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.