Like the lil elephant says, “I always thought Democrats were the big spenders!” The rhetoric just doesn’t match the record.
But let’s talk taxes. The Tax Policy Institute has a pretty good explanation of what each candidate proposes HERE. Take from it what you will…some say the economy is best served when the highest earners get a bigger break, some think it’s best to “spread the wealth.”
Thanks to Viagra, and a lack of sexual education, Florida’s retirement communities are replacing pinochle with pennicilin. According to this news story, patients at one Florida senior community are being diagnosed with herpes and HPV at alarming rates.
“Yeah, they are very shocked (to hear the diagnosis),” gynecologist Dr. Colleen McQuade said. “I had a patient in her 80s.”
I hope I’m gettin’ some when I’m in my 80′s…sure beats Bingo. But here’s the lesson, kids. You’re never too old to practice safe sex.
Am I alone in liking to take a peek at other people’s homes? Maybe it’s an occupational hazard, but I love home tours, open houses, magazine spreads, and anything else that lets me see how other people live. And the blogosphere has been quite helpful in getting me my daily dose of other people’s abodes. When I want to see incredible houses that I could never afford (or, in some cases, wouldn’t take if you paid me), I hop over to the RealEstalker, who gets all the dish on high priced celebrity properties, sometimes including floorplans for me to drool over. Alan thought I was a bit strange for looking forward to seeing his bathroom renovation unfold. But Red really inspired this post with a cool meme she posted. I’m not brave enough to post photos of my own house per the rules of her meme, because you aren’t allowed to clean first.
So, begging her forgiveness, I’m starting my own–the Blogosphere Home Tour. I won’t tag anyone to do it, but I hope several of you will. No real rules–just post up pics of your place and tell us why it feels like home to you. Link back to me so I know to come check you out! And, good sport that I am, I’ll go first.
First up, my master bath. The subject of a light remodel earlier this year. The builder-original vinyl floor and white walls were replaced with travertine, nicer trimwork, and new paint:
Next up, the dining room. Like most dining rooms, it gets used once a month…but my $50 chairs, moving- sale table, and bargain artwork make it a nice little spot to eat a TV dinner:
Around the corner, the living room. Home of the freeby sofa, the finish-it-yourself tables, and the armoire I got in trade for doing a small job:
And we’ll end our tour where I end my days, the master bedroom, which doesn’t quite look like this anymore because I have since gotten different bedding. (Though looking at this picture, maybe I like it better before…hmmm…some redecorating might be in order):
Now, bear in mind these are the good rooms that are photographed “just so”. What I won’t show you is the rooms that are still builder white with three dollar light fixtures in ‘em, or the baskets of laundry, stacks of papers, and piles of shoes that you would see were you to stop by.
So, let the Blogosphere Home Tour continue–who’s next?
1. The lady at the convenience store was looking out for me the other morning. I was hungry, in a rush, and only had a buck and change on me. So I ran in and got myself a pack of raspberry Zingers. The elderly lady at the counter said “Is this your breakfast?” I replied that it was. “That’s awful!” she said, with a disapproving look….”But I guess it’s got coconut on it, so at least you’re gettin’ a helpin’ of fruit.” Coconut counts as a fruit? I’m not so sure, but at least she was looking after my health. As I walked out, she followed me and lit up a cigarette.
2. I was in Philadelphia for a wedding this weekend, and I tell ya, I could NOT drive in a big city. The honking, the traffic, the weaving in and out. I’d have to be on nerve pills just to take a taxi more than once a week. And you see cars parallel parked literally with their bumpers touching…I’d get in that situation ONCE and my car would just be trapped there until it rusted away, because I could NOT get out of a space like that.
3. A group of us in Philly converged on the Macy’s…and when I stepped off the elevator, I had the oddest sense of de ja vu. The store’s soaring atrium seemed so familiar…as I rode back down the elevator, I asked an employee if the store had been used in a movie or something. “Sure was!” he replied:
4. Just about a week to go before this damned election is over. That’s the point of this morning’s lil’ poster. Get the facts and go vote!
5. A little Halloween joke for ya:
A cabbie picks up a Nun.
She gets into the cab, and notices that the VERY handsome cab driver won’t stop staring at her.
She asks him why he is staring.
He replies:
“I have a question to ask you but I don’t want to offend you.”
She answers,
“My son, you cannot offend me. When you’re as old as I am
and have been a nun as long as I have, you get a chance to see and
hear just about everything. I’m sure that there’s nothing you could
say or ask that I would find offensive.”
“Well, I’ve always had a fantasy to have a nun kiss me.”
She responds,
“Well, let’s see what we can do about that: #1, you have
to be single and #2, you must be Catholic.”
The cab driver is very excited and says,
“Yes, I’m single and Catholic!”
“OK” the nun says. “Pull into the next alley.”
The nun fulfills his fantasy, with a kiss that would make a hooker blush.
But when they get back on the road, the cab driver starts crying.
“My dear child,” says the nun, “why are you crying?”
“Forgive me but I’ve sinned. I lied and I must confess, I’m married and I’m Jewish.”
The nun says, “That’s OK.
My name is Kevin and I’m going to a Halloween party.”
October 10th was a sad day. It was then that MillerCoors stopped bottling Zima. Actually, I thought they must have stopped making it years ago because I couldn’t tell you the last time I saw a bottle of it. But, oh the memories I have of Zima.
Christened a “queer beer” by my contemporaries, and perhaps rightfully so–as the first time I can ever recall going to a gay bar, it was as prolific there as sequins on a drag queen. I prefer to think of it as a run of the mill girly drink, something akin to Bartles and James wine coolers. It tasted like a heavy, alcoholic Sprite, and the thing to do was drop a Jolly Rancher into the bottle for added color and flavor. In the days before I could handle my liquor or afford a decent bottle of Pinot, actually, in the days before I could even legally purchase anything alcoholic, Zima was, for a short time, my drink of choice. Fairly cheap, palitable to a naive tongue, and in a cool looking bottle that made it seem more chic than Boone’s Farm, the first several times I got drunk were probably on Zima. (Save for one night of Rum and Cokes that ended with me on a trampoline at 3 AM).
Let’s step into the Vinyl Villager’s wayback machine and go back to my senior year in high school. My friend Snaggletooth’s parents (not his real name, but appropriate since he had some seriously amateur looking caps done) had a lake house. Adults hear “lake house” and imagine a respite from the everyday stresses where work, bills, and the performance of one’s 401k can be forgotten. High school students hear “lake house” and imagine a parent-less place where all rules and curfews can be forgotten.
We had a day off from school…I can’t recall if it was Martin Luther King Day, Columbus Day, or what–but it was one of those bank kinds of holidays. So four of us, in our infinite wisdom, decided to go get plastered at Snaggletooth’s lake house. After somehow convincing the mother of a classmate none of us were friends with to buy us a case of Zima, we set off for the lake.
Now, before I go any further, I should introduce and give a little background information on the folks who were part of this evening of debauchery.
There was me of course. I’d had the good sense to advise my mother that I would not be home that evening. There was J, who had always been a good girl who did what her parents expected. For whatever reason she hadn’t prepared her parents for the possibility that she would be out all night. There was S, who has appeared in several of my stories of childhood mischief. In high school, S drove a big old two-tone green Ford LTD and that night his mother thought he was staying at MY house. And there was Snaggletooth, who shared the lakehouse and a place in town with his elderly parents and an equally snaggletoothed dog that was about as old as we were. These are all important facts for later.
So, at the lakehouse we quickly innebriated ourselves on the feloniously obtained Zima. We splashed in the hot tub until our hair froze, played music too loud, and generally had a good time. At some point around midnight, J realized she was not getting home that night, and went inside to call her parents.
“You all be real quiet…” she warned, “I’m gonna call mom and dad.” She went inside, locking the screened door that separated the hottub patio from the living room. An eternity later, or–in drunk time, thirty seconds, I had to pee. I hopped out of the hot tub and pounded on the metal screen door to be let in. J shot an icy look and pointed to the phone in her hand.
“I gotta pee!” I said, in that loud, screaming whisper that drunks tend to use. She unlocked the door.
“Oh, the door was just locked…” she said into the phone. No doubt in answer to the question of “What the hell is going on there?” When I came back through from the bathroom all I heard was J shouting into the phone…”It’s a gated community and even if you could get in, you wouldn’t know which house I’m at!” She was in big trouble and her dad was threatening to go door to door to find her. I’m not sure what else was said, but at the end of the call, her dad was no longer threatening to search the lake, and she needed a drink to calm her nerves.
Soon, we all passed out. Snaggletooth and J in one bed, me in a basement bedroom, and S, fully clothed, in the middle of the living room floor. At some point in the middle of the night, the phone started ringing. Snaggletooth answered it, apparently it was S’s mom, who had pieced together in the wee hours, with help from my mom, where we were, and was NOT happy about it. Snaggletooth attempted to wake S, and when he had no luck, just left the phone lying beside of him. It rang again and again, until we were all awake except S. Finally, we roused him enough to take her call, and as she threatened to ground him and take his car keys, he shouted “Fine! Just take the big green thing and shove it up your ass!” and hung the phone up, passing back out on the living room floor.
Now, J and i had to be at work the next morning at 8AM…it was an ugly scene dragging ourselves out of there wearing the same clothes we had fallen asleep in. S was riding with us, and we were barely awake enough to note that HIS clothes were now in a pile in the floor, and he was wrapped in little more than a knitted afghan. It wasn’t until some time later that he confessed that, at some point in the night, he had stripped off his clothes and pissed himself in the middle of the living room carpet. It was, perhaps, a year before this tidbit was shared with Snaggletooth, whose mother had put his aged dog to sleep after walking into a piss-scented lake house and determining that the poor thing had become incontinent.
If only they’d stopped making Zima more than a decade ago, that poor pooch might still be alive.
There are some conversations that make for hilarious chatter over cocktails with close friends–sexual misadventures, celebrity crushes, horrible first dates. But what is good for a few laughs with friends is stomach turning, revolting, and downright creepy when being discussed with one’s mother. Such is the conversation I just had with MCM (my crazy mama) about anal sex. To call it a conversation isn’t fair, as it consisted solely of her prattling on while I got in a few distressed “yeah…uh huhs” before she finally broke to take a breath and allowed me a chance to fake an incoming call and hang up.
It started off with her ranting about how worthless her ex-husband turned sometime-live-in-boyfriend is.
“I told him he had to get a job. I’m not buttering his bread. He’s supposed to be buttering mine!”
“Yeah…”
“Unless he wants to be the woman. And I think maybe he does. I said some mean things to him. I told him I thought he got some dick in prison cause he walks funny.”
“Oh, does he?”‘
“Yeah he walks funny. And he tried to put it in my butt one time. And I told him, ‘oh, no sir, that’s an exit not an entrance.’ I pulled my vibrator out of the drawer and said ‘bend over and see if you can take it’. Yes, I did. He wouldn’t! But that’s the last time he tried that.”
“Uh-huh…”
“I mean, I’ve tried it before, but not with him. He was too rough. You’re supposed to use some KY Jelly or some Astroglide or something. But he just tried to put it in there, wasn’t gentle or nothing!”
“Oh God…”
“I tried it with Teddy is who it was. He was real gentle. He used Astroglide. I still didn’t like it, but at least I can say I tried it, right?”
“I’m getting another call…I better let you go.”
“Oh ok, honey. I love ya.”
AT LEAST I CAN SAY I TRIED IT??? Just as non-chalantly as if we were discussing a new restaurant that didn’t quite meet with her approval. I present this tale as a public service message. When your own family is driving you nuts…come back and read this. I bet you’ll feel better.
1. One of my earliest posts was about the navigation system in my car, and how I would rather have a more entertaining voice to guide me from place to place. While this won’t help me, since it’s only for Tom-Tom models, I may be one step closer to achieving that reality if NavTones keeps broadening their market. You can get Kim Catrall, Burt Reynolds, a granny, a cowboy, or a gay lover. If they get Wanda Sykes to work in my car, I’m in!
2. Well…she’s out. Mama left the loony bin last Thursday. She sounded more like herself, but her stay didn’t do a thing to help her make healthy decisions. She was calling from her ex-husband turned sometime live-in boyfriend’s place. Or, I should say, his PARENT’S place–yep, he’s in his 50′s and still lives with his mommy when he isn’t living with mine.
3. Politics is serious business…so lets have some fun with it. Click here to play Palin as President. (You can click on most of the objects in the oval office)
4. And in more fun political business…I guess by now everyone has seen McCain snatch the mic from an old geezer who insisted that Obama was an “Arab”. I thought it was very classy of him, and would love to see how he might react to this woman (thanks Jamie):
5. The past few days have seen COLD temperatures late at night and early in the morning. Perfect sleeping weather! I can not get outta bed. But it’s also the first time that I’ve had to experience cold mornings on the travertine floor that was installed in my master bath back in the spring. Talk about a wake up call.
6. We’re all stressed lately. (If you’re not, please let me know your secret). But this morning’s little poster reminds us not to take it all too seriously.
My old friend, the kidney stone, has come back to visit. It’s not the first time, but he always brings with him nauseating, take your breath away pain. Hopefully, it will pass on it’s own. I do not want to go through having one surgically removed again.
Of course, the pain sent me to the doctor, and as I’ve had a half dozen of the damned things, I know when I get one. That didn’t stop him from doing a urinalysis, xrays, and going through the usual routine of what I should and shouldn’t drink, what I should do, what I should look out for. I sat there thinking, “Doc…you’ve got my medical records there, don’t you see this is old hat for me?” I guess I should just be thankful I have a doctor who is thorough.
So, until this unwelcome guest leaves I’m on a diet of water and pain killers. At least I don’ t have to pee through a strainer this time.
I’ve long told stories about my crazy mom…if you’ve read any of them you’re probably convinced she’s a little nuts too…but now it’s official. She’s been admitted to the nut house.
Now, I don’t mean to make light of her situation–let me say that upfront. I don’t intend to poke fun at legitimate mental illness. I don’t even deny that she has a lot of things going on right now that make seeking professional help a not-so-bad idea.
A week or so ago, my sister’s headstone was set. It’s been eight months today since we lost her. The last time I was home, I tried to visit her grave and couldn’t find it. That’s a very odd feeling…walking aimlessly around the general area–hoping to see fresher grass, a funeral home marker, SOMETHING to let me know where she was. Then leaving, not knowing if I had walked right over top of her. Mom had a similar experience around the same time–had gone to visit the grave and couldn’t remember the names of those buried near her, so left not knowing if she had been to the right spot or not.
So, when I knew the stone was set, it was almost a sense of relief for me. I knew there was a place I could visit. Something that marked where she was…and in some way, that she had been here. Mom called, happy to report the stone was in place. I promised to have the florist put together something for the vase the next time I came home. The next day, mom reported making her own arrangement of “fall colors”, placing a teddy bear, a necklace, some sort of cross, and who knows what else on the gravesite. It sounded more like a yard sale than a memorial, but of course I left that to myself–and assured her that I would take care of getting a Christmas arrangement done for the holidays.
Around this time, and I honestly don’t know if it was before the stone was set or after…Mom reported visiting the cemetary (almost as common as “hello” in our conversations). It must have been late in the evening, because Mom reported being awakened after dark by a courtesy office patrolling the grounds who found her sleeping at my sister’s grave.
“I just felt like talking to her, and I sat down there and next thing I knew I had fallen asleep.” she explained. I started to suggest that she might not want to visit the grave as often, for her own sake, but realizing that it may well give her some sort of comfort, I kept that to myself.
Last week, Mom called in tears. Being at the cemetary, seeing my sister’s name in bronze, along with the dates she had been on this Earth, had brought the reality of the situation home to her. I imagine I may react similarly when I see it for the first time. I listened, cracked a few jokes, and by the time we hung up, I felt like I had cheered her up some. A few days later, I hadn’t heard from her, so called to check in, make sure she was doing ok.
I didn’t get an answer. Later, when I didn’t get the usual “I saw ya on the caller ID.” callback, I called my grandmother. She reported that mom was at the hospital…blood pressure through the roof. Granny went on to say that Mom hadn’t stopped crying since Sunday (this was Thursday). I called the hospital, got through to Mom’s room…she answered in tears. Between sobs, she said they were going to admit her to the mental health ward once her blood pressure was under control.
I would say that was good…but my fear is that they will just give her more medication, and 90 percent of her current problems are overmedication as it is. A fistful of vicodin, valium, and who knows what else is NOT the cure for everything, despite what her doctors seem to think. I’m hoping she gets a different sort of doctor this time.
1. Veep Candidate Sarah Palin tends to name her children unusual things. Let’s see there’s Relay, Roanoke, Geometry, Redwood, and Sunbiscuit. Or something like that. Now, some smart folks have come up with a Palin name generator. I’m Rock Crane Palin, a distant relative of the illustrious Paper Rock Scissors.
2. Might want to check your attitude before going out to eat…a tourist has been beaten to death by a gang of waiters for being “arrogant“.
3. I was out to dinner with a friend who had “Shazam” installed on his iPhone. As we were waiting on our table at P.F. Changs, a song came on and none of us could remember the name of it. He activated Shazam, held the iPhone up to “listen” to the crackly outdoor speaker, and seconds later it gave us the name and title of the song. Amazing stuff. I don’t know if it’s available for anything other than the iPhone, but if you ever get a chance to see it in use–do!
4. This morning’s motivational poster…it has a point, I promise–and it has nothing to do with giving head to fruit or practicing. It’s just that it looks like she is in my kitchen from college! Exact layout, cabinets, and appliances. I wonder if she was my neighbor?
5. I spent a lot of the weekend at my town’s annual fall festival–wherein about 40 local restaurants set up shop on Main street, offering appetizer-sized samples from their menu in exchange for tickets that can be purchased by the sheet for a few bucks. It’s a great way to try restaurants that I’d otherwise not be able to afford, would be too afraid to try, or would otherwise pass by. The best was a wonderful chicken and chorizo paella. Now, I’d never seen, heard of, or tasted paella before, but I will definitely try it anytime I see it on a menu now.
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