The girls in my neighborhood are unacceptable.

Why, for instance, do the girls in my neighborhood travel in packs down the sidewalk in the dead of winter, talking so loudly that I can hear their entire conversation from a block away? Because you know what? I am not even slightly interested in what happened to Lakeisha in Mr. Palmer's third period today. But I know what happened. And it wasn't even interesting. Why talk so loudly about such boring things, Lakeisha? Perhaps, just perhaps, this is why Mr. Palmer has not taken a liking to you.

Also, why do I develop a paranoid fear of having to talk to these girls, to the point where I will yank my dog at a breakneck pace down an icy sidewalk for a whole block just to avoid having to interact with them? I don't have this problem with the boys in my neighborhood. Of course, the boys in my neighborhood, in general, are not interested in talking to a weirdly-dressed woman with a big, crazed dog.

(As a side note, I always feel poorly dressed when I'm walking the dog, mainly because of every episode of What Not to Wear, where Stacey and Clinton made it REAL OBVIOUS that they feel that you should still wear heels and an expensive scarf and a tightly tailored black blazer while walking the dog, even in the dead of winter.)

But I will totally go out of my way to avoid talking to the girls. One, because they talk too loudly, and I'm afraid if I'm right up next to them they might actually burst my eardrum. But two, because they scare the crap out of me.

I don't know if this is a leftover from middle school, where interactions with big groups of girls usually ended in tears, or what.

Point is, they are unacceptable. Or I'm unacceptable. Or something. I don't really know what the point is. I just got back from walking the dog, and ran into these girls, and now I'm in here, blogging. Quietly. Mr. Palmer would be proud.

Kimbo's Snowy New Year

I will be back tomorrow with more in-depth reporting on all things year-change related-- best and worst, my Probably Not Going to Happen resolutions, et cetera. But I thought I would help you ring in the new year with this exceptionally awesome shot of myself, after returning from a walk with the dog into a blizzard:




I am so super-hot.

Two ways to end a pity party

I was having one of those shitty days, which I have about once a month or so (or, for about a six-month period while I was in graduate school), during which I feel that no one likes me at all, and that my disappearance would have about as much effect on the world as the cancellation of "Family Matters" (which, I'm sure, at least a couple of you assumed was still on).

I don't really know what prompts these days, but I do know that a friend once told me (during my six-month bout with extreme self-perceived unpopularity) "If we were to organize a weekly 'We Love Kim Shable' party, you would wonder why we weren't throwing them twice weekly."

Rereading that, I don't know if I should have held on to that particular statement as long as I have.

All I know is, I was feeling totally unpopular and nobodyish, until I got home and two things happened:

1. My passport arrived two weeks earlier than the earliest they said it would. This makes me feel extremely important, as there are constantly stories on the news about people who applied for their passports in March and still don't have them. Of course, the ultimate irony in all this is that, since the time I ordered my passport back in May, Ben and I have changed our honeymoon plans to go to Mexico, for which I currently don't actually need a passport.

2. While walking the dog, Jeni and I saw a man in the street taking pictures of something with his cell phone. As we approached, we saw a gigantic black bird perched menacingly on the fence of the baseball field-- a buzzard, something I have never actually seen before in real life. We watched it for about five minutes, and were particularly enthralled when it hopped off the fence and began eating a dead squirrel in the road. Once we dropped Che off at the house, I ran back to try to take its picture, but it was already gone.

What does this mean? Is it a sign of some sort? A sign that I shouldn't be so down, because at least I get to sit on my couch eating Cheez-Its instead of scavenging for carrion? All I know is, it's a lot harder to feel bad about yourself when there's a three foot tall raptor hanging out outside your house.

Dear Shithead Neighbor,

First of all, the six flowering plants you have deposited haphazardly into the ground around your light pole do not constitute "a garden." And second of all, if my dog needs to poop two feet from them, and I am standing eight inches from her ass with a plastic baggie, ready to collect the damages, you do not have the right, as a decent person, to scream at me about how I need to "keep my filthy dog out of your garden, because that's what the tree lawn is for."

Obviously, you have never had a dog, and are not aware that they are not, in actuality, genetically programmed to shit on the tree lawn, and it is impossible to direct them to do so.

But aside from that, I am aghast at your inhumanity. What gives you the right to scream at me, in broad daylight, in front of other neighbors? I wasn't dancing on your "garden." We actually weren't even in your "garden." And may I remind you, I do not believe those plants constitute a fucking "garden!"

Does it honestly give you pleasure to make people like me feel bad about myself, and make me afraid to walk down your street again for fear of incurring your vengeful wrath? Once you got out of your iffy-looking pick-up truck, did you go inside and say to your husband (if he's even still with you, considering you probably berated him daily for not remembering to put his shoes back on his shoe tree) "I had quite the productive day, I went to the grocery store and then I made a nice-looking girl and her cute pet dog doubt their self-worth"?

Listen, I saw the sign on your lawn that says "Best Yard on the Street." I'm not quite certain if you made this sign yourself, or if some sort of pathetic block party committee gave it to you to shut you up for a few months so everyone else could enjoy their summer. But in my opinion, the Best Yard on the Street is not the one with the randomly sodded flowers, but the one in which people are not afraid to congregate, let their dogs and children run, and have a good time.

You probably don't have any children. And if you do, they probably left town right the fuck away.

Anyway, don't worry, Che and I won't be back to darken your "garden" again. Do not be surprised, however, to find that, in the middle of the night, your "garden" meets with an unfortunate accident. I'm just saying.

All best,

Kim

Could you hate this dog?

What's going on

Okay, so I know I haven't been the best blogger lately (although traffic on my site is way up, which I find both exciting and sort of creepy), but since it's Sunday, and I'm home alone and sitting on top of the washing machine, as is my custom, I thought I'd redeem myself with a short recount of my latest activities (or non-activities, as the case may be).

1. Remember a few weeks ago, when I was called for jury duty? And how I was totally panicked about having to drive downtown, and made Ben do like three trial runs with me to the courthouse, and became convinced that I was going to be gunned down by a rogue defendant, like I saw in this one episode of "American Justice"? And wept openly over it at work, because I was so freaked out that I would get called for some sort of OJ case, and be sequestered for months and months, and then everyone would expect me to write a book about it, only I was afraid the book would be totally boring and no one would buy it?

Anyway, if you can forget all that, I would appreciate it, because I never got summoned. I called the jury hotline today, and was thanked by a recording for completing my jury service. And I have to admit, I was totally bummed. Mainly because I had worked myself into such a retarded frenzy over it for no apparent reason, but then also because that meant that I myself would never actually get to appear on "American Justice," which (when not documenting cases of gunned down jurors) often features them as key performers.

2. On Friday, our dog pooped herself. This was not acceptable, as all of our furniture and carpets are white or beige. (Not that it would have been acceptable had the furniture all been brown, but I admit, it might have eased my worry a little.) Nine pre-wetted paper towels and a day-long confinement to the basement later, Che is now socially acceptable again, only now she has pronounced dingleberries, which makes me wonder if the people in the neighborhood think I'm a bad dog mom when we're out on walks.

3. Fed up with my horribly librarianish wardrobe, I went on a shopping spree and am now very fashionably dressed (except right now, with my unshaven legs and "What Up, Dog?" t-shirt, but I feel that I can afford to be poorly dressed in my own basement). My favorite purchase-- a pair of footless lime green tights, which I don't actually think I'll ever be able to bring myself to wear in public, but which are really fun to run around the house in.

4. Ben and I met with the florist and picked out our wedding flowers, which are totally awesome (my bouquet will have wheat in it!). I never thought I would be the kind of person who would care at all about flowers of any kind (other than a heartfelt hatred of carnations, especially in unnatural colors), but apparently, I do. Next weekend, we're meeting with our minister for our first marital counseling session, which will most likely reveal that I am tired of walking the dog all the time, Ben is tired of doing the dishes, and neither of us really wanted to go to premarital counseling in the first place.

So as you can see, I have been very, very busy

• worrying needlessly about things that didn't happen
• chasing the dog with scissors to remove the offending dingleberry
• running around in footless tights
• being wedding-y

I hope you will forgive my lapse of blog activity, and I do hereby solemnly swear to be a better blogger. Keep in mind that I could have posted dinglebery pictures, but I didn't, because I have that kind of restraint.

Dear Euclid Neighbors,

Why do you keep throwing rib bones into the grass around the school across the street from my house? Why? Why are you even eating so many ribs? I swear on all that is holy, I probably haven't eaten ribs in seven or eight years. Not one rib. And yet, somehow, you're all eating them like they're going out of style, and the unceremoniously throwing them into the lawn in front of the school (which means you also often eat outdoors, which is again weird, as I never actually see any of you eating outdoors, and I'm out there quite a bit. Are you throwing them from your car? Are you eating ribs in a moving car??).

Don't you understand that every time my dog finds one of these discarded rib bones, she has to pick it up and eat it-- I don't mean chew on it, I mean she eats the entire thing, and it makes sickening crunching noises, and I just can't stop thinking, my dog is eating something one of the neighbors already chewed on.

So please, please, please, please please stop doing it. There are enough obstacles on my morning walk-- renegade poo bombs, mysteriously dead-of-apparently-natural-causes squirrel carcasses in the middle of the sidewalk, kids who set fire to things in the school parking lot-- that I don't need your rib bones adding just that much more evil to my day.

Love,
Kim

Staredown

Having just encountered a strange guy in the stairwell on my sixth trip to the bathroom today (I have purposefully been chugging large amounts of water in an effort to take many bathroom trips and thus make the day go faster), I realized that I very rarely look people in the eye if I don’t really know them. I don’t know if this is like alpha dog—or, no, that’s not right, what’s less than alpha dog, beta dog?—behavior, because I know that, as the alpha dog, you’re always supposed to stare down your adversary in an effort to show dominance—but I totally can’t do it.

This once got me into trouble at the day spa, when one day I was feeling shifty and would not look my boss in the eye, and she called me on it. “Is something wrong? What aren’t you telling me? Why won’t you look me in the eye? Did you do something wrong?” Which I hadn’t, but as she began badgering me, I really couldn’t look her in the eye, which caused her to spend the rest of the day monitoring me with (from what I could see out of the corner of my eye) an extremely suspicious look on her face.

My favorite part of that story is that she asked me, “Did you do something wrong?” Which is totally what I ask the dog when I think she’s peed on the carpet.