My business is closed.

So, I think it's time to retire from the blogging world.

I've been actually wanting to do this for awhile, but haven't, for various reasons:

1. "My Business is Your Business" is the single greatest blog name of all time, and if I decide to come back later and start a new one, I'll get stuck with a really lame blog name, because I am notoriously bad at naming stuff, so it'll probably be called "Kim's Wacky Words of Wisdom" or "Oja-pus's Garden"

2. This is my Aunt Kathy's primary way of learning about what's going on in my life (Hi, Aunt Kathy!)

3. I actually did some pretty funny writing here, back in the day.

However, my blogging gene seems to have gone fallow, at least for the moment, and I'm getting pretty tired of making myself feel guilty every time I don't write anything on here for awhile. And also, now that I'm actually writing on a semi-regular basis again (thank you, John Boston Story-- yet another stellar title thought up by Kim Oja!), I should probably put most of my writing time towards that.

So I'm saying goodbye for now-- thanks for reading for the last three years, it's been a blast! And for now, at least, please don't remove me from your blogrolls-- you never know when the Awesome Blogging gene will flicker back to life and I will be inspired to share stories about my sad vagina or my vitriolic hatred of Mark Harmon (which this whole John Boston thing has TOTALLY stirred up again).

From me, Crunchy, vulvodynia, the guys who stole my Garmin, Ricky Martin, Guitar Hero and all the other major players here at "My Business is your Business", we wish you all a fond farewell!

All the Young Dudes

Okay, this seems like the most fun meme of all time, and so I thought I'd share it with all of you (also, because I haven't posted on my blog in a million years and need something to distract you all from the fact that I live quite possibly the most boring life of all time.

I'm going to tag some Facebook friends on this beeotch, but I urge all of you to play along, because seriously, this is the coolest thing EVER. Special thanks to Randy for passing it along!

Oh, and also? Please forgive the lameness of some of these songs. Remember that I lost my super cool music collection in the Great Crash of '08. Although these songs were a part of that collection, too. So I guess I should just shut up.

RULES:

A. Put your music player on shuffle.
B. For each question, press the next button to get your answer.
C. YOU MUST WRITE THAT SONG NAME DOWN NO MATTER HOW SILLY IT SOUNDS!
D. Tag 10 friends who might enjoy doing the game as well as the person you got the game from.

1. IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY" YOU SAY?
"Minimum Wage" by They Might be Giants (I guess that could be an acceptable answer)

2. WHAT WOULD BEST DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONALITY?
"Oops... I Did It Again" by Britney Spears

3. WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
"Eve of Destruction" by Barry McGuire

4. HOW DO YOU FEEL TODAY?
"Creep" by Radiohead (I do feel rather skeevy today...)

5. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
"We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister

6. WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
"Ready to Go" by Republica

7. WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
"We Built This City" by Jefferson Starship

8.WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT VERY OFTEN?
"My Doorbell" by The White Stripes (which is so untrue, because I was trained at a very young age that anyone who would ring my doorbell without calling first was probably there to rape and/or kill me, so I would throw myself on the ground and lay there for like a half an hour every time my doorbell would ring in the time between when I got out of school and when my parents got home, which happened a lot, because my parents are avid catalog shoppers. To this day, when the doorbell rings and I don't expect it, I have to fight the urge to lay prone on the ground for long periods of time.)

9. WHAT IS 2 + 2?
"That'll Be the Day" by Buddy Holly and the Crickets

10 WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
"He Got Game" by Public Enemy (SO TRUE!)

11.WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"Vampire" by Antsy Pants (that can't be good)

12. WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
"Uptight (Everything's All Right)" by Stevie Wonder

13. WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
"I Don't Want to Spoil the Party" by The Beatles

14. WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
"Here Comes Santa Claus" by Elvis Presley (Ew.)

15. WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
"The Distance" by Cake

16. WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
"Sunshine of Your Love" by Cream (This song has a creepy stalker feeling to it, though, like someone creeping up on you. Which isn't super romantic.)

17 What will they play at your funeral?
"All Apologies" by Nirvana (Ouch.)

18. WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
"Tiny Dancer" by Elton John

19. WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
"The Jean Genie" by David Bowie

20. WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
"Shame For You" by Lily Allen (again, ouch.)

21. WHAT'S THE WORST THING THAT COULD HAPPEN?
"Money Talks" by AC/DC (That WOULD be effing weird)

22. HOW WILL YOU DIE?
"Hot For Teacher" by Van Halen

23. WHAT IS THE ONE THING YOU REGRET?
"Dude (Looks Like a Lady" by Aerosmith (I do regret all those men's XXL t-shirts of my youth...)

24. WHAT MAKES YOU LAUGH?
"Why Don't We Do It In the Road" by The Beatles

25. WHAT MAKES YOU CRY?
"I've Got an Ape Drape" by The Vandals

26. WILL YOU EVER GET MARRIED?
"Brian Wilson" by Barenaked Ladies (does this mean I have to marry Brian Wilson? Because I am not down with that.)

27. DOES ANYONE LIKE YOU?
"Let My Love Open the Door" by Pete Townshend

28. IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME, WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE?
"Friend is a Four Letter Word" by Cake

29. WHAT HURTS RIGHT NOW?
"Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" by Michael Jackson (you're a buffet, you're a vegetable)

30. WHAT WILL YOU POST THIS AS?
"All the Young Dudes" by Jill Sobule

I am the champion

I. Did. It.

I actually completed NaNoWriMo. I wrote 50,000 words. In one month. In 28 days, to be specific. And I wrote the final words wearing a Santa hat. Which just makes it that much cooler.

Is it dorky that I'm so insanely proud of myself right now? Before I decided to do NaNoWriMo, I had literally written nothing besides my blog and a few columns for the Columbus Dispatch in four years. And in one month, I wrote something that was longer than my entire graduate thesis. Which means I can totally still do it. Whether it's any good or not remains to be seen. But still. I totally did it.

The only bad thing: the novel isn't actually finished yet. Which is actually a good thing, because it gives me something to keep working towards. And then the revision process, and then, who knows? Maybe try to find an agent? I don't know. The world might not be ready for the John Boston story yet. But when it is, kapow, watch out, America.

All I know is that I totally did it. And I am totally going to Cracker Barrel right now to celebrate. Because that's the way that we high-velocity novelists roll. Awwww, yeah.

A week in the life

As much as I was enjoying studying those photos from Martha's (I MUST find that woman and ask where she got her matching beret/tank top ensemble), I just wanted to stop by and fill you in quickly on the haps, since I've been MIA for so long. It's just that the haps are sort of boring:

1. Am now only 9,996 from my goal of 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo, although I'm now pretty sure that this book won't be wrapped up in 10,000 words or less, so I will need some cajoling to get the rest done after the contest is over. Please place all threats in the comment box.

2. I have decided that this guy will play John Boston in the inevitable movie adaptation of my sure-to-be-a-bestselling blockbuster:


Apparently his name is Jon Hamm, and he is in the show Mad Men, which I have never seen because I don't know what channel AMC is on my cable and am too lazy to find out. But he will be pleased to know that he has been added to the short list of past JB candidates, which included George Clooney, Colin Firth, and of course, the infamous Mark Harmon. Who can now cry his bitter tears of defeat on the set of his stupid Navy SEAL show, or whatever it is they're carrying on about over there.

3. A big, giant, hairy spider has taken up residence in the drain in my basement, and sometimes he comes lunging out at me when I come down to feed the cat. I would squash him, but he's so big that he would both crunch and explode with some sort of goo, which I am not willing to clean up, so for now, I let him live.

4. I am extremely unhappy with the outcome of America's Next Top Model. I feel that the model who won (I won't give names, for those of you who are still waiting to catch this on TiVo) is extremely weird-looking, and I don't care for the quasi-British accent she decided to adopt upon arriving in Holland.

5. On the other hand, I am most pleased with the proceedings on The Office, and am happy to have Jim and Pam once again reunited.

6. Ben went hunting last weekend? Which was weird? And now there are three dead pheasants in my freezer. Which is even weirder.

Sadly, you are now completely caught up with everything that has happened to me during the last week. Oh, and I ate some stuff, and used the bathroom several times. Now you literally know EVERYTHING that happened.

RIP, Martha's

The world was shocked and saddened today by the loss of the world's greatest lesbian and redneck karaoke bar, where the UNCW MFA class of 2004 spent probably way too much of its time during its brief and tenuous tenure in Wilmington. Where the crazy black guy in the wicker hat will spend the remainder of his Prince-performing days is still unknown, but please take a moment to enjoy this photographic retrospective in honor of our fallen friend.

NaNoWriMo Update: Week 1

My stupid toolbar won't update itself for some reason, but as of three minutes ago, I had written 11,730 words.

I would like some accolades now, please!

Rebuilding Music-con One

Now, as many of you know, I lost my mega awesome music collection in the Great Hard Drive Crash of '08; I have been slowly reassembling, but the going is rough (do I really need to search out another copy of "My Sweet Lord" by George Harrison? I probably do, right?).

What you may not know is that for the last ten months, I've been collecting approximately seven million Pepsi points and redeeming them for MP3 downloads on Amazon. As a full-on Diet Pepsi addict, I've managed to score at least 40 songs this way (as well as three CDs, a Pepsi t-shirt, and Home Movies season four on DVD-- I drink a LOT of Pepsi), but I still have enough for 20 more songs, and I have to admit, I'm totally running out of ideas. For instance, today I just downloaded the 1985 classic "Dog Eat Dog" by Weird Al Yankovic. So, I'm tapped out.

Any suggestions for cool songs I should be looking for? Keeping in mind my strict evaluation criteria:

1. Must not be snobby people music (no Radiohead or anything with an artfully illustrated pen-and-ink drawing on its cover)

2. Repetitive chorus preferred; na-na chorus a BIG plus

3. Oldies always welcome (but no Neil Young, as Neil Young just sort of sucks. Sorry.)

4. If I played it in marching band or Guitar Hero, I'll probably like it

5. Also, I go nuts for songs where there's instruments? And then all the sudden it's just singing and drums. That's the best.

So please, help me out here-- I have to use these points up by the end of next week, and if I can't think of anything, I have to use them on a Tom Morello CD for Ben, and really, there's only so much accoustic anarchy pop one can listen to on a daily basis.

Heart of Darkness

I've been so busy diligently writing the world's shittiest novel and celebrating the election of not Sarah Palin that I didn't really get a chance to give a shout-out to the return of my old pal, the Darkness.

Because unlike most people, who seem to feel that the shortening of days is like time theft on par with the hours of your life that are regularly stolen by the Lifetime Movie Network, I very much welcome the long evenings, for several reasons:

1. I am more attractive at dusk.

2. I have always equated night time with farting around time-- the longer it is until sundown, the longer I'm obligated to remain active, because you just look sort of fascist if you choose to sit inside while the sun is still out. The end of daylight savings time means pretty much unlimited farting around time, and this, in summary, is why my Guitar Hero skills are so much better than yours.

3. The cover of darkness allows me to sing really loudly in my car on the freeway on the way home without being seen.

4. Ditto emergency mobile nose-picking.

The only major problem that I can see with the end of DST is that it is followed by the sacred Ohio holiday Drive Like an Asshole Because Apparently Your Car Functions Differently in the Dark Week, during which Ohio's drivers compensate for the new commute conditions by either driving stupidly slowly, ramming themselves into guard rails, or pretending that the darkness has rendered their car invisible, thus enabling them to weave in and out of traffic at will.

Soon, though, we will adjust, and I'll be able to spend my darkness time in a glut of leisure-time bliss, until phase two of the driving holiday, Ohio Holy Crap It's Snowing and My Car is Made of Spun Sugar Week, begins in earnest in a few weeks' time.

I voted today!

...so, I deserve a break. No NaNoWriMo for me tonight-- I'm settling in with some burgers, beer, neighbors, and eight hours of uninterrupted election coverage.

I'm so curious to know how voting went around the country-- anyone have any good horror stories? I was in and out in twenty minutes this morning, but I also live in the smallest town ever, unless there's a town of midgets out there somewhere...

NaNoWriMo Update: Day 1

Hey, I promise not to turn this into a you-go-girl NaNoWriMo blog, but their website is down right now, so I have nowhere to brag-- so far today, I've logged 1,707 words, which is slightly over my daily goal. Which, of course, means that I am THE GREATEST NOVELIST THAT EVER LIVED!

What's the deal?

I am officially banned from watching all game shows, as tonight I began to openly sob watching some woman named Tomorrow Rodriguez attempt to win a million dollars on Deal or No Deal. This is particularly vexing as I am not a regular watcher of Deal or No Deal, and am sort of grossed out by Howie Mandel's shaved head and weird lady parts goatee. But as Tomorrow got closer to her million dollar case, I completely lost my shit.

I don't know how I end up getting sucked into situations like this; I had a very similar situation once with an episode of the Family Feud, which ended with me bawling on my couch at twelve in the afternoon after the family won the big prize. Which I guess justifies my Deal or No Deal breakdown a bit-- if I get choked up when five people have to split $10,000, imagine how moved I would be by one woman getting a million.

I was, in fact, so upset by the whole thing that I had to leave the room and go take a shower, and subsequently missed the end. Did she win? Does anyone know? I kind of have to know now.

(Okay, I just looked it up on Google. She did win. Which is good. Because I would have felt like a supertard, crying over a woman that eventually won $400.)

You know, I just thought of something-- I think the Family Feud family was also named Rodriguez. So maybe I just have to limit myself to shows featuring non-Rodriguezes? Which will totally suck for me if A-Rod ever decides to go on Celebrity Jeopardy.

I'm going novelist on your asses

This morning, Jeremy sent me a cryptic and vaguely ominous-seeming e-mail that contained nothing but the link to NaNoWriMo, the write-a-novel-in-a-month website that I always mean to join, but never do, because I'm lazy and possibly, at this point, no longer talented, and would prefer it if I didn't have to do anything to draw attention to that very real possibility.

I don't know what it was, but something in that e-mail-- just the sight of the link in the body, or possibly the fact that Jeremy has Vulcan mind control skills that can manifest themselves in the form of a simple weblink-- made me say, you know what? It's time. I'm going for it.

I'm going to write an effing novel.

Or I'm going to try to, anyway. I don't know what it's going to be about (although please note: I know there's going to be a scene in which the main character hits and kills a deer with her car, so if any of you have first-hand knowledge about this, I would really appreciate some details, as I've never hit anything larger than a cat, over which I cried for days and days, but which did minimal damage to my car and did not prevent me from making it to the convenience store where I had been headed to buy a candy bar), and I don't know how far I'll make it, but I figure if I make it to day three, and write 20 pages, that's 20 more pages than I've written in the last four years.

Is there anyone out there that wants to do this with me, or that's already planning on doing it? If so, please let me know, so we can be writing buddies and I can write to you to complain about how I'd really rather be playing Guitar Hero and not doing anything with the seven years of education I spent learning how to write a novel in the first place.

Now of course, everyone must suffer for their art, and in this case you're going to have to suffer, too, because my blog postery will likely diminish as I get more involved in this (assuming, that is, that I make it past day three, which I judge to be the biggest stumbling block of all, since by day three I'm really going to need a plot, and I don't really have one of those in mind just yet). But in the meantime, you can check on me here, and I can always use some encouragement, so feel free to drop me a line reinforcing your belief in my awesomeness.

And if I do puss out and don't finish, I'll let you know-- I'm not going to be one of those people who just poops out on something and never acknowledges it again (see: Swing State-- thanks for saving my ass there, Matt!). But hopefully I'll be able to pull it off-- and who knows, maybe I'll get back some of my writing mojo and get back in the groove for good. And if nothing else, all this typing will really limber up my fingers for Guitar Hero solos on hard.

Name this tune:

Okay. So there's this song that I hear maybe once a year-- always somewhere totally unacceptable to jump up and down in, let alone to start quizzing people about their musical knowledge. Like the grocery store, or a bar in Canada once (they frown on jumping in Canada). I have no idea what this song is, or who sings it, but I love it so much. But every time I try to get to the bottom of the situation, the same scenario plays out:

Me: Oh, my God! It's the Cut the Bone to Me song! Do you hear it?

Whoever I'm With: The what to what song?

Me: "Cut the bone to me! Cut the bone to me!" That's what he's saying in the chorus. I think?

WIW: That doesn't even make any sense. How do you cut a bone to someone?

Me: I guess I don't know.

WIW: That sounds dirty.

Me: For real, it's going to be over soon, just listen.

WIW: I don't even hear anything.

Me: It's on the PA system! Just listen! Shut your gob and listen for five seconds and then you will tell me who sings this song!

WIW: This song sucks.

Me: No, it does not! It is awesome and elusive, like a monarch butterfly or El Chupacabra!

WIW: Isn't this just "Collide" by Howie Day?

Me: NO, IT ISN'T EFFING "COLLIDE" BY HOWIE DAY! I WILL KILL YOU IF YOU DON'T TELL ME WHO SINGS THIS SONG RIGHT NOW! KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND!

WIW: I think it's over.

Me: Mother effer.

I had this exact conversation with Ben in the Chesterland Giant Eagle on Sunday, when the song emerged for its annual peek-a-boo while we were in the checkout line. I was actually on my way back to produce to buy some pepitas (which is apparently what you call pumpkin seeds when they are naked and shell-less), and I came careening back up to the front of the store when I heard it, only to be shut down again (but to be fair, Ben doesn't recognize any songs, including many beloved children's rhymes and also "Proud to Be an American" by Lee Greenwood).

So I beseech you, if you are aware of this song, please put me out of my misery and tell me what it is, so I can buy it, listen to it seven hundred times, and then never have to be driven half-mad by it again. Here's what I know about it:

1. The chorus at least sounds like the phrase "cut the bone to me, cut the bone to me," although that admittedly does sound really dirty

2. It does sound like Howie Day singing, but it's definitely not "Collide". Who else sings like Howie Day?

3. It came out no later than July 2005, because the first time I officially remember hearing it was at the aforementioned very calm bar in Canada, and that's the last time I ventured up north

Please help me! The "cut the bone to me" part will be in my head for at least the next six weeks if no one can come up with the name...

Give us your sick

I have been trying, unsuccessfully, to get sick for the last three or four months. My reasoning is simple: I want a day off work. But there is some sort of compulsion inside me that will not allow me to take a day off for no reason (and sadly, playing Rock Band in my underpants all day while Ben is at work apparently does not qualify as a "reason" in my muddled chain of thought), and so my only option is to become sick-- not death flu sick, but just sick enough to allow myself to remain on the couch all day, reading old Entertainment Weeklys and watching "A Real Chance at Love" on VH1.

But apparently, I have developed the immune system of some sort of invincible god, as nothing-- not hand-shaking, not standing too close to someone who is apparently about to cough up their liquefied innards, not glass-sharing with a confirmed tuberculosis sufferer-- can penetrate its defenses.

There are several explanations for this:

1. I am an invincible god!

2. It's the effing vitamins!

3. Too much salad?

But whatever the reason, it's keeping me from my end goal of lying about all day in a low-level state of crappiness. And this has to end, now, because I simply can't continue going to work and sitting among the throng of totally viral co-workers with their sneezing and their tissues and their raspy coughs without getting to experience any of the benefits!

So if you are sick right now, I ask that you please breathe into an envelope and mail it to me, stat. I promise you, if this works, I will thank you from the bottom of my achy, couch-supported, legally earned day off bones.

Words I have decided to use less often as a part of my lifestyle improvement program:

Awesome
Dude
Gay
Retarded
Janky
Douchebag
Fucking

I have not yet decided, however, what I will do if I encounter an fucking awesome gay retarded dude carrying a janky douchebag.

Catwoman Begins

My cat Mamie, perhaps sensing my impending transformation to Fit and Healthy Thirtysomething and fearing that my days of sloth-- and therefore my days of allowing her to lie on my chest for hours on end while I shovel fistfulls of Cheez-Its down my gullet-- are coming to a close, has decided to attempt to sabotage me the only way she knows how-- by peeing on everything.

I take that back-- she has, in the past, broken out what must be considered the Fat Man and Little Boy of the cat arsenal, the Giant Flying Boogery Ear Stink, which afflicted her for about a year in Wilmington. While a successful surgery was performed to eliminate this scourge on my personal life ("Hey, want to come over and sit on my furniture, which is covered with gelatinous wads of goo that smell like a homeless man's belly button?"), I think Mamie sort of realized that with great suffering came great amounts of petting, and filed that away in her brain.

And I have to say, the Random Pee Bomb is nearly as effective as the Boogery Ear Stink-- it certainly smells worse, although this time Mamie has been civil enough to contain the battle to the basement, specifically to a woven rug that Ben put under the laundry table. And since it's so centrally located, it doesn't have the visual wallop of the B.E.S., which could be flung in a six foot arc in any direction (which was really, really hard to explain to my landlord upon relocating). But the R.P.B. is more of a psychological weapon-- every whiff penetrates straight into your brain with the ominous message "Say goodbye to your friends, kemosabe. You're the cat lady now."

Especially horrifying about this is that the woman who lived in our house before us was a cat lady; according to our neighbor Frank, who somehow knows everything about everyone in our neighborhood, there were, at one time, thirteen cats living in our house. Some might say that this could be the cause of Mamie's problems-- that she's simply retaliating against the ghosts of Pee Bombs past.

But I have a more terrifying theory: what if the house makes you a cat lady? What if, when she moved in, the old owner was a young, vibrant, vitamin-taking hipster? And the the house mugged her with its cat ladyness, and all the sudden her clothes all had a vague funk and she wanted to prop cross stitched pillows on every available surface?

If this happens to me, consider this my will. You will know what has become of me. And do not destroy Mamie-- she's but a mindless pawn in the house's deadly game. But I beseech you, please, before anyone comes over to mourn me as I stare at them from behind bifocals and a fur-smeared, teddy-bear appliqued sweatshirt with mock turtleneck underneath, please at least destink my basement. And scan it for signs of Boogery Ear Stink. Just in case.

A million strong and growing

As part of my new Stop Getting Old and Fat at an Alarming Rate routine, I've begun taking vitamins every day-- specifically, a B vitamin in the morning (for energy), a multi-vitamin at mid-day and calcium at night, so I don't end up like Sally Field in my early sixties, vaguely famous and hawking Boniva. Because vitamins are so widely praised, I figured I would immediately become invincible and probably be able to see through walls.

Sadly, though, all they've really done thus far is turn my pee a brilliant chartreuse color (which is interesting, because the ONLY thing I remember about health class in high school? Is the health teacher, a Russian-looking, perm-wearing man-woman, telling us that vitamins were just "expensive pee," because anyone who was living a decent life was getting all the vitamins they needed from their food. I remember this pronouncement coming on the same day that we watched the slides of people with diseased privates on a screen in the home-ec room, but I don't really see how those two topics could be related). While the neon pee is certainly interesting, I'm feeling a little let down by the whole vitamin industry-- was I really getting enough vitamins through my food after all? Are there that many vitamins in a plain Burger King hamburger?

Maybe it's too late for the whole vitamin scene. I'm aging at a rapid and disconcerting pace, despite my latest attempts to camouflage it with bold eye makeup (note: people with poop brown eyes? Aren't really good candidates for bold eye makeup), and there might be nothing I can do about it. The fact of the matter is, soon I will be thirty, at which point the people on my street will stop categorizing me as young, which means I'll probably lose the privilege of letting my dog poop wherever I want in their front yards.

I guess I thought the vitamins would counteract this somehow, and I would wake up young-looking and scary toned, like Madonna (who clearly got where she is today because of Target brand multi-vitamins). But I'm getting puffier and wrinklier by the day, with no possible recourse but to embrace it and start shopping in the Cherokee section at Target.

I don't think I'm going to stop taking the vitamins, though. The freaky pee is like a portable version of a laser light show.

Because being friends in real life is simply not enough...

...come be my Facebook friend! Because never looking at my MySpace page was getting to be too much work.

Seriously, though, I've only been on it for a few minutes, but it seems weirdly... fun? Whereas MySpace made me feel old and dried up inside.

So anyway, search me on there and let's buddy up! And if you're not on there, you should join. Every second you don't join is a second that a kitten's cries pierce the night on a sludgy moonlit river bank.

(Look, people pressured me into joining, and I'm here to do you the same kindness. So DO IT!)

Gateway to Fame

This is my very first blog post from my brand new Gateway computer, which I just assembled (myself! Because I'm a can-do kind of gal) and which, for the first time ever in my long and storied history of hooking up computers (as opposed to hooking up with computers, which would be weird and sort of dirty) had Internet access immediately upon start-up. Normally, I have to fist fight the computer to make this happen, or perform a series of tasks like building a small fire in my living room and burning one of my favorite stuffed animals as a sacrifice.

And I have to tell you, I have high hopes for this computer. Because I have decided to pretend that the only reason I have not written the great American essay collection since leaving grad school is because of my old laptop, which I was given by my parents upon graduation. I never really got used to writing on the laptop, and therefore used it pretty much for listening to music and playing ridiculous amounts of Tumble Bees.

But things are different now. Now, I've got the whole desktop thing going on (with a stupidly large flat screen monitor in HD, which seems sort of unneccessary when typing out blog posts that are rapidly turning out to be mundane), with the keyboard where it should be and the mouse and the speakers and the whatnot.

Point is, I now officially have no excuse not to write. So please, if I haven't pumped something out by Christmas, someone come after me. Because this computer is too nice to waste on Tumble Bees.

Farewell, sweet Pentium

Just to explain the bitter, nuke-u-lar winter type silence that has fallen over my blog of late-- this past Monday, around one in the morning, my computer began making a sort of wheezing noise that I normally associate with our dog when it has a particularly vigorous booger infestation. So I got out of bed and put it in sleep mode, and... and... it never woke up.

I've been futzing around with it for the last few days, trying to coax one more evening worth of life out of it before I consign myself to the bitter task of computer searching so that I can rescue my (you all must admit) insanely awesome collection of one-hit wonders from my hard drive so that they can live to craft another decade of mega CDs. (Because where, I ask you, where, am I going to get another copy of "Brand New Pair of Rollerskates" by Melanie Safka? Answer? Effing nowhere.) But I can't even get it to go into safe mode-- it just keeps taking me back to this scary black screen that looks vaguely DOS-y.

So anyway, until I get that situation resolved, my blog might be MIA-- again. Those of you who are particularly interested in seeing it up and running can feel free to send donations to my Pay Pal account, so that I can save up and get the super sweet computer that can burn pictures right onto the CDs I make. Because nothing accentuates a CD full of crap like an awesome picture of me making guns with my fingers!

Okay, for real...

...am I alone in my paralyzing fear of Sarah Palin?

This post might be more suited for Swing State, but since the venerable (and much more knowledgeable) Matt has taken over, I figure I'll leave the podium to him. But I have to tell you, I'm just a wee bit freaked out by what's going on in this country right now.

As many of you know, I'm freaked out easily, and by a lot of things-- bees, for one. Really freaked out by bees. And clowns. And the continued success of TV's Two and a Half Men. The price of gas-- Ashley in particular may remember one memorable phone conversation in which I completely melted down when gas hit $2 a gallon after Katrina ("What will we do? How will we get anywhere? We'll have to buy horses! Fucking horses!"). The threat of nuclear war-- thanks, 3rd grade gifted teacher who thought nine-year-olds could handle a viewing of The Day After!

Right now, for instance, I'm coming out of a fear-session based on the impending end of the world, thanks to my brush with the Mayans on my honeymoon last year, and heading into a full-blown panic over the possibility of an impending depression.

Let me just say this right now, for the record-- I don't fully understand what's going on with all this buying-out and subsidizing the government is doing. And I don't recommend that you try to explain it to me-- Ben has already done so, and I kind of glazed over and started thinking about what sorts of fabrics I had around the house that I could fashion into smocks if we were to go bankrupt. All I know is, I feel like we're about two steps away from being forced onto the dusty road with our collective retarded brothers, sleeping in barns and accidentally killing baby bunnies as we search desperately for food and work.

I guess I was just not mentally prepared for this as a kid-- I was led to believe that one day, I could ride around my house on a miniature train, like Ricky Shroeder in Silver Spoons. Which would be awesome, but is looking less and less feasible as I groan over my latest 401k statement. (Perhaps there's some sort of miniature transport train system fund I should be looking into). Now, instead of light-hearted comedies about rich children, TV keeps bombarding me with these scary commercials about how everyone should really, really buy a house-- please, please, PLEASE buy a house, the commercial says, or Realtors will have to start eating each other, and soon we'll all live in mud huts like the Slestaks from The Time Machine.

My biggest worry-- alert, by the way, because this is where I get dorkily patriotic-- is that America is declining at such a rapid rate that soon we won't be... well, what we once were. And I'm afraid we won't even notice it, because we'll be too busy watching the premiere of Dancing With the Stars.

Because I kind of feel like as a country, we just don't really care anymore-- I mean, we care about Heidi and Spencer, which is all fine and good if you like caring about attractive people who are famous for no reason. But I don't know, doesn't it seem like we should be doing something? I don't know what, because I'm not exactly the most visionary when it comes to change-- keep in mind that I wore my hair in a scary, poofed-out style for 21 years just because I was too lazy to figure out how to use gel in my hair. But something?

Powerless

Check it out-- Ben and I are two of the hundreds of thousands without power in Ohio! We knew we were in for it when we saw six guys out in the middle of the street cutting up a felled tree on our way home Sunday night.

"Do those guys work for the city or something?" Megan asked from the back seat.

"No, they're just, like, regular guys," I told her. "They're vigilantes."

"Really, really helpful vigilantes," she agreed.

Upon pulling into our freakishly darkened driveway, our neighbor Frank came running out with a lantern for us, simultaneously being helpful and rubbing in our face that he has a generator and we don't. And now, two nights later, Frank's generator continues to taunt us by allowing Frank to keep a full-on spotlight on the front of his house, which I basically use as ambient light to pee by (and then not flush the toilet, because our water pump is also electric).

I'm at work right now (obviously), and sort of dreading finding out if I'm spending night three with no power-- if I am, then I need to work out a way to make distilled water jug baths more pleasant. Because this shit is not pleasant.

And this article casts the ominous shadow of the fact that this might not be resolved until the weekend, which I find wholly unacceptable. I am, in fact, a huge proponent of power outages-- I pretty much love any event that causes your evening to not go the way you thought it was going to, like a forced adventure-- but I've kind of had enough adventure right now, and want a frozen pizza dinner, which I can eat while watching Intervention under a 100 watt bulb.

Before and After: Septic Edition

Our beautiful backyard before septic tank installation:


Our somewhat less beautiful backyard after septic tank installation:


Doesn't this seem like a lot-- a lot-- of devastation just so two people can take a shit that's up to code with the Geauga County health department?

So now Ben and I are trying to rake this mess out so we can spread grass seed before winter-- to be fair, this shot is obviously from before the project was fully complete, but there's still a lot of raking to be done. And it's not fun, cozy, "whee, I'm raking leaves so I can jump in them while wearing a cozy knit sweater!" raking. It's backbreaking Grapes of Wrath raking.

But still, nothing is without its upside. For instance:

1. We were able to use every dollar that the previous owners escrowed us for this illustrious project, thus ensuring that they would not get one cent of their bitterly complained over money back.

2. This project was chiefly overseen by an Amish guy, which allowed me to engage in one of my favorite pastimes, which happens to be gawking at the Amish.

3. Once we get the grass seed down and the hay spread, it will be technically impossible to rake when the leaves fall!

4. All this raking is making me buff and sexy, albeit in more of a female bodybuilder way than an Anna Kournikova way.

So thanks for the escrow money, former owners! Please take comfort in the fact that although your $17,000 is now firmly buried in our backyard, we can now crap without fear of reprisal from the local government.

Chesterland's Happy Ending

One of the first things I noticed upon moving to Chesterland is that there were a lot of spas. Like, a ridiculous number of them. Because after a day of shooting coyotes and burning large piles of rubbish in your backyard, who doesn't want a facial?

But one spa in particular, the Silver Spa, always stood out to me. It didn't look like much-- just a white house with a sign in front that said "All are welcome." About three minutes from my house, I drive by it constantly. But there was one thing that always bothered me about it.

"Why do you think that place is always open?" I'd ask Ben whenever we drove by. Because it was always open-- when I took the cat to the vet at seven a.m. on a Wednesday, when I drove to Drug Mart for a last-minute beer run at ten p.m. on a Sunday-- always.

"I don't think it is open," Ben would say. "I think they just don't turn off the sign."

"I think it's a whore house," I said.

And I was right!

Please feel free to congratulate me on my Columbo-like powers of deduction now.

Requiem for a Dying Computer

I came home to find the black screen of death on my computer today-- even more ominous than the blue screen of death, which at least has writing on it, the black screen just stares at you, a yawping maw of desolation and emptiness. "I ate your thesis," it says. "And all your pictures, and that live recording of Barenaked Ladies performing 'McDonald's Girl' that you worked so hard to find."

Luckily, Ben was able to resurrect the computer through a complex process of unplugging and plugging the power cord and hitting random buttons-- apparently, the escape key is now somehow imperative to the start-up of the computer for some reason, as is that weird Spanish squiggly button. But I know this laptop isn't long for this earth, so the time for harvesting its bounty has begun.

I actually discovered the black screen of death right before I had to drive to my parents' house to pick up a chainsaw, which isn't as interesting of a story as it sounds, so I'll omit it here. But on the way there, I found myself musing over what I really would have lost if I came back and the computer couldn't be saved. In the past, this concept has driven me to insane, panicky tears-- what if I never get to hear "Oh Sherry" again? But tonight, it didn't seem so bad.

After all, I did the smart thing and saved all my digital pictures to CDs the last time the black screen of death darkened my door, along with all my important word documents, including the fragments of the fabled John Boston Story, which is the worst novel ever written, and which I've been working on since I was thirteen, so at least that would be saved for the ages. And maybe it was time to admit that I never, ever wanted to hear "You Spin Me Right Round" ever again. I could rebuild my music collection, make it bigger, better, far less embarrassing ("Pray," by MC Hammer? Really?).

But thanks to the random button poking of my computer savvy husband, I have been given a second chance. Maybe now I can finally use this computer to write something of substance-- my entire thesis was actually composed on my old computer, and the John Boston story was from the computer before that. Maybe, in its dying days, this computer can become home to my masterpiece.

And then, just to be a dick, it will eat it.

I'm all that.

Today I found out that someone hates me.

This, in and of itself, does not really phase me; I have been the object of hatred from time to time, mainly because of my awesome good looks and obvious modesty. The actual problem I had was with the reason given for said hatred: apparently, I believe myself to be "all that."

This struck me as bizarre on many levels-- mainly, I was unaware that people were still considering themselves "all that," since that particular statement has gone the way of "talk to the hand" and my least favorite, "don't go there, girlfriend." (On a side note, please don't ever refer to me as "girlfriend;" I can be considered a girlfriend, as in "My girlfriend Kim thinks she's all that," but I do not accept being called "girlfriend" without a proper article attached. Perhaps this is one of the symptoms of considering oneself "all that.")

Secondly, as a person who pretty much made a career out of explaining my lameness and serious personality flaws to anyone who would listen, I resent being considered one who thinks of themselves as "all that." I'm kind of the opposite of all that-- I'm like the least threatening person on the face of the planet. I posed with a dead stuffed lion in my senior pictures! That is the exact antithesis of "all that"!

So please, if you must hate me (which you really shouldn't, because I'm totally really nice!), please don't do it because you think I think I'm "all that." If anything, hate me for my wicked Guitar Hero skills. Those really are all that.

Oh, grow up

Yesterday, at a cookout at my Aunt Emily's house, I caught myself being an adult.

Somewhere between discussing home decor with my cousin Jennifer and trying to determine if my new prescription for Flonase (to aid in my attempts to reduce my new, scary slack-jawed mouth breathing habit) was going to give me a nosebleed, I found myself sitting on the cement patio, watching my cousin Anthony's baby crawl around, saying "You know what's weird, is that we crawled around on this exact same patio when we were babies."

And it is weird-- not just because it's actually probably not a good idea to let babies crawl around on cement pads. It's because it's time. We're it. We're the new babymakers.

This is something that I just kind of assumed was not going to happen-- I figured Anthony, Jennifer and I would just continue to be relegated to the basement, play Root Beer Tapper on their Commodore 64 and do tumbling routines on that old piece of foam furniture that I discovered years later was actually universally described as a Flip and Fuck.

But then one year for Christmas I began receiving underwear (which I still stubbornly choose to call underpants in secret) in my Christmas stocking instead of My Little Pony accessories. This should have been a major hint at what was to come. The Grownupification of the Shable family children.

In what I choose now to view as a desperate attempt to stave off this process, and not so much a testament to my supremely annoying personality, I managed to hold out the longest, wearing my Simpsons t-shirts and watching professional wrestling far beyond what is actually socially acceptable. But now even I'm married, and one day in the not-too-distant future, an Oja baby will be scraping its not-yet-fully-formed kneecaps across that patio.

This doesn't mean I'm not looking forward to it by any means-- if Anthony's kids are any indication of how fun mine will be, it will definitely be a blast. But I'm going to ask Aunt Emily to hold off on the gifting of underpants for as long as she can, because the slow realization that I am, in fact, an adult, is sort of freaking me out in a way that makes me want to call Anthony and Jennifer and see if they want to play Scooby Doo one more time before we all have to get accountants and open mutual funds and worry about our lawns. I won't even fight to be Daphne, that's how serious I am about this whole endeavor.

I spotted this fake fingernail outside the women's restroom at work after lunch today. I wanted desperately to stop and take a picture of it, because it's not everyday you see an appendage, fake or otherwise, just lying on the floor somewhere, but I was with a bunch of girls from my department and didn't want to appear macabre.

So I had to launch a recon mission later in the day to return and capture it with my camera phone, which was harder than it seems, because our main reception area looks out on the bathrooms, which I imagine provides no end of enjoyment for our receptionist.

Disgustingly, but not surprisingly, the nail was still there-- I suppose no one wants the job of squatting down in front of the ladies' bathroom and, with their bare hands, picking up and discarding a Lee press-on. After loitering nonchalantly for a few moments as several people wandered through the entranceway, I was able to snap this stunner.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm so fascinated by the presence of this nail-- I suppose it has something to do with the questions it dregs up, namely:

1. Who still wears Lee press-on nails?

2. Who could lose one and not notice?

3. If they did notice, why did they not pick it up? It did, after all, come unstuck from their own hand, which means that they of all people should feel the obligation to pick up after themselves.

The real test will be to see if the nail is still there tomorrow morning (it was still present at 5:05, when I left this evening). If it's not, I'm going to pretend that our cleaning lady spotted it and, finding it chic, affixed it to her own pinkie, ensuring that her pimp hand would be strong.

The Very Hungry Kimmerpillar

In an effort to get back on track with my life after months of house-based neglect, I decided to go to my doctor and get a physical, because:

a) My body is a finely honed machine that needs maintenance like any other other superbly-crafted apparatus

b) Secretly, I constantly believe that I have contracted some sort of horrible disease, like typhoid fever or lupus

c) I've been having a lot of trouble breathing through my nose lately, which is turning me into a slack-jawed yokel.

So since I was going in for a battery of tests anyways, I figured it would be a good idea to have some bloodwork done to ensure that my cholesterol and sugar levels were okay (and that my blood had not been replaced with concentrated amounts of Hawaiian Punch, which would be disgusting, but tasty).

Blood work, of course, requires you to fast for twelve hours to ensure that your tests aren't tainted by any of the sugars or fats from food that you eat (and since my diet consists almost entirely of sugar and fat, this seemed especially important in my case). So while a normal human being would schedule their physical for eight in the morning, requiring very little actual fasting, I chose to go at 4:15 p.m.

Why? Partially because I wanted to be able to leave work early, because a little blood-letting is always preferable to suffering through late Monday afternoon at an insurance company. But partially, I imagine it was also because I enjoy constantly informing people of any agony I may be in, and fasting offers a multitude of opportunities to remind people that you haven't eaten in fourteen hours. You're going to Chipotle for lunch? Sorry, I can't-- I'm fasting.

You'll note that I never actually tell anyone why I'm fasting, thus giving off the false impression that I am on a hunger strike for the people of Tibet. Not that I am particularly known for my symbolic acts of dissension, although I have successfully managed to never see an episode of Navy NCIS in protest of the fact that it stars my arch nemesis, Mark Harmon.

Ultimately, though, the fasting was less impressive to my co-workers and more of just a giant pain in the ass for me, as I apparently require food every thirty-seven minutes in order to remain functional, like a rusted-out car with a gas leak. At one point I attempted to fill my stomach with water in an effort to feel full, but this merely resulted in me being really, really cold and full of pee. I also worry that I might have incurred a mild case of water intoxication, as I have never really found auditing so funny before.

But I persevered and made it through to the blood-letting, after which I crammed my face full of crackers to hold me over until I made it to McDonald's, where I ate enough food to tide the US ladies' gymnastics team over until the closing ceremonies. Full of chicken and soda and potato-esque product, I drove home, a crumb-covered testament to good health.

Dear Evil Cable Corporation,

First off, please just let me apologize for writing this on the back of a Burger King bag; I have been unable to order my favorite stationary for the last week or so, because our Internet is out, and I believe it to be all your fault.

Okay, maybe it was our fault at first. Maybe we spliced a cable we shouldn’t have in an effort to supply precious, life-giving cable television to another room of our house, so Ben would no longer be forced to sit through countless episodes of I Love Money on VHI. We did that, and then the Internet didn’t work. Okay. Our bad.

Then we had to call you for help, which really means talking to The Demonic Machine—one of those recorded ladies that asks you questions like “Did you turn off your computer?” and then, when you scream at her, “YES, I TURNED OFF THE FUCKING COMPUTER, YOU PRERECORDED RETARD!”, she says, “sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

And when we finally got to a real person, we were informed that no one was coming to fix the Internet until at least Saturday. Thus, an entire week passed with Ben and I falling further and further into Internet-deprived depression and despair, until finally our house was like the last few days in Lord of the Flies, with an old computer monitor stuck in our front yard with a crudely shaved stake.

But then—salvation! In the form of Randy, the Perfectly Acceptable Cable Repairman, who had the whole problem fixed within ten minutes, giving us a full day of glorious, glorious Internet access. Thank you, Randy! If you ever return to my home, you will be greeted at the door by several comely virgins, as a mere “thanks” can’t possibly explain our gratitude.

Sadly, though, it was not to be.

Yesterday evening, I returned to my computer after a long day of painting Ben’s basement office only to find the ominous absence of the “online” button from the front of the modem. No service!

And so I ask you, Evil Cable Corporation, what you intend to do to make this right. Merely fixing our Internet is no longer enough—I have spent so long without it that I have become feral, getting my gossip fix by following the exploits of Lucky on the back of my Lucky Charms box and crafting e-mails from leaves and twigs I find in my backyard. It may be too late for me—I might actually have to go back to living off the Internet grid, a terrifying prospect that I haven’t had to look in the face since 1996.

Look at me! I’m even having to blog from work. FROM WORK! Every blogger’s nightmare—what if the boss catches me? Or that weird coworker that always peers at my computer as if she’s trying to see into my soul? I cannot allow this to continue!

My first request is the hearts of each of your children brought to me on a platter made of the deeds to all your homes. I will stick a leaf in your mailbox once I have come up with a second request.

All best,
Kim

Blog, Interrupted

Just when I thought I was in, they pull me back out-- the internets are down at my house for the foreseeable future, and (other than this emergency posting), I don't like to blog at work. I'll be back as soon as I can, but to tide you over, here is a brief tidbit-- last night, I had a dream that I lived with Michael and LaToya Jackson, and LaToya had to drive me to work because I couldn't get my car to turn off, and I didn't want it to die in the work parking lot, and Michael was super mad that I had broken my car again.

Life with the Jacksons, man. It's wacky.

Whatever Works

One thing that you are told when you move: your catalogs are not coming with you. (So long, Crate and Barrel, Gump's and Victoria's Secret!) What you don't realize is that that means you inherit all the catalogs that the previous owners of your house had forfeited upon vacating (Hellooooo, Lillian Vernon!).

And apparently, the people who lived here before us accumulated quite a few mail-order friends during their 30+ years of living here-- about seventy percent of the mail we've received thus far has included glossy pages picturing birdbath cleansers, pet stairs and sassy fashions for voluptuous ladies. But my new favorite catalog of all time is one that arrived yesterday, called "Whatever Works: Garden - Home - Pest Control."

While it, too, included pet stairs (because you never want your pets feeling excluded from the events in your house that take place at a height of about two feet), it also featured a variety of items that I had no idea existed, and now cannot live without, including:

1. Onion Goggles-- safety eyewear for those who fall victim to the evil stink rays of the nefarious onion. For contact lens wearers only, apparently.

2. The Super Kegel (tm) Exerciser-- which is sort of gross? Because I thought this was a sex exercise? And I'm really disturbed, because I can't tell if we're looking at this lady's butt, or her front. But apparently, aside from giving you awesome sex skills, it also has the added benefit of improving your bladder control!

3. The Escape Hammer-- which I can't believe my dad doesn't know about, because as Safety Man, it makes no sense that he would have allowed me to go all these years without a method of breaking my car window from the inside should I be caught in quicksand or trapped with a really aggressive bee. I'm particularly enamored of the man in the illustration, who so calmly wields the hammer and uses its sharpened indentation to cut his seat belt, all while thrusting his cheekbones out.

I think my favorite thing in the world would be to encounter a situation in which all three of these implements was necessary at once-- your bladder's about to fail while trapped in a car full of half-cut onions.

SoLong TiVo

In an effort to conserve cash and not become the kinds of homeowners who live in one room of their home, spending their free time sewing sock monkeys and watching cassette tapes of The Mikado on their VCRs by the light of a single, unshaded lamp (as I actually did spend one harrowing month in Wilmington back in 2001), we have had to make some cuts, and sadly, TiVo found itself on the chopping block this week.

This was depressing to Ben and particularly to me, as I had developed an almost gross love for the machine itself, with its happy glowing be-legged television icon and its Wonka-esque booping noises. After a rocky start, in which TiVo became convinced that we were middle-aged black people who enjoyed reruns of Martin and Amen (where are they still showing Amen? Does anyone even remember this show besides me? And TiVo?), we have gotten along famously. By the end, TiVo had introduced us to some of our favorite friends-- Bill Kurtis of American Justice; the guy who does all the voice-overs for the various Battle Against Nature shows on the History Channel ("Chase doesn't know it yet, but this could be the very tree that kills him"); the plucky interventionists of Intervention (my favorite: the one who always tells the drug addicts that they have a family "that loves them like crazy").

But Evil Empire Cable offers a vaguely similar, sort-of adequate faux TiVo (FoVo) for ten dollars less a month, and for some reason, adding it to our list of services somehow lowered our cable bill, not even counting TiVo, by another fourteen, so we had to let it go.

Not, however, without a fight-- Ben did some of the most strenuous flirting I have ever witnessed with the TiVo representative in an attempt to get the far superior Two-Shows-at-Once TiVo receiver out of her-- our logic being that if TiVo could out perform FoVo, we could keep it. The exchange went something like this:

Ben: Hey, baby.

TiVo Rep: I hear you want to cancel your TiVo service? That makes me sad.

Ben: I don't want you to be sad, Sugar Tits. Daddy wants you to be happy. And you know how you could make Daddy happy? With the Two-Shows-at-Once TiVo.

TiVo Rep: Aw, baby, you know I can't just give away the Two-Vo.

Ben: For me you could. Because if you do, we could make sweet love all night long. And I'll even scratch your back after. Awww, yeah.

TiVo Rep: Your offer intrigues me, as I enjoy making sweet love with TiVo fans. Let me see what I can do.

But sadly, in the end she could do nothing for us, even after Ben promised to wash her car in the nude and buy her the rights to the photos of Brad and Angelina's newest babies. (At which point, he called her a Tease-Vo and hung up on her.) (Also, please note: this conversation may not have actually occurred in this way.) So our TiVo box moulders, unplugged and dusty, on a shelf in our basement, while FoVo usurps its glory and spits in our faces by recording the same episode of Intervention four times for no reason. I loved the episode like crazy, but still.

Shaby's back-- back again

I. Am. Officially. Back.

Because as you may have noticed? I've kind of been maybe? A bad blog owner. Not just in my lack of postings, but rather in the quality of the postings that have gone up in the last, oh, say, year. Or so.

But get this-- I'm married. I did it. We bought a house. We did it. And until I have a baby, I can officially go back to being a normal human being. Of outrageously awesome hilariousness.

Throughout this whole getting married, buying a house process, I found myself really wanting to post on my blog, but not really having anything interesting to say. I contemplated deleting it, and just succumbing altogether to my life of audit manager-ness. But I could never bring myself to do it-- my blog is as close as I come-- right now, anyway-- to being an actual writer, as opposed to a relatively funny but mostly indistinguishable insurance drone.

That guy at work, that always tells the jokes, that comes to your cube and then won't leave and you kind of want to kill yourself? I was becoming that guy.

So once the move was complete, I decided-- the blog was back in action. And as evidenced by my severely awesome new background, you can see I totally mean business.

Since readership has dwindled to pretty much Ashley, Alan and my Aunt Kathy (hi, Aunt Kathy!), I realize I'll have to work pretty hard to regain your interest. But please, give me a chance-- I promise not to disappoint. And if I do disappoint? I promise to turn in my MFA and start studying for my CPCU (which, for those of you who don't know, is an insurance designation-- which means I just made an insurance joke, which means I have to go kill myself now, if you'll excuse me).

So please, if I promise not to talk about getting married, or buying a house, ever again? Will you please read this? Because I'm totally all about talking about anything but that, and if you're into it, too, you will be granted one ticket onto Battleship Awesome. For reals.

Ojas Versus Euclid: The Score So Far

Euclid:

1. Brown-out (one point)
2. Water stoppage (one point)
3. Garmin stolen (five points)
4. Recent citation demanding that we cut our grass, or pay a $150 fine (one point)
5. Sudden appearance of new crazy man named Pete living down the street who won't stop talking to me when I walk the dog (one point)

Total: Nine points

Ojas:

1. Acquired new Garmin, which will be carefully hidden, more than likely in one of my bodily cavities, until we have officially vacated the premises (one point)
2. Kim's Euclid city tax bill was inexplicably only $9.06 (one point)
3. Moved to a much nicer community with no grass-mowing related laws, where Garmin will remain safe forever (one bazillion points)

Total: One bazillion and two points

So HA! In your FACE, Euclid! You have been powned by our superior level of awesomeness

And don't forget...

...there are still six minutes left in Ashley's birthday, so wish her a happy one!

Happy birthday, man! I love you!

Casa De Los Ojas

...if this were the 1800s, and I were a man, I would be able to vote, because I am now a property owner! (And so is Ben. So I guess he WOULD be able to vote. Lame.)


Check out more pictures at our Snapfish site-- Snapfish gets no end of plugs from me, so some free pictures would be nice (ahem). We're in the process of moving in right now, so I may be gone again for awhile, but once we're in for good, I'll be back to blogging, so please don't leave, because without your comments, I die. Literally.

Clearly, God is angry that I haven't left Euclid yet-- ever since we started Operation: Get Out of Dodge, He has been inflicting us with a multitude of plagues, including the theft of my beloved Garmin (still pissed about that, by the way-- I've been wanting to drive by my new house all week, and without Garmin, I am incapable of finding my way there-- screw Mapquest, I'm done with that garbage!). Recently He decided to up the ante with a brownout, and tonight, I am without water due to a massive water main break about five houses down from mine-- a different water main, mind you, than the one that exploded on my street last year. Why are there two water mains on my street? Because Euclid sucks. That's why.

Even more distressingly, I was in the middle of a crucial load of laundry when the water was shut off, so now my outfits for this week are wet and soapy and no doubt forming some sort of crud crust down in my stinky filthhole of a basement. So now I have to break into my junior varsity clothes, which include a lot of polo shirts and ridiculously cuffed jean capris.

And more distressing still was the fact that I spent the whole day cleaning the house, and so was a disgusting smelly wreck-- "this is okay," I thought, "because once the house is clean I will shower and be a fresh morning lily!" Not so! Filthed up and sticky with cleaning residue, I drove the forty minutes to my parents' house, showered, and drove back, thus killing the evening I had planned to spend watching The Nanny Diaries, which I will most certainly not be allowed to watch once Ben is back in town.

So at least now I'm clean, and I have a gallon of water for teeth-brushing and hair-refreshing in the morning, should water not be restored. And I'm doing my best to avoid the inevitable situation that will develop when I need to use the bathroom. I think I can hold it for the next twelve hours, until I get to work. Right?

Robbed!

Dear Asshole That Stole My Garmin,

You're really lucky you got that when you did, because I'm about to move away. So I hope you enjoy the drugs that its pawning afforded you, unless you're actually using it to plot routes to some other, unrelated drug score, in which case I hope you enjoy the pleasant Englishman voice I programmed into it for you.

I do appreciate that you didn't take my CDs, and also that you very gently shut the car door so that I wouldn't wake up to a dead battery. That was really nice of you, really.

Since I will be leaving town in a few short weeks here, I would appreciate it if you didn't come back and try to take any of our other shit, although I imagine that I will likely spend most of my remaining evenings here hiding in the bed of Ben's truck with a baseball bat. You know, just in case.

In conclusion, I hate Euclid, and I hate you, and I hope your face is eaten off by vicious dogs (which are also abundant in this neighborhood, just to warn you). I would also like to give a special shout-out to the Euclid Police Department, who always stop patrolling our street as soon as school lets out (which would explain why we were robbed DURING THIS EXACT SAME MONTH two years ago).

All best,
Kim

The most heinous woman EVER

Today, driving home from work, Jeni, Erin and I encountered a woman driving a Rav-4 who was somehow driving, smoking a cigarette and PLUCKING HER MUSTACHE, all at the same time. It was both the most freakishly hideous display I had ever seen, and also one of the most deft.

Psych!

In an effort to thoroughly confuse everyone we know, we are currently in negotiations to buy that same house again. Yes, the exact same one. Because we are lazy, and looking for other houses is just too hard.

(Note: not really. Really, it's because I was so mad that we didn't get that house the first time that I had several satisfying dreams about burning it down, just so no one else could have it. So if dreams of arson aren't enough proof as to how bad I wanted that house, then you know what? I don't know what would be.)

This time around, negotiations seem to be going a lot more smoothly-- thus far, no one has threatened to auction the house off, and the new bank that we're working with actually returns our phone calls, which is an exceptional service that I feel more banks should provide.

I realize that I'm probably jinxing the entire thing by telling all of you about it-- I mean, I don't want to cast blame on any of you, but all I know is, I told you about the house, and then it fell through. So don't blow it for me this time, okay?

Hey, um, never mind

We ended up walking away from the house-- I think it was when they threatened to just put it up for auction even though we had a contract signed that really did me in. All in all, this all went quite possibly as badly as it could possibly have gone, short of the ghoulish corpses of Indian burial ground zombies rising from the earth, coated in shit from the bad septic system, to ensnare us and drag us back into their hellish abode.

Anyway. I'll tell you more about it when my eyes aren't so puffy, or my contacts seared to my eyelids. In the meantime, if you know of any houses for sale in the area with no fucking septic system, please call me. We're interested.

Indeed: Movin' on up!

We got the house! Pending inspections, mortgage applications, etc., that mo-fo is OURS. I'm still trying not get too excited, in case things still fall through, but secretly I'm redecorating the whole place in bold blues and greens in my head.

And also? Ben's going to be out of town when the house goes into escrow, so I might get to have power of attorney. Which means I'll have a superpower of sorts. Rad.

Movin' On Up?

Ben and I just put in a bid on a house in Chesterland this morning-- I don't want to say too much, because I don't want to jinx it, and also talking about it makes me want to throw up. But wish us luck!

Much Ado About Matts

While I am out gadding about in a world of non-creative endeavors (although I DID just beat Slash on Hard at Guitar Hero last night-- on the first try!), please take a moment to honor two of my friends and fellow bloggers, who have made great strides in balancing out my current lameness in the cosmic scheme of things:

Matt Tullis, a fellow MFA from the Wilmington brood, has been appointed to a full-time position teaching journalism and overseeing the Collegian at our alma mater, Ashland University. In his new role, he will get to spend a great deal of time hanging out with our shared mentor and totally all-around awesome guy, Joe Mackall, which makes me supremely jealous. However, since Matt was the one who first gave me a chance to strut my stuff on the comedy column state when he gave me my first column in the Collegian back in 1998, I think I can let the jealousy slide, because I know what a kick-ass job he will do, and what kind of life he can bring back to the campus paper. (And if the Collegian ever needs a guest columnist, you know where to find me. Ahem.)

Matt Rowe, meanwhile, has continued to bring it hardcore to Swing State, and has exciting news for all y'all-- he will be on the ballot at the Virginia 1st District convention to be a national convention alternate. The election is May 17, so keep an eye on Swing State to follow him through the process and see if someone we know will actually be on the floor at the DNC. Also, if you're attending this convention, vote for Matt. Or suffer the consequences. (Note: there are no actual consequences. But I will be really, really mad at you.)

You must know...

That I am about to crap my pants over this:


It comes out June 3. Don't bother calling my house for a few days.

A new and better me

About once every four years, I am struck by a strong Self Improvement urge that I am powerless against, and must act on, even if it causes me to do insanely retarded things in the name of a new and better me. These bouts are usually preceded by a longish period of depression, which causes me to stay in, eat copious amounts of microwave pizza, and cry at game shows, such as the time I wept openly for nearly an hour when the Rodriguez family won the big prize at the end of Family Feud. It was only once I realized that the $10,000 prize would have to be split between the five of them, and that after taxes each one would only receive roughly $1,000, that I managed to calm myself down.

After awhile, being depressed gets boring and I get fat after months of bizarre eating sprees that involve crafting the Perfect Fast Food Meal (Burger King hamburger, McDonald's fries, Arby's Jamoca shake, Pizza Hut breadsticks), and that's when the Self Improvement urge strikes. It usually begins when a certain piece of music, one that I have never had much interest in before, suddenly seems to have been written just for me, such as Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler," or James Taylor's "Steamroller."

It's usually a pretty lame song.

Anyway, it's about at this time that I am compelled by forces larger than myself to buy a new notebook, usually orange, that I intend to fill with notes on how to find myself and become happy with the New Me. In the past, this notebook has been decoupaged with inspirational sayings cut from magazines; now I tend towards a minimalist look, with maybe just a sticker to cover the Five Star brand name.

No matter what the intention, the notebook is inevitably half-filled with hilarious screeds against the things and people that I find annoying. In the past, the notebooks have featured such targets as my old school counselor Etta, the country of Australia, every boy I ever liked that didn't like me back, and music snobs.

I also become compelled to read books that I would normally classify as SUPER LAME (the most notable example: Women Who Run With the Wolves. I spent a great amount of time underlining the passages that were about me, which were all of them, until I suddenly realized how totally queer I was and stopped). I listen to my lame empowerment song and make my Better Me lists and read my self-help books and become insufferable until I finally realize that I am once again acting like a dorkwad and shake it off.

I only tell you all of this because I am about to enter one of those phases right now, and I can't stop it from happening. I'm like Bruce Banner, turning into the Hulk, except instead of being green and super strong, I want to talk about my feelings in a totally earnest, non-sarcastic way.

I already have my orange Five Star notebook (although it is currently blank), and my empowerment song is Poison's "Nothing But a Good Time," which I blare pretty much incessantly throughout the day. I have yet to find my upsettingly lame self-help book, but I imagine that's coming down the pike here shortly.

One of the things on my mental New and Better Me list (which will be rendered real only when it is entered into the Orange Notebook of Enlightenment) is to blog more, and not worry so much about upsetting people with my posts (in other words, I have decided to use the word "retarded" a lot more). So I apologize now if I come on here and explain how I have a lot to learn from the gentle manatee, that does not hold its anger in but rather releases it peacefully to be lost in the vastness of mother ocean.

If that does happen, please don't stop reading. Because another one of my Better Me goals is to rebuild my self-esteem, and losing readers by the boatload is not going to help.