Get Your Kicks
I wanted to take a road trip with Anthony while the boys were in Utah, but this isn’t the way I imagined it.
Sadly, Anthony’s Grandma Tilly (cute name, I know) died on Monday and we are heading to Albuquerque, New Mexico tonight (Route 66, anyone?). Actually, we are going to stay in glorious Flagstaff, AZ tonight and finish the trip Thursday. Our goal is to get there in time for the rosary Thursday night, with the funeral services planned for Friday.
I only met Tilly once, and it was at our wedding (I just almost wrote “funeral” instead of “wedding”, Freudian slip? Har! ). She was very sweet, yet full of pepper. I can’t help but fully adore any grandmother who uses the words like “shit” and “ass” in front of her entire family. That’s the type of grandma I aspire to be, and I feel I’m well on my way! I think the closest one of my Grandmas came to that was when she said “damn” in church. That may just be a rumor though, a rumor I intend to keep spreading.
Grandma Tilly gave us a nice, new rotisserie oven for our wedding. Because of its size, and the lack of space in our kitchen we were never able to take it out of the box. Anthony and I would joke about how the boxed rotisserie remained in our coat closet for over a year, and what his Grandma would do if she found out. When she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Anthony said, “Well, now she won’t even remember giving it to us.” Thanks for always looking on the bright side, honey. When we moved, we gave the rotisserie to our neighbors who were very gracious about it—“Yeah, we can make grilled cheese sandwiches!” they said. After Grandma Tilly died, Anthony brought up the possibility that the rotisserie could be a haunted rotisserie now.
I would like to see a haunted rotisserie. Maybe I should call my neighbors and pay them a visit.
Time to pack…
Tilly, you were loved by many and will be missed by many.
To Whom It May Concern
I need to post a sign on my blog that says:
BEWARE OF RABID, JEALOUS, INSECURE, GUARD DOG HUSBANDJust because I'm posting to the WORLD WIDE WEB doesn't mean I want anyone to read this shit, right? Duh.
P.S. I'm going to dinner
and a movie tonight
BY MYSELF. Don't wait up.
The End
I think I'm liking this stay at home, no kids, no job thing a little too much. I just barely took a shower today--it's 5p.m. The End.
Fish Eyes and Spider Legs
Top Ten Reasons Why My Sister Should Dump Her “Boyfriend”10. He weighs less than her, and he’s over 6’ (Heroine, anyone?)
9. She had tried dumping him several times—but, like a possessed Ouija board he keeps coming back around to torture her with renditions of their twisted past.
8. Recently, after one of their break-ups, he “let slip” that he may have cancer (I’ve heard that one before). How convenient; how pathetic. Even if he does have it, let his wife take care of him—which leads me to #7.
7. He’s married and has been for the duration of the relationship. He has strung along the “I’m working on the divorce” carrot for almost two years. He recently went to Disneyland (the sickest man on earth at the happiest place on earth, the irony is not lost on me) with his wife and daughter and lied about it. He wasn’t in Disneyland; he was “fishing with his old man.” I’ve even used that lie before, get an imagination. Judas-T.
6. He uses street drugs like an out of work NYC ballet dancer.
5. He breaks things when he gets mad, like car stereos.
4. The affair began in the office. While my sister got reprimanded for such behavior—he got promoted! That’s Utah for you. Burn the scarlet “S” on the woman and high-five the guy.
3. He’s a liar, cheater, and alcoholic.
2. He gets all freaked out at the possibility of meeting any of the family. We’re not scary; we’ll just cut you with a broken bottle if you hurt anyone in our family.
1. At the sake of repeating myself—THE MOTHERF*CKER IS STILL MARRIED!
This list is just a little bit of sisterly therapy, venting, entertainment, etc. Of course she knows this is a sickeningly dysfunctional relationship, but those are the hardest ones to get out of as many of us know.
Anyway, Jez, please move to California. That’s all I’m going to post on this topic (today at least).
Lovely
My favorite line from Fox's new brainmelter "So You Think You Can Dance":
"Nobody has ever told me before that I don't look masculine when I dance with the ribbon."
--Gay Julliard Student with Large Balls and Tight Spandex
*Please note: The above quote is not verbatim. This is the best I can remember it after watching the two-hour special—well, watching it in between commercial breaks on Discovery Channel’s “Shark Week.”
My Reward
After putting up the good fight this afternoon with the weeds and bugs and snails (Morten salt, anyone?) in the front yard, I decided I deserved to relax a little. So I set up the beach chair in the backyard, grabbed a book and a Minute Maid, and began my long needed sun-worship. The construction workers next door were blasting Radio Lobo, so if I closed my eyes and concentrated hard enough, I could imagine I was in a Corona commercial. I had to concentrate really hard.
I closed my eyes for about 10 minutes, and imagined myself using my imaginary palm pilot as a coaster for my imaginary Corona. Upon waking from this sweet hallucination, I found myself covered in a fine sprinkling of sawdust. Sawdust from the construction next door. The sawdust is now topping off the sweat I sweated this morning, and the dirt, and mud, and salt, and pesticide from this afternoon. I think I'm about as disgusting as a marathon runner coming out of crop-dusting hay field relay. Probably more so. Anyhow, just thought I would share.
Shower time!
Looks luxurious, right?
The Dog Next Door
The neighbors are building a house next door. It’s a sad thing that happens often in Redondo, people buy lots that already have adorable little beach houses on them—then they proceed to bulldoze the tiny charmers into oblivion so they can build million dollar “look at me!” homes on the newly leveled lot. Right now the “house” next door is only a skeleton of wood framing that comes alive each day with a party of Hispanic construction workers. This morning, the party came to my house—at 7 a.m.
Apparently, my car was parked where the construction workers needed to park their massive cement truck. How did I know this? Well, there was a knock at my door and I had to answer it because Anthony was in the shower. I opened the door to see standing on the porch a blurry construction worker, who then quickly asked me the dreaded question:
“Is that your tan car parked on the street?”
It was my tan car, and apparently I needed to move it. So I stumbled out of the house with my car keys, flip flops, and contacts glued to my eyes trying to walk while also trying frantically to blink some type of moisture into my contact glued eyes so I could see enough to move my car (if you don’t have contacts, damn you for not understanding this phenomena). As I was tripping towards my car, a fuzzy blob intercepted my path.
“Hi! I’m Brooks, your soon-to-be new neighbor,” the cheerful voice assaulted me.
“Hi, nice to meet you,” I lied.
Obviously, it was not nice to meet him. He must have thought I was crazy the way I was frantically blinking through my sleep-puffed eyes. And what kind of a real woman is still sleeping at 7 a.m.? I should have been at the gym or doing laundry or something productive at that time. I should have, then I wouldn’t have had to move the car.
“Thanks so much for moving your car. This won’t happen every morning,” Brooks promised.
“Oh, no problem,” I lied again. I was so tired and annoyed that if he had tried to shake my hand at that moment, it would have been chewed off and spit out into the carcass of his soon-to-be enviable house. Wouldn’t be so enviable then, would it Brooks?
Much to my glee, when I approached my car there were about half a dozen Hispanic construction workers standing around staring disapprovingly at it. Since I don’t know Spanish I can only imagine they were muttering something like, “Stupid beeyotch, move your skate, then we siesta.”
So I moved my car. ALL THE WAY TO THE END OF THE STREET. That’s right. I swear it was almost an eighth of a mile! There was no place else to park it. That’s another thing you have to deal with in California, lack of parking everywhere.
On my walk back another blob apprehended me. This blob was blonde. Brooks’ wife. I can’t remember her name but she spewed out something syrupy like,
“Can you believe we decided to pour the cement the same day as trash day?”
I dribbled out a completely fake, "how ironic", two-second chuckle, and just kept walking. There will be plenty of time to be genuinely friendly with the new neighbors I figure—plenty of time while I’m genuinely sunning myself and drinking margaritas on the deck of their new pool. I figure they owe it to me after this morning.
The Selling Point
Infested
Hi-dilly-hey!
I haven't posted a while for several reasons:
1. We left California to drop Cody and Colton off with their beer guzzling old man in Utah. What a trip that was, almost like something out of “Fear and Loathing.” Anthony was fairly certain that he was going to die on our trip to the desert for a few reasons. Not only does my mother lack ESPN on her television, but the temperature was well above the balmy 75 degrees we experience EVERY DAMN DAY here in Redondo. Oh, and there are mosquitoes and spiders in Utah—lots of them. So, Anthony was convinced he was going to die from one of these elements: boredom, heat, or spider/mosquito bites. If I had a dime for every time he cried out, “Get them off of me!” I would have enough cash to buy two Spicy Jack Quesadillas from Del Taco. Luckily, my delicate little flower made it out of Utah alive. Now me, I had a great time there—if only I could have stayed longer and visited some of my old haunts. Mosquitoes be damned. I guess I'm heartier from years of living in Utah with its blazing heat, nostril freezing cold, and deadly spiders. Anyway, we dropped the boys off and came back to the West Coast so we could…..
2. Move! We moved from our apartment to a cute little beach house a couple of blocks away. During the move our DSL got shut off and didn’t get turned back on until today. My fingers have been twitching uncontrollably, dying to dance a word tango on the plastic of the keyboard. Finally they can get the workout they deserve. Okay, so the house is a-gosh-dang-dorable! It must have been built around the 50’s or 60’s; at least that’s what I gather from the closet space. It’s about a fifth of what we had at our old place, but it’s a comparable trade-off. The house is complete with wood floors, crown molding, and an old white and chrome O’Keefe and Merritt gas stove. It matches my old chrome breadbox perfect! All I need is a bright, stiff cotton dress and a short curly hair-do and you would think you were walking in to June Cleaver’s house. (You would think that until I opened up my perfectly lipsticked mouth and spew a slurry of obscenities at you for walking into my house without knocking.)
So anyway, that’s why I haven’t posted in a while. Oh, one more exciting thing about the new place. It has fleas! Yes, fleas. Judas-T Priest! Just when I start getting prideful of my new cute house, God has to infest it with fleas. I’m guessing they were here before we moved in, because we never had them before. Honest. Apparently, in California, “cat fleas” are quite common. Yes, they’re common—that makes me feel so much less like trailer trash. GD Fleas. Mind you, I’ve only seen a few of them, and I’ve vacuumed like crazy this morning. Next, I think I’m going to boil the couch and all the bedding in a mixture of bleach and Chore Girl. I hope I can find a pot big enough. Good thing Anthony isn’t here for this, it would be paranoia all over again.
Time for another shower…
