Seven things about me that you never wanted to know

I read alot of blogs. Big blogs, small blogs, humorous and informative. With all this reading, I've run into a fair amount of lists. And since it's been a very (*ahem) long time since I've written anything, I thought I would try one of these new-fangled listy things all the kids are raving about.

So here are seven (unless I run out of things that are interesting or someone flashes a shiny object in front of me)things about me that you probably didn't need to know. If you're not a fan of useless information, you should just go ahead and clickity-click on that little red "X" up there in the corner. Go ahead. I won't cry. Much.

1) I have cartoon feet. The patron saint of Hanna-Barbara bestowed upon me the feet of Fred Flinstone. The are wide, squarish appendages with round, stubby toes. (You totally want to make out with me right now, right?) Plus, I can stop a car. Probably.


2) I like to touch things. Now before you call the cops, it might not be what you think. I am a very tactile person and certain textures just make my brain happy. Let's just say that I'm far better being at the Children's Museum, instead of the Art Museum. Also? Certain fabrics can give me the hhhhuuuuzzzzzz. You know that spine-shaking, creep-fest that crawls up and down your skin? That's the hhhuuuuzzzzz. Trees, flowers, kitties, marble, linen, and the softest leather? Love. Them. Hard.


3) Food. I love it, but on the other hand I may be the most non-picky person about food EVER. Animal, vegetable, mineral, blue, green, chunky, pasty? Whatev. Gimme. Just throw some groceries down my throat and let's move on.


4) Due to the nature of my job, I have acccess to some of the most exotic and eclectic alcoholic beverages in the U.S. I have a full stocked bar at home that would make the local tavern jealous. Lagers, and porters, and bocks and beers. Imported, domestic, micro-brew and craft vineyard. But. But. I drink the same bourbon every single time. I don't know if this a habit or laziness or loyalty. I choose not to think about it too much.


5) If my bra doesn't match my panties, I'm uncomfortable all day. Also, I cannot bear cheap underthings. They make me squeamish.


6) If there is less than 3/4 of a bottle of laundry detergent on the house, my teeth hurt. From the clenching. With worry. I might run out. I feel much better knowing that if there is a zombie invasion or a plague of pestilence that would keep me from leaving my house, I will have aleast 1.75 bottles of detergent at my disposal.


7) I would rather have someone beat me with a large pissed off squirrel than do dishes. So it's a good thing that I have teenagers in the house to do my bidding. And load the dishwasher. When I was a kid, my parents had a dishwasher but we weren't allowed to use. My dad made is known to one and all that that "contraption" wasted water that he PAID FOR. So I did dishes every night. It was good training for me because I know have the stamina to tolerate the whining from the teenagers when they have to put dishes in and push the button. O, the agony.


So, there are seven things about me that you really didn't want to know. You may now consider yourself my very good friend. The kind that bakes me cakes and tells me I'm pretty as they brush my hair.

Hot for Teacher

Day 4: Washington, DC
Temperature: 102
Likelihood of heat-induced brain trauma: 75%
Likelihood of me fanning my T-shirt so vigorously that I inadvertantly flash a senator's aide during his lunch: 90%

I'm feeling not funny today, so this post is likely to be full of suckage. But whatev. I'm committed to finishing this thing. I jotted down a few notes yesterday, so the chances of this being mildly coherent are up slightly. So at least there's that.

So, where was I? Oh yeah, Capitol Building. We parked there and died. Not really, but now that we were no longer moving, the air seemed stifling. (Gah, I need spellcheck. Is that right? Stifling? Doesn't seem right.) Looking around the Mall, we personafied typical tourists, all gape-mouthed and whatnot. As we stumbled towards the big fancy buildings, this approached us.



This is Dave. Everybody say hi, Dave! Dave is a high school science teacher and may have saved our lives. He kindly offered to pedal our sweaty asses around the Mall for an undetermined amount of money. Dave drives a Pedi-cab when he's not teaching science to adolescents and works for tips. Since we have cash and looming heat-strokes, we take him up on his offer.

I'm quite sure that Dave is the hot teacher at his high school and all the girls giggle whenever he talks about positive ion attraction and big bang theories. He is a fountain of information and told us more about the area and buildings than we could have gotten from any tourist-y booklets. Since he knew we were in town for only a few hours, he filled us in on which places were best and which would not be worth our time.



I have lots of pictures like this. I didn't want to lean too far out of my seat and take a chance on swaying the Pedi-cab rickshaw thingy, thus causing Dave to get irritated and throw me out, leaving me to die along the street.





After pedaling 2/3's of the way around, we disembarked, paid the cute teacher and started to head into the first of many Smithsonian biuldings. This is when we overheard Dave the Cute Teacher negotiating with his next client. He offered to take the couple HALF the distance we had just ridden, for well OVER the price we had just paid. Clearly, we are cheap and he is re-thinking the whole "working for tips" thing. But in our defense, he told us to just pay whatever we thought was fair. Meh. I hate being cheap. I also hate being guilted into paying more. FAK!

We loaded up our guilt and plowed into the first building, surrounded by middle schoolers on field trips and Griswold family vacationers. First up, the Air and Space Building.





Then the Museum of Natural History


RAWR!




I think this one looks sneaky. I suspect that dinosaurs were assholes like that.

And that's when it happened. You know how you can go somewhere, somewhere far away, somewhere no one ever goes and then you see someone you know? Well there he was. My Ex. The Milkdud himself.


Hi, Asshat.

After that, it was time to change buildings and hope The Milkdud wouldn't find us. The Museum of American History. (My apologies for the poor quality of pics, it's really dark in there and my camera is ashamed of the fact that it is smarter than me.)


You can almost smell the napalm and weed.







I have oodles more pictures, but I'm afraid this is turning into a slideshow at Aunt Liz's house of their trip to Bumfuckville while eating crappy appetizers and inhaling Uncle Raymond's second-hand cigar smoke and beer farts.

A few more buildings later, as our blood reached the temperature of lava, we headed back to Chesapeake Bay and comfy beds and air conditioning.

Stop back by tomorrow, there will be bears, hikers and funeral processions. Not neccesarily in that order.



Bye Dave! You'll always be my Capitol Crush!

A New Bright Shiny Day

After spending the night fearing for my health and safety, not to mention dousing my entire body in 38 gallons of Purell, we headed out for rounds of antibiotics...I mean a hearty breakfast. Making our way eastward we proceeded towards the coast, with our only planned stop for the day being York, Pennsylvania.

Now you may ask what is in York that would attract two happy vacationers? Why it was the birthplace of Christine. Are you still puzzled? Christine is the name that The Man has given to his motorcycle and York is the home of the Harley-Davidson factory where it, I mean she, was born.

We arrived there that afternoon and signed in for a factory tour. We were only allowed a limited tour since the factory was currently making the 2011 models and they had not released them to the public yet. We browsed around the lobby until the tour was ready to begin and after a short introductory movie, we were fitted with protective eyewear and earpieces so that we could hear our tour guide.

Let me be the first to say that this may not be a girly-girl place. But on a coolness scale, this place still rates pretty high. The large machinery, the cool robotic technology, the brawny men walking around in tight shirts......wait. Where was I? Oh yeah, the gorgeous paint colors, the acres of bright shiny chrome...it was still enough to hold this girl's attention.

No cameras or recording devices were allowed inside the factory, but I have a few pictures from the lobby that show the process.



Pieces and parts



Frame (This factory only makes the larger touring bikes.)



The Man gets a look in his eye when he's surrounded by this much chrome. It's the same look I get when I walk in a designer shoe store.



It's starting to look like....something?



What I find completely amazing about this whole thing, is that it only takes them two hours to build one of these beautiful pieces of machinery. No matter what paint color, no matter what emission stardards (different countries have different requirements), no matter what bells and whistles you require, it's still two hours and out the door. Hell, I can barely get ready to go out in two hours! But then again, I'm an older model and they don't even make some parts for me anymore.

After again succumbing to the lure of the gift shop, we loaded up (I pushed The Man kicking and screaming) and headed back out on the road. Rural Pennsylvania is actually quite pretty and I enjoyed the scenery until we crossed into Baltimore.



Word of warning: Do not announce that you are from Indiana while in Baltimore. Especially if you are wearing a Colts shirt. They are apparently still quite bitter.

We tossed a coin, or followed a tractor, or came to some conclusion that we should head south. Another hour of so of wandering around found us here:



We did it! We made it all the way to the coast! We were on Chesapeake Bay and there we would stay for the night. In a real room, with clean sheets and hot water and eveything! Room service! Soap! Down-filled duvet on a king-sized bed!



Edited to add: Mileage totals Day 3: 853 miles
Condition of hind-quarters on a 1-10 scale: 6.5
Median Outdoor Temp: 418 degrees Farhenheit (estimate)
Number of poor meal choices: 3

Tomorrow - The Beach

How to pack the whole world in a Ziplock bag

So, in a few days the man and I are leaving on vacation. Being the free spirits that we are, we will not hesitate to jump on the Harley and zip off for ten days with no particular destination. Yep, ten whole days. On a motorcycle. Two of us.

While on the surface this sounds idyllic, let's look at the practicalities. Here is our mode of transportation for said ten days.








Notice the failure of adequate packing area? Holy crap! And this has to hold everything for TWO people. The last trip was for seven days, and I'm pretty sure I had to buy new underwear to make it through. Now it's time to make a plan of attack on this issue. Let's start at the top and work our way down. (That's what he said.)

Hair and various products to make it not appear like a taxidermied pelt. Travel size washing and rinsing agents are readily available. And cute. Various blowing, drying, curling and straightening tools. Not gonna happen. Most reputable motels with the exception of Chunky Bob's Love Palace provide hair dryers, so I guess that just leaves curling my hair around empty beer cans before bed every night. It's like recycling, folks! Hopefully the motel dumpster will provide enough Old Milwaukee cans to leave me looking like I'm ready for civilization.

It takes a daily plethora of potions and volatile solutions to prep this face for the world. I will be culling this down to the bare basics. I will only be packing the necessary items needed to not scare and/or scar children and/or small animals. The rest of world should just look away.

Clothing. Herein lies the problem. Sure, we could skip on undies and ride commando, but over a thousand miles on a small leather seat with the seam of your new cool jeans wrapping around your ovaries makes one testy. Seam chafing your labia majorly? Seam rubbing the jay off your vajayjay? "Insert your own disturbing phrase here."

Since we will not be attending any grand affairs or red-carpet events, comfy jeans and cute tops will suffice. Throw in some t-shirts for the man, and we will be all ready for All-You-Can-Eat-Barbeques and roadside flea markets.

Shoes. There will be arguments over the packing of shoes. Namely cute shoes. I choose to live in denial for now. Or at least until the fighting begins.

Various technological devices. *sigh* Dear Laptop-on-which-I-am-typity-typing, I will miss you. Please do not think that I have abandoned you for another. I promise to return to you with tales of wonder and will google all the places that I've been. I will upload pictures for you to see and download any new music that I find while I'm away. Yes, the new camera and the newer ipod will be making the journey with me, but only to keep me amused while we're apart.

The man will probably make me pack practical things like rain suits and sunscreen. I will argue for cute shoes. He will win as soon as I realize that it's vacation and I dont' care. Just don't expect any pictures of my feet.

It wasn't that kind of revival

Today I had to have a Come to Jesus talk with other people. Twice. No, this wasn't religious in any form. It was more along the lines of "Straighten your ass up, or I'll make your life hell" kinda talk.

The first group was my employees. How I managed to hire a full dozen people that never matured beyond second grade is beyond me. The meeting was productive and I think that some necessary changes should help make everyone's day's easier, but sweet baby Jesus, they are a loud bunch. Ex-inlaws loud. Monster truck rally loud. I think I still have a little reverb going on inside my head.

The second talk was with my eldest. She's testing her boundaries as a teenager and pushed too far again tonight. There was the standard "Oh shit, I'm caught" moment. The five minutes of yelling time. The requisite twenty minutes of pouting silence, and then the hour long talk. Or should I say TALK. (It deserves capital letters.) My daughter seems to be under the misunderstanding that I should be her friend. All her friends are BFF's with their mothers. Their mothers understand. Their mothers share.

Ok, listen kiddo. I'm not your friend. You have plenty of friends for that. I've met them. I'm your parent. It's my job to make sure that you grow up to be a respectable human being that can take care of herself. Someone who will consider consequences before she acts. Please understand that when you're older, I'd love to hang out with you, but right now it's not in the job description.

Years ago, my cousins were causing some trouble. They were teenaged boys and involved in many stupid acts that teenage boys can get into. There was drinking, drugs, pregnancy scares, wrecked cars, detentions, arrests and boot camps. When their mother, my aunt, was filling us in one evening on the latest escapades of debauchery, she made a statement that has seared into my brain. She said, with all the nonchalance she could muster, "Well, someone had to be Charles Manson's mother." Ummm....really? She was excusing herself for everything? No-second guessing? No regrets?

Now what my child did is nothing compared to the cousins. It's a blip for an otherwise good kid. She goes to school, her grades are excellent, her friends are not wanted by the police. But did I over-react by not being her friend? I don't think so.

And dear Bette, if years down the road you ever read this, I love you but I was right. We can be friends now, but back then you needed a parent.

I left my uterus in San Francisco

Not Really. Actually I left it at the hospital. And while I can have no more children, I am more than happy with the two I have. Bette and The Blonde are more than enough for any person.

Have I ever told you that my children saved my life? No? Hmmm, lemme share a story with you.

I had been married for a few years when I became pregnant with the first-born. Now like most women I know, our own health care come last on a rather long list of things to do. I wasn't on any medications that required doctor visits. I had no medical issues at the time. Annual check-ups were things that just never happened.

With some sudden on-set nausea and a pee-stick confirmation, I made an OBGYN appointment and received confirmation that I was pregnant. Let the testing commence. Lord, the amount of tests ran on various body fluids for a pregnant woman is astounding. At any given appointment, I was apt to leave looking like a well-fed heroin addict. (I don't have great veins and seem to attract nervous phebotomists.)

To get to the point, at some point I was diagnosed with advanced cervial dysplasia. This is only one step away from cervical cancer. Now, it stands to reason that while pregnant, one's body is into growing things. Babies, hair, everything grows faster. I was a baby making machine, what with cells dividing and whatnot. Unfortunately, this also sped up the abnormal cells squatting on my cervix, like hobos moving in for the winter months. Chances are that the cells would have prgressed at a slower rate had I not been pregnant, and I would have ended up with undetected cervical cancer. Which could have spread to other places. Which could have ended me.

My child saved me before she was ever born. Post-birth, I had surgery. The hobos were removed and life went on. Three years later, the same doctor told me they were back. And yes, I was pregnant again. Post-second-birth, all offending female-ish parts were removed, and hobo-land was permantly removed from the map.

Moral of the story: Bette made me realize that I had something to lose. The Blonde made me lose it and live happier and healthier as a result. My children saved my life. I have a feeling that it was so they could make me crazy for the rest of it.

Round and round

Sometimes life can get a little...oddly complicated. Sometimes we get in our own way and our stubborness refuses to budge. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel that I have let myself fall into a rut that is all too familiar. It's a procrastination/avoidance/denial rut and it's one deep motherfucker. Like, gonna need a tow truck to pull myself out of this.

I have a bad habit of extremes. I can focus on the larger picture, and I can focus on the minute details. It's the middle part. The part that matters. The execution. The work. I blame my brain.


Does anyone else wake in the morning with a clear plan of exactly how their day should go? I've done this every day for as long as I can remember. And not once has it happened the way my head thinks it should. Rarely my day turns out better than imagined. Mostly it doesn't live up to the plan rattling around between my ears. Sometimes it sucks way worse than I could have ever dreamed.


This however isn't the problem. I can handle change, go with the flow. The problem lies in the thinking. At the first sign of variation from my planned day, I must re-think the whole day. See the problem? As you can imagine these changes occur approximately 4,352,218 times a day.

Now on the surface it appears that I can make most (not all) decisions quickly and efficiently. I can delegate, administrate, and facilitate my ass off. In my head there are about a gadzillion scenarios spinning wildly out of control, each allowing for multiple variables.

The biggest problem with this whole mindset is that with each change comes a little disappointment. It's not what I wanted. (And yes, I realize that makes me sound like a conceited bitch.) But that's what happened and a little piece of my heart hardened with each change. By the end of most days I feel flat and weak, disheartened and shamed at my own ablility to make my world what I wanted.

This is affecting my life and I need to get off the hamster wheel. Is there a way? Does it require planning?

Ya git what ya git and ya don't throw a fit

I've been thinking alot lately about what I want this blog to be about. I am having a hard time deciding what I do want, but I definitely know what I do not want it to be about.

I do not want to write about high tech devices or the state of the economy. There are people way smarter than me to address these topics. Unless I get something very cool, then I will have to go on and on about it, until I'm sick of it.

I do not want to write about recipes, laundry spot removal, or where to find the best coupons. That just ain't me folks. I make a lousy soccer mom. Unless I have a brilliant momma day, then everyone will simply have to know.

I'm not gonna write about my sex life. My vajiminy and what ever parlour tricks it performs are none of your bees wax. Unless it's funny, then I will totally tell. Honest.

I ain't writing about work. Ok, maybe occasionally I will write about whatever stupidity I have to endure, because I'm all about sharing. You understand, right?

I'm not writing about my kids and family. Wait...I've already done that, so nevermind. Whatever.

So see? I'm completely out of ideas.

Ladies and Gentlemen, coming now to the stage...

After much editing, here's my first post. In order to start at the beginning, I will take the time to describe myself and my life. The Reader's Digest version of a backstory, if you will.

Childhood – not typical and not always good, but no Lifetime movie tragedy. Sure, my family not only has skeletons in the closet, but is often prone to dragging them out and dancing around the living room with them. There’s the typical American version of success, failure, alcoholism, and drama. There was the struggling 60’s, the cautiously optomistic 70’s, the 80’s of excess and the reality check of the 90’s. And that was just my childhood. Adulthood has just been an extension of all of the previous ages, with more technology.

Family: Bette and Blondie – the teenagers (I know, don’t you feel sorry for me now? I’ll take the Pinot Grigio.) And The Man. You know…the one I’m living with. As in NOT MARRIED. Shameless hussy that I am. Divorced a few years back from the Hilljack currently referred to as Milkdud. Not because he’s full of sweet chocolate-y goodness and caramel, but because his head is shaped like one.

Occupation: Failing household enginneer. Needs put out to pasture. Or a disability check. Also works as a General Manager over a chain of liquor stores. Finds this extremely convenient.
Religion: Yes. On my terms. Which may or may not defeat the purpose of religion.

Friends: I am fortunate. I have old friends, recent friends, family that I would count as friends even if we weren’t related. I live with a man that I love that is also one of the best friends that a person could hope to have. I have far-away friends that I can count on for great catching-up stories and tales of what life is like way over there. I have near by friends that will bring you a pack of smokes when you can’t get out of the house. I am friend wealthy.

Love: Yup, got that too. The man and I have a all-around, everyday love. The kind that you can always be sure that it’s around. The kind that will surround and encompass the bad and smother it away. The kind that still makes my heart flutter just a little every day. Sappy, gushy, schmoopy kind of love. My favorite.

So, that's me in a nutshell. If anyone from the Nennernet stumbles upon this , welcome. Have a seat and let me pour you a drink. We're both gonna need it.