tool. Children use it as a game. Picture those childhood days spent with a close friend or two saying the first word that pops into your head. My brain never outgrew it. My mind never developed the ability to stick to one thought for more than a few seconds.

When I was younger, as tangent queen, I always remembered to somehow bring it back to where I started. Now, not so much. Follow with me, if you will, as I chase these random thoughts around the office, as they dodge between the scattered evidences of a large, untidy family.

Why does the dog have to take his food out of the bowl to eat it? Does he enjoy watching TV so much that he has no choice but to obey the impulse to bring mouthfuls into the living room, drop them on the floor, and consume most, but never all of the food therein?

Is it worth it to make the old wood floors look better by covering them with laminate that has some trouble holding up to my kids in the dining room? We can't refinish the wood. It's been done too many times, and there isn't enough thickness left to work with.

Am I up to the challenge of making my kids spend less time on their computers when I don't feel like getting off of mine?

I wonder if I can get by with vacuuming the curtains or if I actually have to take them down and wash them. I don't feel like thinking about that today, so I will put it off until at least tomorrow.

Am I afraid to let go of procrastination because it is the one constant in my life?

How does one explain to a 3 year old that "baby shows" do not have to be on two different TV's at the same time?

Why do the bubbles in a bottle of soda collect around the top edge of the liquid as it gets lower? Is this the backwash making that edge slightly dirty (like pollution in a stream)?

Why are there so many computer parts lying around my house?

Will I remember to take my eldest to his first job interview Thursday?

Why is my ankle bone visible for the first time in weeks on the very day I am supposed to go to the doctor about it?

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? And where do woodchucks live anyway?

Why do my fingers misbehave when I have loads to say, but type perfectly when I am doing nothing but babbling incessantly about nothing?

If one is sick of the sound of their own voice and the sight of their own type, why do they continue spewing?

Why do some bruises turn purple while they are healing and others turn brownish-green?

What is an organized way to keep all of those darn lids when I don't even have enough cabinet space for the things they belong to?

Where are all of the rechargeable batteries?

And, of course, what deeper questions am I trying to avoid by concentrating on silly nonsense?

m-i-s-s-p-e-l-l-i-n-g....misspelling

I knew how to spell once. Really. I was never spelling bee worthy, but I could get by. My question is this: What is it about birthing children which makes little pieces of functioning brain tissue fall out of your head never to return?

I avoid words now, words that I suddenly no longer know how to spell. This can be quite irritating, as those words are sometimes as simple as "their" and "eat." I sat for twenty minutes last night looking at a word. I typed it. it didn't look right. I looked it up on trusty dictionary.com. It was right, but still didn't look that way. So, I continued to stare.

You know, the longer you stare at a word that doesn't look right, the stranger it looks? It's kind of like the reflex to start feeling around on your head the second someone says, "tick."

cat sitting

So, I get a call from my mother.

"I know I said I would try to make it to football practice on Wednesday or Thursday, but I completely forgot those were the days I told your sister I would feed the cat and spend some time with him."

Since my memory is such that I had completely forgotten she had mentioned coming to practice on those days, this was not even a hiccup in my world. If my family were normal, the story would end here. But you see, I got my skewed nature quite honestly.

"I played with the cat with a flashlight for awhile, but he got bored."

Again, nothing major to this little revelation. Cats never let you think you are entertaining them too much. They would never relinquish their lordship so easily. But it does go on. Apparently, a school friend of my niece's is to be feeding the cat in the AM's. Apparently someone left the sliding door unlocked(hopefully they were not still outside as my sister often has people staying there). Paranoia point one. Apparently, the blinds are broken in the master bedroom (which, by the way, faces the REAR of the house). Paranoia point two.

"It would be easy to see that no one was in the bed all night. So I (giggle) made a fake body. I couldn't find a wig."

Here there was one of those pauses my mother is famous for. A pause just long enough to make you wonder if she is going to leave you hanging on this bit of information.

"So, I got (niece's) stuffed monkey. Some people do have white hair."

Again with the pausing.

"I found a basketball. And (BIL's) clothes were there, so I arranged them. There was a book sitting on the bed stand, and I put that on the bed. Where it dropped when he (the dummy) fell asleep. I don't know if anyone is actually reading the book or not."

Again the pause.

Have you any idea how hard a person can shake from stifling laughter before causing some kind of explosion? I am relatively sure I was close to the brink on this one. The strange thing is, the retelling can't even begin to capture the reality. I'm sure glad I don't come from a normal family.

"Gosh, I hope they don't get scared when they come home."