• a variety of fine pickles •

2006-07-19T21:50:00.000-05:00

Star Wars on a Banjo

PICKLES HAS MOVED!

2006-06-04T11:35:00.000-05:00

after complaining about blogger for months, i have moved my blog here.

my blog is now on typepad.com. please visit & leave me a comment on a site that will actually allow them through! i love comments. they make me hap-hap-happy.

i have disabled comments on this blog. they weren't working anyway.

please dew drop inn - http://redhotjezebel.typepad.com/

same pickles, new geography.

i'll probably leave this blog site up for about a week, then it's adios, blogspot!

words i hate

2006-06-03T23:18:00.000-05:00

it all started when my friend sara used the word "belly" in her blog. i commented to her that it reminded me of a particular incident that occurred when we were in high school. commenting started me a'thinkin', and that led to the belly blog entry, which in turn elicited a comment from my friend matt, explaining to me that he LOVES the word belly, but does hate the words "tarmac" and "credenza".

i found this to be a stroke of kismet, as thursday after the belly blog entry, i started compiling a list of words i hate for various reasons. here they are:

flesh - it just bothers me.

slice - only in certain context, for instance when paired with flesh.

ooey gooey - for some reason, hearing someone else say this embarrasses me and makes me feel sorry for them.

jazzy - i always hear this spoken by somefat woman from michigan with a bad hairdo.

pizzazzy - same as above. also true that jazzy and pizzazzy cause me to feel himiliation for the person speaking them.

ooze - gross.

mash - when used as a verb. i prefer smash to mash any day.

kernel - GROSS!

masculinity - can't say it. masculinninny.

compote - doesn't sound as if it ought to be something edible.

loaf - i use it, but i don't like it. starbucks' pumpkin loaf is one of my favorite things in all of the world, but i feel a distinctive tinge of discomfort when having to order it.

maggot - makes my skin crawl just saying it. or hearing it. or reading it.

slacks - it's trousers.

oleo - just say margarine.

algae - reminds me of snot.

phlegm - speaking of snot... what an unattractive word.

moist - unless referring to cake or chicken, i make a point to steer clear of the word moist.

what are some of the words you hate?

congratulations mr & mrs primeaux

2006-06-03T01:27:00.000-05:00

click here for more at the daily photo

i hate that word "belly"

2006-06-01T17:48:00.000-05:00

my friend sara wrote a blog entry yesterday and included the word "belly" in her narrative; i had to comment to her to remind her of why i have always hated that word.

when we were probably about 16 & 17 respectively, sara & i were driving around our home town of bedford, texas, probably listening to def leppard, smoking, singing at the tops of our lungs, and laughing hysterically at nothing in particular. we came to a stop sign that looked something like this crude recreation, fashioned specifically for this cyber-reenactment:

we were stopped at the stop sign a little longer than we would normally stop, when all at once, apropos of nothing, sara and i both said in unison "i hate that word 'belly'".

i can't impress enough that it was in complete unison. exactly. we both agreed through tears of laughter ("i'm cryin'! look! i'm cryin'!) that this had to be the first time in the history of the world that anybody had ever uttered the phrase "i hate that word 'belly'", and the mere fact that we had said it at exactly the same time had to mean something. what, exactly, remains to be revealed. but that was pretty damned impressive. it became the phrase we would say whenever we coincidently uttered any phrase at the same time, even if it was only one word. it was one of hundreds of our inside jokes. sara & i were famous for our inside jokes and if i recall correctly, we rarely let anyone else in on them unless they were really special.

it wasn't the first time that had happened; some random phrase spoken at exactly the same time, in exactly the same inflection, with emphasis placed on the same parts of the same words, etc... i think the first time it happened was at my house when we were a year or two younger. my mom & dad were having a bible study in the living room with several members of our church, and sara and i were hanging out in my parents' bedroom watching television like sinners (it was the cosby show, so it wasn't all that sinful) and one of us was telling a story. for some reason, again, seeminly apropos of nothing, we both said "...like a hot knife through butter!"

it took a couple of seconds to realize we'd both just said exactly the same thing, exactly the same way, and after the shock wore off, we laughed until we were sore. up until the "belly" incident, "like a hot knife through butter!" had been our insider phrase, but even after it was replaced, it still held a special place in & amongst the inside jokes for which sara & i were so celebrated. maybe "celebrated" is the wrong word... "ridiculed" might be more appropriate.

nah. they were all jealous of our inside jokes.

all this reminiscing i've been doing whilst taking a stroll down belly lane got me digging through my highschool scrap book, where i came across several hysterical photographs from highschool, including this one, taken at bedford boy's ranch at the going-away party we threw for our friend dusty:

(i have tried, unsuccessfully, at least 10 times to upload the damn picture, and it won't. use your imagination.)

that's dave lane on the left in the swing, craig jenest, also in a swing and wearing his big gay les mis t-shirt, sara standing behind him, me sitting in the swing, and who knows what the hell i'm wearing, but i know i'm wearing those chinese shoes that were five bucks at the shoe repair shop in hurst, and dusty standing to the far right with his back to the camera. it was his going-away party. man, that was fun. we had a butt-load of fun every time we went to bedford boy's ranch, even the time sara and i got chased by geese, and i got bit on the ass by a particularly mean gander.

i can't believe that was something like 17 years ago.

even though i might use it from time to time, i still hate that word "belly".

it goes through me like a hot knife through butter.

a long night's day

2006-06-01T01:31:00.000-05:00

i got home from work at about 3:45 pm today after my second day on the new job - my trainer threw me right out of the fat and into the fire today, but i did pretty well. she was sitting with me the whole time so there was really nothing at all to worry about, but somehow i found something to worry about. i do that. but it wasn't so bad at all, actually very exciting. still have a long way to go before i'm cut loose and on my own, but i'll get there, no worries.

when i came home today, i did my normal stuff with the dogs, got online, answered email, ate a very early light supper, then at 6pm, i laid down on my bed to vegetate for a little while. i got a little sleepy and decided a quick nap was in order, and wouldn't hurt anything.

i woke up at 12:56am.

that's not a nap, melissa. for me, that's a night's sleep. come on, seriously? that's nearly seven hours. so now it's 1:36am, and i am WIDE AWAKE and not the slightest bit sleepy. can't imagine why.

i have to get up at 5am - that's like, in a few minutes or something.

sure, i'll be heading to starbucks this morning before work, like i do every workday of my life. but no quad espresso for me. i'm getting a six-shooter. i'm gonna need it.

vpn, sleepy & crackhead hookers

2006-05-30T21:21:00.000-05:00

what a day...

i had my first day on the new job today! it went well; as well as any first day on the new job cab be. i mean, i'm in the training phase, so i didn't exactly get a lot accomplished other than learning, but everybody was so nice and friendly and hospitible. really nice people in public safety.

got my work laptop today as well; brought it home tonight to vpn into the network at my office, but was frustratingly unable to do so... for some reason i wasn't able to make a connection to my wireless network. that'll stop you every time.

my new work schedule for the next few weeks is 7am - 3:30pm, and as excited as i was last night about my first day on my new job, i couldn't fall asleep last night... like a kid the night before christmas. I'M 35! needless to say, i'm pretty exhausted tonight and am about to go to bed.

this afternoon when i got off work though, i wanted to be able to take advantage of the available daylight since i am getting off work so much earlier than on my old schedule, so i toodled around town with my camera in tow, looking for inspiration.

i had always wanted to photograph the abandoned car wash located a few blocks from my neighborhood, in a little bit seedier part of town, so i drove to the carwash, parked and walked around snapping photos.

pretty sure the old abandoned carwash is now an operational crackhouse or shooting gallery of some sort, as i was greeted about 5 minutes after i took this photo by a very rough looking working woman and her gentleman friend, both seemlingly LOADED on something. they were both moving a little as if they were in slow motion, and the man said to me "hey, that's a nice camera! lemme see that camera!" and came walking towards me. that's when i took off running to my car.

by the time i was safely in my car with the engine running, they were no where near me. i think they took SLOW POKE drugs. they were definitely walking my direction, and i was the only other visible person there (no telling if there were more people inside the carwash or not), but i made my safe getaway and drove my happy ass back to the safety of my house.

i don't enjoy being chased by crackheads and hookers on a tuesday afternoon.

more photos from today's adventure on the daily photo.

jewish penicillin & deliverance

2006-05-29T20:31:00.000-05:00

first, for matt: i got nuthin' but this for you!

as of today, i have officially been sick for TEN days.

as of today, i have officially been in my house for THREE days.

i am officially sick to death of theraflu, nyquil, dayquil, vick's vaporub, halls lozenges and kleenex tissues with aloe. damn kleenexes are making my nose break out.

today i went hardcore. today, i made homemade chicken soup.

let me assure you: this stuff kicks ass.

i'm actually feeling better. penicillin, indeed.

i can cross #2 off of my melista now; last night at about 11pm, "deliverance" was on cable. i watched it from opening credits to ending credits, barely able to pry my eyeballs off of the screen, what with all those hillbillies. those are some scary-ass crackers. and that weird kid who played dueling banjos with ronnie cox? DIOS MIO.

i did a little IMDb research on that banjo-playing freak from deliverance and found out his name is billy redden, and he is now a cook & dishwasher at a cafe in georgia. IMDb had this to say about billy redden:

"At the age of 16 this boy from Rabun County, Georgia, was the only "authentic" local to play the role of The Banjo Boy in John Boorman's disturbing hit movie Deliverance (1972). He was hand-picked from his local elementary school largely due to his "look" (his large head, skinny body, odd-shaped eyes and moronic grin had sadly branded him a poster-child for inbreeding and mental deficiency)."

BOY DID THEY EVER.

man, i am still creeped out by that kid, not to mention that even though i previously "got the joke" about squealing like a pig without having seen the movie, now that i have seen it i not only get it, i want to get rid of it.

ned beatty in size-jumbo not-so-tighty-not-so-whiteys... burned into my frontal lobe.

i kept wanting to brush my teeth watching that movie. the choppers on those hillbillies... wow.

i'm making plans to NEVER visit appalacia.

I START MY NEW JOB TOMORROW! i am so excited i'm gonna wet my pants! i'm gonna go brush my teeth. again.

the melista - 101 things about me

2006-05-28T19:27:00.000-05:00

† UPDATED 5.29.06 - see #2, then see the bottom of this list. i'm a moron. or a hillbilly.

i have cabin fever. i've been inside for the last two days with whatever this crap is that's going around, and have regressed into my previously in-check OCD behavior including list making. grocery lists. to-do lists. already-done lists. lists of lists i need to make. and now, the melissa list, or "the melista", as i like to call it, because i'm wacked-out on cold medicine.

get in, sit down, shut up and hang on.

1. i have an abnormal, completely irrational, paralyzing fear of clowns. seriously.
~~2. i never seen "deliverance".~~ - saw it, 5.29.06 †
2. i collect whimsical teapots and bottlecaps.
3. when I was in 2nd grade, i met theodore seuss geisel, dr. suess.
4. i am the only italian in my family.
5. seeing people trip and/or fall makes me laugh till I pee.
6. i accidently dyed my hair black once, and it was iridescent like a crow.
7. i can play the accordion. well.
8. i “went” to college for 2 semesters, but really I would drive there and take naps in my car.
9. the worst nightmare I ever had involved charles manson, a 4-foot bag of cheetos and a japanese katana.
10. i have only had one cavity my whole life, but;
11. my upper two front teeth are bonded together, and one day the bonding is going to fall off. probably in an embarrassing yet comical scenario.
12. i have been offered every job I’ve ever interviewed for except one; i re-interviewed and got it, and i start on tuesday!
13. i once met johnny depp at barney’s beanery in hollywood, and he told me i had “a great set of lips”.
14. whenever i dream that i’m married, i’m always married to john corbett. that is VERY okay with me.

15. i have always wanted to switch to mac OS but am too intimidated.
16. i have had surgery 12 times.
17. i swallowed a straight pin when I was 2 ½ years old. My mom “waited” for it, and it’s now in my baby book. gross.
18. i am a three stooges afficianado. really.
19. i once waxed one of my eyebrows completely off in what I now refer to as “the waxident”
20. if I could look like any celebrity, I’d want to look like lili taylor.
21. i am completely, desperately addicted to afrin nasal spray since i was 15 years old.
22. my favorite drink has always been icewater.
23. i can recite every word of dialogue from young frankenstein, fletch, raising arizona, steel magnolias & grease.
24. no matter how hard i try, i can NOT learn to play the guitar.
25. if i don’t have a starbucks quad espresso before 10am, i have a headache all day long, and i complain about it ALL DAY LONG.
26. i have never been married. thank God. if i had been married, i'd be divorced.
27. i have an unnatural obsession with dried herbs, and have more than 200 in my apothecary.
28. i’ve always wanted a monkey because my mother and father had one before i was born. his name was algernon. and yes, he flung poo.
29. i dance worse than chandler bing.
30. i’m a big fan of barry manilow. yeah, i said it.
31. i don’t have a passport.
32. i’m not a big fan of alcohol and imbibe extremely infrequently.
33. when I have food cravings, it’s usually either sashimi, cinnamon rolls or spinach.
34. i am a sympathetic vomiter.
35. i’ve always wanted to win a grammy.
36. i am the trivial pursuit goddess, all editions except sports.
37. i abhor anything sports related.
38. i’ve never been a blonde.
39. my favorite bandnames are adios pantalones and vanilla trainwreck.
40. I know all the words to the bonanza themesong.
41. my favorite holiday has always been halloween.
42. alice in wonderland has terrified me for as long as i can remember. like clowns.
43. i will not eat an onion unless it’s cooked to mush. even then, i have reservations.
44. i have five tattoos, and i’m pretty sure i’m done.
45. i once accidentally super glued my right hand to the side of my car and was stuck that way at a gas station for 3 hours. that was a proud day in my life.
46. i see dead people. i was once interviewed on a news special when a news crew investigated the haunted house i was living in. the caption read: “melissa mcgee: senses spirits”.
47. i once caught someone breaking into a car at 4am. he tried to run away, turned his ankle on a rock and fell into a creek where he landed on a fallen tree and broke his leg. punk.
48. i’ve been stabbed.
49. julia roberts nauseates me and i'd kind of like to punch her in the throat.
50. i’ve been saying martha stewart was shady for years.
51. if i had been a boy, my name would have been jason, named after jason and the argonauts.
52. i was born with naturally auburn hair, the least common shade of red hair.
53. i was also born with brown eyes, an extremely rare eye color for a red head. see #80.
54. i have two extra bones in both of my feet.
55. al lewis, who played grandpa munster, once sang happy birthday to me
56. my father is a direct descendant of mary, queen of scots. i guess that means i am, too.
57. i was banned for life from the dallas zoo because i accidently killed a mccaw when i was 4 years old.
58. i will eat any variety of sushi or sashimi except urchin, because it’s the texture of phlegm.
59. i was good friends in high school with two of the voiceover artists for yugioh.
60. i once killed a spider on a pizza delivery man’s face by slapping him. he wasn’t as appreciative as i thought he would be.
61. the sound effects in the movie “twister” hit too close to home, and i broke out in hives watching it in the movie theatre when it first came out.
62. i was once a witness for the prosecution in a murder trial in dallas.
63. i drive the speed limit.
64. i am always too hot, never too cold. i hate being hot.
65. i have never visited nor had the inclination to visit a tropical locale.
66. i want to go to sardegna on my honeymoon if i ever get married.
67. many years ago i called in sick from work to stay home and watch a golden girls marathon on lifetime. it was worth it.
68. i got my finger caught in a theatre seat’s reclining mechanism and tore it open, and left the theatre with blood spurting from my finger. the movie? “night of the living dead”.
69. i have a blood lust for rats but i don’t want to be near them.
70. i went to summer camp with a girl whose name was cherry dick.
71. my nicknames include smelly, lissa, skeecat, swee’pea and gidge. (see # 77)
72. i had to cut all of my hair off once after a perm fused my hair together so badly it looked like dredlocks. at the time, my hair was down to my butt.
73. i used to have a hedgehog.
74. when I was in radio, I accidentally dumped soup into the control board, knocking my radio station off of the air for 4 days while the replacement board was delivered at a cost of $29k, which was more than I made that year by several thousand dollars.
75. i had my 16th birthday party at Tom Joyner’s house in irving, texas.
76. i was righteously stalked by a creepy, obsessed mistake of an ex-boyfriend 7 years ago.
77. when I was 14, i convinced everybody at summer camp that although my name is melissa, all of my friends called me “gidge”. it worked.
78. i am the 7th generation first born; all 7 generations’ first born was a female. the legacy ended with me as my sister, the 5th born of the generation had the first baby of the new generation.
79. i am the oldest of 8 granddaughters.
80. my eyecolor changes from brown to auburn – matching my hair color perfectly – depending on what i’m wearing, but i tell people it changes with my moods. and they buy it.
81. two of my friends and one of my uncles gave their daughters the middle name kate after me.
82. i am a fairy Godmother.
83. i once drove a flaming bread truck down the highway. it was AWESOME, but it wasn’t my fault.
84. i once yelled “what’s the holdup!” in a bank drive-through before I really thought about what i was saying. the tellers didn’t find it humorous.
85. i have a somewhat obsessive fear of scorpions though i’ve never been stung.
86. when I was 5, i accidently kicked out a girl’s two front teeth in ballet class because instead of doing pliers, i was doing high kicks like a rockette. my mom was asked not to bring me back to class.
87. when i was 16, i ate two whole canisters of play-doh in under one minute, on a dare. also in less than a minute, i vomited it all back up. red and yellow play-doh barf, white carpet. dusty’s mom was maaaaaad.
88. when i was 17, i got drunk for the very first time on triple sec, grand marnier and vodka. i didn’t get drunk again for a very long while.
89. i make kickass potato soup, crème brulee, velveeta fudge and fried egg sammiches.
90. i have only eaten spam once in my life, and only then because there was trickery involved.
91. my first fight was when i was 5; i busted some 6 year old bitch upside her damn head with my little pink purse full of playground gravel.
92. i the past i have had pets named: chicken, tutu, nicky, crusty, paisley, pyewackett, peanut, massive cat, akasha, rosie, sebastian, cocoa, little pig, screwy, scooter pie, and a hamster named wildfire.
93. i was so disturbed at seeing the ending scene of “hannibal” that i barfed in the theatre.
94. at a texas rangers baseball game (see #37) i tried to blow a bubble with my gum and accidentally spit my gum into the hair of the very large, angry man sitting in front of me.
95. among a long string of bizarre injuries, i was once in the hospital for 6 days with 2 cracked vertebra, a skull fracture, a brain bleed & aphasia after tripping over my cat.
96. i have never been successful with sea monkeys, no matter how many times i’ve tried.
97. i can only drink a glass of champagne if i’ve put 2 sugar cubes in it. i understand that’s the way hookers drink it, too.
98. i once accidentally punched kyle carter in the face while learning to square dance in the 4th grade for “pioneer days” at my school. he celebrated pioneer days with a black eye. i never got any better at square dancing, and found it difficult to find a willing partner.
99. i am way more obsessed than a person should be with febreeze antimicrobial spray.
100. at 35, i have only been to california, utah, new york, new jersey, oklahoma, new mexico, mexico and canada.
101. as i mentioned, i am a compulsive, obsessive list maker.

† i JUST realized, two days after i started making this list that on #2 i wrote "i never seen "deliverance". notice the conspicuous absence of the word "have". must have been the power of suggestion. apparently i transported myself to appalacia for a moment there.

it's good to be back.

the great indoors

2006-05-28T12:42:00.000-05:00

happy sunday! click here for the daily photo.

my family went to dallas this morning to see my grandparents and my aunt rosie who's in town from hollywood for a week or so. i had planned to go up to dallas myself and stay through tomorrow, but with this creeping crap i've got, i'm in no condition to make the drive, and i don't want to get my family sick by breathing all over them. so crap.

i do feel a little better than i felt yesterday, but then again, yesterday, i made out my will and finished paying off my burial plot. i felt like i was shaking hands with the reaper man yesterday. so anything is an improvement.

since it doesn't look like i'm going to be getting out of my house, with the exception of possibly going to the pharmacy for some stave-off-death-for-one-more-day medicine, i decided to venture out into my backyard for some fresh air. i put on some actual clothing, temporarily discarding my uniform of the last 24 hours consisting of a thin little slip-dress of a nightie for when i have the sweats, and a huge, thick terrycloth robe for when i have the chills, and i trodded into the outdoors.

i was greeted as soon as i opened the back door by a huge hornet's nest, buzzing with construction workers wearing hardhats and of course, stingers.

for some reason, i plowed on anyway.

i found a place at the side of my house where hank & willie had clearly begun excavating, and decided that a big rock would do the trick to keep them from digging any deeper. i went to the fenceline where there just happen to be huge rocks - for some strange reason - and found the one that looked like a perfect fit, turned it over, and discovered i had disturbed a small village of what appeared to be fiddleback spiders. brown recluse spiders for those not living in texas. i'm not certain that's what they were, but i decided to err on the side of caution rather than inviting one onto my arm for closer inspection. i got the eff away from the rock and fiddleback village tut suite and decided that if hank & willie want to excavate, who am i to discourage them from learning a new trade?

i turned tail to get back in the house where there are less chances i'll develop flesh-eating necrosis from a bug bite, taking special care to scream like a harpy in my attempts to discreetly sneak by the now even larger hornet's nest. once inside, i discovered that in the less than five minutes i was outdoors, i collected approximately four thousand mosquito bites. pretty.

so much for the great outdoors. i'm staying inside today.

if i do venture out for more cold medicine, i'm definitely getting a can of raid.

or a flamethrower.

holy sacred cow

2006-05-27T20:48:00.000-05:00

wow.

sweet.

gracie is crawling!

2006-05-27T11:59:00.000-05:00

megen and kirk had gracie at their house last night, and megen sent me this video - which made me cry! gracie started crawling this week, and since i've been sick, i wanted to stay away from her so she didn't get what i have... unfortunately as a result, i've been missing THIS!

she's wearing her absolute favorite outfit - nothing but a diaper. notice she's crawling to get a CELL PHONE from uncle kirk's daughter... gracie is definitely her mother's daughter. phone obsession begins at age 9 months... (ps there is no sound - your speakers are fine.)

pure d dookie

2006-05-27T10:55:00.000-05:00

is what i feel like.

whatever this is, i've been fighting it off for days. i got it last friday or saturday, was sick all day sunday & monday, felt tons better on tuesday, but had lost my voice completely; still no voice on wednesday and starting to feel rather crummy again, and it's been a steady decline towards feeling like dookie since. today i woke up with a horrific headache that i can't make go away. not even with coffee. not even with tylenol sinus. not even with dayquil, which in fairness, i just took about twenty minutes ago, but i still have complete faith that it will FAIL ME. i've been hearing all week long at work that whatever this is "has been going around", so at least i know i'm not typhoid mary. she never got sick. just passed it generously from one unsuspecting idiot to the next. no, i've got it. i'm gonna kill that damn typhoid mary if i don't croak from this.

here comes the hardcore whining: i have chills. i have a fever. i am sweaty and cold at the same time. it's 87 degrees at 10:58am, and i can't get warm. yes, i've taken a shower this morning which made me even colder, and knocked the sweat off of me for a few minutes. my throat feels live i've eaten something akin to broken glass & battery acid, and i cannot breath out of my nose. i've blown my nose so much i'm pretty sure one of my nostrils came off with the last blow. pretty.

happy effin memorial day weekend, everybody. the weather is gorgeous, not a cloud in the sky. i'm going to go spend it in bed with some vick's vaporub & honey-lemon theraflu.

getting punked & richard simmons

2006-05-26T20:16:00.000-05:00

for sayra: the first one from 5.26.06 is for you! i haven't forgotten about your crappy homemade present; i just had to put it on the back burner for a bit. it's coming, i promise!

if you need a good laugh, click this because, as my friend randy darnell said in his email, it's just "wrong". wrong, as in RICHARD SIMMONS and those crazy-tiny shorts with his ass hanging out of them, and that big, oversized boyfriend-beater shirt. and that afro. that freakish, richard simmons afro. that is one boy crazy little gay man.

wrong, yes. because it's so damn right.

this had me slapping my knees and laughing out loud. it's about 6.5 minutes - watch the whole thing, it just gets funnier and funnier. turn up the volume.

i had my LAST DAY in nt2 today! much to my surprise, my coworkers had decorated my desk and made me a cake and a "good luck!" sign! apparently, the original sign read "pack up your s*** and get the f*** out, b****." written by my friend tracy. she's a nutball.

then, i got punked. it was AWESOME! my department manager - the guy in charge of the entire IT department called me into his office, sat me down for what i mistakenly thought was going to turn out to be a run-of-the-mill exit interview, and started asking me what's been going on within my team lately. i wasn't sure where he was going with that line of questioning, and the confusion must have been apparent on my mug. he said he'd heard "some things" had been going on on my team, and i said that i hadn't heard anything and wasn't aware of anything going on within the members of my team; then i said "am i involved?" with even more confusion, but certain that whatever it was, there was no way i could have been involved with any of it. my fears were NOT assuaged when he told me that my name had come up specifically, but he just wanted to hear my side of things, and he didn't want to jump to any conclusions. what the...? now, not only was i thoroughly confused, but i was starting to get a little worried, wondering what the hell i could have done and NOT remembered. he kept pressing and pressing, and i kept telling him i didn't know what he was talking about, and he would answer me with things like "just be honest with me".

then tracy and another coworker friend damian came in the room, laughing their asses off. i looked at tyrone and he wasn't able to keep up the act any longer either, and busted out laughing. i said something to the effect of "y'all suck!" and started to leave tyrone's office, but decided it had been a pretty damn good practical joke, and i'm certainly no spoiled sport.

it was better than it *could* have been; they'd initially planned to have security contact me, then attempt to escort me out of the building. my friend justin, a wise, wise man, advised against doing that because he knew that i'd probably end up actually losing my job if they tried to do that. i'd have gone, but i'd have gone windmilling and screaming the entire way out to the parking lot. the police would have had to get involved just to get me out of the building, and then where would i be? probably coolin' my heels in the clink.

i love little debbie zebra cakes. there probably aren't any zebra cakes in the hoosgow.

my voice is back! sort of.

2006-05-26T07:45:00.000-05:00

i didn't talk at all yesterday.

well, a little.

not enough to count, really. the only time i spoke was when my blessed little time warner guy came out to install my roadrunner; i greeted him, he heard that my voice was barely there, and i croaked out "so i'm not going to be talking much" to which he said "no problem. you can just nod or shake your head". that works for me. i even improvised when offering him something cold to drink: i held up a coke next to a diet coke, and he took the coke with a thank you. when he said "all done!" and had gathered up all of his tools, i held up my checkbook, and he told me the total. i wrote the check, shook his hand, mouthed the words "thank you" and walked him to the door.

i think i might have spoken a grand total of twelve words yesterday. that's voice rest.

as a result, my voice is back! it's a little shaky, and sounds somewhat like i need to clear my throat, but i can talk. i'll be able to actually do my job today - for the last time! this is my last day in NT2 as a tech-support monkey. 6:30pm and i'm outta there.

i'm giving blood at 10:45 this morning, and i'm not really sure what got into me, volunteering to give blood; i have a pretty spotty track record when it comes to being able to walk away from the scene of a donation on my own two legs. i'm a fainter.

i have high hopes for today though. maybe i've outgrown the fainting thing. maybe when you turn 35 you don't pass out when having blood drawn anymore. i am strong. i am invinceable.

plus i get a tshirt and a squeezie. cool.

to do list, redux

2006-05-25T21:53:00.000-05:00

so on my previous post today, i had many items happily crossed off of my "to do" list for my fabulous day off. however, despite my well-intended enthusiasm, here's what didn't get done today:

1. give dogs a bath
whatever. i don't have that kind of energy today. i only had 6 cups of coffee.

2. check apples on appletree for ripeness
check. done. i'm martha freakin' stewart.

3. organize recipes & recipe books
check. again, very martha. it's a good thing.

4. take photos of something interesting
check. see here.

5. organize bookshelf in bedroom
um, nope. still a trainwreck. a huge, embarassing trainwreck.

6. dust blinds throughout house (who am i kidding?)
well, at least i knew it wouldn't happen.

7. harvest basil from herb garden
what? okay, this martha crap as gone too far. didn't do it.

8. wash my car
i'll just let god wash my car.

9. shave my damn legs
i'll just let god shave my damn le... wait, that's not cool. but i didn't do it, either.

10. color my damn hair
yeah. nope.

11. love on willie & hank more
check. done. sleeping peacefully as i write this.

to do list for my day off

2006-05-25T11:40:00.000-05:00

~~laundry~~

~~dishes~~

give dogs a bath

~~wash dog bedding~~

~~dust~~

~~wait for hours and hours for the time warner cable trained monkey to install my roadrunner~~

~~open windows & air out the house~~

~~roast chicken~~

check apples on appletree for ripeness

~~pick up dog landmines in backyard~~

~~don't talk to anybody to reserve voice~~ (until cable guy gets here, which may never happen)

~~watch too much lifetime on tv~~

organize recipes & recipe books

~~change water in sunflower vase in dining room~~

take photos of something interesting (from "take a photo every day" on my 43 things)

~~sweep~~

organize bookshelf in bedroom

dust blinds throughout house (who am i kidding?)

~~drink more coffee than i should~~

harvest basil from herb garden

wash my car

~~take out the trash~~

shave my damn legs

color my damn hair

~~sleep in~~

~~love on willie & hank~~

love on willie & hank more

UPDATE!

ROADRUNNER INSTALLED!

melissa is hap-hap-happy. my most sincere apologies to the ~~trained monkey~~ really nice time warner installation guy who installed my roadrunner. showed up at 12:15, out the door at 1pm. that's what i'm talkin'.

and then there were 43

2006-05-24T23:21:00.000-05:00

i finally came up with my 43rd "thing" for my 43 things list.

however, i didn't want to make 43 seem any more significant than any of the others by virtue of it being the last - same as number 1 isn't any more significant, so i REARRANGED THEM ALL. just to mess with my own head, really.

then i started on my 43 places and then my 43 people, both of which are currently significantly less than 43, and just one more nugget of proof to me that i spend too much time online.

i'm off tomorrow to while away the hours, waiting with baited breath for the trained monkey from time warner cable to come out and install my roadrunner. i am convinced that time warner is exclusively staffed by minions of satan. but hey - i'm off work. even though i'll be landlocked until the roadrunner guy shows up, at least i won't be at work.

then on friday, i work my last day at NT2... then on to public safety! i got to go into the public safety office today for the first time; saw my desk, even. it was very cool... very "inner sanctum" feeling to it. my id badge was security upgraded today to allow me entrance into the office. also very cool...

i would like to end this post by saying that flickr gamma SUCKS IT.

the daily photo

2006-05-24T15:17:00.000-05:00

after having become somewhat obsessed with my list of 43 things, i've decided to make myself accountable for at least one of the things on my list: take a photo every day.

i stopped photoblogging a couple of years ago, and have really missed it. i don't miss xanga at all, which is where i photoblogged on my blog called "photoblography"; so i've decided to do it right here on blogger.

i'll be posting at least one new photo every day. hopefully. i'm going to try and make this a commitment. i got a small jump on things by posting four new photos to the inaugural posting for the daily photo.

please do visit, and let me know what you think; feedback is appreciated!

43 things minus 1 thing

2006-05-22T23:50:00.000-05:00

i have 42 things on my 43 things list. (and for sayra, all consuming )

i don't know what the hesitation is to find a 43rd "thing" for my list. maybe that should be #43.

if you've never visited the site before, it's a really great idea - and really makes you think about your life. did for me, anyway. it's really neat, especially if you're an anal-retentive list maker, as i am. it's a sickness. perhaps "learn to stop making lists" should have made the list. that would be a little too much reality for me, i think.

if you *do* visit, and if you do make your own list of 43 things, please comment and let me know! i'd love to visit your 43 things.

i'm debating actually creating a 43rd thing on my list... maybe i'll just throw caution to the wind and leave that one dangling.

if bea arthur & ernest borgnine had a baby

2006-05-22T20:40:00.000-05:00

it would sound like me.

i have lost my voice. i was hoarse yesterday all day, but today my voice is totally gone. it slipped away somewhere on a phone call. it had been dwindling most of the afternoon, and was pretty deep right before it went away totally.

ME: "thank you for calling sprint-nextel tier II technical support. my name is MELISSA."

CUSTOMER: "hi. yes sir. um, my text messaging's not working."

she called me "sir" one more time after that, and i managed to croak out that i was a girl, to which she asked "really?" with genuine confusion.

yes, really. bitch.

i started getting sick on friday late, but didn't realize i was getting sick, just thought i was a little rundown. saturday when i mowed the lawn, i sucked some sort of rogue airborne pollen-spore-thingy up my nose and sneezed for a couple of hours whilst i lay naked on my bed with the ceiling fan going full tilt boogie because i got REALLY HOT mowing the lawn at noon. yesterday i realized i was sick-sick, not just rundown. today, however, i'm not sick-sick. i'm sick-sick-sick. i sang on saturday night - burned the roof off'a the joint. knocked it out of the park. apparently, i blew my voice out completely singing. thank goodness my voice at least lasted through the show.

i seem to lose my voice about once a year, and it lasts for about a week or so. what i always marvel at, is that every time i lose my voice and have to struggle to be heard, i have this mental block that causes me to over-compensate for my lack of audible voice, and tend to gesture wildly and use over the top mouth movement, as if the people i'm talking to are hearing impaired and must read my lips. i always envision myself as a cartoon when i realize i'm doing that.

i'm stupid.

i have a headache from talking. i get all light headed and woozy. maybe i should just take this as my cue to shut the hell up for a day or two. that's an interesting, novel concept...

the life of the party

2006-05-21T20:04:00.000-05:00

my neice gracie. a sleeping angel having a nap on my bed with pooh. she's sleeping in "the donut" :this ingenius donut-shaped pillow that she gets strapped into to keep her from rolling or scooting off of the bed. cool.

the party was this afternoon, and for the occasion, i bought these:

i love sunflowers, and i bought 10 stems for my dining room table centerpiece. the party was a good time. great food, sangria, and TAB! i love tab. when i was little, my mom used to drink tab by the case. i stocked up on tab for the party because i knew my mom would get a kick out of seeing her adult daughter's fridge full of tab. my mother, who eschews smoking and is a fervent anti-smoking proponent used to be a smoker. today at the party, she actually said "man, back in the 70's if you had a tab in one hand, and a virginia slim in the other, you had it goin' on."

it was a little disturbing for some reason. i don't remember growing up in a mobile home.

as i mentioned, my mother used to be a smoker; in 1977 she went to schick-shadel in dallas to quit smoking. schick-shadel used aversion therapy for their smoking cessation program (which they still offer, according to their website, as well as aversion therapy for vicodin, weed, oxy, and various and sundry other delicious illegal substances) utilizing tactics like electric shock every time she tried to take a drag off of her glamour-length virginia slim 120, and they actually made her EAT cigarette butts that she'd smoked. gag. barf. and barf she did.

she is now one of those ex-smoking nazis. but she sure loves her tab, and it brings back for her all those forbidden memories of being alive with pleasure, and washing it down with cold, refreshing carbonated saccharin.

gracie wore her posh frock to the party today and was this afternoon's hands-down attention getter. she has cut her first tooth! and the cool news is that AUNT LISSA MADE THE DISCOVERY! i am a hero right now, at least to me. we all knew she was about to cut a tooth, but i was the first one to feel that it had broken through her gums while i was feeding her, of all things, melted chocolate off of a chocolate covered cream puff. she is, after all, my neice. food aggressive + chocolate lover = my neice.

i am exhausted and woke up this morning feeling pretty crunchy. my sinuses are wacked-out or something; my soft palate feels swollen and somewhat inflamed and it hurts when i swallow. waaaah. i've got this weird, disturbingly productive cough, and grody things are coming out of my nose, which i've been blowing so much today it's probably just going to snap off of my head sometime this evening. i hate being sick. more specifically, i hate being around myself when i'm sick. i'm a baby. i whine a lot. i annoy even myself when i'm sick. i hope whatever it is is short lived because i can only stand myself for small doses of time when i'm like this, and i've already begun to wear on my very last nerve.

sara, the lawn ranger & google calendar

2006-05-19T23:45:00.000-05:00

for sara: blogger can SUCK IT. i was getting full tilt boogie spammed by f*ers all over the place, so i turned on my damn "word verification" for comments, and ALL comments stopped altogether. crap. got your message on your blog today, turned off the word verification, and BLAM! ZIFF! WIFFLE! spam all over the place within - literally - minutes of having turned it off. blogger is a bitch. comments are enabled again although you might have to wade through spam for cialis, online poker and various & sundry vibrating "toys of ecstacy". sticky.

an example of a message that i just recieved, 5 times on separate posts - "I am smart auto posting. We are posting from auto machine." smart assholes.

my mother is having a party.

she's having it at my house. sunday.

the party is for a friend of hers who is a representative for arbonne swiss skin care, and she asked my mom to host the party; my mom gets really cool free crap, and i get to clean my damn house. floors, really. that's the bulk of my cleaning. if you've read my blog for any amount of time, you already know that i have 2300 square feet of hardwood floors* that are a royal bitch to sweep, sweep again, mop and gloss, three or four times. they look unbelievably beautiful when i actually do it, but i rarely do the whole routine, full tilt boogie. for a while there i was doing it nearly every time i booked a sitting in my studio; that grew tiresome BUT QUICK.

i have that to look forward to on sunday morning. i'm doing it the day of the party because there's just too great a chance they'll get a) barfed on b) peed on or c) crapped on by a white boxer, so i'm playing it close to the vest.

tomorrow, i have the lawn to look forward to. yes, i am mowing my lawn. i borrowed megen & kirk's lawn mower and weed whacker in lieu of buying my own yet, and will be up at the asscrack of dawn in the morning pissing off all of my neighbors, somewhere around 7am.

i've been trying to remember how long it's been since i actually mowed a yard. i think it was sometime back in the seventies. actually, it was about 4 years ago when my ex and i had a house about 4 blocks from where i live now; i mowed the damn lawn because if i didn't, it wouldn't get mowed, even though i was told over and over that it wasn't my job, and should be left to someone with more aptitude for yard mowing, like my ex. whatever. first of all, it ain't brain surgery; a monkey could do it. secondly, if i ever took an aptitude test that said i should be a yard mower, i'd shoot myself in the face. knock yourself out, ex. i hope you and your aptitude are very happy together. ps, i drove by a couple of weeks ago. the damn grass needs mowing. get on that.

i'm actually going to set my alarm clock for a saturday morning to mow the lawn. i feel sorta like a grownup.

i guess it's about time.

finally, i discovered this morning while checking my gmail that google has FINALLY added a calendar to their gmail offering; i've been waiting for it for some time now, and it's pretty darn nifty. it's very similar to the outlook calendar which i've lived by for years, but this one is online so i can access it anywhere without having to get into my outlook calendar via webmail, which is never the same as the real thing. i love it, and i'm excited about it. there's something very wrong and not just a little sad about a 35 year old woman who gets her jollies from hand-copying her calendar from outlook to gmail. between the calendar & the flaming zombies, i'm starting to worry that eharmony is going to start spamming me next.

*the only exceptions from hardwoods being the kitchen and both bathrooms, which are tile. also a bitch to clean.

flaming zombies are cool

2006-05-19T07:42:00.000-05:00

zombies + burning oil + flaming wax = melissa stayed up too late. how did it take me so long to find this? i am completely and utterly addicted to all manner of "falling sand" - and i think hell of sand might be my favorite one.

i spent the better part of last night trapping zombies in wax, watching them chew through it only to fill their new waxy hole with oil, then TORCH THEM. it was awesome. the wax catches fire, and since zombies constantly fall from above, they fall right into burning wax and POOF. no more zombie. every time a zombie gets waxed (so to speak) another one takes it's place. sure, they're stick-figure zombies, not nearly as scary as the ones that chase me in my nightmares, but you can play with 'em! there's a "hand" feature that lets you toss zombies around like rubbery ragdolls, pull them out of the wax, throw them into fire, and generally just beat the shit out of them. sweet. kickin' zombie ass.

i'm going to get NO work done today.

planetdan, sand & june allyson bladder pads

2006-05-18T20:09:00.000-05:00

i suppose it's actually my own fault. however, being italian, a red-head and a woman, i am reluctant to admit guilt, so i'll blame it all on dan that i'm addicted to this. (see my sad, sad addiction below in all of it's embarassing glory.) it's all dan's fault. i'm completely addicted. i can't stop. i'm spiraling out of control. soon i'll be standing on the side of I-35 with a cardboard sign that reads "will work for highspeed internet" scrawled in cigar butt.

above? yes. falling sand. i made this. tonight. i made it because i am SO LAME. what's worse, and an even sadder commentary on my ultra-exciting life is that it was the THIRD one i made tonight. i'm such a loser i'm trying to figure out how to tell myself i'm not really into hanging out with me anymore.

dan has the funniest blog i think i've ever read. evar. i've been poring over his blog archives for the last few days. i've even been bookmarking where i've been leaving off so i'll know where to start when i'm online again. i haven't laughed outloud so much since i can't remember when, and i laughed so hard yesterday at one of his older posts that i'm pretty sure a little pee came out. don't tell anybody or june allyson will start harassing me again. bitch.

as i write this, i'm watching the series finale of will & grace. i'm ambivalent about it as of right now. haven't been watching it for the last couple of years, but really wanted to watch it tonight. still ambivalent.

as of tomorrow i have 1 week until i start in public safety. w00t! i'm so excited i could just weewee. and - i have memorial day off! bonanza. to celebrate, i'm going to buy a lawn mower. my neighbors will be thrilled.

on a completely unrelated note, i just saw some commercial, i think for kmart or something, with a guy walking out into the kitchen saying "dad's lost some weight!" and he's wearing a butter yellow cotton pique shirt, and kelly green jogging shorts - nay, daisy dukes, ala richard simmons and circa 1981. complete with rolled white piping. they're truly hideous. the commercial was fabulous.

UPDATE: will & grace is officially over. the finale was ginormously disappointing. there was one "shocker" that was truly heartwarming and sappy and well done. the other 57 minutes of the finale pretty much sucked donkey ones. besides, sean hayes, 50% of my favorite actors on the show, seemed to have been on quaaludes.

hours of hilarious fun!

2006-05-17T07:40:00.000-05:00

you are compelled to click this

especially if you're not a huge fan of gw.

if he gets stuck you can click & drag him around!

hank is home & cable bastards

2006-05-16T23:33:00.000-05:00

bastards. time warner cable. they're bastards. more on this in a moment.

hank is home! i picked him up on my lunch break today from the vet. he's better, but you'd never know it by looking at him. he's so thin, he's a shadow of his former little hank self... he continued to lose weight in the veterinary hospital, apparently, although they were able to get him through the mystery virus, as they did willie. he came home with copious medications and is much harder to pill than willie was. he's much faster; he's wiley. he is, after all, the brains of the outfit.

his ribs are showing, his spine is showing, he looks like he's about 2 months younger than he actually is, and taller than he should be for that specific age. when i left the vet, their parting words to me were "take that boy home and fatten him up."

fatten him up, i will. he ate like a piglet when i got him home, and drank like he hasn't had water in a week. i wondered for a minute if they had actually been giving him access to water. he's been on an IV for several days and only started drinking water from a bowl yesterday, but he's still a bit dehydrated; he had these weird, crusty dog boogers on his nostrils. gross. never seen a dog with boogers anywhere other than their eyes before.

he's also covered - and i do mean covered - in fleas, and that funky gritty "flea dirt" that comes with having an infestation of fleas. it's late, but we're about to hit the bathtub for a bath. good times. i hate to say this because i think i'm going to end up sounding like an opportunistic, hard-hearted bitch, but he'll be easier to bathe tonight than he will tomorrow, because he's still a little on the weak, shaky side, and he'll he stronger tomorrow. i'm going to hell for that.

time warner cable is the devil.

i have GOT to have roadrunner. i can't stand clearwire any longer. it might as well be dialup. hell, sometimes i think dialup is faster than clearwire, but i digress.

i love that to have time warner cable come out and install my highspeed i have to take an entire day off from work. why? because they can't tell you when the cable highspeed installation technician will show up. it's like a lottery. maybe he'll be there at the crack of dawn, and maybe he'll be there somewhere after 8pm. there's no tellin'. but boy howdy, you'd sure as hell better be home, or THEY'RE LEAVING. no calls, no note on the door, no SCREW YOU, LADY. nothing. so not only am i having to take a whole day off of work to wait on this jerk, i'm also landlocked in my house until he decides to arrive. nice that there's about a 12 hour window as to when he might or might not show up. i think these people probably start their work day sometime around 5pm and just like to screw with their customers by telling them they "could" show up around 8am.

whatever. they're probably still drunk at 8am. hell, they're probably still drunk at noon.

the treehouse: my weird luck.

2006-05-15T19:49:00.000-05:00

i had no cause to believe this morning would be anything other than a typical monday morning when my alarm woke me up at 7am.

i let willie outside and shuffled down the long hallway and rounded the corner into the kitchen for my morning ritual, or to quote dolly parton,

get outta bed and i stumble to the kitchen
pour myself a cup of ambition
a'yawnin', stretchin' tryin' to come to life

i know you were singing along. don't try to deny it.

as i was preparing a very strong cup of coffee, my sleepy, not-quite-all-the-way-focused eyes trained on the kitchen window over the sink, subconsciously expecting to see what i see every morning: back yard. fence. neighbor's house across the street. sunlight.
my eyeballs and brains were a little confused when all they saw were green. leaves. foliage. TREE.

whaaat? let me just reiterate that this is not my normal kitchen window view; this is:

you can see how the image in the first photo might have given me pause... what the hell!

i ran out the front door with my camera around to the side of my house, and saw this:

"hm." i thought to myself, "interesting." i don't recall half of that 150 year old native pecan tree crushing my fence and filling my back yard yesterday."

we had severe weather yesterday and i spent most of the day with my family, from about 2:30pm until about 10:30pm, so i suppose it could have happened while i was gone, when there was inclement weather. no scorchmarks, so i doubt it was lightning.

i called the tree-fell-on-your-house authorities, who told me that pecan trees, while very hard wood when dried, are a soft wood when alive, and water from frequent, heavy rainfall tends to sometimes make the branches heavy enough to break off.

oh. well. i didn't know that. and now i do.

mr. chainsaw came out and chopped up the half-a-tree, and my fence, which seemed crushed and bent beyond repair, snapped right back into place without the weight of the tree. who knew rubbermaid manufactured chainlink fences. he stacked all of the tree-parts in my yard for the city's monthly large-refuse pickup which, unfortunately, isn't until the second tuesday in june. this is what me and my neighbors get to look at until then:

pretty. my neighbors are gonna love me even more than they already do. the chick without a lawnmower, whose yard guy is a good-for-nothing lazy layabout who shows up three weeks after he's supposed to when the grass is high enough to conceal preteen children standing erect. that lady.

and yes, in case you were wondering, my house is where the sidewalk ends, so here's my favorite poem from shel silverstein's book "where the sidewalk ends".

Dreadful

Someone ate the baby.
It's rather sad to say.
Someone ate the baby
So she won't be out to play.
We'll never hear her whiney cry
Or have to feel if she is dry.
We'll never hear her asking "Why?"
Someone ate the baby.

Someone ate the baby.
It's absolutely clear
Someone ate the baby
'Cause the baby isn't here.
We'll give away her toys and clothes.
We'll never have to wipe her nose.
Dad says, "That's the way it goes."
Someone ate the baby.

Someone ate the baby.
What a frightful thing to eat!
Someone ate the baby
Though she wasn't very sweet.
It was a heartless thing to do.
The policemen haven't got a clue.
I simply can't imagine who
Would go and (burp) eat the baby.

hehe. i love that poem.

happy mother's day!

2006-05-14T23:06:00.000-05:00

to my beautiful momma, my meem, my nana, my sisters megen & kristen, my aunts tatau, rosie & dyan, my cousin kate, my friends shellie, matt & adam (dogmoms!), sara (dogmom!), sara's mommy ann, corey's mother joyce ann, and to every mother.

my momma! the best mom in the whole world.

we had a lovely mother's day today despite the inclement weather. it was nearly black outside at 1pm, and not a lot brighter at 3pm when my family met at a local restaurant for mother's day lunch. we all had a great time, laughing and exchanging gifts and having a wonderful time.

something happened to me this mother's day that's never happened to me before: i was wished happy mother's day, and was given mother's day gifts by my mother and sisters.

i am a godmother to gracie, and a dogmom to hank & willie. i officially qualify as a mother.

i am so blessed with the most wonderful family, and the most wonderful mother.

no poison & my family

2006-05-13T23:43:00.001-05:00

from top, left to right: megen & kristen; dylan; gracie's first spaghetti;
kirk & gracie; daddy; gracie's first lemon;

megen 5 months pregnant; megen, kristen & mom; kristen

dr. gudgel called me this morning with interesting, frightening news about hank, and about willie.

he'd been speaking to several other area veterinarians after one of them said he'd had several cases come in that looked like parvo, but all tested negative for the parvovirus.

one of the veterinarians had a case that looked like parvo, but tested negative, so he tested again. the second test was also negative, so he thought there might be something wrong with his testing; maybe it had become too warm at one point, rendering it no longer viable. the dog he was treating was clearly a parvo case, vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, lethargy, weakness... all of the same symptoms that willie had displayed when i first took him to the vet. everyone in the vet clinic thought it had been parvo with willie, too, and he tested negative, twice.

this particular doctor was so convinced it was parvo that he continued treating the dog for parvo despite the negative tests, and unfortunately the dog died.

the other doctors in the veterinarian association had all explained that they'd had frighteningly similary experiences with dogs in the last week, and they'd all lost dogs to what they thought was parvo, but all had tested negative for parvo as well.

my doctor was the only one who hadn't lost a dog to this particular illness, and said he'd been treating two dogs from the same household with these exact symptoms, and he'd deduced that it had indeed not been parvo, but poisoning with the first dog, and the second dog from the household was now under his care for what first presented as hookworms, but since the hookworms were taken under control the dog was now presenting with the same symptoms as the first dog from the household.

he was speaking of my household. he was speaking of willie and hank.

the horrifying moral to the story is that there is either some serial dog-poisoner on the loose in temple, or there is a new, as-yet unknown viral strain affecting dogs in this area with symptoms that present as parvo, and are exacerbated by parvo medication and treatment.

the doctors are leaning towards the latter.

if you have a dog, and if that dog starts vomiting, or having diarrhea, or becomes lethargic and weak with a sudden, noticeable weight loss, get your dog to the vet post haste. have them tested at least twice for parvo; my understanding is that two similar test results are accurate.

hank will be in the animal hospital until at least tuesday as he started having diarrhea, never stopped vomiting, and lost more weight. the doctor again sounded a little grim on the phone this morning, and although he was excited about this discovery with the other doctors, he still couldn't make any promises to me that hank would survive it, but is hoping for the best as with willie, that he'll pull through.

i hope so. i sure miss hank. willie is pining for him like hank pined for willie when he was away. i am too.

i had a wonderful time with my whole family tonight. we all went out for dinner; mom, dad, me, megen, kristen, kirk, dylan & gracie. we shut the joint down. we're loud, we laugh a lot, we tend to make a mess; we're a force to be reckoned with, us mcgee clan. we had a good time. it was a precursor to tomorrow's outing: mother's day at cactus jack's. they won't know what hit 'em.

great news & hank news

2006-05-12T20:34:00.000-05:00

the good news first :

i mentioned a few posts ago that i had interviewed for the job i've wanted most for the last three years within the corporation i work for. i interviewed for it on monday, and found out today that I GOT IT!

i'll be going to work for public safety (hey jann!) within sprint nextel on may 29th, two weeks from today. it's the most amazing organization at sprint nextel, and i've literally wanted that job since my orientation on my very first day at sprint nextel three and a half years ago, when i first heard of it. i knew that's where i wanted to be, no matter how long it took me to get there.

i'm there.

now the hank news:

he was supposed to be coming home this morning, but the doctor said that he's not ready to come home; he hadn't stopped vomiting, and the infestation of hookworms was worse than he first thought. he'd started hank on an IV drip for fluids and nourishment last night, because they'd attempted hand feeding him yesterday and last night, and he couldn't keep anything at all down. the hookworms looked like they weren't dying as fast as they normally do, either. i'm not sure what that means.

he said that hank might be coming home on monday, although there was a chance he might be able to come home as early as tomorrow. i have a feeling that's not going to happen though, and i certainly don't want to rush hank any more than i wanted to rush willie when it comes to getting out of the vet, and out from under his care. i just want my dogs to both be back to normal again: happy, healthy, blissfully canine in their behavior.

willie is back to normal. he just had a bath, which means that i had a shower. he's do damn big, and just thinks it's hilarious to jump out of the bathtub while he's covered in shampoo, right after i've started to rinse him off , while his fur is full of soapy water. "hahaha" he says, because it's so funny. back in the tub he goes as i lift him back in, all forty-five pounds of him, soaking myself in the process. he likes to act like he hates getting a bath, but i think he secretly loves it.

giving the dog a bath means i've also managed to get my bathroom floor mopped as well. you do the math.

hookworms & green apples

2006-05-11T19:58:00.000-05:00

explaination of the photo in a moment; first, the important news:

hank is just fine. he's still at the vet because dr. gudgel wanted to keep him over night to rehydrate him. fortunatly he doesn't have what willie had - he had a raging case of hookworms. gross. they'd leeched the blood from his gums, and that was the first thing the vet tech looked at when we went in this morning; his gums were nearly white.

it's still good i caught it when i did, which still seems like i could have caught it sooner if i hadn't thought he was avoiding food due to depression while willie was in the hospital. it's treatable and curable, and the doctor is sending medication home with hank tomorrow, and a full course for willie too, so he doesn't get it as well.

i am now dr. gudgel's endentured servant.

now for the photo: surprise! i have an apple tree in my back yard! i had no idea... i know that sounds dumb, but i swear, i don't think i've ever seen a real-live apple tree before; there aren't that many apple trees in central texas.

the fruit must have been tiny last time i was in the back yard, because i didn't see it. i only saw it on accident this morning; something bright green caught my eye, and my first thought was "horse apples", those bright green, bumpy seed pods, but on closer inspection i found that they're actual apples; bright green, immature apples.

i'm absolutely thrilled to have an apple tree in my back yard. free pie all summer long! free snacks! if i eat one a day, hopefully the doctor will stay away.

i wonder if dogs like apples...

willie, pining for hank, yet thrilled to be back home, rolling in the clover in the back yard.

hank's going to the vet

2006-05-11T08:03:00.000-05:00

today.

still no diarrhea, which is good news. no vomiting except once last night, also good.

however, still no eating, no drinking, and no energy. that's not good. hopefully, whatever it is, the doctor will be able to fix it, just like he did with willie.

round two: this time it's hank

2006-05-10T22:12:00.000-05:00

my worries about hank were right; he's sick. he's not hemmorhaging like willie was, but he's completely refusing all food, he's become listless and lethargic, and he seems to have gotten downright skinny since yesterday. he is drinking, but very little, and very seldomy. the one bright spot in all of this is that the water he's drinking, when he does decide to drink, has pedialyte in it, which may be keeping diarrhea at bay. still, he's been vomiting since yesterday when i got home from work. just water and mucous.

my vet's office was closed by the time anyone ever got back to me, but an after-hours veterinarian called me and i explained the whole situation to him, and he suggested that since hank's not hemmorhaging and has no diarrhea, but has been vomiting and showing no desire to eat, to treat this as a severely upset stomach tonight by giving him 8cc of pepto bismol, allow him to drink water if he wants it, and bring him into the clinic tomorrow morning.

get thee behind me, satan.

if you've been praying for willie, well, as the bible says, "pray without ceasing". please keep hank in your prayers, also.

good news about willie; he's gotten his appetite back, and seems to be tolerating food pretty well in small portions. he's definitely got his strength back as he all but knocked me over when i let he and hank inside the house after going outside for a wee. i just gave him his evening pill, which is becoming increasingly more difficult; he's figured out the hotdog trick and found a way to foil my ruse. i've been slicing bits of hotdog about 2 inches long, inserting the pill, and he's been swallowing it whole, as he usually does with, well, most things. somehow he caught on, and has now started actually chewing the hotdog, finding the pill and spitting it on the floor. this leads to "willie, sit. willie, sit. willie, honey, sit for momma. willie, please sit. sit. sit. sit sit sit. sit! willie! get back here!" , and then hand-pilling him, which is no small feat just to get the pill into his mouth. making him swallow that pill is another comedy of errors altogether.

hank is resting right now, it seems comfortably, in willie's crate, nestled on top of a huge, stuffed fluffy, fuzzy dog pillow/stuffed animal. it's his favorite dog toy because he can sleep on it. i hope the pepto settles his tummy enough to make him hungry for a little food, and also enough so that he can have a good nights sleep tonight.

touch and go

2006-05-10T10:47:00.000-05:00

we're having lots of naps today.

it was a bit of a rough night last night, and i think it's my fault; i think i fed willie a bit too much, and gave him a little too much water due to my ignorance as to what's enough and what's too much. it's tough to have a hungry dog who gets sick from food. i'm a feeder by nature. my mom made me that way. that's what we do.

still, my best efforts to temper his illness with his "mom, i'm hungry" looks ended up making willie sick last night. he did take all of his medication, but ended up vomiting twice last night, mostly what he'd eaten, and a lot of mucous. since i'm a sympathetic vomiter, willie wasn't the only one nauseated... i never threw up, but gagged my way through both cleanups. trying to breathe through my nose and talk myself through it seemed to keep the barf at bay, but i was nearly blinded by the water in my eyes from gagging, and now i need to shave my legs again. that's the reason i always brush my teeth before i shower & shave my legs: brushing my teeth makes me gag, and gagging gives me goosebumps, and goosebumps ruin a good shave.

i ended up doing several loads of laundry last night as willie was, shall i say, creative with his fluids; he managed to vomit all over every inch of bedding in his crate, a throw rug, clean laundry and two pair of my shoes. and that was the first time he threw up.

the above photo is of my boys having a nap in willie's crate, laying in a sunbeam.

hank threw up a few times last night as well, mostly just water, and probably just due to the pedialyte in the water bowl. hank's a drinker and lapped up quite a bit of water. still, he seems to look a bit thin to me today, and he didn't eat his breakfast this morning, nor did he ever eat his dinner last night. i hope this isn't indicative of some sort of illness with him as well. to be safe, i called the vet and he'll be calling me back when he's out of surgery. i'm praying for psychosomatic symptoms with hank.

willie ate this morning and took both of his meds with minimal protest (he doesn't like the liquid, so that was a bit of a mess, and he spit up his pill three times before i finally tricked it into him hidden in a spoonful of peanut butter, which he eats right off of the spoon.) and the good news is that i think i fed him the right amount this morning because he kept it down, even after an almost-generous intake of water from the pedialyte-water bowl in the kitchen. i'm keeping it on the counter out of immediate reach of the boys; we have "water dates" together in the kitchen every once in a while for a family drink. i'm sticking to bottled water sans pedialyte, myself.

my comment feature hasn't been working for several days for some reason, but it seems to be back up and functional. thanks, blogger. you're always there for me. why must you torture me so?

baby's back home

2006-05-09T20:13:00.000-05:00

after five days in the veterinary hospital, my willie has finally come back home.

the doctor said that the toxins he ingested were much stronger than any sort of organic poison; his best guess is antifreeze. antifreeze. he thinks that someone intentionally threw something soaked in antifreeze into my back yard for my dogs to eat, like bread, or a piece of meat. antifreeze is extremely sweet, and cats and dogs both love the way it tastes. it's also a deadly toxin. i hate to believe that someone might have done that. it's not the sort of thing that would be considered a joke, or something to just make a dog sick. my vet told me that cruel, mean, horrible people do that because they know antifreeze will kill a dog. it doesn't take much, either. people have lost cats and dogs due to antifreeze leaks in their driveway left behind by their car. the fact that willie survived, if that's indeed what it was that made him so sick, is a testament to his strength.

willie and i came home, and i thought hank was going to come right out of his white hair. he bucked like a damn bronco, barking and wagging his little stump and willie, exhausted and still a bit weak and wiped out, did nearly the same thing despite his exhaustion. they spent considerable time walking in circles, sniffing each other as dogs do to say hello, and they talked to each other and barked and whined and chattered, then spent a little time running around. it was precious. hank and willie, together again. both of my babies.

willie has had his liquid medication, has to have it thirty minutes before eating, then i gave him his turkey & rice baby food mixed with canned puppy food, and he ate a good amount of it. it was only about a cup of food altogether, but he did pretty well. he then had a little piece of hotdog with his antibiotic pill shoved in the middle of it. swallowed it whole. i'm having to give him water with pedialyte in it to keep his electrolytes up, but he doesn't seem to mind, and it's non-flavored.

hank can't quite figure out why they're both having dinner tonight in their respective crates. both of my boys are crate-trained, and have their own huge, "large breed" dog crates. i refer to them as their "bedrooms", and they're parked in my bedroom. they don't mind them at all, in fact they enjoy being in them and go in their crates willingly all of the time. they view them as a safe place, and sleep together in willie's crate every night, door open. but tonight they're having to have dinner in them to keep their food separated so hank gets his regular puppy food, and willie gets his special blend. since he's spent the last 5 days eating in a crate i suspect that's the reason he didn't protest at all. hank, on the other hand is utterly offended at the mere idea. hasn't touched a bite and won't stop letting me know how dissatisfied he is with the whole situation.

he's the sassy, headstrong boxer in the family.

i've taken tomorrow off of work to stay home with my boys. i plan on babying them both to the point of spoiling them rotten, seeing to it that willie eats, drinks and takes his medications at their prescribed times, and gets lots of naps in his own bed, in his own bedroom, with his little brother curled up beside him. i'm going to love on him more than i ever have as well.

although that's going to be a tough act to follow after tonight.

exxxxxhaaaaaaaale.

2006-05-09T19:31:00.000-05:00

willie is back home with his family, with me & hank.

i will write more in a bit. i have to give willie his evening medication and spend some quality time with my little family.

a very heartfelt thank you to everybody who sent their well wishes and said prayers for willie. it means so much to me and they were answered.

rollercoaster

2006-05-08T19:29:00.000-05:00

i've been on an emotional rollercoaster today, but hopefully things are looking up for willie.

poor little hank is still just completely inconsolable. he still walks from room to room in the house, whining, and i actually heard him bay and cry this morning before i left for work.

this morning i called the vet's office as soon as they were open and spoke to the doctor. he had grim news. willie, who had been administered an IV yesterday early in the day for fluids, and a catheter to monitor his output out fluids, wasn't doing well. the doctor's words were "he seems to have taken a turn for the worst." i don't quite remember exactly what he said after that. everything sort of stopped for a few seconds.

he went on to explain that although he still had an IV for fluids and was being administered amounts of fluids that should have rehydrated him after all of the diarrhea and vomiting, he wasn't passing any fluid through his foley bag (catheter), but was still vomiting and having diarrhea. that meant that all of the fluids being put into his body weren't being absorbed by his cellular structure, but were being removed as waste. it didn't make too much sense to me, but he's the doctor, not me. i always considered urine to be waste fluid as well, and figured that the fluid they were giving him was being absorbed which was why he wasn't urinating. not so, according to the vet. bad news.

they were going to xray him in a few minutes to see if there were any bowel obstructions in his intestines or stomach, and if there was something obstructing, say, a piece of string or a rock, or something else willie is likely to have eaten (because he'll eat anything he can catch), he would have to surgically remove it. he started talking thousands of dollars in surgical costs, as well.

he then told me that depending on how bad the situation was, i should consider the option of euthanasia to end his suffering. the thought of it sickened me, and it was all i could do to not scream at the doctor for suggesting something so vulgar and completely out of the question. he told me he would call me as soon as he knew something and wouldn't do anything at all without my permission. i told him to please just do whatever it takes to make willie get better. somehow i would find a way to pay for all of this. i have to. he's my baby.

later on that morning, at my desk at work, i started thinking about what the doctor had said about putting willie down. was it really so vulgar? perhaps the more vulgar idea was my wish to prolong willie's pain and suffering just to bring him home to me. i feel fine, i'm not sick, i'm not in a hospital with tubes feeding me. i started to feel so guilt-ridden and so selfish, and started trying to come to terms with the idea that maybe that would be what was best for my baby if all of these things weren't working. the idea of it still sickened me, but my consceince made me at least consider it as an option. i have to do what is best for willie, not for me. the the prognosis being as grave as it was, i had to try and remove myself from the injured party equation and make it about willie, not about me.

i had an interview today at 3pm for a job that i really really want; the interview was set up on friday, after willie had been taken to the vet. i had no idea how i was going to get through this interview today with this sword of damacles hanging over my head. how was i going to sound the least bit articulate? i wondered how i could come across as anything other than a completely inarticulate, bumbling idiot, not fit for this considerably large promotion.

then, at 12:15, the doctor called.

he said that willie had started eating solid food, and had kept it down. he also said that he had started to drink small amounts of water from a bowl, and his foley bag now had urine in it. they had fed him several small doses of solid food; gerber turkey babyfood and a special wet puppyfood, both very bland but highly nutritious. he was drinking small amounts of water with pedialyte in it for electrolytes. he said he had perked up a little bit as well.

there were no bowel obstructions at all; no surgery necessary. his stomach was a little bothersome; the lining of his stomach was irritated and ulcerated, and swollen to three times the thickness it should be, indicating that he had indeed ingested some sort of strong, highly poisonous toxin. the lining of his stomach was also coated with a thick layer of mucous, which acts as a natural prophylactic as a protective barrier (think sinuses) especially to irritated tissue, but his body had had to produce so much mucous that it had caused him to purge it by vomiting over and over, which caused his body to produce more mucous. it was some sort of horrible mucous-vomit cycle. but he hadn't been vomiting for a couple of hours, which was the longest he'd gone since friday when i brought him in.

that was the best news i'd had in four days. hopefully this change for the better will continue over the next couple of days, and with god's grace, willie will be strong enough to come home with me this week. the doctor said wednesday at the earliest, and if his condition continues, thursday more than likely. i'm not going to rush him. i want him to be as strong as he needs to be to come home safe and well.

that'll be a nice mother's day gift to me, i think.

a vigil for a dog

2006-05-07T19:39:00.000-05:00

i think i'm keeping vigil for willie. i've been so depressed this weekend, and just listless. i miss willie so much. it's just not the same without him here with me and hank.

he's still in the vet, and his condition seems to have worsened since yesterday. i went to pick him up at the vet yesterday morning, but willie was too sick still to come home. he was having to recieve his antibiotics via injections because taking them orally made him vomit and lose more electrolytes. the vet said he's a good pill-taker; he opens his mouth and swallows his medication without protest, he just can't keep anything down, and he hasn't been able to keep any food or water down either.

the doctor called me today and told me he'd started willie on an IV and a catheter this afternoon. i was under the impression that he'd already been administered an IV, but he hadn't until today. apparently that's a pretty big deal for a dog, and they don't give a dog an IV unless it's absolutely necessary. he's been moved from the big kennels into the ICU. but that's a little bit of good news i think, because at least he'll be getting fluids that way, and that will make him a little stronger.

the doctor said he's continued to vomit bile and some blood which means he's still hemhorraging a little bit, and the doctor is going to xray him tomorrow to make sure there are no foreign articles in his tummy. he asked me today if he was a chewer, and i answered with "of course. he's a boxer, and he's a puppy." he's worried that there's something lodged in his intestine or elsewhere that willie might have ingested that's causing all of the damage, and if there is, he'll have to surgically remove it.

as far as a prognosis, he didn't give me one. i didn't ask for one either. i was too afraid to hear what he might have to say on the matter, and i didn't want to risk that it might not be a good prognosis. i'm not sure what all of this means; i'm so confused by all of this. willie was just fine, and then he was sick, and i feel like such a horrible dogmom for not having noticed any symptoms until it was too late.

poor hank is so depressed; he's still waking up from naps and running all over the house looking for his best friend. he's been sleeping in the bed with me at night, and today we took a nap together. he's considerably more calm than he is when willie is here, and i'm not sure how to take that. it's like his joy is gone, the joy he derived from spending time with his best friend, his playmate, his brother. i feel so sorry for little hank. he's been getting lots of extra cookies this weekend, and lots of rubs and scratches. he's been giving me lots of kisses in return.

this weekend especially, i'm glad dogs can't talk. what hank might have to say would break my heart even more.

please, whether you know me or not, please please say a prayer for willie. hank and i miss him something awful.

without one of my babies

2006-05-05T22:01:00.000-05:00

i noticed yesterday when i got home that willie or hank hadn't finished their breakfast. as a matter of fact, they hadn't touched it. one bowl was nearly empty and the other was as full as it had been when i set down the bowl yesterday morning for the dog's breakfast. it was unusual that one of my boys wouldn't have eaten, but for some reason it didn't strike me as something to think about for much longer, and i let the boys outside for their early evening wee and poo.

when the boys came in from outdoors, hank was as bouncy as always, but willie seemed a little more sedate than usual. i chalked it up to the heat, and we all went about our business. hank ran around and secured the perimeters of the house, drank his weight in water, which he always does, and played with a nylabone. willie came and laid beside me as i typed away on my laptop. again, i attributed it to the heat and just thought maybe he was tired.

this morning when i woke, i let the boys outside as always, and went to fix my first cup of coffee. something didn't smell right in the hallway near the kitchen door. something smelled awful, like something had died. rats. it must be a dead rat in the attic. the hatch to the attic was right above my head when i realized that; i had to have been smelling a dead rat. it was horrible. acrid and bilious, i can still sort of smell it, actually, in the back of my throat. it's a nauseating odor. i kept trying to recall what a dead rat smelled like; i had smelled one in my hotwater heater closet several months ago after the dogs alerted me to something in there. they were picking up the scent of something dead even before it began to smell bad. by the time i smelled it, it had been dead for several days. i couldn't remember what that rat smelled like, so i figured it must have smelled like what i was smelling now.

when i let hank and willie inside after my shower this morning (which is part of our every morning routine ) hank ran inside for his cookie as they do every morning of every day, but willie walked in the house as if he'd had the air let out of him; he was so slow and sluggish and seemed so lethargic. it still hadn't hit me that there might be something wrong.

while hank headed right for the water bowl, willie wouldn't drink at all. when hank stood on his hind legs to be fed while i was filling the bowls, willie just stood there with his eyes half open. he didn't want the food or the water, and he hadn't wanted his cookie this morning.

setting down the food bowls, something in the dining room caught my eye; something shiny on the floor. one of the boys must have had an accident. it was a long puddle. the closer i walked towards it, the worse the odor was. it was the smell i had thought had been a dead rat. i turned on the dining room light and found the puddle to be about two and a half feet long, and reddish brown. it wasn't urine. it wasn't vomit. the odor was coming from blood. it wasn't even the smell of dog poop. i wondered while i was cleaning it and scrubbing the floor if it even was poop. it was horrible. i found another long, huge puddle of it in the spare bedroom. it wasn't visible from the bedroom door, but around the corner on the other side of the bed. that's what i had been smelling in the hallway. the spare bedroom door is directly across from the kitchen door in the hallway.

i was trying not to cry as i called the vet's office, but it was no use. i was so worried about willie while i was on the phone i started crying so hard i could hardly breathe. the poor girl on the phone with me sounded like she was talking someone off of a ledge. she kept trying to get me to breathe, telling me it was alright as i apologized over and over and tried to collect myself. i described to her the symptoms willie was displaying: the lethargy and listlessness, the aversion to food and water and the diarrhea with all the blood in it. she put the doctor on the phone and asked me to tell him about the symptoms, which i did. he said he didn't want to scare me, but i needed to get him in as soon as possible, because i had just described a dog with parvo. parvo. that word terrified me. and worse, he explained, was that parvo is extremely contagious, and if it was parvo, my other dog already had it and would be showing the syptoms within several hours.

i was beside myself with horror. i kept imagining what my life would be without hank and willie. i kept hearing the doctor's words over and over: "most dogs can't survive it, and we have to put down most of the parvo dogs that come in."

i got willie to the vet as soon as i could. when he didn't protest to my putting on his collar and leash, i nearly panicked. willie doens't do collars or leashes at all. he flipped me once when i put a collar and leash on him; that was our last attempt of taking a walk outside. flipped me, right in my living room. he's definitely not a leash dog, but today he didn't fight me at all. even though he had the leash on, i carried him to the car. he seemed too frail to walk any farther than he already had. it was nearly too much for me.

when i took him to the vet and the two veterinary techs escorted him back behind the door where only staff are allowed, he turned around and tried to walk back to me. the look in his eyes broke my heart in a way it's never been broken before; he looked at me as if he knew i was leaving him when there was something wrong with him. i burst into tears and ran over to him, kneeled down and talked to him and stroked him and told him how much i love him and that i would see him tomorrow and that he was going to feel better, but my heart just kept breaking. boxers have very expressive eyes, and their eyebrows furrow like a human's.

they were going to administer the parvo test right away and call me with the results. they said the tests are refrigerated and have to sit out until they reach room temperature, about fifteen minutes, then the test takes approximately eight minutes. they'd call me in about thrity minutes with the results, and willie had to be quarantined in a "parvo room" all by himself until the test results came back, so as to avoid any potential contamination of any of the other dogs in the clinic.

when i hadn't heard from them in nearly two hours, i realized how sore my jaw was from grinding my teeth and clenching my jaw with anxiety, so i called the doctor's office. the tech who answered said "oh, wait a minute. the doctor wants to talk to you.", and my heart sank. then the doctor came on the phone and said the parvo test had been negative.

willie had something called "HGE", or hemmorhagic gastric enteritis. poor willie had been hemmorhaging. the doctor said he had ingested something that had caused him to contract botulism which had caused the HGE. he had either ingested a long dead animal like a squirrel or a bird or a rat, or he had ingested some sort of poison. i did a little quick math and told him that i had had the exterminator at my house to get rid of the rats, and i hadn't seen but one rat since, and it had been dead. i told him the dogs had carried it to the deck, but it was for all intents and purposes still all intact, and he stopped me and told me that a dog has to eat twice it's body weight in poisoned rats to contract secondary poisoning, so that couldn't possibly be it. he said that if willie had been poisoned it was a possibility that it had been an intentional poisoning. no matter what caused it, he was on aggressive antibiotics and an i.v. for fluids because he had become dangerously dehydrated due to the lack of water ingestion and the diarrhea, and would have to take a course of antibiotics for 14 days.

the most important part, and the only part that mattered to me was that willie would be coming home. he'll either be home tomorrow or monday, depending on his condition tomorrow and how he does overnight tonight.

hank is lost without him; when i got home from work, i let hank out of his kennel and he ran around the house looking for willie, and whined when he got back to the bedroom after not having found him. he's about six months old now, and has never spent a day without willie since he came to live here, about five months ago. willie is his big brother, figuratively and literally; they're from the same parents, born in different litters. hank was born in the litter after willie's. i imagine hank will sleep in the bed with me tonight, instead of curled up on willie, as he usually does.

i'm a little lost, too. willie has lived here with me since the fourth day i've lived in this house. willie and hank are what i have instead of a husband and children; they're my family. we're a little family, the three of us.

i miss my little white boy. i hope he's not too terribly lonely and scared.

i'm just glad he's going to be alright, and i can't wait until he comes back home to his family.

two for two

2006-05-04T21:28:00.000-05:00

this was my horoscope for today:

"It's hard to know when to stop, for you are excited about what comes next. You can inspire others to join you as you engage in activities with gusto. Make certain that you are extra cognizant of the needs of those around you, for it's easy to forget them when you are so jazzed up."

wow. really? 'cause that's not at all like the day i had today. i had the complete opposite day of that which is described in the above horoscope.

seriously, two gargantuan disappointments in as many days. i wish i could just stay in bed tomorrow.

fevered brains & room for squares

2006-05-03T22:56:00.000-05:00

my brain won't stop going. all day long today, i had the feeling that there was something big on my mind, but i couldn't quite pinpoint it. it was this weird combination of feeling that you've forgotten something and having something really big going on in your life and having to push it from the foreground of your mind to keep your mind on work or other every day life events. only as nearly as i can figure, i haven't forgotten anything and there's nothing big or traumatic going on in my life that i've having to shove back so i can get work done. it's weird.

i couldn't hold a single thought today for more than a few seconds. several times today the thought crossed my mind that maybe i was dreaming, but i wasn't.

i did have a somewhat monumental disappointment yesterday; nothing i really care to go into right now. suffice it to say that i'm disappointed, and i feel a little silly for hoping for the best and expecting the best. my mother always told me to hope for the best and expect the worst. it's a safety net in case the worst happens; it's not a surprise that way. if the best actually happens you're just pleasantly surprised.

my expectations were set too high and the consequences of that are, what else, disappointment. huge disappointment. i'll live.

i've been listening to john mayer a lot lately. can't stop listening to him, actually. i go in cycles, listening to specific artists; john mayer's room for squares is my favorite of his albums, and i'm a little obsessed with it, again. i've done this before.

last week it was ac/dc back in black. i cycle through that one a lot, too.

walt, tina, soap & corndogs

2006-05-01T21:33:00.000-05:00

*there are tons of great links in this post - visit them - you'll be uber-pleased.

overheard too many times to count since 9:30am this morning:

"OH MY GOD! what happened to your eye?"

"i caught a werther's original with it."

it's a lovely shade of brownish-green now. pretty.

i had the distinct pleasure with fred & shellie of seeing one of the most talented texas musicians last night at the crossings in austin, walt wilkins, who was joined by his beautiful and very talented wife tina mitchell-wilkins, and my good friend greg whitfield, who plays with our band, as well as bonnie bishop band & pauline reese.

(left to right: walt wilkins, tina mitchell-wilkins, greg whitfield.)

it was in the treehouse cafe at the crossings in austin, a very intimate venue with the most beautiful backdrop- the hill country just past volente peak and lake travis at sunset. breathtaking. it was like being outdoors without the bugs.

walt wilkins is an unbelievable - and i do mean unbelievable songwriter (listen to "angel's share" on his most recent album "hopewell".) and delivers a soulful, emotionally charged performance that just sort of envelopes you, and puts you under a texas roots-country-hippie-folksy-live-music spell, complete with cold beer and the hill country as your backdrop.

if you're a fan of pat green, you're undoubtedly familiar with one of his biggest hits, "carry on", in which he mentions walt wilkins, paying homage to the greatness of texas country music, the austin live music scene, and one of texas' most prized native sons:

"Ol' Walt Wilkins lives up in Nashville,

You know his eyes have seen the miles,

Walt why don't you jump in Jim T's caddy,

Come down to Texas and drink with me awhile,

Yeah, everybody gotta get away sometime,

Forget about yourself for awhile,

We'll go down to El Arroyo

Have some tacos and beer yeah and let ourselves go

Ok, alright

Just might try to get a ride tonight

I'm okay, I'm alright, carry on"

ol' walt's moved back to austin with his family, so i hope to be seeing more of them in the very near future. i highly recommend finding him and taking in a performance whenever you get the chance. he and tina are two of the nicest people you'll ever meet, and walt performs barefoot, bless his texan heart.

must be where pat gets it from.

tina mitchell wilkins has the voice of an angel and a smile that could melt the ice off an igloo. she's adorably beautiful, and has the tiniest little sparkly piercing in her left nostril - which nearly made me want to get mine re-pierced; it was exactly the tiny little screw that i used to have in my nose... then i realized that having a tiny little screw in my left nostril again wouldn't make me gorgeous and thin and blond like her, so the urge passed.

she has a powerhouse behind her vocal chords and she sings about, among other, more heady topics, eating cheese, bowling and being "not cool" because she's from wisconsin; there's nothing not to like about her. beautiful in every way, and ultra-talented.

greg whitfield was perfectly spot-on as he always is, and was a shining endorsement for the saxon pub, as evidenced by the photo top right. it amazes me sometimes, watching him perform; it dawns on me as i sit in awe of this man's talent that i regularly share the stage with him, and i am never ceased to be completely humbled. see him. see all of them.

my friend shawn and i had breakfast and coffee and too many cigarettes yesterday morning at my kitchen table, and discussed earth and sea essentials, her burgeoning and booming business of handcrafted and all natural skin care products and it looks like i'm going to be her soapcrafter. she's looking for completely natural, handcrafted soap; that's totally my bag. if i do say so, i'm one hell of a soapcrafter. yes, real soap starts out with lye in it; otherwise, it's not real soap. when real soap is made correctly, the lye, combined with fats (vegetable and fruit oils, no animal products in my soap) and water change into soap molecules through the process of saponification, a chemical reaction that causes the caustic, skin-removing lye crystals to become completely neutralized. this stuff ain't melt and pour; my soap is the genuine article.

i make soap in small batches to control the quality as closely as possible, and it takes 2-3 days to create a four pound batch of soap, then about 6 weeks until it's cured and ready for use, but i like to cure my soap for at least three months; it makes for a much milder, harder bar of soap that resists dissolving in the shower or bath, and lasts quite a bit longer.

i could go on about the how-tos of soap forever, so i'll stop for now and continue this topic later on as i'm sure i'll be inspired to write about it when i start crafting. i'm going to start handcrafting the soap for shawn this sunday afternoon. hopefully i'll have photos of the soapmaking process as well as the finished products.

i'm excited to be writing soap formulas again, and the prospect of digging into the 50 lb. pail of coconut oil, all the canisters of lye, vials of essential oils and jars full of loose herbs in the apothecary in my spare bedroom excites me to no end!

what was it i wanted to be when i grew up again?

i also started my cinnamon roll, corndog & reese's peanut butter cup diet today.

so far, i'm doing great.

the shiner, the spammer & the humdinger

2006-04-29T19:08:00.000-05:00

all i wanted was a damn piece of candy.

werther's, to be precise. michael had them, and he sits four desks away from me. i said "cookie! (i call him "cookie".) throw me a werther's!" i'm a very good catch.

he threw me a werther's, and i caught it like an outfielder catching the would-be homerun to end the world series. it was beautiful. okay, so maybe that's a little dramatic, but it was a damn good catch, and truly a thing of beauty. michael must have been impressed, because he kept throwing them to me. two, then three, then uh-oh.

the fourth one was a little low, and would have landed in my neighbor alisa's desk if he'd thrown it any shorter; instead, it ricocheted off of the outside of her cubicle, and imbedded itself in the soft, fleshy part of my face just under my eye and my eye socket. it made this horrible noise when it hit me and i swear for a split second, i thought my eyeball was going to shoot out of it's socket. it did this "bouncy" thing, and although i couldn't see it, it felt like it bulged out just a little bit.

so, naturally i have a black eye now. my right eye. black in the inner corner, following the contour under my eye to about 3/4 of the way to the outside of my eye. pretty.

poor cookie; he felt horrible. i milked it for all it was worth. it's alright, really. my eye is fine. nothing more now than soreness, a little swelling still, and a burgeoning shiner.

i was supposed to go to cookie's going away party tonight but i have been getting a horrible headache for the last couple of hours. i came home after work today at 4, and laid down for a little nappy, dozed off and woke up with the beginnings of a splitting headache. i've done everything i know to do: caffeine, a loading dose of tylenol, accupressure; nothing has worked. i'm not sure if i'm going to cookie's party tonight or not.

i got SPANKED by spammers today on my blog. damn spammers! they hit most of my recent blogs at least twice, and there's no way to remove specific comments from blogger posts, just to hide the exising comments and disable future comments. i had to turn on word verification so if you comment on my posts in the future, sorry for the hassle.

oh my god, somebody please hit me over the head with a mallet and put me out of my misery. a little concealer would be nice as well.

it's true it's true

2006-04-28T22:51:00.000-05:00

james blunt. he's cute. i'd go so far as to say that he's sexy, in a scrawny, pasty english sort of way. i've always had a weakness for scrawny pasty english boys. i'll also admit that he's talented, and may god bless him in all of his artistic endeavors.

but for the love of crap, SHUT UP. okay. she's beautiful. we GET IT. if i hear that damn falsetto warbling "you're beautiful" one more time i'm going to shoot myself in the face.

on one of my days off this week, i woke up really early - like 4am, and couldn't go back to sleep, so i turned on the tv and in lieu of watching some infomercial about something that i probably already have, i made the mistake of turning the station to VH1. i kid you not, in an hour and a half, they played that damn video FOUR TIMES. the end of the video dipicts him jumping into the water from a high cliff; about the third time it came on, i started wishing i'd see his lifeless body bobbing at the surface of the water after he'd jumped. no luck, they played it again about twenty minutes later.

it's storming here right now - thunder and lightning, pouring rain. about 65 degrees. the windows are open, and i should be in bed right now as i have to wake up at 5 tomorrow morning to go to work.

i had two bowls of cereal with 1% milk on my days off and now my ears itch. i shouldn't be drinking milk due to my allergy, but damn it, i love milk, and i love special k with fruit & yogurt. it's awesome, so the itchy ears are worth it. sort of.

sweet melissa & kabuki drag queens

2006-04-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

ay dios mio! i don't want to go to work tomorrow. it's midnight, and i'm as awake as i've ever been, and i'm going to regret it come 7am tomorrow morning.

scratch that. this morning.

i feel like i got a lot accomplished today, though. i bought and potted a bunch of herbs for my side porch; can't plant them in the ground as the squirrels will dig under them to bury pecans from all the pecan trees in my yard.

i planted lavender, lemon thyme, lemon bee balm (sweet melissa, or melissa officionalis), sweet basil, chives & something else that escapes me at the moment but i'm too lazy to get up and go to my porch. i also planted the six rosemary bushes alongside my driveway, and two hydrangeas in big pots on my side porch. gorgeous.

i framed two vintage european advertisement prints, hung one in my bedroom and the other in my kitchen.

drank a dirty hooker martini and watched "i shot andy warhol", one of my favorite movies starring one of my favorite actresses, lily taylor. i love her. i have a s.c.u.m. magnet on my fridge that i got the day i saw that movie when i lived in dallas, watched it at the inwood theatre.

after my second dirty hooker martini, i got the bright idea to do the self portraits i meant to do on tuesday, as seen above. the others can be seen here or on flickr. i um, experimented with reds on my eyes; i won't try and fool anyone into thinking that i applied anything other than lipstick to my eye lids - who has red eyeshadow? not me. i do have tons of red lipstick though, so i went with what i had.

after all the red on my eyes, two sets of false eyelashes and a generous application of lip gloss, i ended up looking like a kabuki drag queen with greasy pork chop lips had mated with one of the vapid guitar-playing bimbos in a robert palmer video.

i'm okay with that.

if i've said it once, i've said it a thousand times: sometimes a girl just needs to get painted up like trash. it does wonders for the self esteem.

and martinis don't hurt, either.

prank calling etiquette, the lawn ranger & apple pie

2006-04-27T12:04:00.000-05:00

why would you call someone you're not certain if you know or not, and when they answer, ask "who's this?" don't do this to me, because you'll only be met with "well, who were you calling for?" i'm not so dumb as to tell you with whom you're speaking. especially not if you sound like some dirty old man with four teeth in your head.

and when i do say "well, who were you calling for?" if you decide to get lippy with me, expect to be hung up on. and when you call back repeatedly and ask every time "who is this?" expect to be told "it's the person who's about to use her connections with phone companies and the police to arrest your stupid ass for harassment."

and when you call back again and tell me in a not-so-pleasant voice "quit hanging up on me, bitch!" expect me to tell you "stop calling me then, you asshole." and when you tell me "i ain't no asshole!" you should always expect me to laugh at you, berate you for being a fifty-year old drunk prank caller with nothing else to do while you're waiting for your welfare check to come in the mail and why are you at home anyway? did somebody steal your 'will work for food' sign?"

that's when the phone calls stopped.

how the hell did it get to be thursday already? i have to go to WORK tomorrow. how badly does that suck?

spent all morning on my hands and knees in my front yard pulling weeds and errant grass out of the flower bed that separates my driveway from my yard, and i planted the rosemary bushes i bought the other day. yay! i love rosemary, and it's so hearty here in texas. we need plants like that that grow under almost any circumstance or climate. any weed that cleverly disguises itself as a "plant" or better yet, and "herb" is perfect. i'm going to go herb shopping this afternoon i think, and plant a bunch of different varieties in clay pots on my side porch because it gets great sun and great shade. i love my porch. i'd really like to get rid of the porch-swing-of-death and replace it with a lovely bistro table and chairs as well. that's a perfect spot for coffee in the mornings because of the indirect sunlight.

nobody cares about my plants so i'll stop.

although i did fire my lawn guy today after waiting for TWO WEEKS for him to show, calling him countless times and leaving voicemails and actually speaking to him and being assured time and again that he'd be out to do my yard.

made a lovely roast chicken last night with perfect baked potatoes. baked a homemade apple pie with a lovely streusel topping. from scratch even! had apple pie for breakfast this morning. good 'n good fer ya.

off to the nursery for potting soil, clay pots and herbs o'plenty!

wednesday morning carnage

2006-04-26T10:03:00.000-05:00

i must have missed a nest, or maybe there was another bluejay massacre committed by a jealous father bluejay. or a serial murdering cat. i don't know.

all i know is that hank has been dragging dead baby birds up on my deck again this morning. it's just now 10am, and he's already brought two onto the deck. to my horror, hank had, shall i say, been playing with them.

chewing on them is more accurate.

this is my pennance for poisoning the rats.

it's been two weeks since i've seen a rat, dead or alive. i'm assuming they're dropping like flies and when the weather turns warmer my attic is going to reek with dead rodent stench.
still, no rats is good. so now i have dead birds.

i had to move into a house with a thousand pecan trees in the back yard...

cs, stamps, knife fights & baby birds

2006-04-25T21:40:00.000-05:00

day 1 of 3 days off of work. glorious.

i woke up this morning, on my day off, not at 9am, not at 10am. i woke up at 4am. seriously, 4am. what is this, a getting-older thing? i woke up from the craziest dream about my friend sara in new york. i dreamed i went to visit her in new york and suffice it to say, hilarity ensued including screaming matches, knife fights, driver-less cars and name calling. it was wacky to be certain.

took a nap around 11am. showered. went out and bought stamps. bought a galvanized dogfood can. grabbed a salad from wendy's. came home and hung my head in shame because i could not figure out why the program i attempted to install last night would NOT install. talked to my friend ed.

problem solved. program running. ed ROCKS.

i've been waiting for jesse the lawn guy to show up since saturday. still nothing. in the mean time, my grass is getting taller and taller, making me look trashier and trashier. i've even talked to him twice, and he assured me he'd be here today. mentiroso!

i've been playing with my new program all afternoon, thanks again to ed. editing a photo order and am nearly finished with some beautiful photos for my friend jann. planning on using it tomorrow afternoon as well; i've been toying with the idea of revamping my website again. i do this about every six months or so; i completely renovate the page, sort of like rearranging the furniture. all the same elements will be present, just a little different. don't have any idea what i want to do to it yet, but i would like to update my portrait on the site as well, and will probably do that tomorrow. i'm thinking something a little more bold. there might be false eyelashes involved, but at this point i can't make any promises. i may end up looking like a drag queen. i'm okay with that.

i let my dogs in the house this afternoon from being outside for about an hour. ever since i found the dead rat on my deck that my dogs had apparently been playing with, i've been eyeballing the deck pretty well whenever i let them in the house. so far, since i found that rat a couple of weeks ago, i haven't seen anything out of the ordinary until today. there was a dead baby bird on my deck. no feathers except on it's tiny wings, eyes were still closed, couldn't have been more than a week old. poor pitiable little thing, probably got kicked out of the nest, and my dogs found it and schlepped it up onto my deck. i disposed of the tiny bird and went about the rest of the day.

this exact event happened two more times with two more dead birds ending up on my deck. the other two birds were a little less mangled than the first, and it was clear that they were baby bluejays. i decided to take a walk around the back yard to see if there was a bird's nest that had been upset. maybe a cat had gotten to it. i can't imagine a mama bird kicking three of her young out of the nest, but i remembered reading somewhere that male bluejays after having fathered a clutch of eggs will often upset the nests of other bluejays if the mother is away. that must be what had happened, because i found a total of six dead baby birds in my back yard; one all by itself, and then three within about a foot of each other under a different tree, then two more that looked like they'd been moved by one or both of my dogs.

i dug a good-sized hole and had a little baby bird funeral. i marked it with a rock.

things like that always remind me that none of us are bullet proof.

fireflies! now available in plaid!

2006-04-24T20:30:00.000-05:00

the installation started out like a dream - quick, click-click, done. click here to install. sure! "please wait while the shared components for xxx are being installed. this may take several minutes."

that was an hour and a half ago, and it's still installing. call me psychic, but i get the distinct impression that somethin' ain't goin' right. i looked in my file directory, and it looks to be there - but i'm not a complete idiot; i do know that looks can be decieving. the proof is in the pudding. it'll all come out in the wash. a stich in time saves nine. never put anyting in your ear larger than your elbow.

why why WHY can't things go smoothly? because, melissa, that would be too damn easy, that's why.

on a brighter note, while i was waiting for this damn program to install, i went outside and watered the plants and flowers that i spent part of the day planting yesterday. i turned the corner to the side of my house and caught something out of the corner of my eye; it was green, and bright and very familiar. it was a firefly; the first firefly i've seen this season.

i love fireflies. they make me feel like a child, although i don't recall ever having seen a firefly until i was in my twenties. i saw the first firefly i can ever remember seeing in the front yard at my friend leilani wilma odell's house after we'd spent the day at scarborough faire. i was exhausted, sunburned, and couldn't wait to wash the dirty hippie stink off of me. a few years later, someone told me that fireflies aren't always greenish-yellow; he said "did you know fireflies come in different colors in different parts of the country?", which cracked me up. it sounded like they were available for purchase in the color of your choice, depending on your region; subject to availability and participation.

i ran in the house tonight to grab my camera, but by the time i got all the way back out the front door, they had moved on to a neighbor's yard. the elusive firefly. i love them so.

i'm off work for the next three days, tuesday, wednesday and thursday, and i could not be more excited about it. plans? none. i'm taking it eeeeeeeasy for the next three days.

or installing this damn program.

raw brownie batter and a PSA

2006-04-23T21:53:00.000-05:00

this is not a PSA about the gastronomical dangers of eating raw brownie batter.

quite the contrary.

i relish my time in the shower. i look forward to it, and am no stranger to showering three times a day just to indulge in beautifully scented bath & shower products. i'm a whore for good bath products.

my favorite of all time is prescriptives' calyx shower gel. that is the cleanest i ever feel, after a shower with calyx.

i may be a whore for good shower products, but i'm certainly no snob about them. i'll just as soon use a shower gel that cost five bucks as one that cost four or five times that amount. just so long as the scent turns me on, that's all i care about.

that being said, i'm not one of those sun-ripened raspberry shower gel kinds of people. while there are a few scents at bath & body works that i really like (my favorite is their peony) all the fruitiness sort of gets to me. the sweet-fruity is what i like the least, although i am currently nursing a bottle of peach-mandarin that was given to me for christmas, and i just love it. i can't detect even the slightest hint of peach in it, or mandarin for that matter. it's much more like ruby-red grapefruit; heady, brightly citrusy, nearly bitter. i love it.

as i was paying the receptionist yesterday after getting my hair cut, i was nearly overwhelmed by the array of scented goodies at the receptionist's desk, most notably a display for "fresh baked", a line of shampoo & body wash with interestingly chosen bathing scents.

the scents were cinnamon roll, apple pie, chocolate brownie and one more that i don't recall. i was skeptical about these scents for the shower; maybe a candle, but stepping out of the shower smelling like a brownie seemed a little... over eaters anonymous.

it was right up my alley.

i do love chocolate. as a soapmaker i used to make a lovely chocolate soap, heavy with cocoa butter and with cocoa powder. it was delicious, and had that unmistakable cocoa butter scent. i expected this "chocolate brownie" to smell similar to that, as nothing ever smells like a chocolate brownie when it's marketed as such. it just doesn't happen.

it didn't happen this time, either. i opened the lid and lowered my nose, then inhaled... the scent definitely wasn't that of a fresh baked chocolate brownie, as the label claimed. no, not at all.

it was better.

it was precisely the scent of chocolate brownie batter. when i say "precisely", let me make clear that i mean exactly. it smells exactly like chocolate brownie batter smells, and i would certainly know what chocolate brownie batter smells like. rarely do i make brownies that are any higher than an inch after they're baked, because i've eaten most of the raw batter. brownie batter is one of my favorite "secret eatings", and it's long been tradition in my family amongst the women who bake in the kitchen: we all sneak batter before we bake anything, and licking the beaters is cook's treat, as my grandmother and mother both say. i go a little farther than that, and break out the silicone spatula and scrape every molecule of batter off of every surface of the bowl after i pour the intended amount into the baking pan. let me also say this: i get the bowl clean.

i purchased the bottle of chocolate brownie scented bath gel, and i have to admit i was a little embarrassed at the thought of actually buying it to use it. i know that's silly, but i really did. i had to stop myself from saying something like "my sister will love this! her birthday's coming up." but realized that would just be stupid, and completely over-compensating for no reason at all. i shelled out the cash for it, and left to run the rest of my errands. it sat next to me in the passenger seat the whole time, and i think it was actually calling to me. the urge to cancel the rest of my appointments was very strong, but i resisted, and kept all of my engagements.

when i got home though, i was stripping down from the second i locked the front door and was naked by the time i got to the kitchen. i walked straight into the bathroom and turned on the shower, unwrapped the bottle of glorious brownie batter scented goodness, and stepped into the shower...

by the time i got out, the water had been running cold for several minutes. i scrubbed each and every inch of my being with my new shower gel. when i emerged, my bathroom smelled just like the empire baking company in dallas. it was unbelievable.

as hesitant as i am to shower with food-scented bath products, i have to recommend fresh baked chocolate brownie wholeheartedly to anyone with any sort of chocoholism. be prepared for your water bill to triple.

BONUS! my post about squat lobster is now officially a PSA! i received an email today from someone who found my post to be most informative:

"I was googling "Squat Lobster" for recipes and came across your blog. Thanks for the heads-up, I try not to serve guests hermit crabs. Thank god the store took them back after I brought the bag and a printout of your blog! I was able to trade them in for fresh muscles[sic] and salmon. I love living in the Pacific Northwest!Anyways, thanks again."

my work here is done.

day of beauty, id est "feet of mass destruction"

2006-04-22T20:00:00.000-05:00

BONUS! grody new photo of dead rat from previous post!

in a good shoe, i wear a size 6. but an 7 feels so good, i buy a size 8. (name that movie!)

it's amazing what a little spackle'll do for a girl. every once in a while, it just feels good to get all painted up like trash. pretty = feels good. it's a fact, jack.

after long having neglected my vanity and appearance due to work, photography et al, i decided that today was the day to patch a few things up. i had an old fashioned day of beauty. a girl absolutely must take time out to pamper herself, and that i did.

i started out by taking care of business, having the oil changed and the fuel injectors cleaned in my car. i then drove myself to the first of three beauty salons where i got my hair did, my eyebrows waxed and had a nearly two hour pedicure.

two hours? you ask. yes, two hours. why two hours? you ask. well, i'll tell you.

i had a two hour pedicure because unlike normal people, i don't have feet attached to the ends of my legs; i have hooves. like a damn goat.

everybody gets a callous every now and then, that's just natural. i on the other hand don't get callouses every once in a while; i get callouses on my callouses. i can get a callous by walking to my car from the pedicurist's station. no kidding, i have the crunchiest feet in all the land. on the rare occasion that i walk barefoot on my hardwood floors, you'd swear someone was tapdancing.

i have two teeny-tiny extra bones in both of my feet, right in the ball of the foot. i'm some sort of mutant. apparently, according to the witch doctor who diagnosed me with these chernobyl bones, (he actually did use the word "mutated" at one point in the conversation) it's a "condition" that's not all that rare. one in every two million people have these crazy bones in their feet.

our last census revealed a population of 295,734,134 in the US. now, i'm no wizard, but if my calculations are correct, this mystery-bone anomaly isn't exactly rampant if you get my meaning. what a freak.

i'm referring to myself of course, and well, also that fruitcake doctor.

these little bones cause me to have extremely wide feet. like, landbarge wide. pair that with an extremely high arch, then top it off with really slendar heels, and you have yourself a first-rate shoe-shopping nightmare. it's always fun going shoe shopping. heh. i remember that time a few years ago; i went shopping for a pair of heels and i got so lucky! i found a pair of medieval torture-devices that almost fit me after only seven shoe stores! ha! what a fun day that was... good times.

seriously. when i find a good pair of shoes, i buy them. if i have to prostitute myself for the money to buy them, i'm alright with that. i'm not proud. i buy them. i have about twenty pair of shoes in my shoerack, and i wear about 3 pair of them. the others? pipe dreams. beautiful, insanely expensive pipe dreams.

the two hour pedicure today was spent mostly removing the callouses from the bottoms of my feet. they hack those things off with razor blades. it looks like they're planing a wooden plank; by the time she got done with both of my feet, i swear i could have built another whole human foot with the dna that was laying on the floor. then the scrubbing block action started. they've actually broken one of those things on my foot before from scrubbing so fervently. that's humiliating.

"how'd your pedicure go?"

"i broke the equipment."

"again?"

i am currently enjoying baby's-butt-smooth feet, and will continue to enjoy them for the remainder of the time they'll stay smooth and callous-free. i've got about twenty minutes left.

former hundred-aire : the melissa mcgee story

2006-04-21T20:30:00.000-05:00

this has indeed been a very freaky friday.

i woke up early - and by early, i do indeed mean stupid early - to catch up on email, finish a slide show for a photo client, purchase some badly needed software for the new laptop, and drink copious amounts of very strong coffee.

it rained all night long, and it seems a window in my car wasn't quite closed. okay, wasn't closed. the rear passenger window. the floorboards of my car were full of water, and by full of water, i mean about 2 inches. what a grody mess to clean up when you're already running late for work. how the hell do you get that much water out of your floorboards? well, you start by filling up cupful after cupful of rainwater and slinging it into the unsavory neighbor's yard. hey, they knocked a branch off of my tree; i can sling scrummy rainwater into their damn yard.

then, when you are sick and tired of bailing out your floorboards you break down and drive to the car wash, and try not to let anybody see you vacuuming the water out of your car like a ninja. you wonder if you're about to be electrocuted or if there's going to be a poster with your crudely-drawn likeness crafted with a sharpie, headlined with something like "industrial vacuum wrecker!". if it were spelled "wrekker" i would laugh and be proud it was me.

in a twist of irony, after draining lake floorboard, i dropped off my water bill payment. i derived strange satisfaction from that for some reason.

i stopped by my ATM machine for a little mad-money style cash, and drove to starbucks. when i got to work, i still had about 15 minutes to spare, so called the cable company to make an automated payment, where my DEBIT CARD WAS DECLINED. what? um, i just used it about 5 minutes ago, not to mention that i checked my balance this morning before i left the house - and unless i inadvertently purchased some swampland, i have plenty of money - i just got paid.

in another twist of irony, or maybe it's coincidence, preciesly as i was listening to the automated lady-bot tell me "YOUR CARD IS DECLINED YOU ARE A LOSER STOP CALLING US", i heard the voicemail notification beeping in my ear - so i hung up and called my voicemail, where i heard someone called mark in a state of utter confusion; he was saying "ms. mcgee? are you there? ms. mcgee?" over and over - apparently i am his first experience with voicemail. i didn't know you could still pop a voicemail cherry in 2006. then i heard where he was calling from:

"i'm calling from bank xxxxxxxx ATM card fraud department. i guess you're not there. i'm terminating the call." (card declined + credit card fraud = my irony.)

well, HELL YES i freaked out. the whole declined card thing started to make a little sense when i heard that, but it did nothing to un-freak me out. i had these visions of sitting in a halfway house drinking cooking sherry and wearing men's shoes while watching a lifetime television for women movie about my life story after somebody stole my identity and took me for everything i had. that would be hundreds. starring delta burke, of course.

i got on the horn and contacted my friendly banking customer service representative who hadn't the foggiest idea of what the hell to do with this panicked woman in a near tizzy, spouting off about credit cards, checking acounts and suzanne sugarbaker. i was transferred, probably 400 times, and then landed in the lap of a lady who asked me about 10 quick questions, for which i had all the answers (and i didn't even study!) who informed me that due to unusal activity they had frozen my card and would now be re-activating it. unusual activity? i made about 5 purchases totalling close to $150. okay, sure it was in the space of about 2 hours - but where the hell was this freeze-happy fraud hound when i spent 2 grand ON MY LUNCH BREAK once? or for that matter, any number of the times i go depression-shopping and end up having to cool the card down in an ice-water bath because it's getting so much action? where is he then? HUH???

seriously, i am very grateful that somebody's watching out for me. it's nice to know that if some dim-witted idiot decided to steal my debit card, maybe i'd get tipped off before he realized that he ripped off somebody with no money, and blew my tens of dollars at monkey ward.

it was exhausting, and then it was over. no fraud, no identity-theft, no lifetime movie starring delta burke... thank god.

do i even WANT to get married?

2006-04-19T21:14:00.000-05:00

before there are any conclusions hastily jumped-to, no, i'm not getting married. that's the whole point of this post. i'm not getting married; maybe i'm never getting married.

despite the severe lack of a requisite significant other, i've been thinking a lot about getting married lately. not so much the act of getting married, but the state of being married. the older i get, the less i think that a) being married is for me and b) i'll ever get married. honestly, i don't think i'm the marrying kind.

i think there are too many things i want to do in my life to be able to rationalize being married to someone. hell, if i could marry me i wouldn't do it; that's just way too much of another person, even if it's the person i know the best in the world. i like being single. i like not having to adhere to anyone's schedule but my own. i like not having to answer to anyone but me if i leave the cap off of the toothpaste. (which, incidently, i would never do. especially my fabulous marvis toothpaste.) i like decorating the way i want to decorate and not having to humor someone's tackiness of taste for the sake of a relationship. how many relationships have suffered stress due to a horrible hand-me-down chair or a black velvet painting of dogs playing poker? thank you, no. and of course, i like standing at my kitchen sink at 3am wearing nothing but a tshirt, spoon in hand, devouring an avocado liberally sprinkled with kosher salt. yep, eating it right out of the peel. i like doing that, and i like not having to explain it or secret-it away from anybody. my friend matt understands that.

the truth is this: i am surrounded on all sides by people ending bad marriages, regretting their recent marriages and still reeling from horrible relationships that ended eons ago. that's quite a dose of reality, really. i know very few married couples who are truly happy, and who truly want to be around each other when they can. what's to say that the person i marry would want to be around me when he was able to? or, that i'd want to be around him for that matter?

i've never been married, but more importantly, i've never been divorced. i know that i would have a very hard time dealing with a divorce, only because i know myself so well. i'm certainly not begrudging anybody's relationship; maybe i should clarify that earlier when i mentioned that "i know very few married couples who are truly happy" that i actually do know a few couples who are happy. i don't mean to imply that it's my opinion that a happy marriage is a myth; my parents are a perfect example of a happy couple, and they're not the only couple i know who are truly happy being married.

is marriage really a sacred bond? is it really just a piece of paper? is it really something that should be legal to heterosexual couples only? honestly, i don't think so. marriage is love is two people is forever is blind to gender in my opinion, but that's a whole different post, and i haven't the fortitude to go into that right now. suffice it to say: if you don't think gay people should get married, don't get married to a gay person. no harm, no foul.

i am set in my ways. i'm something of a creature of habit, and seriously, i'm okay with that. if i never find "the perfect man" to share the rest of my life with, well, i'm becoming more and more okay with that, too. i was certain once that i had found the perfect man, and could NOT have been more wrong. if i had tried to be wrong, i still couldn't have been more wrong. i'm a pretty good judge of character, but that asshole somehow got right under my radar. i no longer trust my judgement when it comes to the character of a potential partner. at this point in my life, it's more important not to feel that way ever again than it is to risk it just to be married, or at the very least to be in a relationship. it's not worth it.

if he happens to come along, great. if he wants to marry me, well, maybe.
he, of course, being the real perfect man. the genuine article, if he still exists.

there's nothing that says i have to get married to him, right?

well, nothing except maybe my mother.

the importance of eye contact

2006-04-18T22:23:00.000-05:00

i had terrible, horrifying dreams last night, and tossed and turned and generally didn't get a lot of sleep; still somehow when my alarm clock went off, i felt more rested than i have felt in weeks after "a night's sleep", a phrase i use in the loosest form.

i actually surprised myself by being in such a good mood this morning, even before the requisite two cups of coffee before showering. the morning ticked on without incident, and at around 8:50am, i was driving to starbucks, as i do every single morning of every single workday. there was an unusually long line in the drivethrough, my normal m.o. for starbucks, so i parked and went inside.

i was greeted by the happy, caffeinated faces i'm accustomed to, and didn't even have to verbalize my order, just greet everyone and answer "yes! thank you!" to the question "quad espresso & pumpkin loaf?" and within about 2 minutes, they were handing me my white paper cup full of nectar of the gods and a little slice of pumpkin loaf heaven. i thanked my favorite morning people and turned to go, accidently bumping the arm of a lady passing in the opposite direction.

since she was already behind me, i said "oh, pardon me." and kept walking when i heard her say "excuse you, bitch!"

it didn't take but a second or two to deduce that she probably hadn't heard me say "pardon me" at all, beause she was deaf. i would hate for this to come across as a generalization, so if it does, i apologize ahead of time: i could tell she was deaf by her speech.

instantly, after realizing that she hadn't heard me, i felt horrible. she must have thought that i hadn't cared enough to apologize after bumping into her. i turned around after having heard what she said and for a brief moment we made eye contact, but it was after the fact, and didn't matter any more. my expression must have been befuddled confusion, and hers was certainly anger. it was an accident. still, i felt horrible.

driving to work, the good mood i'd been fostering so preciously all morning was all but wrecked. thank god i had some espresso. still, something was eating at me: just as i had assumed she must have heard me, she had assumed that i hadn't said anything in apology.

in fairness, i suppose i shouldn't assume that my apologies never fall on, pardon the pun, deaf ears. in the same vain, wouldn't it be prudent for a hearing-impaired individual not to make the assumption that just because they hadn't heard an acknowledgement of some sort that said acknowledgement never occurred? does that even make sense?

sure, i'm totally over-thinking the entire thing. maybe she's forgotten about it completely by now. maybe she didn't give it another thought after she cast "bitch" at me like she did. maybe she's accustomed to being pushed around and had finally had enough. maybe i was her breaking point.

whatever the situation was that caused her reaction, i did learn a valuable lesson today: a little eye contact never hurt anybody. i'll definitely make eye contact next time, no matter how big a hurry i think i might be in.

and now for something completely different: this is hilarious! i did it over and over and over - and it always got my songs right! you tap your spacebar to the beat of a song, and if you have any kind of rythym, the results are amazing - it gets it right every time! save it for a pleasant work diversion...

h-o-t.

2006-04-18T07:57:00.000-05:00

it's going to get up to 97 today. that is all.

heaviness and light

2006-04-17T21:29:00.000-05:00

things are sort of heavy right now. every once in a while, everybody has a little bit of extra heaviness in their life; mine is right now. lots of things going on, and i can handle it, but it's just sort of bearing down on me as a singular weight that keeps getting heavier and heavier.

there are a few things going on in my family right now and, although i'm not going to go into detail, suffice it to say that they're extrememly heavy. everybody's fine, really. there's just this outside influence that is making everybody completely miserable. it goes so much deeper than that, but i haven't the energy to expound, nor do i want to give any credit to this pox by even mentioning it's name. what's that saying? something about naming evil and giving it strength. i won't do that. pox works for me just fine.

the job hunt has yeilded a few very exciting nibbles and some signifigant interest in my resume, which is definitely good; as i mentioned a few days ago, a little scary in a thrilling, exciting way. i'm coping with it well, though. that's stress i can definitely handle.

i realize that i just had five days off in a row last week, including the weekend, but damn it, i need a vacation. a real, honest-to-goodness vacation. i'm hoping to be able to take about two weeks off between jobs to clear my head, find myself a little bit and reeeelaaaaaaax. i don't think i know how to relax anymore; relaxation is usually me in bed, stiff as a board, all clenched up trying to force myself to go to sleep. that's not relaxed. i'm not really a drinker, or i'd have one of those old fashioned night caps to knock myself out. i have a cocktail every now and then. i'm not a big wine drinker because i get wicked sulfite headaches. beer is wonderful if i'm drinking it with friends, not dogs.

i don't sleep well. i have never slept well. my grandmother and i both routinely go through bouts of insomnia, not sleeping for days at a stretch. night after night after night, no sleep, even with the help of a sleep-aid. sleeping pills are tricky for me; you have to take them at just the right time, and you've got scarcely little room in that window. if you miss it, it's too late and you'll oversleep or feel all drugged the next day. i really don't like taking any sort of sleeping pill, over-the-counter or prescription, but when it gets desperate, i'll break down and rish oversleeping just to get some shuteye.

i'm not at that point just yet. i'm getting just enough sleep lately to be able to function pretty well. i can tell i'm tired, and i can tell i look tired, but apparently it's not completely obvious to everybody else.

on top of everything else, it was hot today. not just mildly hot. not warm. it was hot. nearly 100 degrees. am i crazy, or is this only april 17th? i mean, this is texas - but it's rarely this hot this early in the year. that tells me that summer is going to kick my ass this year. i have no pigment in my skin; if you hold me up to the light, you can see right through me. i'm the color of typing paper. and i'm a redhead. double whammy. i do not fare well in the heat. i don't burn - i just burst into flames.

i did get to see my princess grace this evening though, which perked me right up. she always perks me up. i love her so much i think my heart might just burst. she had been swimming today, and apparently she loved it! she sat on my lap and i fed her corn, which she just adored. that child i definitely a mcgee woman; she is food aggressive. if i got a little too slow with the corn, she'd start to grunt and growl at me. wow! pace yourself, gracie...this was no ordinary corn, either; this was creamed corn my mom made for dinner tonight. the creamy base was what i was feeding her. it had bits of corn in it; not the hulls, just the meaty part inside the hull. she loved it! that's gonna make one interesting diaper change later on for krissy.

she's so smart, my little gracie. she's started waving! she's also mimicking noises we make to her, and she's starting to figure out peoples faces. i sat with her on my lap tonight for a good fifteen minutes while she played with each and every facial feature i have. eyes, nose, mouth, chin... she would grab them and twist and pat and just touch. it was like she had just discovered all of the things on someone's face and wanted to learn all she could about them. she's so smart.

tonight when i was kissing her goodbye, she gave me a kiss back on my face. it's the sweetest thing i've ever seen; right on the face, between my mouth and my cheek. she made this little cooing sound when she kissed me.

then she grabbed my nose. i made a honking sound, and she laughed. so of course, i kissed her. she's the light in my heart.

ah, everythings just fine.

Καλό Πάσχα

2006-04-16T08:57:00.000-05:00

happy easter to everyone. Christos anesti!

Felices Pasques - Joyeuses Pâq - Frohe Ostern - Buona Pasqua - Καλό Πάσχα - Felices Pascuas - Glad Påsk - честит Великден - Hyvää pääsiäistä - A' Chàisg sona - शुभ ईस्टर - С праздником Пасхи - สุขสันต์วันอีสเตอร์ - Happy Whissunday - schöni Oschtere & happy easter

Χριστός ανέστη εκ νεκρών,θανάτωι θάνατον πατήσας,και τοις εν τοις μνήμασι,ζωην χαρισάμενος!

Christos anesti ek nekron, Thanato thanaton patisas, Kai tis en tis mnimasi Zo-in charisamenos!

Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs Bestowing life!

the beginning of a beginning?

2006-04-14T21:09:00.000-05:00

it's always a little scary to me when i hand my resume over to someone for their review. perhaps i'm not alone in this slight fright, but it strikes me as i write this that i don't believe i've ever discussed this scaredy-catness about resumes with anyone else before.

i'm very proud of my resume; it's beautiful and concise and really showcases the diversity of my talents and my assets and my value as an employee no matter where i go. and yes, i'm very proud of that. and can you believe - no fudging!

i submitted my resume today. not just once. i submitted my resume a bunch, to several prospective employers. one of the employers is based in new york city, and i think that's the company for which i'd like to work.

why is it so scary? i imagine it's the prospect of all of that newness that comes with phone calls, meetings, interviews, first impressions... after giving it some thought, i nearly changed my mind about using the word "scary" in lieu of a word that seemed more fitting, "exciting". i can't discount scary altogether though, because along with all that excitement is a modicum of scary. i guess the only amendment i need make is that it's the good kind of scary; it's thrilling.

even more thrilling would be the "we're interested" conversation.

i have a crazy-busy weekend: working 7am - 4pm tomorrow, have to rush to rehearsal (which starts at 4pm, so i'll be a few minutes late) then performance until somewhere around 11am, two photo shoots on sunday, and of course, easter. somewhere in there i have to schedule a little sleep, so i'm going to get a head start right now.

a quick rat tale

2006-04-14T08:00:00.000-05:00

last night when i got home, before i opened up my wonderful birthday package from sara, i left my dogs outside for a wee, like i always do as soon as i get home.

after i opened up my package and fawned over the wonderful goodies inside the package, i let my dogs back inside, only to spy what appeared to be a dead rat laying on the deck outside my back door. it was about 9:45 when i saw it, and it was dark outside, but the evening sky was illuminated by a brilliant full moon, and that dead, bloated, rigored rat was glistening in the moonlight. he was glistening because he was covered in boxer slobber.

gross.

thanks, boys, for the gift. they've taken lately to cleaning up the back yard and schlepping trash the previous residents of this house so kindly left in the back yard and under the deck; toilet brushes, motorcycle parts, beer & soda cans, toothbrushes, old stuffed animals... clearly these people were classy. i can't blame them for the dead rats, but possibly for providing a rat haven with all that crap lying around. nonetheless, my dogs dragged that damn dead rat up to the deck like they would anything else they found in the back yard...

last night i disposed of my very first dead rat, ever. all by myself. oh, i've had other dead rats to be certain, but this was the first one i disposed of. normally, i would call my sister's boyfriend, the strapping and not-scared-of-rats kirk, and he would willinging come over and fish the rat out of the toiled, or out of the closet, but i did it myself. i'm 35. i can do anything.

almost.

i just heard a rat trap go off. i've never heard one go off before, but i knew instantly what it was because of the location it came from, and it is, i understand now, an unmistakable, gruesome sound. it was the one rat guy bobby left on top of the hot water heater in the a/c closet. as horrible as this sounds, there's no way i'm going to go near that one. i can't. i tried to psych myself up to do it, and couldn't get close enough to the door to open it. i just can't; it's a physical impossibility. i'm going to have to call rat guy bobby to come do it. and worse, it's going to be after work, which is 6:30.

and that rat ain't gonna stay fresh.

I HATE RATS!!!

very good things

2006-04-13T21:35:00.000-05:00

what a wonderful thing to come home to; a package. a package with a handwritten address label. a package from a friend.

long day over, i came from my parent's house from celebrating my dad's birthday and arrived home to find a brown kraft paper-wrapped box on my front steps under my mailbox. i'm expecting a photo shipment, but this was the wrong shape for photos altogether; this was a narrow rectangular box. the address label on the box was hand-written, and very familiar. this label was written by my friend sara, and the box came from new york city.

sara wrote me last week that i "should be expecting a little something in the mail" this week; i was expecting something card-shaped. this was a box. this was a birthday gift!

i wanted to desperately to just tear the brown paper wrapping off the box in grand savage style, but thought it over as i was letting my dogs outside, and decided to sit down and open it like a grown-up-person. i'm glad i did because i was able to enjoy the opening even moreso.

removing the brown paper from the box yeilded another layer of paper, lime greem tissue paper. hehe. double wrapped. like pepperidge farm bread. that was, i supposed the actual wrapping paper on the gift. the brown paper was the overcoat. smart. i removed the green tissue paper to find a converse shoe box! jack purcell low tops! in a SIZE 9! HEY! that's MY SIZE! WOOOO!

then i found a note handwritten on business letterhead: "I DID NOT BUY YOU SHOES." this made me laugh outloud; so loudly in fact that i sort of freaked my self out a little.

the box was taped with clear packing tape. it was taped well. it was taped so well that there was no way i was getting into this box without some sort of blade. i broke the seals sara had made (wow - i mean, REALLY good taping job, sayra.) and very carefully opened the box...

it dawned on me as i was so carefully opening the box that if anyone had been watching, i must have looked a bit like an orphan child opening their one and only christmas gift. when i got the box open, the aroma hit me; i couldn't quite make out one specific scent, as there were so many beautiful scents mingling together. the first thing i saw was a card.

i opened up the card to find a lovely hand-painted "happiness" in chinese characters on red rice cloth with a chop-stamp and some gold leaf glitters on it. lovely! the inside was hilarious as sara had scratched out the words "the holiday season" and written "your birthday", then explained how she'd missed that when she bought the card, and this was definitely not a recycled christmas card! hahahaha!!

then, i saw all the candy...

about a billion tiny boxes of japanese meiji candies! coffee flavored, chocolate, strawberry, grape, these little strawberry-flavored chocolates, and some other candies that are undescernable yet highly delicious! honestly, that would have been enough to tickle me pink, but there was more.

there were four little boxes wrapped up in decorative paper. the first one i opened was a wonderul box containing an aluminum tube of dr. hunters rosewater & glycerine hand creme. an elegant preparation for softening of the skin. indeed! it smells absolutely sublime, and sara can now claim the title of "enabler" as this will quickly become a part of my hand cream addiction.

the second little package i opened was immediately recognizable as some sort of soap. i can sniff out a good soap from 10 paces, and this... this was definitely a good soap. fig. actually, figue. so i shouldn't say it's soap, but savon. the scent is absolutely heavenly, and secretly i want to eat it. i won't, because i've made that mistake before. but still, fig + soap = my kind of savon.

the third was a heavy, nearly square rectangular box which didn't take but one rip of the paper before i was hit with the most incredible fragrance; something slightly citrusy with something round and warm as a top note. as i removed the paper enough to see the label, it was a votivo candle - as sara knows, one of my favorites, and the fragrance was vanilla grapefruit. it is instantly my new favorite, and as i write this, it's burning next to me, filling all corners of my bedroom with the most lovely, brilliantly calming scent.

by the fourth and final wrapped box, i had recognized a pattern. it took me this long because i'm a little slow on the uptake after a good day, and this day had been longer than most. i digress.

opening the fourth box, i have to admit, i wished that it was something very specific that sara and i had discussed, and as i got the paper off of the box, i realized my wish had come true. how often does that happen?

it was toothpaste! i know that might sound weird to anybody but me or sara, but it wasn't just any toothpaste, this was the most wonderful toothpaste - marvis toothpaste. marvis makes the most unbelievable toothpaste flavors - and this was my favorite, jasmine mint. don't knock it until you've tried it; it'll put you off of colgate forever. and the other best part about marvis toothpaste is that it comes in the most gorgeous, chichi shiny aluminum squeeze tube, accented with colors specific to it's flavor - and mine, jasmine mint matches my bathroom perfectly! it goes with my toothbrush, which is lilac, which goes with the wall, which is lilac... silver, white and lilac all on one fabulous tube of toothpaste? shut up! it's perfect. perfect.

i can't wait to brush my teeth before i go to bed tonight with my beautiful new marvis toothpaste! but i can't just yet - i still have more japanese candy to eat...

and that was the best way to come home after a long, hard day at work. thank you, sara. that was the most special thing.

and now, i have to go get the dead rat off of my deck. apparently the bait blocks are working.

mi famiglia è fin da sardegna!

2006-04-12T22:12:00.000-05:00

so my italian needs work. my fried stef in roma should help me translate my title...

i'm an italian. that's something i've known since before i started reasoning. before i was able to understand what italian meant, i knew i was italian; my family, like most italians, was very proud of our heritage and the place our ancestors and family came from, italy. more specifically, an island in the mediterranean sea off of the western coast of italy called sardegna. (sardinia)

sure, i'm a red-head. i can still be italian, right? i do have brown eyes...

when i was twenty-six years old, i visited ellis island for the first time while visiting my friend corey, who was at the time living in hoboken, new jersey. as silly as it might sound, and it sounds a little silly just writing it, visiting ellis island was something of a pilgrimage for me, as i was always told that my great-grandmother and great-grandfather entered the united states through ellis island from sardegna when they were just a young married couple, and settled in new york city for many years where they raised my grandfather and his siblings, then eventually retired to new jersey, where they both lived out the rest of their lives. my great-grandfather augustus guiseppe was twenty-one years old when he came to america, and was several years older than his wife, my great grandmother antoinette. my grandfather was his father's namesake, but everyone called him "joe", the american version of guiseppe, (joseph) and some people even called him "a.j.". my grandfather passed away more than twenty years ago, but even to the day he died, he was a very handsome man with thick, curly black hair and mediterranean-italian good looks.

a friend of mine on flickr recently posted a series of photos to his account that told a story of his recent visit to ellis island, and i was very moved by his images; the images portrayed him, an american citizen, standing in front of gorgeous, large black & white images of immigrants upon their arrival at ellis island through the port of new york, some of them had names emblazoned at the bottom of the image; some did not. i commented to him how his photos had moved me, and how i had wished that my visit to ellis island had been longer. i explained that my visit was the last ferry of the day, and as such, corey and i along with the rest of the passengers on the ferry had been a bit rushed to view the museum as quickly as possible before they closed for the day. i told him how i desperately wanted to visit again to see if i could uncover any evicence of my great-grandparents having come to new york more than a hundred years ago. he responded in kind, and included a web link.

in less than five minutes, i had found the passenger record of my great-grandfather guiseppe that was created on his arrival to america from italy in the early 1900's.

the record stated that his first name was guiseppo [sic], his last name was pippi, he was married, he was twenty-one years old, his last place of residence was ponto torres, he was of italian ethnicity, and his ship of travel is listed as the sardegna. fitting.

all of my life i've wanted to visit sardegna, and now more than ever. i know i won't find my family there; although if there are any members of the pippi family left in sardegna, chances are better than not that i'm related to them somehow. the island is beautiful and green, and swathed in a rainbow of flower species indigienous to the region, and is in the heart of the medeterranean sea. who wouldn't want to visit a place like that? and the food...

if you've never had sardinian food, oh my. i found an authentic sardinian restaurant in dallas called arcodoro pomodoro. to my knowledge, it's one of the only authentic sardinian restaurants in the u.s. and the food was absolutely unbelievable. it's less similar to italian food than one might imagine, but there are undeniable, delicious similarities like the pastas, carpaccios, pizzes i zuppas (she said, waxing italian...) and for the love of god, do your absolute best to eat your weight in sardinian music bread! of course, i grew up eating food very similar to the fare offered at arcodoro pomodoro - albeit much more rustic and informal - whenever my great-grandmother antoinette was in town from new jersey. i called her nonnie; we all called her bella. she made a sauce that was so thick and rich and full of pork so tender that it could make you fall to your knees. i haven't had my nonnie's sauce in more than twenty years, but i can still taste it. nonnie's sauce was so good, it could be a meal in itself, and a satisfying meal at that.

there's a wealth of information on sardegna to be found on this internet super highway, from maps of the region to vacation locales to its history to its cuisine. i highly recommend if you ever have the chance to experience sardinian cuisine that you jump at the opportunity. go for the lamb, it's incredible when it's prepared in the authentic sardinian way. for that matter, go for the veal. or any of the many varieties of seafood. what the hell. just eat until you burst.

i'd also recommend staying away from a sardinian delicacy, casu marzu. i'm pretty food-adventurous, but not even i would go near that.

coffee & cigarettes

2006-04-12T07:18:00.000-05:00

i had high hopes for this movie and was nearly giddy upon it's arrival in my mailbox yesterday in it's bright red netflix sleeve. anything called "coffee & cigarettes"? sign me up! and it's a jim jarmusch film; i loved johnny depp in jarmusch's "dead man", and tom waits in his "down by law", also netflix picks. since coffee & cigarettes was released in select theatres, it never made it to my tiny little city as all we seem to get are huge, obnoxious, overblown blockbusters of titanic proportion, and i usually end up hating these movies after having been dragged to see them, kicking and screaming. about ten years ago, i once accused my best friend corey of being a movie snob because the only movies he would pay to see were indies, eschewing all things mainstream; i don't know when my tastes shifted, but i think i've become just the person i accused corey of being.

coffee & cigarettes was a huge disappointment. it not only made me itchy to hit the fast-forward button on the dvd remote, it actually lulled me to sleep, twice. i so desperately wanted to like this movie, for it to be some eye-opening, gritty glimpse into the seemy underbelly of new york city's late night diner populous who sit and discuss art, politics, mob hits and sex all whilst consuming what else, coffee & cigarettes. i think i wanted it to be a little more documentary-esque than it was. it was far from anything remotely akin to a documentary.

the cast was star-studded: roberto benigni, steve buscemi, bill murray, steven wright, tom waits, alfred molina, cate blanchette, iggy pop... okay, not necessarily a-list star-studded, but definitely my kind of star-studded. it was set in nyc in the mid 1980's, shot in black & white, and that's where the interesting scenarios ended.

it seemed as if the cast were loosely following a script, then improvising the rest of the way; this might have worked with a cast more talented at improvisation, but this lot didn't seem very inspired. many of the scenes ended up seeming stiff and wooden and just, well, boring. it felt like watching someone drag a red wagon after the wheels fell, but without any sparks to make it interesting.

as much as i love a good, wacky indie film, this one just wasn't for me.

ironically, as i sit here and write about how much i disliked a movie titled coffee & cigarettes, i'm drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. i really wanted to love it.

the glory of "as seen on tv"

2006-04-11T21:49:00.000-05:00

for my birthday, my mother & father bought me a beautiful cocktail print to hang in my dining room in honor of my swanky cocktail party, this really cool shower foot scrubber shaped like a foot, three unbelievable body butters scented in milk, olive oil & coconut, and the wonder seen in the photo above, the pasta express.

i'm something of a sucker for infomercial products... i don't buy the products all that often at all; as a matter of fact, i can't remember the last time i ordered something i saw on television, but fortunately for infomercial-junkies like me, most of the same stuff can be purchased at my local neighborhood bed, bath & beyond. still, i am thoroughly enthralled when an infomercial airs on tv. it doesn't matter if it's melissa gilbert hawking bare minerals cosmetics or that annoying british guy who says everything way too loudly while selling some sort of miracle kitchen knife; i'll watch it. i might scoff at the sheer cheesiness of the product and the low-budget production values, but i'm watching, nonetheless.

so, it stands to reason that the first time i saw the pasta express on an infomercial, i was completely captivated and couldn't stop watching. i thought it to be miraculous; this clear plastic tube with a lid that COOKS YOUR PASTA. no more huge pots of rolling, boiling water!ingenious. inspired. a bargain at only $19.95.

of course i didn't buy it. now, had i seen it on my last venture to bed, bath & beyond, i might have bought it... turns out i didn't have to, because my mom & dad bought it for me!

it's simple: you boil water in a kettle, fill the pasta express with uncooked pasta, then pour the boiling water over the pasta, snap on the strainer lid, and voila! in 7-15 minutes, you have perfectly cooked pasta!

maybe.

i like my pasta al dente, and there's no better way to check pasta's doneness than getting your hands and teeth on it. turns out you can't do that with the pasta express. you have to keep the lid on it until the pasta is done. so, exactly how do you know when the pasta is done if you can't take the lid off?

yeah. you can't. i had to play with it a couple of times to get the pasta right. fortunately, i saw this potential pasta disaster before it happened and made concessions for experimentation. i was on a mission.

the first and second attempts yeilded something akin to polenta; way too overdone and absolutely inedible. again, this wasn't a complete waste because i'd planned for it in my attempt to play mad scientist with my new pasta toy. the trick, i learned, is watching the pasta; i've watched enough pasta in my time to eyeball it for doneness, and this hard-earned, well honed craft came in handy on my third attempt - my penne was perfect the third go-round. i'd gotten a bit cocky and filled the pasta express on this last attempt with enough penne for a dinner portion, and tossed it in fresh basil pesto and shaved parmasean with some toasted pignolis.

delicious.

and, seen on tv!

the door, the fan, the rat & the virgil

2006-04-11T13:41:00.001-05:00

after six months of living in my house, there have been a few things that i've been needing to get fixed. the side door no longer locked tightly, and could be shouldered open even with the deadbolt locked. the air conditioner didn't work the first time i tried to turn it on; it was working just fine in october when i first moved in, but haven't had need for it since the middle of november. (yes, i was still using the a/c in november, and have begun needing it in april - this is, after all, texas.) i have rats that i could saddle up and ride to work in the mornings, and my bedroom ceiling fan stopped working. all of these things warranted a service call to their appropriate service technicians.

friday, the air conditioning repair technicians came out, a woman named brandy and a man whose name i thought was virgil for some reason, and i kept calling him that. turns out his name was john. sorry, john. i don't know where the name virgil came from; i don't even know a virgil. i don't feel so badly about it because he never took the time to learn my name either and instead just called me "hey lady" over and over. incidently, he had bright red hair in a prince valiant haircut and a total of about a dozen teeth in his head, none of which seemed to be in their rightful place. but i digress. the a/c was fixed, and brandy & virgil left.

also on friday, the rat exterminator came out, bobby. rat guy bobby. that's what it says in my cell phone. bobby was a much older man, and i was so happy to see him. i had these delusions of grandeur that he might be leaving my house in an hour or two with several hundred dead rats all strung together by their tails, saying something like "well, little lady, all the rats are gone." but i was sorely disappointed when nothing like that happened. he came into my house with a small paper bag from which he produced two old fashioned, wooden rat traps and one snickers bar. he baited the traps with bits of snickers, and while he was placing them in their respective new homes, explained to me why it was that he uses snickers bars to bait the traps. apparently rats love chocolate. who doesn't? rats also love dogfood, bread, cream cheese, butter, margarine, newspaper, unopened bills, papertowels, unpopped popcorn and anything else that i happen to leave out on my kitchen counters for more than 20 minutes. so, it stands to reason that rats might just love chocolate. so rat guy bobby baited and set the traps, then left. and that was all she wrote.

well hell, i could have driven to walmart and spent $2.00 on two rat traps and a snickers bar, and come home with change jingling in my pocket. thank goodness i waited around all day on my day off for a professional to do it. sticking a candybar on the end of a wire stapled into a hunk of balsa wood should be left only to the most highly qualified technicians.

he came back yesterday however, and here's where the apology comes in: he told me that when i called him on friday morning for a service call and told him i was having a cocktail party the next night, he didn't want dazed, poisoned rats wandering out in & amongst my cocktail party guests, so he just baited a couple of traps in high traffic areas. good thinking, i mused. maybe these things should be left to the professionals. yesterday, he tossed about twenty bait blocks up in my attic, and said i should start seeing dead or dying rats within the next twenty-four hours for up to about seven days. even though the prognosis is gruesome, that sort of makes it seem like there might be a light at the end of the rathole.

and yes, i apologized.

the ceiling fan man came this morning because my bedroom ceiling fan hasn't worked for months. when virgil the air conditioning guy was here on friday, he tripped one of my breakers and the ceiling fan light started working, but for the life of me i still couldn't get the fan to turn on no matter how hard i yanked on the chain.

perhaps if i'd yanked the correct chain, it might have worked. which, it did, right there in front of the ceiling fan guy. sure, it was a little humiliating; i was embarassed for a while, but now i'm just cool & comfortable.

lastly, but certainly not least is greg the door guy. he came out yesterday and told me the door they'd bought was a 36", and my door needed to be a 32". easy enough to fix, right? nope. i needed a white door. apparently every building supply in the land was sold out of 32" white doors until this morning. so he arrived again at approximately noon today, and he arrived with a bang. literally.

he was backing his truck into my driveway, and smashed into the fence in my driveway - the one in question the other day when i introduced myself to my crappy new white trash neighbors from longbeach. he dented his chrome truck bumper when he hit it, then when he put the truck into drive to scoot forward a few feet, he caught his taillight on some big monstrous metal thing attached to the fence post and smashed his taillight into about a billion pieces, scratched the cherry red paint and dented the body of his brand new truck. he got out of the truck a'cussin, and throwing a little-girl fit; a grown man was throwing a hissy fit, right there in my driveway. throwing tools on the ground unloading a brand new door for my house with a less than gingerly approach...and he's still at it at 2:30. i was sort of hoping that mr & mrs white trash from longbeach were watching and might think i had a crazed boyfriend and then think twice about messing with me again. sure, my door is getting installed as i write this, but he hasn't stopped bitching about that fence since he got here. he's been installing a door while talking on his cell phone the entire time, recounting the story to anyone who'll listen. he even told the crappy neighbor when he wandered over to my side porch to see what the ruckus was all about. so much for the lunatic boyfriend theory.

i don't blame him, really. what a way to start out your workday.

he can cuss all he wants, just as long as while he's doing it, he gets my new door installed. right now, there's a huge, gaping maw where my old door used to be.

but my ceiling fan works.

re-heated party photos

2006-04-10T14:36:00.000-05:00

i put together a small album with a mini-tour of part of my house, as well as the rest of the snapshots from the party - please visit! click here and if you're so inclined, leave comments! i love feedback!

from my party, left to right: my sisters kristen (19) and megen (25), me, my very good friend shellie. megen is pregnant; she only looks drunk. she was caught mid-blink in this photo. she's drinking a very swanky julius ceasar. (my name for shirley temple - it just sounds classier.) i, on the other hand, am working on a serious buzz here, drinking a cosmo. deeeeelish.

above - me about to be sung to then blow out my candle. below - classy broad. the petites fours were GOOD.

above - the princess grace at her SECOND cocktail party; she's such a party girl. below - booze booze and more booze. that's not all of it...

my friend fred fuller entertained us all evening on the acoustic guitar. the princess grace fell head over heels in love with him, and if anyone spoke while he was singing, she would shoot a look at them that made them think twice about continuing the conversation!

i'm enjoying having two more days off of work - man, the last three days has just flown by! how is it that three 9 hour days spent at my office feel like something akin to three weeks, but three 24 hour days spent off seem to pass by in about 20 minutes?
my house is still clean - an amazing feat for me. i was going to leave the after-party clean up til this morning so i wouldn't spend my birthday cleaning, but i couldn't stand it, and finished it early yesterday afternoon. i'm glad i did. i love waking up to a clean house. i'm watching sixteen candles (yay!) on cable right now, one of my favorite movies, and new netflix dvds are coming tomorrow.

gotta go, i'm about to eat my birthday cake with jake ryan while sitting on his dining room table. um, i mean, molly ringwald is. not me. yeah. i meant her.

i love jake ryan.

happy birthday to me!

2006-04-09T22:25:00.000-05:00

a leftover petit four from my cocktail party saturday night. i love these birthday candles!

the party's over

2006-04-09T03:18:00.000-05:00

the dishwasher is running, full of plates, platters, utensils and other party accoutrements. there are currently close to 20 martini glasses soaking in my kitchen sink, along with 8 pilsners, 10 highballs and i don't know how many tumblers that were used as cocktail shakers. my stainless steel cocktail shaker was cleaned by hand. it saw a whole lot of action last night...

for certain, all of the cocktails were fabulous, but the most popular by far was the dirty hooker which, by the second round had seen a change of name to "filthy ho" which just seemed to fit a little better. i had more than my share of filthy hos, and at least one of everything else. my first drink of the evening was the peppermint patty i made and drank for my friend sara in brooklyn; you woulda loved it, sayra. i sure did. it nearly knocked me on my ass. shaken, not stirred, and shaken until my fingers nearly ice-fused to the stainless steel cocktail shaker - that was one good, cold peppermint patty martini, complete with a real peppermint patty garnish. deeeelish. it was cold cold cold all the way down.

the hors d'oeuvres and canapes were definitely a big hit as well and in true italian fashion, i made way too much of everything; always better to have too much. running out of any good thing is a cardinal sin in my family. my mother's beautiful canape contributions consisted of asparagus spears wrapped in herbed puff pastry, and a gorgeous assortment of cheeses and olives that were gone before i realized it.

my friend fred was dressed in a "texas tuxedo" - a beautiful red brocade waistecoat, string tie and tuxedo jacket and performed live music for all of the party guests most of the evening, and when he wasn't doing his thing, i had fabulous music playing on the stereo - everything from ella fitzgerald to goldfrapp to nick drake to earth, wind & fire.

somewhere around midnight we all went into my studio and had a great time taking drunken party portraits - which was a great idea, and was hilarious to say the very least. i can't believe the photos turned out half as good as they did, because i was pretty darn d-r-u-n-k. i've never been good at sodden photography, but i fared pretty well this go 'round. the photo above is of my friends michael and charlotte who were clearly uninhibited, thanks mostly to the constant flow of martinis. more photos to come soon.

the mood was great, the food was fantastic, the music was perfect, the drinks were potent to put it mildly, and the evening was a complete success - a fabulous, beautiful time. my home was full of mirth and music and laughter. it was truly a thing of beauty, and a good time was certainly had by all.

a swanky time.

so far, thirty five isn't nearly as bad as i imagined. happy birthday to me!

t-minus 5.5 hours

2006-04-08T14:32:00.000-05:00

i think i'm ready. i've never thrown a real cocktail party before, so i don't really know if i'm ready, but i'm as ready as i'm gonna be.

i have made so many lists of things to do that i've started making lists about what lists i need to make. the first step is admitting i have a problem.

all i have left to do :

my floors - oy VEY.
finish the hors d'oeuvres & canapes
get dressed
have a fabulous time

i just took a little disco nap and am about to get back to it, full tilt boogie; the hors d'oeuvres are going to be delicious and they're almost done. there are a couple of things i have to put together right before the guests start arriving at 8pm. as i mentioned before, my mother is bringing a couple of surprise canapes and hors d'oeuvres for me, and last night my good friend michele and i whipped up the ones i'm serving:

alsatian cheese tarts - greek yogurt flavored with garlic, spread on crispy puff pastry, topped with shaved parmesan, shaved black forest ham & sauteed onions

caramelized onion & goat cheese tartlets - tiny little phyllo shells filled with chived goat cheese, topped with beautiful, sweet caramelized onions

kalamata & pesto crostinis - tiny slices of toasted french baguette, spread with basil pesto and topped pitted kalamata olives, sundried & diced fresh tomatoes tossed with balsamic & olive oil

i picked up my petites fours this morning - they're adorable, and delicious. yes, i ate one. i had requeste they spell out "happy birthday melissa" on petites fours, and as luck would have it, they guessed at spelling my name and got it wrong. there's only one "l" in melissa, so i ate the extra "l". hehe! it's my damn birthday party, i can do what i want.

the glasses are all clean and ready to go; i caught SUCH a bargain at pier 1 yesterday - i went looking for martini glasses on the off chance they'd have them on sale - and lo and behold, they DID - all their glassware was 20% off! woo HOO! i ended up getting martini glasses for 1.80 each. BONANZA. i could now throw a cocktail party for a small village, but then again, a girl can never have too many martini glasses...

those damn floors. they're the bane of my existance, and they're waiting for me, mocking me. they beckon, and i must answer.

then, it's off to swank-fest '06.

next time i blog, i'll be thirty-five.

well, that'll ruin your day...

2006-04-07T16:08:00.000-05:00

so maybe i liked it better when the house next door was vacant.

i miss my old neighbors. they up and moved to jackson hole, wyoming a couple of months ago, and a couple from longbeach, california bought the house before the old owners moved out. the house has been empty for 2 months.

they moved in today.

they arrived last night, and i was excited to see that they were here; ignorance is bliss. i saw three cars in the driveway with california plates on them as i was pulling into my driveway after work, so got out of my car and walked to their back door to welcome them to texas and to the neighborhood. trying to be a good neighbor. it was wasted on them, completely.

the female whose name i never got because she didn't give it, answered the door and i said my welcoming words and while i was speaking she turned around and hollered to her old man whose name eludes me at the moment that "the green house is here". green house? um, i believe i just said that my name was melissa. that doesn't even sound like green house. she was, of course, referring to the color of my house. he walked to the door and in lieu of saying hello or even "who the hell are you?" said "who's fence is that?" referring to the fence that separates my driveway from theirs. i mentioned that it was erected by the previous owners of their house and he said "good. i want to hang stuff on it.", then turned and walked away.

i finished my conversation with miss congeniality by telling her that if they needed anything to let me know, and welcomed her to the neighborhood again, and while i was doing so, she was shutting the door as i was still speaking. wow. um, RUDE.

this morning, i was wheeling my dumpster out to the street for pickup when what's-his-name yelled over to me, asking me when the city picked up large refuse because they were going to have a lot of boxes after the movers left. i told him they only picked up large refuse once a month, and it had been this previous tuesday.

the movers arrived shortly after in a semi - redball movers out of california. i know this because i had ample time to memorize the truck's appearance while i was landlocked in my driveway. the truck parked so that it was completely blocking me in my driveway. i didn't want to raise a stink because although i had plenty of running around to do, i also had plenty to do here at the house, and i could probably just wait for them to leave. so i waited. for 5 hours. finally, i walked outside and asked them if they could move just enough to let me out of my driveway and the movers were very polite, apologized for having blocked me in, and moved. i left on one of my pre-cocktail party errands.

when i got home, one of the large, long limbs from a 150-200 year old pecan tree at the corner of my driveway was laying half in my yard, and half on the street. it had been torn off the trunk of the tree; it took me absolutely no time at all to deduce exactly what had happened, but i didn't want to jump to conclusions. still, i didn't feel like assuming the moving truck had done it was that much of a stretch.

i walked over to the neighbors' house where what's-his-name was standing outside with some other longbeach bubbas and asked him if he happened to know what had happened to my tree. he said to me, and i quote: "yeah, i saw what happened to it. my moving van hit it when they left. i have a chainsaw on the way over and i'm gonna cut it up and leave it for the city to pick up. alright?" in a tone that suggested nothing less than "what are YOU gonna do about it?" ASSHOLE!!!

there is now a very large pile of brush laying in my yard at the corner of my driveway - that will be there for A MONTH until the city picks up large refuse again. i called the city to see about how i could get it picked up and charged to the jerks who moved in next door, and they said extra pick ups are $40 and i'd have to pay for it unless i could get them to sign off on it. i can tell alrady that that's not gonna happen.

he was standing in his yard when i was outside looking at it - was he not going to say anything to me until i asked? didn't he think it would raise suspicion for me to see him in my front yard with a CHAINSAW hacking away at my tree limb???

green house is PISSED and no longer happy to have neighbors.

friday morning chess

2006-04-07T10:39:00.000-05:00

talked to the landlady last night. the news was good...

called the air conditioning guy this morning. he'll be out to fix it today. check.

called the door guy this morning. he'll be out to fix it today. check.

called the electrician for my bedroom ceiling fan. he'll be out to fix it today. check.

called the rat control guy. he'll be out to kill those filthy f*ckers today.

CHECKMATE.

early morning thursday bitch session

2006-04-06T07:41:00.000-05:00

can i just bitch for a moment?

in all this hurrying around to get my house into cocktail party-shape, there is very little that needs to be really, truly cleaned. i try to keep my house pretty clean, but not so clean that it looks like nobody lives here. so, i'll be sort of "spring cleaning" tomorrow and saturday; dusting, bathrooms, kitchen, etc. i'm sort of a clorox whore, and since i have so much tile in my kitchen and bathrooms, i really get my bleach on, man, i dig it. i love a clean, bleachy-scented bathroom, and admittedly, i love to have an over-abundance of bleached, clean white towels. and sheets. and dishtowels. bleach w-h-o-r-e.

there is one task however, that is so daunting, i'd rather hire someone else to do it than have to tackle it myself. it's my floors.

my house is miles and miles of hardwood floors, and it's the original hardwood that was built into the house in 1921. i found that out before i moved in, when the landlady had hired flooring people to refinish the hardwoods for me. none of the guys actually doing the sanding and refinishing spoke any english, so i wouldn't have been able to communicate much with them (how have i lived in texas for almost 35 years and not picked up enough spanish to carry on even a short conversation?) but i had a friend with me who is fluent in spanish.

turns out, when they sanded my floors in september was the last time anybody'll ever be sanding my floors; my hardwoods have lived their life, and have been sanded too many times before this last time in september. the guy doing the sanding told my friend that they were grinding down the plank nails... next time my floors get redone, they'll be replacing them.

that being said, it would have stood to reason that to protect my ancient hardwood floors, they'd put several good coats of poly on them after staining them a lovely, deep honey color.
did they? no. they put one coat of poly on the floors. the spanish-speaking floor guy said the landlady told them to only apply one coat of poly.

so many ugly names come to mind, all with the word "cheap" stuck on the beginning...

so now, after sweeping my floors then buffing them, sometimes twice, i have to apply this industrial hardwood polish to get any shine to them at all. they're very dull without it. it seals them a bit though, so i was told by a flooring guy who speaks english (i didn't have my spanish speaking friend with me that day) that this product actually seals the floors a bit, but it just has to be reapplied over and over and over... like any floor product, it breaks down and wears off with regular foot traffic, and since i have not two feet walking around on my floors but a total of ten, i guess that's why i have to apply it so often.

that is the daunting task that awaits me for saturday morning; i'll do all the sweeping and one of the buffings tomorrow, then another buffing saturday morning before the waxing.

seriously, i would love to hire somebody to do this for me...

the devil's playground & a dirty hooker

2006-04-05T22:53:00.000-05:00

i think i have way too much on my mind to convey any one particular thought clearly tonight.
watched "the devil's playground" a documentary about amish kids who experience rumspringa; on their 16th birthday, they get to go out into the world of the "english" (me and you and everybody else who's not amish) and do everything they can't do in the amish community before they decide whether or not they're going to join the amish church, which is a lifetime commitment. drugs, sex, alcohol, parties, tattoos, cars (how strange is that? culture shock.) bluejeans, haircuts, makeup, perfume, cellphones... i had really high hopes, because i love documentaries, but i should learn to qualify that with "good documentaries". this was mediocre at best. an interesting glimpse into a world that i admittedly know nothing about, but not interesting enough to keep me from looking away and wishing it was over.

ate a dinner of a whole avocado sliced in half and pitted, sprinkled with kosher salt and devoured with a spoon just like a savage. i'm okay with that. then i had two twinkies, because they were, um, gonna go bad. yeah. that's why i ate them both. waste not, want not... whatever.

watching high art right now, one of my favorite movies.

decided on the list of cocktails (martinis) for the quickly approaching swanky cocktail party:

peppermint patty martini
pomegranate martinis (my favorite!)
chocolate martinis
dirty hooker martinis (my other favorite, just because of the name)
salty dog martinis

also serving red & white wines, and there will be champagne after 10pm. non-alcoholic beverages will be served as well, for the non-alcoholics. (virgins for the virgins?)

my mother is making several canapes and hors d'oeuvres, bless her. my mother has never created anything in her kitchen that wasn't unbelievably fabulous, and these little noshables will be no exception.

white petites fours have been ordered, and they've spelled out "happy birthday melissa" on twenty of them, one letter each. how very swanky and glamourous. i'm hoping to get plenty of photos of the food, drinks, and of course, the cocktail party revelers. since i'm not a big drinker, i'm not anticipating being too drunk to take a few good photos, and of course the portraits start after 10pm...

i extended my days off to include tuesday - i can't believe i'm off for five whole days in a row... tomorrow is my last work day for five entire planet earth days, and i couldn't be happier.

or busier...

for me, for tuesday

2006-04-04T21:35:00.000-05:00

some days, there just aren't enough rocks.

so much for spellcheck...

2006-04-03T23:49:00.000-05:00

i created and sent out the invitations to my swanky cocktail party this evening via evite.

i can recall receiving an evite invitation in my email sometime around 7-8 years ago. it's funny. i would figure they'd know what they were doing by now.

Q: how is it that i typed hors d'oeuvres and petites fours in the body of the evite, yet after using the evite spellcheck tool, they ended up as "h'ors doeurves" and "petit fours"?

apparently, that's what's in their spellcheck dictionary. how how how is that? crap.

and of course, that's what was emailed out to all my potential guests. crap crap.

unfortunately, none of my friends are stupid. crap crap crap.

not bad for a monday

2006-04-03T20:34:00.000-05:00

for a monday, i have to say, today really hasn't sucked all that badly. which is nice, considering that most of my work weeks consist of five huge, long mondays in a row.

1. i was handed a totally juicy piece of gossip that i drooled over all day today; i was dying to tell someone, but i was a good girl. i only told one person. it is so good, you'd never believe it. i can't believe it. of course, probably no one reading this would know that person, and as such might not care, let alone care about believing it. but if you knew this person... you'd realize how good it is.
and now, i've beaten the dead horse so badly, it no longer resembles a horse.

2. i got my new tv today! yay for me and my ability to enable my own addiction! it's a philips flatscreen and it is beautiful and delicious and very flat and i'm not sure how to adjust the color on it, so chandler bing's shirt looks safety orange. it's going to look that way until i learn how to adjust the colors, but at least he won't be shot by hunters. or dick cheney.

3. i also got a brand new dining table, this monstrously huge ashley table with a cherry tabletop and huge, beautiful black-laquered turned legs. the top resembles a butcher block, which i love, and the chairs are cherry seats and black laquered backs. just gorgeous. i've got the leaf in it right now, and i'll need to get two - four more matching chairs, but right now, i'm just thrilled to have such a lovely table. as for the fate of the table that used to occupy my dining room, i removed it's leaf and moved it into my kitchen's breakfast nook. my kitchen is ginormous and was built with a corner specifically designed for a breakfast/bistro table. so i'm calling it my bistro nook because it sounds considerably less country farmhouse than "breakfast nook" to me. "bistro nook" sounds a bit snootier and more presumptious. i'm okay with that.

4. i'm OFF WORK this friday and the following monday! that is reason enough just to wake up in the morning... four glorious days off in a row. i'm using friday off to prepare my house (read: clean from top to bottom), buy copious amounts of booze, and perform various and sundry other running-around-errands involving day-before-the-swanky-cocktail-party preparation, including putting together the canapes and hors d'oeuvres that can be made ahead of time, not to mention getting my errant eyebrows waxed. the curse of being italian. more hair than any one person needs. damn my eyebrows! saturday i'm picking up my birthday petites fours (in lieu of a birthday cake) and all of the fresh stuff for the party, which is saturday night at 8pm. drunken portraits will begin somewhere around 10pm, and sometime around midnight i'll either be kicking people out of my damn house, or too drunk to care.

5. i'm going to turn off my laptop now and go watch my new tv until my eyes cross and there is no programming left but infomercials.

then, i'll probably watch infomercials, because i can.

my most favorite boy & daylight savings time

2006-04-02T22:01:00.000-05:00

i had a really good time saturday night, and i was in desperate need for a good time. my friend deryl dodd was playing the cotton club in granger, so i went with shellie & fred, and another friend, cathleen. deryl was fantastic as always, dispite having had his equipment trailer stolen on thursday morning around 2am in ft worth. all of the band's instruments were in the trailer, as well as all of their equipment and merchandise, and it was all stolen. fred & i went to go see deryl before the show and he said he'd bought himself a beautiful new takamine 6 string that he had fallen in love with. it sounded beautiful; he definitely got his money's worth. i'm glad to have had the opportunity to photograph his old guitar before it was stolen, a 1966 gibson country & western 6 string. i took this photograph and many others of his guitar while i was on tour with him last summer. this was taken before a performance in corpus christi.

deryl has the coolest guitar picks ever.

we normally stick around after the show and hang with deryl at the club owner's house to play catch up since we only get to see each other about once every six weeks or so, but deryl got stuck longer than usual signing autographs, so i went back in the club, gave him a peck goodbye, and we left.

it was a great night, but a long one, especially after having worked 8 hours that morning. i don't remember anything that happened after i washed my face and lay my head on my pillow... and when i woke up this morning to my phone ringing at 10am, i found out it was actually 11am, and i was late for an appointment at my house.

i hate daylight savings time.

"all they found were wet ashes around the drain."

2006-04-01T17:49:00.000-06:00

i knew these things came with the territory. i'm not a newbie at this, i've been doing it for six years now. i am speaking of hot flashes.

by hot flashes, i don't mean just feeling a bit warm and wishing there was something cool to drink. i don't mean temperatures outdoors reaching somewhere above 80 degrees and feeling the heat from that. i mean full-on, roasting on a spit in the seventh layer of hell burning from the inside out hot flashes. the kind of hot flashes women in menopause have. i qualified for the honor of hot flashes when i was 29.

i had a total hysterectomy; nothin' left at all. no ovaries. no reproductive organs whatsoever. the upside of this is HEY! no more cramps and all the fabulous trappings of what comes along with cramps. i feel i need not elaborate...

the downside to a hysterectomy: well, there are several, actually. the most bothersome however, has always been the hot flashes. i don't have them as often as i did the first couple of years after my hysterectomy; i actually can't quite remember the last one i had, until today.

i was sitting at my desk at work, feeling completely fine, then out of nowhere, it felt like the heat had been turned on in the building. then within about twenty seconds, i was bright red - and i mean bright red, and felt as if i had eaten fire, and was now sitting in a furnace next to shadrach, meshach & abednego.

i immediately wanted to be NAKED, which wasn't an option there at work. it almost didn't matter to me that it wasn't an option, because i nearly stripped down to my birthday suit right then and there. i immediately started fanning myself like a crazy person and patting my face with the ice water from the styrofoam cup i was drinking from. i was trying to get some air between my t-shirt and my skin, when one of my co-workers turned to me and, noticing how red i was, shouted "HEY, KOOL-AID!"
for those too young to remember the old kool-aid commercials, here's a visual reference.

there was raucous laughter from my co-workers of the male gender. the women weren't laughing. they knew. even the women who still have all their parts, and haven't had even a single hot flash in their lives; they knew because it's the stuff of legends amongst women. they knew that i was having a hot flash and that to me at least, it was no laughing matter. it seriously feels like you're knock knock knocking on heaven's door. i always imagine that what i'm having isn't really a hot flash, but the beginnings of spontaneous human combustion, and the newspaper headline will say something like "all they found were wet ashes around the drain".

i haven't spontaneously combusted as of yet, but i always worry just a little bit that one day i'll end up in one of those time-life books about bizarre and unexplained human phenomena. i'll be "case study: melissa mcgee - the hot flash that went horribly awry."

it took about ten minutes to regain my normal, regular paper-white skin tone again, but i felt all grody and greasy and sweaty after all of my sweat glands had gone into hyper-active mode. i drank ice water as if it was the last i'd ever get. i went to the ladies' room and toweled off a little bit and brought several wet paper towels back to my desk with me.

in short, hot flashes make me pretty.

but i'm saving a fortune on tampons.

my name is melissa, and i can't read.

2006-03-31T21:09:00.000-06:00

the unthinkable has happened. i'm trying not to panic, but it's becoming increasingly difficult.

my tv is broken.

the audio is perfect, but there's something wrong with the picture; it's a bit like watching scrambled porn; everything is all wavy and line-y. i thought at first that maybe the cable had gone out, so i just figured it was one of those things that would pass and in the meantime i would just watch movies on dvd and keep checking back to see if the tv was back to normal.
i popped in a dvd, and horror of horrors, the dvd looked the same as the cable picture.

crap.

there's no point in getting it fixed; it's the picture tube and it would cost more than the tv is now worth to fix it, so i'm having the new tv delivered on monday. MONDAY. it's going to be a long weekend.

truthfully, i don't watch a lot of tv, meaning i don't sit in front of it and actually watch tv. it's on when i'm home, period. it's background noise more than anything; that comes from living alone for so long and not wanting to hear noises that i am certain would scare the crap out of me if i actually heard them. creaking floorboards. wind. house settling. the odd rat running around. with the tv on i don't have to hear those things; tv is definitely my favorite method of escapism. i only have one tv, and it's in my bedroom. i don't have a tv in the living room, by design; when i have company over, i want to be able to talk to them - i don't want to have to vie for their attention during a commercial break. i don't have company over very often to watch movies unless we're very close, as we'll be watching the movie from my bed.
that's not the sort of thing that inspires great comfort when you're a casual aquaintance with someone, although i'm certain more than a few families started that way...

i am, admittedly, a tv head. even though it rarely has my undivided attention, i have to have it on. the first step is admitting i have a problem. i have a definite routine even though i don't necessarily watch tv, and it is very rare for me to have anything on that one could classify as "reality" television as i eschew all things reality. i freakin' hate reality tv - i turn on the tv to get AWAY from reality, not to watch somebody else's. (which is ironic because reality tv is so often very obviously scripted; truth be told, most people are boring as hell and nobody would watch if there wasn't someone behind the scenes stirring the pot just to kick up the "reality" anti-plot.)
it started out - to the best of my recollection - with survivor, and it all went downhill from there. now any b-list celebrity and washed up former celebrity and even a celebrity who only enjoyed 14.5 minutes of fame has a damn reality show. you don't even have to be a celebrity to have a reality show. i'm sure i'll be getting my reality show sometime this year.
i hate reality tv.

except rollergirls on A&E. rollergirls rock. okay, and sometimes dog the bounty hunter. i'm only human. it's so cheesy i can't watch it without crackers. admittedly, i watch it for dog's wife, beth. any chola who chases down bail-jumping white trash while wearing pole-dancing shoes gets my attention. she kicks ass, but i digress.

none of that matters right now though, because i'm not watching ANY tv, at least until monday. i'm watching wavy, wiggly lines...

that is totally and completely and without any doubt, the suck.
god, i wish i knew how to read...

never ever ever ever google your food

2006-03-30T20:30:00.000-06:00

especially while you're eating it.

i made that devastating mistake this evening. let's just call the incident a life changing event.

about twice a month i go grocery shopping - and i mean hardcore grocery shopping - the kind where i make a list and stock up on stuff like frozen goods, canned goods, dry goods, etc, and i leave the fresh meats, fresh produce and baked goods for weeknight shopping; i'd rather buy the meat i'm preparing for dinner on the day i'm planning to prepare it. that's the sort of shopper i am.

about two weeks ago, i did my most recent power-shopping at my favorite grocery store and bought scads of frozen things - i am single, after all, and must have some conveniences in my life - and amongst the items in my freezer for the last two weeks has been a package of lobster. lobster tail. "great!" i thought to myself when i found it in the seafood counter's freezer case. i love lobster! i know nothing about lobster, including how to prepare it at home; i know how to eat it at a restaurant, and that's the extent of my lobster prowess. but really, how bad can frozen lobster be?

tonight when rummaging around the fridge and cabinets and freezer looking for something to whip up as this evening's dinner, i came across that fabulous bag of lobster tails! "great!" i thought to my self, a second time. man, i sure love lobster. i'll be livin' it up as a single gal! i can't wait to ask the poor bastards at work tomorrow what they had for dinner tonight. suckers! probably spam or tuna helper or fried bologna. not me. no sir, i'm havin' LOBSTER!

i fired up my george foreman grill (i love my george foreman grill, i do.) and reached in the freezer for the bag of lobster. i think that was the first time i really took a good look at the package they were in; for the first time since buying this treasure of lobstery goodness, i read the words "squat" and "chunks" in very small print. the actual name of the product i had purchased and was about to prepare was "squat lobster tail chunks". squat? oh. well, that's just the species of lobster, i guess. sort of like crab. there's dungeoness, my favorite. and king, and alaskan. apparently there is maine lobster, rock lobster and squat lobster. makes sense.

i opened up the package, reached inside and pulled out this pinkish, frozen "chunk" of "squat" lobster. the shape was odd. i pulled out another. same shape. familiar shape. then another. exactly the same shape. i grew increasingly suspicious of this bag of lobster delightfulness, and was hit with a revelation; i did know this shape. i took one of the chunks to the freezer and plopped it into an ice cube compartment in my ice tray and guess what? it fit perfectly. like a glove. i started to read the packaging even more carefully.

"100% pure squat lobster tail chunks, pressed and molded, flash frozen from fresh." it was very small print.

so they gypped me in the presentation department. they could have at least made them mcnugget shaped so they'd be a little less recognizable as lobster-cubes. that seemed a little cheesy. could i live with it? hell yes i could, it's lobster. if i haven't made it abundantly clear: i.love.lobster.

i grilled those little gems up on the g.f. grill, and toasted a bagel (i love bagels, i do.) and whipped up a little garlicky-lemony-butter in which to toss my little lobster blocks. since i have a lot of photo editing to do, i thought i'd just take the whole lot into the bedroom, watch a movie and eat while working on my laptop. great idea, i'll call it a working dinner for one. still, there was something nagging at me the whole time; what the hell is "squat lobster"?

the texture was somewhat like that of lobster tail, as i recall; not what i'd call delicate really, but not chewy. it had firmness, it was slightly sweet, and it had cute little grill marks on it from the g.f. grill. i plowed on.

a little more than halfway through dinner, that nagging question had not yet subsided even though my mind was mostly trained on work, then it dawned on me that i was on my computer; i had the world at my fingertips. google! i googled "squat lobster".

i should have never googled squat lobster.

more specifically, i should have never googled squat lobster while i was eating squat lobster.

heh. turns out "squat lobster" isn't really so much lobster as it is SOMETHING ELSE THAT IS NOT LOBSTER. it's not even in the lobster family. it comes out of the water, and that's where the similarities end.

those curious little pink ice-cube shaped pressed chunks of squat lobster tail came from a crustaecean that doesn't even posess a tail. as i mentioned before, it's not tail, it's not lobster... it's crab. and it's not just any crab either; it's closest relative is HERMIT CRAB. tonight, for dinner, i had what might as well be hermit crab and a nice toasted bagel with a schmeer. oh dear sweet jesus i just ate hermit crab, and now i want to die.

i made the additional mistake of looking at a few photos of hermit crabs, errrr squat lobsters online, which only made it worse for me. that'll teach me about reading packaging in the grocery store a little more closely in the future, as well as nearly everything i currently have in the fridge, freezer and every cabinet and cupboard in my house.

from now on, unless i witness it swimming in a tank moments before i consume it, i will not be partaking of anything with the name lobster.

mitch hedberg feb 24, 1968 - mar 29, 2005

2006-03-29T20:09:00.000-06:00

today, i had a really crappy day at work, blah blah blah... i'd rather talk about mitch.

today is the one year anniversary of the death of one of my favorite comics, mitch hedberg. if you've never seen or heard mitch hedberg, and you have any sense of humor at all, it would be well worth your time to buy, beg, borrow or steal his two albums, strategic grill locations and mitch all together, which comes with the dvd of his comedy central special.

mitch hedberg had one of the funniest, most clever styles of delivery of any comic i've ever seen, and i have many times in the last year found myself saddened for never having been able to see him live, and no longer having the opportunity to see his HBO special that was in the works when he died.

tomorrow march 30th is the unofficial official mitch hedberg day; it's been designated as the day to bust out all of your favorite mitch hedberg jokes. some of my favorite mitch hedberg jokes:

"my apartment is infested with koala bears. it's the cutest infestation ever."

"I especially hate turtlenecks. I wear a turtleneck it's like being strangled by a really weak guy... all fuckin' day. If you wear a turtleneck and a backpack it's like a weak midget trying to bring you down."

"This product that was on TV was available for four easy payments of $19.95. I would like a product that was available for three easy payments and one fucking complicated payment. We can't tell you which payment it is, but one of these payments is gonna be a bitch. The mailman will get shot to death. The envelope will not seal. And the stamp will be in the wrong denomination. Good luck fucker. The last payment must be made in wampum."

"I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."

"I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry. And that's extra scary to me, because there's a large, out-of-focus monster roaming the countryside. Run. He's fuzzy. Get outta here."

"Sometimes I wave to people I don't know... very dangerous to wave to someone you don't know, because what if they don't have a hand? They'll think you're cocky. "Look what I got motherfucker! This thing is useful... I'm gonna go pick something up."

"I think pickles are cucumbers that sold out. They sold their soul to the devil, and the devil was dill."

and my absolute favorite mitch hedberg joke:

"this shirt is dry clean only. which means it's dirty."

ah, mitch... i loved you so. you are truly missed.

*photo courtesy of www.mitchhedberg.net

are the inmates running the asylum?

2006-03-28T21:00:00.000-06:00

the huge rat poop i found on my dryer this evening.

when i found my house, i couldn't believe how lucky i'd gotten; beautiful 1921 architecture, miles and miles of hardwood floors, three huge bedrooms, the most enormous kitchen i could imagine, a formal dining room, a deck, a charming side-porch, and all on a large corner lot with tons of hundred-year old pecan and oak trees. how did i get so lucky?

because it has rats. tha'ts how.

i first discovered that i had rats when i found a rat in the throes of death crawling through my photo studio after one of my dogs (a pekingese who no longer owns me) had mauled it. i would come to find, later, that it was trying to crawl home. home is the crawlspace under my house, and he was trying to get there via the hotwater heater closet, located in my studio. an open portal to the rat kingdom. a hellmouth. a rat hellmouth. i have goosebumps just seeing the words in print.

"just set out rat traps", all my well-intended friends say to me. "snap. dead rat." snap, dead rat indeed. then what? to date, i have found four dead rats in my house, and the afore-mentioned mostly-dead rat. to date, i have not disposed of any of these rats myself. i have had to call my sister megen's boyfriend kirk to come and remove the rats for me. sure, the only thing worse than a dead rat is a live one, and let me make this perfectly clear - i would no sooner touch a live rat than a dead one. its a physical impossibility for me to not scream, then cry, then lapse into over-dramatic hysterics upon seeing a dead rat, let alone go near one for heaven's sake. the time i found a dead rat in my toilet was so bad, i stood in the bathroom, screaming at the hideous vision floating in the commode until i grew hoarse. and no, i didn't flush it. kirk had to come and fish it out of the crapper for me.

my point in all this incessant back story is this; the rats are no longer afraid of me. it's not often that i see one, but when i do, it's always a very dramatic event where i curse at the "g.d. m.f'ing rats!" at the top of my lungs, then stomp and bang on things to frighten them back into hiding. my house is c-l-e-a-n. i don't leave food out, ever. i don't even leave dishes in the sink. my dogfood container is like fort knox. (although they've managed to chew into it a few times, sons of bitches.) my dogs seem virtually nonplussed by the presence of rats in my house, but neither of them are rhodes scholars, bless their little pointed heads.

last night, i saw two. two rats. that's a double sighting in a single evening. i was a little creeped out to say the very least; of course, i woke up every five minutes or so for the first hour i was in bed sleeping, imagining that there were rats crawling on me. both of the rats that i saw were in my kitchen; one was more gray, and one was more brown. and by rats, i don't mean cute little mice wearing red pants and white gloves. i mean rats. long, filthy, grody, disgusting freakin' rats. rats that leave huge rat turds as a calling card. both times i saw a rat last night they saw me and made their usual getaway, but with markedly less haste than usual. instead of shooting off to their emergency exit like a bullet from a gun, they just sort of, well, jogged away. it was as if they were saying "oh, hey, lady. yeah, i see you. i'm goin'." i did my usual stomping around on the floors, screaming curse words and banging on the stove to make noise, and the more i thought about what i was doing, and thought about the reaction i got from the rats when they saw me, the more foolish i felt. it's quite an unpleasant reality check, the realization that you've been imagining rats are laughing at you.

living in the historic district, as i've done three times now, rats are just an unpleasant little extra that comes with the territory. the rats have been here for longer than the people have, and apparently they're not going anywhere. in fact, the town i live in, temple, was once known as "ratsville" around the turn of the century, due to the huge population of rats.

the phrase "the inmates are running the asylum" has come to mind several times, especially in the last few days, but i can't help but wonder: are they really the inmates, or am i?

another day, another term of endearment

2006-03-27T23:08:00.000-06:00

tonight i had a lovely dinner of mesquite-roasted chicken breast i purchased from the deli at HEB, a few spears of fresh asparagus with lemon juice, and one of my favorite indulgences ever - king's hawaiian bread rolls. yuuuuu-ummmm. i have to pace myself so i don't eat all the bread first; i nibble very judiciously and deliberately to try and stretch it out for length of the entire dinner.

i didn't have dessert because the rolls were so good.

today was bad-mood monday at work. not necessarily the people at work, but the idiots calling tech support. especially the ones without enough synapses firing in their feeble little brain-lets to choose the right option in an automated system. "if your internet or text messaging isn't working, please press 3 for technical support" and "if you'd like to change your rate plan or add or remove an additional service, please press 1 for customer care".
i get it, but apparently it's a little ambitious for some people.

i start work at 9:30am every morning, and before 11am i had already been called a f*ing bitch and a f*ing c*nt. it was the most rediculous thing, i actually laughed at the lady [and i use the term lady verrry loosely] who called me those names. the conversation went something like this:

me: i apologize ms. martinez, i'm going to need to transfer you to customer care for that; as i mentioned, a few times, you have called the wrong department. you want a rate plan change, and this is technical support. i'll be happy to connect you with the right department.

her: i can't f*ing believe this sh*t. this f*ing bitch is gonna transfer me again. i can't wait till my f*ing contract is f*ing over. stupid f*ing bitch.

me: ma'am, i can still hear you. i haven't transferred you yet.

her: put your f*ing supervisor on the phone! i want to make a complaint because you just eavesdropped on a private f*ing conversation between me and my f*ing husband that was none of your f*ing business!

me: (laughing) i'm terribly sorry that you feel like i was eavesdropping on your private conversation, especially when you were speaking directly into the phone. i'd be glad to put my supervisor on the phone, but she's going to hang up on you if you curse at her, and i will too if you curse at me one more time. now, is there anything else i can do for you before i transfer you to the correct department?

her: no, you can't do anything for me. you haven't done anything for me but waste my time!

me: okay then, you have a good day, and thank you for choosing [insert cellular carrier here, said with huge fake, toothy smile on my face].

her: [in a vague attempt to seem as if she weren't addressing me] stupid f*ing c*nt!

me: um, ma'am, i'm still here. [click]

can't say i didn't warn her.

i get sick, sick pleasure out of acting like cursing bothers me that much, because i get to hang up on jerks with no manners who were raised by a pack of wild hillbillies.

spring time in texas for five more minutes

2006-03-26T19:51:00.000-06:00

after five straight days of gray, rainy, windy, 40 degree weather, this weekend has been absolutely picture perfect. it's been in the mid 70s all weekend, and sunny sunny sunny. i so desperately needed sunny weather this weekend for a photo shoot i had, and i got my wish. i had an outdoor shoot this afternoon at a local university in a neighboring town and although it was a little windier than i'd have liked, i really have no cause to complain. the campus is starting to look spring-like, with flowers budding in unexpected places, and trees full of new, bright green leaves. there are still fallen leaves on the ground, and the grass is still trying as hard as it can to turn green; in short, it's beautiful.

here in texas, we have a very short window between what most people would call "winter" and the sometimes oppressive heat of the summer. if you've never lived in texas, here's the lowdown: summer in texas starts in early may, sometimes mid-april, and lasts until usually mid november. no kidding. in between, we have about twenty minutes of autumn, then it gets cold, then for about another twenty minutes, we have "spring". winter in texas isn't as picturesque as say, new england. winter-weather in texas hardly ever produces a beautiful blanket of white snow; winter-weather in texas is most often a thick layer of ice covering everything, especially the streets. our streets, ironically, weren't built for ice, which always turns into horrible black slush, which will undoubtedly freeze over again, and so on and so on until it finally gets warm enough to melt completely. this pisses everybody off because it means you have to go back to work. yes, most businesses that aren't critical close during an ice storm. texas all but shuts down when the weather turns bad, and it matters not what's going on in the rest of the world, the weather is always the top news story when it's bad.

there are a scant few weeks of potentially crappy weather left in texas, then it's time to belt in for the heat; since we had an atypically mild winter with only one ice storm, we're all anticipating a very hot, long summer. i can hardly wait. i am, of course, being very sarcastic.

my photoshoot this afternoon was a single mother and her three very cute kidlets, one of whom did not want her picture taken. she moped and pouted and covered her face and even cried a couple of times. fortunately, her mom said "get out of the picture and go sit in the car." and i never stopped shooting. she's conspicuously missing in some of the photos, especially in photos of the rest of the family, but she came around after a little while and decided that sitting in the car alone was even less fun that being photographed. she even started smiling after a few minutes, and in all, it was a great, very productive family portrait shoot. because it was outdoors, i was able to take advantage of one of my favorite photographic tools: natural lighting. i love natural light and would use natural light exclusively if it was an option. studio lightings' got nothing on the sun.

i not only had a productive shoot today, i had a productive two days worth of weekend. i didn't get as much sleep as i would have liked, or even as much as i probably needed to get, but i got more work done than i thought i would. i matted and framed a bunch of black & white prints last night, and now have eight of my photographs newly framed and hanging in various places throughout my house. yay for black & white photographs with a white mat and a black frame. gorgeous.

it really was a pretty good weekend.

make mine corporate with extra foam

2006-03-25T12:46:00.000-06:00

i've often mentioned "my morning sunshine", carlos hernandez at the starubucks on i-35 in temple, texas. starbucks. just the mere mention of the word, and i'm feeling nearly sluggish enough to head straight there for something with four shots of espresso in it. i like my coffee sweet, and i like it strong. for me, the strength dictates the sweetness; i take my coffee strong enough to peel the paint off of a car, but i don't necessarily want it to taste like it could. carlos gets it right each and every time. indeed, all the baristas at my starbucks get it right, but i think there's just something innately caffe about carlos.

living this close to austin, i see bumper stickers all the time in favor of smaller, independently owned coffee houses, eschewing all things starbucks primarily because it's a corporate machine. i'm certain there are other reasons some of the greenies boycott/dislike/curse starbucks, but i don't care. the fact that it is a corporate machine, however, doesn't negate the other fact of the matter: it's just damn good coffee. sure, i'm all for supporting and patronizing the smaller, hip coffee houses owned by good people who work hard for their every dollar. i've been to millions of these little brew houses, and i've had many a delicious cup of coffee, or latte, or espresso and even, on occasion, something frothy and frozen with whipped cream on top. i would never cast aspersions on a good cup of coffee or it's birthplace. truth be told, the hippie in me would love to open a chic, hip little coffee house someday. when it comes to ordering a strong, delicious coffee though, especially one that's going to keep me going for several hours, i never go any farther than starbucks. i am truly addicted to starbucks.

sometime last year, i read somewhere that starbucks coffee is something like 55% more caffeinated than folgers coffee, and that's why it's so addictive. that's how they can keep people coming back for their morning, afternoon and or evening brew; it keeps them going as long as their needs demand they keep going. i have no idea if the statement about the caffeination of starbucks coffee has any truth behind it or not, and truly, i don't care. it matters not to me. it does keep me going and it does keep me not just a little bit wired for hours on end every day. i'm something of a junkie, but i'm certainly not alone. starbucks wouldn't be the corporate machine it is today if i were alone. ah, the good people in seattle really know what they're doing with the beans.

i had the distinct pleasure of photographing several of the baristas - especially carlos, my morning sunshine - at work early this morning at my starbucks in temple. i tried my absolute best to stay out of their way, but was apologized to more times than i remember by baristas who thought they were in my way. caffeinated people are just friendly and polite. i was even allowed behind the counter for a few shots to get a little closer to the action. that's the kind of action i can really get into.

i was intrigued at what a well-oiled machine they were operating; i had no doubt that it was as my coffee is perfect and fast every morning, but i've never been in the thick of it like i was today. hands everywhere, reaching for whole milk, cups, steam wands, shotglasses full of nectar of the gods; hands pumping vanilla and caramel and chocolate and hazelnut syrups into coffees and frappuccinos; hands reaching into the bakery case for something unbelievably delicious wrapped in rice tissue and a craft paper bag printed with yellow swirls and a very recognizable green & black logo sporting a crown-clad mermaid. i got the distinct impression that even if i had actually been in someone's way this morning, they'd have just gone right around me without missing a step, a caffeinated smile on their face the whole time.

so cheers to the indies. cheers to those single, stand-alone coffee houses somewhere with good foot traffic and great coffee. i wish no ill will and have nary a disparaging word for these establishments; i wish them nothing but hand-over-fist prosperity.

as for my coffee, however, make mine a tall quad espresso with equal and steamed whole milk, and make sure it comes from starbucks.
..and from carlos, my morning sunshine.

a bottle full of phenobarbital

2006-03-24T21:49:00.000-06:00

i think the week is finally over. the week days are over, anyway. it's been a long week from mishaps at home to horrible mishaps with photo orders to my niece, gracie, who's having more seizures. i thought she was out of the woods, but apparently she's not.

she seized last night from 9pm until somewhere around 11:30pm, my mom told me today. nobody called me last night because they wanted to sort of downplay her seizures so as not to freak my sister out, so i didn't find out about it until this morning at work. my poor sister; she's one of the best mothers i've ever seen, and she lives and breathes for gracie. watching gracie have a seizure is nearly more than she can take. i completely understand.

i went to my parents house tonight after work so i could spend a little time with family and be near my little princess grace. i brought her a stuffed duck - it's the softest, cutest thing, and i just had to get it for my gracie. she loves it. it made her laugh and she cuddled with it a few times, then sucked on the duck's bill and tried to chew on it. score. i held her and gave her the bottle of formula with her medicine in it tonight. a bottle full of similac and phenobarbital. i wanted so badly for it to work. i'll hear tomorrow morning if gracie had a seizure-free evening tonight; she seems to have seizures almost exclusively in the evening, especially when she's overly tired or has had a lot of excitement during the day.

i have a photo shoot tomorrow morning with carlos, my morning sunshine! i have to be at starbucks at 8am in the morning (on a saturday!) and another shoot at my house in my studio at 10am. after that, i'm seriously considering taking a nap for a few hours to catch up on what i will have missed by waking up so early on a saturday. how old does that make me - i'm pre-scheduling my naps. i have another shoot on sunday, but the time is still up in the air because the subject wants outdoor photos, and the weather has been dodgy at best lately; if it's not too cold & windy to be outdoors, then it's raining. might end up being another studio shoot, but i hope not. getting out for photos of people will be nice for a change.

someday, when i kill that guy

2006-03-23T23:39:00.000-06:00

this evening i was invited to dinner to celebrate the 21st wedding anniversary of my very good friends fred & michele at our favorite sushi restaurant, nami in belton. i've had sushi in san francisco, new york, los angeles, dallas, houston, and i'm certain a few other notable cities that undoubtedly have fabulous sushi, but nami is by far the best sushi i've ever had. did i mention nami is in BELTON, TEXAS? seriously, they've got something going on at nami. by all accounts, this should be some dodgy sushi; it's in central texas, the farthest point inland one can get in texas. and it's in texas. nothing at all about that combination even whispers "good sushi". no matter, it's consistently exquisite in it's quality & freshness, and a work of art in its presentation. a great pleasure in my life is taking a skeptical, self-proclaimed sushi afficianado to nami and watching the changes in their demeanor when they realize just exactly what they've stumbled upon.

we all had a wonderful time and of course, beautiful, delicious sushi & sashimi. my favorite sushi are superwhite albacore sashimi and saltwater eel, or nagi. every time we have sushi, i have to repeat the proclaimation that when i'm on death row for killing that guy, i want albacore sashimi and nagi as my last meal.

what guy? you may be asking. whatever. i'll probably kill some guy one of these days just for pissing me off, cheating on me or just for leaving the toilet set up one too many damn times. makes no difference; whatever the circumstances behind my last meal in this mortal coil, i want it to be albacore sashimi & nagi, and i want it from nami.

from one of the orders at our dinner tonight, left to right: edamame (of course!) seared salmon, nagi, albacore.