All posts by Licketysplit

My filing technique truly is unstoppable

You do not want to know what I did with three days of naps, one father-supervised walk to feed ducks, and a P-Touch. I feel a deep sense of calm in my soul. A place for everything, and all the other stupid crap shredded and recycled.

I even went through a stack of proxy cards and voted them, generally installing incredibly old rich white men on boards everywhere. Sample additional question: “Some tedious meddling killjoy shareholders feel we should not invest in companies that profit from genocide. The board recommends a vote AGAINST this measure, as we wish to swim unfettered in our money bins.” Well, a vote for genocide is OK with m— whoa, wait a minute, reading messes things up again! I voted against profiting from genocide. So far, I’ve lost 3% for the year, so genocide can’t be that lucrative anyway. Don’t worry, the 3% was in retirement accounts, and I’m only 25. Indefinitely. The government is going to have a tough time making me take mandatory disbursements. I have a portrait in the attic I’ll use as ID.

OK, I made the 3% back last week. But still. Genocide!

Conquer existentialism in 72 easy steps

Can you believe I can go to the grocery store without a dissociative episode or panic attack? It was not always so, blogarinos, although that was still not enough to keep me away from the grocery store. Sometimes it’s kind of fun when the stuff on the shelf dances. Hell, I’ve paid for that experience before. But anyway, such vapors are a thing of the past. They took away my fainting couch down at the Hannaford. They also stole my debit card number, but that’s another story for another time. I got a new card, and the expiration date is no longer a very lucky 08/08, which was very popular when calling for Chinese takeout, trust me. Oh right. So anyway, to conquer your existentialism, try doing all your errands with a small conscience who yells at you, passersby, and dogs and fire trucks, just in case there are any. Your conscience should also throw things at you, like a grocery list, a pen, a travel magna-doodle, and a bag of organic soup beans. This works wonders for the constitution, if not the complexion. You might also substitute fire juggling if you do not have a conscience. You’ll be far too busy and concerned with your own survival to be crazy, at any rate.

The other day the conscience ran right over to that giant plastic car shopping cart, and I grudgingly soaked it in rubbing alcohol and secured her with a well-gnawed rope. A litter of other children saw her riding in splendor and made comment to their mother as to how they wished for a similar experience. MOMMYIWANNACARCARCARCARMOMMMYYYYYYYY. Their mother glared at me and said “No, we can’t do that today.”

“YAY! DRIVE CAR! FUN! WHEE! BEEP BEEP!” opined the conscience. Her timing is impeccable. The other kids dialed it up to about 12.

I decided to run with it, since other lady glared at me. “Yes, honey, I love you! You are driving! This is so much fun! I love it when you have fun with me at the store! Yay! What does the car say? Who’s the best little girl?”

Then I had to leave without all my groceries so I wouldn’t come out and find my tires slashed. On the way out, I realized if you go in the other entrance, there are no fucking plastic cars stored on that side. Oh. This is what it’s like to have low concerns.

March madness

It’s a good thing I am in good with the powers of the universe because the last few weeks have been bumpy. Emotionally, March is like landing a duct-taped regional jet with a wicked crosswind on the twelve feet of runway Logan Airport can afford. At the end of the twelve feet is the harbor and an LNG tanker, so you see how the stakes are high. November of course stabs me, but March sees me hanging by my feet twitching as the last drops of blood drain away from my head. And then something wondrous occurs from all that oxygen deprivation, and god starts talking to me.

Now, don’t get too ruffled. My god is a pretty lowercase kind of ultimate love, a safety net of interconnected interests rather than a personification. I call it god because I simply do not have a better word. This year, god is telling me we’re in for a flood, but it will be OK. I kind of preferred three years ago when god told me to take up learning Chinese and buy tickets to Spain, but apparently god is not a fan of the exchange rate now.

Last night, Mr. H took it up on himself to show me many links about horrible things happening to dogs. An artist in Honduras, or possibly Guatemala (all those countries look alike), tied up a manky stray dog in a gallery and instructed gallery patrons not to feed the dog. The dog starved to death over several days. The internet responded to the news with all-caps comments about castration, and the pictures were quite sad. Horrible point about how human are sheep and horrible point about how we walk by starving animals and people in the street on a daily basis and also do nothing. I like to think I would have fed the dog and called the damn police, but I am not sure if the Honduran P.D. would have been all that moved.

Then ol’ Mr. H showed me a video of a Marine holding a puppy, and whaddya know, he throws that little fuzzball off a cliff! I live under a rock, and I had not heard of that one. Apparently some people are making the point that the average YouTube looky loo cares not for actual people dying in Iraq (brown or otherwise), but puppies? Do NOT fuck with puppies! I was going to a candle-lit vigil for ending the Iraq war yesterday, but it was sleeting, and I decided not to take a ybab out in that. Oh. ALL-CAPS COMMENT ABOUT PUBLIC FLOGGING.

I was so pissed that now I have to pray for all of these assholes, including Mr. H, who could have kept these things to himself. In fact, I have to pray for the whole damn internet. This is going to take a while. If you need me, I’ll be in my grotto.

Make mine a Listo and OJ

Only 17 days until Spring, goldendoodles! And it is with great regret that I only just remembered there is an enormous bottle of high-quality gin (oxymoron?) in the liquor bunker in the kitchen. Where were you in November! No on-the-job accidents since…what time is it now?

Next week I am vacationing in style in a location ten degrees warmer than here. Break out the winsome safari shorts! The Simpsons are going to my parents’ house. Oh, come on. It could be worse. I could have a gummy smile or cankles. My parents will feed us for a week, and when ybab gets up at the crack of dawn, I will say “Go find Grandma,” and she will gleefully race down the hall. Whether she actually finds Grandma or just ends up rooting around under the kitchen sink is anyone’s guess. Grandma is the one without the Mr. Yuck sticker, if that helps. No, Grandma routinely gets up at 4 AM, outfoxing even a ybab. It’s what Laura Ingalls Wilder would do. I trust ybab will be intercepted and drilled with flash cards until I awake from my beauty rest.

Clinging tenaciously to my buttocks

Darlinks, medicine I have had nothing to write. I have been experiencing excellent customer service, and thus reeling in shock. Why, I got a letter from Blue Cross, Blue Shield, and they said “WE WILL NOT PAY! NOOOOOO!” And I said “Surely this is but a minor misunderstanding, for I always operate within policy,” and I called and said “Surely this is but a minor misunderstanding,” and they put me on hold for 30 seconds while I listened to their selection of “Everbody Have Fun Tonight.” Then the representative came back on the line and said “You are absolutely correct! This is our mistake, and we will reprocess the claim on our end. You need do nothing further but prop up your feet and book a massage. Here is my name, direct line, and confirmation number. Have a pleasant day.”

So then I died of joy, and I will probably have to call them again about the whopping bill I will receive from my ybab for use of a defibrillator to revive me. Only it was more like a few fridge magnets and a rolling pin that she used, so I am NOT paying for that.

Right now, on this blessed leap day, ybab is feeling poorly. She has come down with some sort of rhinovirus owing to her father placing her in that filth-encrusted plastic racecar shopping cart. Why, did you know, he did not wipe it down with carbolic acid, nor did he steam clean and Simonize her upon returning home? I publicly shame and renounce him!

And double renouncing for even putting her in that hellish chariot in the first place, because now she will accept no substitutes. There is nothing quite like getting a dirty look from an enormous woman (who probably drives an enormous SUV and routinely straddles two lines on the public thoroughfares) because one cannot maneuver past the onions quickly enough for her liking when one is pushing a disease-riddled Sherman tank of infant entertainment. One thinks “My life has come to this.” One moves on, stiff upper lip. One gives up and weeps openly as the wheels of the beast get stuck on the freezer case for the sixteenth time. My willowy arms are simply not powerful enough!

Quagmire no more!

Now, did you think “giggity giggity” or “Iraq” when you read that subject line? I meant Iraq! Read my mind! Then I thought “giggity giggity.” Then I had to go check the spelling of “giggity.” Then I saw other open browser windows, little magpie that I am, and I had to check Facebook not-Scrabble and stuff like that. It is a wonder I returned here at all. But I thought I would take a few moments of my precious ybab nap time to rejoice in the fact that Congress and Roger Clemens are finally hammering out an exit strategy for the Iraq war! YES! It is about time, don’t you think? Jesus H. Jones. That is what they are doing, right? I only get to look at CNN for three seconds every day.

People still think they are me

Or am I actually the wrong person? I am not sure anymore. My secret disposable Gmail account keeps getting appropriated by others with similar names, and it’s like having a window into arcane and hideous secrets of existence. I live in my own head, first and foremost, and some of my scariest moments as a child involved seeing myself in a mirror and realizing “I am a person! I am three-dimensional! I am ME!” But in my old age, I have realized that it is far worse to be other people.

January 29
Heidi to Alan, Nina, Lisa, me, Eric, Maggie
not sure if you guys have seen this..but i love this audition. I’ve seen the video many times. haha…
the beginning part made me laugh so hard because Nick does that a lot also.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HifybwoujTk

January 29
Y. Lisa to Heidi, Alan, Nina, me, Eric, Maggie
Hehe, Alan and I saw that last week on American Idol. They were awesome!

Which part exactly does Nick do all of the time? I’m curious….

January 29
Heidi to Lisa, Alan, Nina, me, Eric, Maggie
the “chicka bow wow” part.

It’s from axe deodorant comerical. Of course Nick doesn’t do it with such skill.

January 30
Y. Lisa to Heidi, Alan, Nina, me, Eric
Oh, haha…do you chime in with your “ow wow”? Hehe! A duet!

November 14, 2007
Hello [my first name],

I was talking with Louise the other day and she mentioned that you were curious about me and what I looked like.

Jody and I have a Wedding website you are more then welcome to check out. You probably haven’t seen Jody in a while either. We have our engagement photo on the site.

http://www.weddingbells.ca

If you can’t get it to work just let me know and I can email the photograph.

Take care,

Kate C–

P.S. Louise said she had told you I was of a German background. Actually, my Dad was in the military and I was born in Germany because he was posted there. My family name is actually Old English, the first part Cowper ( should be Cooper, the ancestors couldn’t spell) means a barrel maker and Waite means a clearing. We have done some genealogy and we can trace back 14 generations in England, which is kind of cool, though, both sides of my family have been in Canada for several generations.

September 26, 2007
Someone in Australia named Marena requested that someone named Janet forward this along to me!
FW: no 83 [I am itching to read numbers 1 through 82, let me assure you]

“….
While all this was happening Gordon was in South Africa. We always give him a list of stuff to buy there, and he is very good about it. So on 26 July he arrived back, armed with a suitcase filled with drugs: Sudafed, Codis, Bezerol, Rohypnol (stuff we can’t buy here), his own medication, and lots more. As he approached Quarantine he noticed a big sign: “Channel 7 is filming ‘Border Patrol’ today”. He almost had a heart attack – what if they find all those pills and he is filmed on national television for the whole world to see him as a drug dealer! Fortunately he seemed small fry and he shot through without a hitch.
….
We joined John and Carol for an evening of Peruvian singing by one of that country’s famous singers. Not my cup of tea. It was a long evening, everything in Spanish (she did not have one word of English) and the music was pretty much the same – uninteresting and loud. Pity to waste so much time and money and not enjoy the evening.
….
The Ski Saga

Before Gordon knew that he had to go to Chicago, we had planned a trip to the snow fields. (We haven’t been for a few years, due to knee ops and such.) We booked our usual Adaminaby cottage and to make it a bit more reasonable, we invited several people to join us. One after another they fell by the wayside, and then Gordon got summoned to Chicago. I was willing to cancel the whole trip but he insisted that I still went. In the end only John (40, unmarried) was still able and keen to go, and then I managed to cajole and bribe Maria and Eric to join us for the weekend. John and I were leaving on the Thursday and coming back the Monday. Then, the day before departure, the owners of the cottage phoned to say the sudden warm weather had the snow melting and did we still want to do it. I consulted John and my children and all of them said they’d still like to go, whether they ski or not. So the trip went ahead. I bought the food, packed the car, made the padkos, locked up the house and when John arrived we were on the road within five minutes. We had a few hitches along the road with wrong directions and ended up driving the last hour in the dark through a kangaroo infested national park on a dirt road. But we got there in the end, had our liquid refreshments and psyched ourselves up for the morrow.

We woke to a rather miserable day, with rain hovering on the mountains tops. John had never ski-ed before and booked in for a lesson straight away. I tried out my ski legs on my own and found that the few years of absence and the increasing years have not been kind to me. In addition, by the time we got to the slopes, it was raining quite hard, also sleeting and snowing at intervals. We were sopping, dripping wet, but determined to persevere. I had about an hour of braving the elements when I decided to take a brief break. I took off my skis, put them in the ski racks that are all over the place and went to the loo. By the time I got back, about 2 minutes later, some low life had nicked my skis!! I was devastated, and there was absolutely nothing I could do. My lift pass, a whopping $70 for the half day, was useless and a waste of all that money. I was not happy. Not at all. After John’s lesson (by then he was a wreck – he is not very fit) we went home, calling in at the ski hire place. They were very kind and I only had to pay TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS instead of $600+ for new skis, and then I had to hire more for the rest of the time. There was a bit of ranting and raving that night, and I still get viciously angry when I think about it.

Maria et al arrived that night, but well after midnight. We had a brief visit together in the morning but John had booked another lesson, so off he and I went, leaving the young ones to amuse themselves. In the end they didn’t even attempt to ski and just had a lazy weekend, showing Becky the farm animals and chilling out together.

That night we had a lovely braai outside around a big fire with the Murrumbidgee River flowing a few metres away. By then it had turned cold again and every morning we woke to heavy frost.

Sunday morning we left for the ski fields again, and Maria and family went home. John was getting on quite nicely, but unfortunately my enthusiasm had disappeared and I found it quite a struggle to go to the toilet and everywhere else with my skis glued to my body. There was no way I was leaving them anywhere again. So I had a few runs, a few hard falls, and started wondering if I was not getting too old for the game.

Monday morning we left for home. What a to-do about almost nothing, as far as I’m concerned.

Well, the rest of my letter contains just a few incidental snippets, like

Eventually getting the cleaners in again every fortnight (Gordon: “So I don’t have to feel guilty about not helping”.)
…. [and then the incidental snippets continued for another 2 pages]

Life is a miracle. What a to-do about almost nothing.