I am not who I think I am

Apparently, I managed to buy $220 worth of gas at a place in the Bronx that also hosts a check cashing place starting on the same day I bought groceries at Whole Foods in Massachusetts. I guess I *could* have nipped on down and returned in time for a ybab's birthday party, stomach virus and all, but eh. And sure, my H2 is expensive to fill, but I have never spent more than $60 on a tank thus far, and I only fill up once a month since we walk to stuff. The plot thickens. Could it be that someone is playing funsies with me? I cannot imagine. According to the helpful American Express representative, these were pay-at-the-pump transactions, so I must have physically been there, buying $75 worth of gas once a day for three days running. There is no chance, none whatsoever, that my card details were re-encoded on a new card, or that some shady fucker has a shady fucker of a friend who works at a gas station/payday loan place in the Bronx.

I have got to get off the Ambien. If I can't stay out of the Bronx, what's next? Sleep fucking in order to get the hobo semen necessary to join the Gloucester High pregnancy pact? I have a few things to say to those poor girls: meet my ybab. I took her to her two-year-old well visit the other day, and she screamed and wrapped her legs around my waist like a monkey and would not stand on the scale. She fell asleep from sheer rage in the exam room, and thus and only thus was the doctor able to physically approach her and listen to her lungs and look in her ears. Perhaps my special purpose is to do ybab "Baby Think It Over" demos around the state.

Of course the "pregnate" issue is being muddled in with birth control access. Birth control access = good, as far as I am concerned (and I make sure to access it as much as possible), but what do you do about a fifteen-year-old who thinks having a child is a good idea? They are not interested in using birth control. Women may control their bodies, but deeeeeee-amn. Shee-it. What a mess. I also don't understand the concept that there is only one dead-end community to live in for the rest of your life in all this great land. Why, move to Lowell! You could work at the CVS favored by 90% of the city's methadone users and steal my credit card info from the Express Pay reader. And my ybab will have a fit on the floor and then bite you.

Posted 9:37 AM by Licketysplit

Where does one begin?

One could begin last week, when one spent a fair amount of time sitting on the toilet while barfing in a Halloween pumpkin bucket (don't you keep one handy to play with in your bath tub?), or one could begin two years ago tonight, when one was flippantly out for a pasta dinner while in labor, unaware of dire twists and impending abdominal surgery, but at any rate, one could say it has been a most intriguing run-up to this year's ybab birthday celebration.

Martha Stewart be damned! Martha Stewart would have known to pencil in "salmonella," and she would have hired someone to get sick for her and her entire household. That person would have barfed in a hand-turned ceramic bucket with a pleasing shade not unlike the egg of a young Buff Orpington. Then Martha would have been free to make a monkey cake with a face fully articulated by sixteen colors of buttercream icing. A ybab has an incredibly long memory when promised a monkey cake, so a monkey cake was obtained through back channels. I am ashamed to say what actually took place. It may have contained real monkey.

At least I had the foresight to have cart loads of toys arrive UPS in the days leading up to ybab's birthday, so once she was feeling better just as I was becoming completely incapacitated, she was able to enjoy learning to use a box cutter and diving into piles of bubble wrap. It was like her birthday all week! And so efficient. I will never wrap again.

My parents are also in town, which is a story in itself for another time. They arrived one morning wearing matching lime green shirts, but not exactly matching: one was more of a kiwi than a lime. "Did you feel I was not already sufficiently nauseated?" I asked. "Oh, we didn't plan it." "But surely you looked at each other before you left the hotel room?" This line of questioning was fruitless because my sister had told me about the matching lime green shirts making an appearance weeks ago. They know exactly what they are doing!

And they would be the only ones to know what they are doing, but somehow Mr. H and I rallied and pulled off a birthday party. Mr. Whole Foods may have helped. For my re-entry to solid food, I went with sangria. Vitamin C is good for what ails you. A good time was had by 100% of the ybabs who live in my house, and a cat has barfed a festive coil of pink ribbon, so we will count this as successful, even though the poor monkey is never getting back from space.

Posted 8:06 PM by Licketysplit

Pre, post, and currently traumatic

Internet, you jerk. I am trying to decide if I should go back to the therapist I saw last year or the year before or maybe the year before that for Wanting to Throw the Ybab in the River Syndrome. I want to throw the ybab in the river again. I am starting to think this is a personality flaw on her part, not mine. Can you have a two-year-old treated for Total Asshole Syndrome? Is there some kind of off-label use for animal tranquilizer everyone else is in on but me? I am so sorry that jerkism is hereditary. It is really biting me in the patootie.

But anyway, the therapist I saw back whenever that was happens to drink lots of soda with real calories, and that used to disturb me to no end. And I couldn't just tell her that (because I'd sound crazy, wokka wokka), but jeez, I can't watch someone drink two Mountain Dews or Pepsis in a row at 10AM. Am I really that boring with my petty neuroses that the woman has to prop her eyelids up with toothpicks? Don't answer that.

I idly considered finding a new therapist, maybe one of those fancy CBT ones who will snap me with a rubberband every time I consider peeing on the floor. I wonder how therapists of that ilk feel about how cock and ball torture comes up ahead of their professional organization in the Google? Does this give them a complex? Do they just move their no-complainy bracelet to the other wrist and blithely move on? I'd like to know what that's like. I require a full day of rumination if someone is a little hasty at a 4-way stop! And do not even talk to me about the grocery store. I couldn't find the wheat germ. It was awful.

Oh well, if I can't have low calorie mental health, at least I finally convinced someone at Saab to put a new liger on the back of the car. Someone stole the original one! Can you imagine? What must they be doing with it?

Posted 10:46 AM by Licketysplit

Gorgeous ladies of Craigslist

It's that time of year where I troll for summer help on Craigslist, a process not unlike slamming your head in a storm door. The storm door emails you in pink capital letters, eschews punctuation completely, and inquires "What is this job for? How much does it pay? When do you need me to start? Why am I emailing you again? A/S/L? Is it OK if I commute from another state? Is it OK if I am only 12? Gas is expensive: can you pay more than you stated you would in order to assist me in my unreasonable commute to your town?"

Well, you get the idea. Pesky storm door. It's only a slight deviation from the "selling something on Craigslist" response template. Of course some people shock me by being competent! I don't know what to do with that! I fear success! But not exclamation points.

My personal formula for Results seems to be "email address with some combo of numbers or xnamex" + "lack of standard English" = "hilarious inappropriate Myspace profile." Do people really think that a prospective employer can find Craigslist but not Facebook and Myspace? Is it that hard to refrain from putting a photo of your butt smoking a cigarette on a public website? The formula is never wrong.

I keep forgetting to call about the results for my back scab hole. Wouldn't they call me if something were awry? Surely this is need-to-know stuff. Uh, it's not getting any smaller. Does skin stop regrowing at a certain age? After all, this year I will be 25 again.

Also, ybab said "Go to store. Buy cake." Uh, twist my arm!

Posted 10:52 PM by Licketysplit

If, when, why, what?

My ass has been kiting checks again, if you know what I mean. And I hope you don't. I have a series of impossible choose-your-own-adventure dealings with which to deal. Please pull up a chair.

The largest problem is probably our ridiculous living situation. Let me tell you it: we live in a beard of bees. No, we live in a loft in a charming old mill with a recycling program and a contentious owner message board, steps from a body of water that did not even flood this year, a lovely park, and old world charm-y cobblestone streets! There are now restaurants where you can get shiso on everything, if that is a kind of thing you like.

In short, my lovely home is a fantastic place for anyone who does not own a toddler. It is RATHER SMALL for raising a team of helper monkeys as well, so be warned. But people are all concerned with "mortgages" and "credit" and "interest rates" and do not seem keen on buying anything these days. That's too bad. I would like to sell you my bee beard. The bathroom was recently painted by a man who could pass for Perez Hilton. There are numerous other selling points, including the fact that we would get out anytime you wanted, even in the middle of the night, and we would leave any items of furniture you fancied. I might do your grocery shopping and other unpleasant errands for a year. Do you need your taxes done? I got a guy. We recently discovered the image of the Blessed Virgin in the ceiling over our bed, if that helps.

We have hit upon a plan to kidnap Ricky Gervais, namesake of a local car dealership and famous actor/director, before he leaves this lovely town when his movie finishes shooting. He taunts me with posts about using a private jet and house hunting in New York. He clearly has no idea he needs a Lowell pied-à-terre. We will convince him of the beauty of this area by taking him to the Blue Moon, a windowless cinderblock strip club out on 3A, and then to Club Thirtysomething across the way for a nightcap. There you will be able to find a woman with a tattoo reading "The only things getting between my legs are a hard dick or a Harley." I assure you, she is out there. Then we'll take a tour of where they print The Lowell Sun. We could start with the proofreading department, but the donkey died several years ago. Very sad.

From there, we'll attend a Lowell Spinners game, participating triumphantly in dizzy bat, and after this, some skanky townie friend of my sister-in-law is probably having a "Jack and Jill" shower at a VFW.

Perhaps some of you more worldly types are concerned and wondering why I am not pushing the martinis and the shiso a bit harder, but honestly, you can get that anywhere. I moved here for the local color, or colour, if you must. I moved here to live next to a minor league ballpark and a methadone clinic. It speaks to me. You just can't make this crap up, except when you exaggerate a little. You people who can have nice things don't know what you're missing.

Posted 11:06 AM by Licketysplit

The Halls of medicine

Bless, but there is a giant disgusting hole cut in my back! An actual doctor did it, so at least this time there is an explanation.

He was going to remove another thing while he was at it, but I asked him if he was going to cut it the same way as the other one, and he said "Oh, no, that's just a skin tag. I'll just snip it off with scissors." Well, to hell with that. I can boil water, and I have a pair of scissors. That is not going to count against my deductible, no thank you! "You're not going to try this yourself," he asked when I declined assistance. "Uh, no, I'm going to pray about it." Ybab is boiling water right now.

Mr. H has gingivitis. He claims the dentist told him he needed prescription mouthwash. I asked if the dentist also suggested that he start flossing. "Oh, uh yeah, I guess." I JUST LIVE HERE. In a land where nobody puts anything back where it belongs, and everyone manages to climb on me and jab me in the band-aid covering the gaping crater that a professional burned to crispy blackness as an afterthought of sadism. I sure would like one of those hyfrecators for my home kitchen. I'd make the tiniest Baked Alaskas.

A ybab screams bloody murder and refuses to brush her teeth, and we have to wrap her in a towel like we're giving a pill to a cat. I say "You don't want gingivitis like your father, now, do you?" And she glares at me and plans to kick me in the kidney after I fall asleep. These people have no respect for the gums and other soft tissues.

Posted 11:46 AM by Licketysplit

Highlights, for childrens

Someone's world was rocked by the fact that everybody has a butt. And Spiderman? Spins webs with his butt.

Posted 9:33 PM by Licketysplit