Oct. 14: Voters’ Pamphlet thoughts

The voters’ pamphlet has arrived! I’ll admit, there are a lot of years that I toss it into the recycle bin without a second look. While I know that votes matter, even in the minor elections, and Oregon’s mail-in ballots could not make it any easier or more convenient, I tend to be one who saves my votes for the biggies. I know this is stupid and senseless.

This year we’re voting on semi-importanter things, so I plan to exercise my right. However, first I want to make fun of things, because making fun of things is fun!

• Did you know that the order of the candidates appearing on the ballot must be random? So says ORS 254.155. I became thoroughly familiar with a lot of Oregon statutes after writing bylaws for a nonprofit corporation, but I guess I passed right by the ones having to do with general elections. Who knew? (Probably Loveliest Lori. I bet she knew.) This year’s alphabet is OQCNMRDZTHPJAYVIKBUGSFLEWX, in case you were wondering. (What’s with the “bugs flew” in this alphabet? Hmmm.)
• The information candidates submit for the voters’ pamphlet is sometimes hilarious. The ones who have “the school of hard knocks” or “I’m not book smart, but I’m street smart” under “education”? That’s pretty much saying I’M NOT REAL SMART, BUT I’M PRETEND SMART. Seriously, don’t try to tell me whatever you did instead of going to college was just as educational; that’s probably not true and you probably know it. We need people representing us who know how to think. Am I education-ist? Yes. Proudly.
• Oh, and I’m also comma-ist. Why so few Oxford commas, people? Don’t you know why they’re so important?

• “Tootie,” really? The name of this local politician might never not make me laugh. ‘Course, we’ve had “Mitt,” “Tip,” “Newt,” and “Dick Armey,” so why not?
• US Rep, 3rd district, Pacific Green party candidate, this one’s for you (I don’t want to write your name on my blog). You have some good ideas, but I don’t think anyone will take you very seriously when it looks like your photo was taken under duress and by a police officer. Did you have no other options? Have you not heard of the SELFIE???
• I do not, and probably never will, understand how the phrases “right to bear arms,” “defending the family,” and “protecting our borders,” so frequently appear with “Christian.” And the justification of denying assistance to the needy? Gah.

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don’t want to do it. (Stephen Colbert)

• While the Constitution Party concerns me (because, y’know, see the quote above, and also, a party based on a group’s interpretation of their god’s word—yikes), I find the official political party statements fascinating. I mean, they all sound so righteous. I guess they should—you wouldn’t want to align yourself with a party that’s just “meh” about their platform—but it’s almost hilarious how most of them seem to have all the right answers, and they use all the “gotcha” words they know people react to. Nearly every one of the parties has at least one issue with which I agree, but being so firm in others makes me a whole lotta nervous. I want to believe there’s really not a chance of these smaller (read: kooky) parties to get anywhere, but it’s happened before. Yikes again.

• ARE YOU TOO DUMB TO VOTE? I chuckle reading some of the instructions to voters, especially the FAQs: “What if I change my mind after I have returned my ballot?” I want the job of whoever gets to answer that question because I bet it involves a lot of slapping. “Do I need to attach first-class postage to my ballot envelope if I return it to a drop site?” Really? I also enjoyed this instruction: “Some families like to make voting a communal event, but make sure the envelope you sign is your own, and doesn’t belong to some other family member. [Do not let] your spouse or child or parent sign your ballot envelope.” SMH.
• Here’s something I’m not making fun of: people working on making college more affordable. We’re way overdue on that. In fact, most of the measures that have to do with updating educational resources and buildings should pass without argument. They probably won’t, because voters are often jackasses, but they should.

The only state measures I still need to educate myself on are the ones having to do with open primaries (90), marijuana legalization/regulation (91), and food labeling (92). That’s when I’m glad to have the voter’s pamphlet. After that, it’s straight to the recycle bin.

DON’T FORGET TO VOTE! Unless you disagree with me, in which case DON’T TURN IN YOUR BALLOT BEFORE NOVEMBER 5.

Nov. 7: Parents and politics

Wow. Facebook sure was angry as the election results came in last night. I finally had to stop reading, not because of my frustration at people’s dissatisfaction with Obama being re-elected, but because of the ridiculous things they were saying—my brain couldn’t decide whether to laugh derisively or click “unfriend.” It took everything in me not to comment on these things:

Well, that’s it. In a month I won’t have a job anymore.

WHAT I WANTED TO SAY: Do you have a negative IQ? I mean, you don’t honestly believe that, do you? Do you really think that the results of this election will have an immediate and negative effect like that? Have you never lived through an election before? They really don’t change our day-to-day life that quickly.

I hate my country.

WHAT I WANTED TO SAY: Just because a few more than half the people in this country elected someone you hate doesn’t mean your country sucks; it means you live in America where we have the right to vote for our leaders.

(Hey, I was disgusted when Bush was re-elected in 2004. I know how you must feel, and yet... I believe the words you used back then were “democratic process!” I’m not even going to bring up the 2000 election—because if you think you’re angry now, just imagine all the people who thought that election was stolen!)

In other words, shut up. Just… shut up.

I will not support this administration.

WHAT I WANTED TO SAY: That’s just fine. You don’t have to agree with how the country is being led, but what kind of good will come from bitching about it for the next four years? None. Don’t get me wrong; I hated Bush as president and it was hard for me to keep my mouth shut while he was in office. But here’s what my mom always told me when I didn’t want to do something: if you decide RIGHT NOW that you will be unhappy, you will be VERY unhappy. So yeah, go ahead and hate everything Obama does and stands for—commit right now to being a disgruntled American citizen for another four years. Mother Mary was right: Guess who it hurts?

Fine, I’m just gonna quit my job and go on welfare.

WHAT I WANTED TO SAY: Is that really all you think Democrats do—make it easy-peasy for the lazy to live comfortably on your dime? How ‘bout you read up on American political party platforms? Educate yourself, please, because you sound like a moron.

Obama’s going to kill my grandpa with his health care plan.

WHAT I WANTED TO SAY: Oh my goodness, I was right. You definitely have a negative IQ. Health care needs a lot of fixin’. Please check out the facts about Obamacare before you decide it’s worthless. You’ll find out that your grandpa *probably* will not be killed by Obama. And maybe try watching something that isn’t FOX News.

My 7-year-old is in tears because Obama was re-elected and there’s no hope for our future.

WHAT I WANTED TO SAY: The only reason your little kid is in tears is because you have fed him a bunch of bullshit “facts” and he believes them because he trusts you. You are soooo underestimating the impact of your words.

And by the end of the night, that’s really what stood out to me: some people don’t have any idea what they’re doing to their kids. They share their political beliefs (nothing wrong with that!), but instead of allowing the children to form opinions of their own, the parent only wants little copycats of themselves. Are we supposed to teach our kids to think, or just WHAT to think?

Parents: sometimes we can be extraordinary assholes!

I remember years ago, probably around the 1992 election, my sister was furious because one of her boys came home from a friend’s house saying, “Clinton is bad because he sucks babies’ brains out before they’re born.” It wasn’t that Kathy was a Clinton fan, but she certainly didn’t like that another mom made it her duty to feed her kid that kind of nonsense. First of all, it was highly inappropriate for the mom to tell 5-year-olds that kind of thing. Secondly, the mom made it sound like Clinton himself performed these procedures. And finally, the mom basically formed her entire political platform based on ONE issue, one for which she clearly did not have the facts straight, and then taught it to her kids AND her kids’ friends. Yikes.

Is what that mom did any different than telling kids, “Republicans don’t care about women” or “Romney is a dog-hater” or “George W. Bush was responsible for 9/11” ???

Ridiculous.

I have been sickened by pictures of kids holding Romney (or Obama) signs at rallies around the country. It’s all kinds of adorable when kids are for the candidate I support, but when they’re supporting the other one, I’m all YOUR PARENTS ARE BRAINWASHING YOU, KID. If you have firm political opinions, you know you think the same thing. You know it.

Jack’s fifth grade class has been learning about the election process over the past couple weeks. From what he’s told me, they’ve been sticking to the facts, and I gotta hand it to his teacher; in the school system, with what seems like constant cuts to funding, it can’t be easy not to favor one candidate over another. Of course, conversation has continued outside the learning environment… As Jack watched election returns last night, he said, “My friend’s parents will lose their jobs if Romney wins.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, WHOA.

[Cut to the Clinton-performs-abortions thing back in ‘92. Gah!]

Poor Jack got an earful at that point, from both me and Victor, about making extreme statements or paying any attention to them. We reminded him that no matter who won the election, tomorrow wouldn’t be any different from today. Any changes that would come with a new (or continuing) president would not be immediate. His friend’s parents would still have their jobs if Romney won. Unless they were Obama campaign staffers, I suppose.

And, again, I was shocked and sickened by the things some parents tell their kids.

Growing up, I had a very conservative Republican for a dad and a then-closeted liberal for a mom (who has since admitted that she quietly cancelled out her husband’s vote in most elections—if you knew both my parents, how can you not love that???). I remember knowing who my parents hoped would win the presidency, but not really why. We watched election returns, sure. My dad was no good at keeping his opinion to himself, but I really can’t remember having political discussions at the dinner table. It could be because we were too young, or more likely it was because we were girls (Dad didn’t think much of girls-and-politics—which is how my mom got away with her voting; he assumed her opinion was his).

(Dad also didn’t think much of girls-and-lawn-mowers, which is why, to this day, I have never mowed a lawn. This distresses Victor greatly.)

The first time I remember my dad expressing a real political view was after Dan Rather, his favorite news anchor, interviewed George H.W. Bush in an especially awkward exchange. Dad was so mad about it. I was home from college one evening and turned to CBS, assuming Dad would want the news on as usual, and he said, “No, go to ABC. I won’t watch Dan Rather anymore.” He didn’t go into details (I was older but still a girl, after all); he was just “done” with Dan Rather.

As I got older and more opinionated, Dad and I would occasionally get into political arguments. He was NOT happy to discover that I was a liberal—a word he spoke with a dripping combination of sarcasm and disgust. But even when we disagreed, both of us had logical arguments; he didn’t say stupid things like “Democrats are unshowered hippies” and I didn’t say “Republicans are warmongers.”

So maybe my dad was more sensible and responsible as a parent than I thought. Hm.

Over the past few weeks, our kids have asked questions about the two major political parties and their candidates. I’ve done my best to answer honestly, and when I’ve expressed a personal opinion, I’ve made that clear. For instance—and this is just ONE ‘for instance’—I said that marriage equality is a very important issue to me. This is pretty much what I’ve told them:

A lot of Republicans don’t support gay marriage because they think only men and women should be married. *I* believe that if two people love each other and want to be married, they should be able to get married.

I can’t help but add this:

It doesn’t change anyone else’s lives if two women get married. A lot of the people who say marriage is holy and that’s why it should be between men and women only, like they think the Bible says, have been married many times, or cheat on their spouses. And a lot of them really just don’t like the idea of people being gay so they don’t want gay people to have nice things.

I emphasize with that last part that THIS IS WHAT I BELIEVE. NOT EVERYONE AGREES WITH ME. And I don’t say (but I do think) THESE PEOPLE ARE ASSHOLES. Sure, I’d love for my kids to grow up believing the same way I do, but I think I’d be more proud of them for standing up for the things they believe in because they know WHY they believe them. I want my kids to be thinkers, not mini-Jens. They’re welcome to be both, obvy.

I’m proud of the fact that my kids aren’t doing a happy dance over Obama’s re-election (like I am), because they wouldn’t even know why they were dancing. That would me look like a rotten parent—like someone whose kid cries because a guy they don’t know anything about was voted into an office they know even less about.

Before Jack went to bed last night, I told him to be kind to others at school today, and not to be cocky about the election results. He gets that there’s a lot he doesn’t understand about politics and not everyone is going to be happy about the way our country voted yesterday, so I think he’ll do okay. I’m eager to hear about today’s class discussion. If I get an email from his teacher that tells me Jack was a smarmy shit-head, I’ll be very upset with that boy.

My closing statements: Parents, be careful what you say to your kids. They’re sponges. They watch you. They want to be like you. Make sure you’re sharing THE truth, not just YOUR truth. Someday they’ll respect you for it, and that can only make our world a better place.

Enough with politics! We now return to our regular programming of silly images, tales of clumsiness, and the worst haiku ever.

Aug. 6: Silly, mean, deep, mean, inappropriate. And mean.

This morning I thought I’d do one of those “currently” posts, but YAWNERS. It got boring, fast. Instead, I’m going to share stuff I’ve been collecting—some’s funny, some’s profound, but none of it’s YAWNERS, I promise. Here ya go.

 

 

Bachelorette party cake = BRILLIANT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I totally did not think of Tina when I saw this… nope…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Something happened on Facebook this weekend that angered me greatly. A friend shared a well-written article about the protests surrounding that chicken restaurant (you know the one) that has donated to anti-gay campaigns for years, and it prompted a “friend” of that friend to leave an incredibly offensive and ignorant comment about why she thinks gay marriage should not be legal. What bothered me besides the Bible verses she used to support her statement was that she prefaced the whole thing with, “I know and love a number of homosexuals, but…”

I wanted to reply with many, many words that would offend her right back. I know a lot of words like that; I totally coulda. Because no, you don’t love a number of homosexuals if you think legalizing their marriage will destroy the family basis of society and have “a much more far-reaching agenda than appears on the surface, including legalizing pedophilia and bestiality.” You don’t love them at all. You hate them. You think they’re icky and sinful and wrong. And that makes me think YOU are icky and sinful and wrong. Argh.

I didn’t have to respond because other people did, and they did it in a way that was so much better and more fair than I would have. They quoted the Bible AND EVERYTHING. It was the best. Because this is the truth:

And it reminded me of something I heard Aziz Ansari say on the subject (he’s the actor who plays the very annoying Tom on Parks & Recreation):

“My whole take on the gay rights issue, particularly gay marriage, is, let’s be honest, if you’re against gay marriage, you just don’t like gay people and you want to stick it to ‘em. And I’m not saying that I wouldn’t do the same thing if I was presented with similar opportunities. If there was a law up for debate where it was like – ‘hey man, do you think guys that wear tight t-shirts and get bottle service at nightclubs should be allowed to own property?’ – I’d be like, ‘No!  @$#@ those guys! Yeah, uh, it violates the sanctity of owning property and it says in the Bible that they’re douchebags.’ Whatever I need to say so you don’t think this is coming from purely a place of hate.” —Aziz  Ansari

Bullseye.

Don’t think that I don’t realize how much of my post today has to do with not liking people. While it was not a conscious decision to lump all these things together, well, there they all are. Heh heh heh.

So’s not to leave a “Jen be so meeeeean!” taste in your mouth, here’s a picture of Lucy and Millie being friends that don’t chase or hiss or bite or claw. Sometimes they are very sweet critters.

I hope your day also has very little chasing, hissing, biting, or clawing.

Aug. 11: Fill ‘er up

Yesterday Mom and I are out running errands like mad women who had just gotten out of chemo—which is exactly what we were—and I stop for gas. Here in Oregon we can’t pump our own gas, so I stay in my seat and pull the thingie to open my gas tank cover. And, because I’m an awesome multi-tasker, I also open the passenger side window to give the attendant my debit card so he won’t have to walk all the way around the car because I’m not just an awesome multi-tasker, but also kind of a nice person sometimes.

Unfortunately, I don’t pull the thingie to open my gas tank cover. I pull the thingie that pops my trunk open. Apparently I suck at multi-tasking.

So I say to my mom, forgetting that her window is wide open, “OH GEEZ, I just popped my trunk. I’m such an idiot. Everyone here just saw the dumb girl do it. I’m so embarrassed!” She starts giggling as the attendant, who undoubtedly heard what I just said (along with everyone else there), walks toward the car.

I say, “Nope, I’m not gonna look like a dummy. Be right back.”

So I hop out of my car. In Oregon, if you get out of your car at a gas station, the attendants sometimes freak out a little because they think you might be trying to pump your own gas and that means they’ll have to call 911 or yell at you. As soon as I get out of the car, I see the attendant look my direction (he’d been interrupted on his way to my car).

Knowing he’s watching me, I go to the trunk and rearrange stuff, totally looking like I popped it open for good reason. And Mom even tries to help. She yells out to me, “Jen, did you find my iPhone back there?”

“No, it’s not in here!”

“OK.”

I think her “OK” sounds like she doesn’t really care that her iPhone isn’t back there or possibly missing, or that she might, in fact, not even own an iPhone. So I yell back, “Did you check under the seat?”

And she giggles, “Oh, it’s probably in my purse.”

I slam the trunk closed and get back in the car.

“Thanks, Mom. That totally fooled ‘em.” We chuckle conspiratorially.

Just then the attendant appears at her window. I hand him my card and say, “Fill it up with regular unleaded, please.”

Mom starts giggling again. “It’s all unleaded now, Jen.”

“I know, but there are different kinds. There’s regular, and plus…” And then I realize that she’s talking about the type of gas, not the quality.

“Oh. Geez, first I pop my trunk and then I ask the guy for unleaded gas as though he’s going to put something else in there. Could I be any dumber?” I start to bang my forehead against the steering wheel.

Mom just sits and giggles. She’s too nice to agree with me. Also, when she gets the giggles she can’t do much else.

So I’m sitting there, feeling like the biggest idiot in the world and glad this is not a gas station I go to very often, especially when the attendant leans back in Mom’s window and says to me, “Ma’am, I can’t pump the gas until you turn off your engine.”

Mar. 24: Blockage-ness

I’ve been in a blogging slump lately. It may not be noticeable to anyone else, but it is to me. I’ve also been reading books less, to the point that I could almost say I’m not reading at all. And Facebooking less. And Twittering less, although that’s not too unusual. I can’t seem to concentrate for very long at a time. I don’t know when this all started, nor what caused it, but I don’t like it.

I think I would feel better, maybe even re-energized, if I went on vacation. Everyone I know is on vacation this week and they’re so whistling-out-their-arses-happy, it makes me want to stab them a little. I want to be that happy too. I’m not really unhappy right now, but I think I’d be happier at Disneyland. Or in France. Or Hawaii. I’m totally easy to please, vacation-wise.

If I went on vacation, I’d have something to blog about, and that would be a good thing. And I would probably read a book on vacation because that’s what I do when I’m on vacation. And I would post constant updates on Facebook about my vacation, because that would totally jealousify my Facebook friends and why else would a person go on vacation but to jealousify their friends?

(My concentration problems have not adversely affected my ability to make up words, obvy.)

So I’m not reading or writing, and I’m doing as little ‘rithmetic as possible. The problem? It’s making me stupid. Lately I always think I smell smoke. I can’t remember semi-important things, like Jack’s birthdate and not to fall down stairs twice. Sometimes I forget to eat. I try to calculate things that have no keys on a calculator. Stuff’s making me mad, too, like reality shows—Celebrity Apprentice, really? Is anyone still watching that shiat?—and hay fever and stuff that needs ironing and people who think our healthcare system is fine the way it is and that new Jack in the Box commercial and drivers who block the intersection and the very noisy frogs in the pond behind our house and Sandra Bullock’s jackass of a husband and hangnails and people who are famous for no reason whatsoever. Also, Brazil nuts. Why do they think they’re so special?

Don’t lie to me and say none of those things would change if I went on vacation. I know they would. I’ve been on vacation before, and I know what it does to a person’s psyche. It would make me normal again. It would make me not care about those damn frogs. And I’m quite sure it would help me remember the answer to FOUR + WAFFLE.

Mar. 8: They don’t tell you everything

Before I started chemotherapy, I knew I could plan on a few sure things: baldness, nausea, and fatigue. But there are so, so many other things that happen to a person during chemo that the doctors, nurses and a lot of books fail to mention. How did I find out about these things? When they happened to me. About a week after my first treatment I started noticing stuff going on with my body that I had not expected, stuff that made me go WTF, CANCER??? The baldness isn’t humiliating enough?

• For the first few days after each chemo treatment, everything that comes out of me is toxic. They say I’m supposed to flush twice, clean around the toilet with antibacterial stuff every time I use it, wash my hands eleventy times, etc. Why do I need to clean all around the toilet? I don’t dance while I’m sitting on it. I just sit. It’s insanity, I tell you. As far as the hand-washing, I do that like an OCD freak anyway, so no changes there. The one fun thing about being toxic is threatening to spit on people for those few days.
• My vision has gone all wonky. It comes and goes, the wonky-ness, but I can almost always count on it being bad. And the worst part is that sometimes it’s far-sightedness, and sometimes it’s near-sightedness—it’s inconsistent and annoying as hell. One minute I can’t read street signs or see my kid in his school play. Next, I can’t read the newspaper or focus on the computer screen. See? Annoying. As. Hell.
• Have you ever heard of chemo brain? I hadn’t. It’s totally a thing, though. Forgetfulness, stupidity, loss of the ability to speel words correlcty… I do not enjoy this one bit. I think chemo brain is similar to pregnancy brain or mom brain, but I don’t remember because I’m a dummy now.
• My skin is drier than normal, but not all over. It’s dry in patches. I’ve never had this problem in my life.
• Ugh, don’t get me started on my manicure. My fingernails have begun to bend at the tips. This is usually hereditary and/or a sign of low calcium, but even as I guzzle gallons of milk, it just gets worse. They’re also striped now—you can read my fingernails for my chemo schedule, just like a tree for its age. And then there are my cuticles—dry and hangnail-y like never before. I rub Bag Balm on them every night, but by morning you can barely tell. That could be because the cat loves the taste of Bag Balm, but I’m still blaming the chemo drugs. Oh, and professional manicures and artificial nails are out of the question—too much risk of infection.
• Approximately two weeks after each chemo, my neck and chest break out with an acne-like rash. I’ve bitched about this in recent weeks because I’ve never had an acne problem, EVER. It disappears right after each treatment and then comes back again about a week later. Fun! And so pretty!
• Yeah, they tell you your hair’s gonna fall out, but you kind of assume it’s just your long, flowing tresses that you’ll lose. Then one day you look in the mirror and see that girl in high school who shaved her eyebrows off for no apparent reason but she looks psychotic and everyone suddenly suspects she’s the one who pooped in the gym shower. Losing your eyebrows sucks BIG. Eyelashes too. The hair loss on the rest of my body, I’m not complaining about—that kind of maintenance I do not miss. But the eye hair! I curse the missing eye hair!
• The hair on my head did not come out at its roots—oh no, that would be too clean. Instead, it broke. It broke off right near the skin, but left a teensy root, like a practical joke played by Paul Mitchell himself. What this means is that my head is not smooth-bald, it’s stubbly-bald. Stubble is sexy on some guys, but not on my head. Worse yet is that between each treatment, the hair begins to grow back… and then breaks off again. I wonder if God gets a huge kick out of this. Someone must. It sure ain’t me.
• Don’t get me started on what chemo, pain meds, and anti-nausea stuff do to one’s digestive system.
• I’ve read in every cancer book about mouth sores and what a problem they can be. They are easily infected, can interfere with the ability to eat, are extremely painful, etc. I’ve had one small mouth sore and I think it’s not so much due to chemo, but because I bit the inside of my cheek while I was showing off blowing huge bubble gum bubbles for the kids.
• I’m dizzy a LOT. And not just the weird for-a-second dizziness, but the for-a-couple-minutes-I-might-just-fall-over dizziness. I’d do well to get myself a cane, but I don’t want to look like a pimp.
• This one I’m not complaining about too much: chemo can put women in a state of menopause. If my body starts in with huge hormonal fluctuations and hot flashes, I’ll be very upset, but for now, I’m fiiiine with menopause.
• Fatigue? Depression? I could go on for days about this stuff. I won’t though, because I’m too fatigued and depressed.
• I read about loss of appetite being common with chemo patients, often as a fear of eating due to nausea. And I’ve definitely experienced it—the oncologist said I’ve lost ten pounds since this started, in fact—but the odd thing is that it comes and goes, changing within seconds. It’s not like I don’t want to eat for a day or two; it’s more like I don’t have an appetite now I have an appetite here comes my food oh wait I don’t feel like eating this now I’ll take it home I’m starving I don’t want to eat. My tummy is a total food tease.
• Not helping the appetite problem is that my taste buds are different now. Things taste bland where they used to be delicious, or they taste metallic where they used to … not. This is something that happens with a lot of medications, and is a well-known chemo side effect. I hate it.
• I’ve been lucky not to have too much trouble with nausea. This was a huge fear of mine, after being rehydrated in the ER three times last year during particularly bad migraine episodes.
• I’m wetting the bed again. Not with pee, mind you, but with sweat. I have awakened several times on drenched sheets. What is with the night sweats? I’ve tried different types of sheets, different types of jammies, no jammies, a cold room, a warm room, no blankets, piles of blankets. Nothing seems to stop them. Am I running a fever? NO! So, um, again I ask, WTF, CANCER???

I have to just keep telling myself: IT’LL ALL BE OVER SOON. IT’LL ALL BE OVER SOON. IT’LL ALL BE OVER SOON.

Feb. 26: Stupidity and failure

You know what sucks? I’ll tell ya.

What sucks is promising my daughter I’ll make an American Girl doll outfit for her cousin’s birthday and then trying to make it and ending up wanting to throw the sewing machine across the room, because it keeps getting stuff caught because I can’t thread the bobbin correctly because I’m borrowing my mother-in-law’s sewing machine because mine isn’t working and I’m too lazy to take it in to have it serviced because I don’t use my sewing machine often enough to even remember that it needs to be serviced until I go to use it.

That’s what sucks.

No, wait. I forgot one part. What also sucks is taking my daughter shopping at the fabric store and finding the perfect combination of fabrics, appliqués, buttons, and accessories, and none of it is on sale because the universe hates my guts, so I pay full price for everything, and as I leave the store I wonder why I didn’t just go over yonder to Toys R Us and buy a friggin’ pre-made outfit. Then I wonder that the whole way home and for many days afterward.

There’s more.

I bought enough extra of all the materials so I could make one of these adorable outfits for my daughter to have to match her cousin’s, and maybe even enough to make the same outfit for her other cousin too. Because wouldn’t that be so precious, all three girls having the same outfits for their American Girl dolls? Yes, yes, it’s a lovely and lofty dream. And I am an idiot.

Then there’s the fact that I waited until the last possible moment to start the actual sewing of the outfit because there were too many other things going on earlier in the week and I’ve been very, very tired. That might be the worst part of the whole thing. Well, besides the idea in the first place. They don’t get much stupider than that.

And besides the anger at myself (mostly) over the suckiness of this whole thing, it’s also made me feel like a complete and utter failure that because I can’t thread a bobbin—on a machine I’ve used before without any problem—I am quite possibly the worst mom and auntie in the whole world. It’s true.

Also making me miserable this evening? My teeth. They hurt. I’m going to bed.

And if you need me, I’ll be at Toys R Us as soon as it opens in the morning.

Jul. 24: Re-post/reminder/whatever

Because you probably haven’t had enough reasons to laugh yet today, don’t forget to check out Don't Even Reply: E-mails From an Asshole. It’s the very definition of awesome.

I’m  reminding you because I forgot about the site until I went digging through past posts this morning. I don’t see where Don’t Even Reply has RSS or I would definitely subscribe and you, in turn, would never miss an exciting episode. The guy’s a freakin’ genius.

Jun. 24: Words, words and more words

‘Member Sniglets? They were, like, THE thing for a little while back in the 80’s, thanks to Rich Hall and HBO’s Not Necessarily The News. Sniglets are words that belong in the dictionary but aren’t—words like todlitter (food debris residing under a high chair following an attempted feeding) and meganegabar (the line one draws after writing the amount on a check, to prevent the recipient from adding “and a million dollars”) and ignoranus (a person who’s both stupid and an asshole).

Sniglets were/are awesome. There’s probably a better word to describe them than “awesome,” but I don’t have a single one of the ten Sniglet books that were published way back when, so we’re going with “awesome.” Sorry.

Why do I mention these made-up words? Because in my last post I used the word-that’s-not-a-word “funner” and Lovely Lori H called me on it. She’s a total editor-snob, and that makes her way cool until I have to start defending my own word usage. When I told her that “funner” is a perfectly cromulent word, I GOT HER.

(What? You’ve never heard the word “cromulent” either? What is WRONG with you??? I mean, if you don’t watch The Simpsons, how do you know what to think about religion and politics? Gah.)

Some made-up words become such a part of our popular culture that we forget they’re not even real. I don’t mean words like “orientate” or “irregardless” or “supposably” or “whole ‘nother.” Those are letters that don’t belong together and that only friggin’ morons think are actual words. I’m talking about words like “Jazzercise” and “smackdown” and “hottie” and “unibrow.” These are words that have been added to English language dictionaries in recent years.

Cracked.com published a list of their top 12 most memorable words and phrases first heard on The Simpsons, some of which are now recognized by Webster’s. Kinda scary, huh? (Some of my favorites that didn’t quite make the list: debigulator, disembowelingest, embiggen, sacrilicious, Jeebus, shutterbuggery, and yoink. We use several of these on a regular basis in our household, along with fab phrases like “you can’t win friends with salad” and “Marge, honey-fräulein, I'm home.” Now don’t you wish you lived with us? It’s a laugh a minute, I tells ya.)

That list led me to a blog called Wordlustitude and it contains such fabulousness, I just can’t keep it to myself. My fellow word-lovers will enjoy it too, I’m sure.

Mark Peters (better known as wordlust on Twitter) is a language columnist for Good, a euphemism-collector for Visual Thesaurus, a blogger for Oxford University Press, and a Contributing Editor for Verbatim: The Language Quarterly. He has written about language for The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Esquire, The Funny Times, Good, Mental Floss, and Nerve. This blog is a growing dictionary of ephemeral words, also known as nonce or stunt words. All readers are strongly encouraged to use these terms (here's the index) in their blogs, poems, prophecies, and recipes.

If the first page of Mr. Peters’ posts don’t grab you, check out some of the links in his sidebar. I think he’s my new favorite dude! (So sorry, Vic—we were good for a few years, though.)

Jun. 21: Don’t even reply

Admit it. Every once in a while you read a classified ad and are sooo tempted to reply with some kind of smartass comment. Well, here’s a guy who actually does reply, and he shares the conversations that follow on his web site, Don’t Even Reply – Emails from an Asshole. Here’s how he describes the purpose of this very important work:

This is a collection of e-mails I have sent to people who post classified ads. My goal is to mess with them, confuse them, and/or piss them off. These are the ones that succeeded.

Is that awesome, or what? You gotta read some of these; they’re hilarious. Warning, though: extreme potty language. Check out How Did She Know? and Kittens for My Tiger.

Mar. 20: Things will be different now…

Goodness gracious! Let Me Google That For You might just be the smart-assiest way to explain a simple concept to someone that I have ever, ever seen. Check it out using my example. Have you ever seen anything so ideal for boosting passive-aggressive behavior?

Let Me Google That For You is a site that lets you create animated Google help for a stupid person who doesn’t think to Google something they should Google. In response to that stupid person (or a normal person’s stupid question), you type the question into LMGTFY, copy the link they give you, and then give the stupid person the link and leave it at that. See? It’s perfectly, passively, aggressive!

Here’s the kind of situation in which using Let Me Google That For You would be appropriate. Let’s say your friend—we’ll call him “Darby”—tells you about a food he insists is delicious but you totally think he’s trying to Punk you because it doesn’t seem to exist. I mean, it has no vowels! Instead of “Darby” gettin’ all high-pitched and squeaky-defensive, he can simply send you a link to the “food” using Let Me Google That For You and you can decide for yourself if you’re being Punk’d. Hint: you’re not. Hint #2: Even better is when “Darby” brings you over a plateful of said vowel-less food, because it really is delicious. Sometimes it pays to be a doubter. But that’s not my point.

My point is that I am going to start using Let Me Google That For You whenever and wherever I can. Ye be warned.