grumbles and grunts

never make the cow eyes at Colonel Sanders

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:27:00 +0000

A few weeks ago Jon, Jude and I celebrated a perfectly lazy Sunday morning by hitting up McDonalds to mack on some breakfast-freaking-burritos. Yes, sorry hippy dip gluten-free-organic-dirt-covered-free-range friends, I'm normally on board with your colorless gloop schemes but I'll also freely confess to breaking my chemical-poison embargo before 11am on selected weekends. (And also any time I really need to feel the beautiful plastic caress of a McFlurry in my esophagus. It burns so good.)

Jon went up to order our food while I ran interference with Jude at his preferred table ("with the puffy seats, Mom!"), and as he was blabbing my ear off about how Optimus Prime is his best metal space-brudder a man in his upper 70's in a filthy, tea-dipped t shirt walked in the door just in front of us. Within a fraction of a second the guy had zeroed in on Jude, who was obliviously chattering away 2 inches from my face, and started veering towards our table, crooning in a sickly sweet voice, "SUCH A PRETTY LITTLE GIRL. HEYYYYY SWEET GIRL...."

I've mentioned it briefly before, but I don't bother correcting strangers when they mistake the Jude for a girl because of his longish hair, even though it is A) really not that long and B) he is the bro-est bro that has ever bro-ed C) what the hell go away. I shot the guy a single steely-cold glare and refused to respond to his cow-eyed advances until he finally proceeded around the corner to do whatever the fuck it is aggressive old people do at McDonalds at 9:30am.

I shook off an involuntary shudder and breathed a sigh of relief when Jon whipped back around the corner with our food. We went on to eat our burritos and panclocks in relative peace, minus all the times Jude tried to eat butter straight out of the plastic bin and then rub it on my face.

When we were ready to go I went back up to the counter to ask for a refill on my coffee, but as soon as I turned and saw that guy hovering around I knew it was going to be crabapple bad news. I stepped up to the edge of the register to get someone's attention and Creeper McCreeps made another immediate beeline in my direction, crossing at least fifteen feet to get my attention.

"You have such a pretty little girl. Sooo pretty. How old is she?"

"Uh..."

"Let me show you these videos of my granddaughters dancing that I keep on my phone to look at while I'm all alone in my shed in the woods at night while I touch my ...arrangement of rusty saws."

And he pulled his crusty cell phone out of his pocket and tried to show it to me with his meat paws also maybe I made up that last part but it was totally implied I could tell.

"Uh..." I shifted backwards, handing my cup across the counter and leveraging some serious side-eye. I angled slightly so my back was towards him and made a scary clown-smile at the manager. As soon as my coffee reappeared I bolted for the door, snagging Jon and Jude on my way through and glancing over my shoulder. "We need to leave. Now."

Never, never, to that point in my mom-career had the screaming red alarm in my gut shaken bell tower that loudly, and fuck if we didn't need to get our kid as far away as possible from that dude right that very second. I would have stabbed someone in the face to steal their bicycle and never looked back.

In retrospect, I can't help wondering if I was maligning a kindly, misunderstood old grandpa with no social skills. Was I thinking the worst for no reason? Paranoid? I mean, just because he comes off like the creepiest human of all time, surely that's an unfair characterization or something, right?

Except. Except. Except I have never, ever had a skin-crawling reaction like that before. Except, all joking aside I fully believe in the powers of a parent's intuition. Except, the undeniable SOS my heart was sending to my brain said no. goddamn. way.

So sorry random old man that we will (hopefully) never see again, but I refuse to feel guilty for not being "polite" to you. Maybe you aren't a creeper after all, but probably you should considering being less of an extreme perv alert, because that shit's not on the up and up 'round here. No way, no how.

Tell me: Has your gut ever sent an emergency mayday to your face? Have you ever had your HIGH ALERT alarm bells go off?

my branches are waiting for you, like arms

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:49:00 +0000

put the bullet in the barrel

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 14 May 2013 15:30:00 +0000

When I was in primary school my neighbor was my best friend. She was exactly my age plus one month and lived exactly my house plus one house over, at the very top of the tallest hill, and one evening like 3,342 others my mother called over to her kitchen and to tell me it was time to come home from our eternal play date.

I hopped out the back door and started on my merry way. I remember it being a particularly pretty evening, the kind where lazerbeams of twinkling golden sunset shoot through the branches of the trees and mist swirls low on the ground indicating extremely beautiful poor air quality. The grass was crispy green and slightly damp on the soles of my feet as I rounded the corner to the front of the house and strode confidently towards home.

Just as I crested the peak of the hill I put one foot in front of the other and stepped straight into an open drainpipe that just so happened to be in the middle of the yard and just so happened to be the exact diameter of my grade school thigh. I looked around in alarm as half of me was suddenly swallowed by the earth, flailing my arms like a rat on a tiny boat, a castaway tethered in an undulating sea of grass.

After the initial shock wore off and I took stock of my situation a more pressing sort of panic settled into my chest. I yelled and wiggled and waved my useless arms in the golden light like a tulip planted in the bloody yard for the better part of an hour, surrounded by dancing sunbeam unicorns, and thought, "WHAT. IF. NO ONE. EVER. FINDS ME."

No one ever did, and then I died and worms ate my leg. The end.

(What do you think this is, Lost or something? Eventually I pulled myself out and went home, slightly traumatized and cutup about the leg but no worse for wear, and when I worked myself up into a tizzy and told all the nearby adults about what happened they shrugged their shoulders and told me to go play in the street. I MAY AS WELL BE DEAD, OKAY.)

let the roots & soil drink of me

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 07 May 2013 13:39:00 +0000

straight at the sun

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Sat, 04 May 2013 15:23:00 +0000

hush now creature, dry your eyes

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Thu, 02 May 2013 13:35:00 +0000

go home pinterest, you are so goddamn drunk

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 14:46:00 +0000

How to start your seeds in twee little ice cream cones like you're the Zooey Deschanel of gardening, a real life primer in just 20 easy steps!

1. Put on a full-skirt cotton polka-dot dress, apron, and heels, or the pajamas you've worn the last three days.

2. Carefully arrange 75 ice cream cones on trays all over your deck.

3. Futily attempt to keep wind from blowing over formations of cones.

4. Use a measuring cup to fill each cone with mixed soil types 3 / 5.

5. Divide into groups by plant type and lable each cone with permanent marker.

6. Plant your seeds like a carefully tending mother hen! Grow, my darlings, grow! Mommy loveums yous! Do not attempt to nurture cones with the warmpth of your butt.

7. Gently dribble a dime's worth of water into the center of each cone.

8. Watch as cones begin to slump alarmingly to one side. Suddenly remember that ice cream cones turn to mush when they get wet.

9. Run around the deck screaming and desperately trying to corrale the avalance of ice cream cones tipping over and pouring precious seeds and dirt all over the ground.

10. Cry.

11. Move surviving, mushy cone globs into cooking trays WITH SIDES.

12. Relocate to sunny spot. Ignore for several days.

13. Check in and notice cone globs have accumulated an alarming amount of mold.

14. Do nothing.

15. Devotedly tend your black mold farm for many more days. Cry.

16. SUCCESS! SEEDLINGS EMERGE FROM THE MOLD FARM!

17. Attept to tell seedlings apart. All labels are now fully obscured by the onslaught of creeping mold.

18. Escort cones outside. Plant at random.

19. Watch out the window as idiot dog immediately runs outside and consumes all seedlings/moldy ice cream cone tummy treats.

20. Congratulations! THANKS PINTEREST!

come out of the hatch naked with your hands in the air

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 14:08:00 +0000

I'm rewatching Lost, all by my lonesomes, because sgnp made me do it and Jon despises Lost with the power of ten-thousand supernaturally enhanced water bound sun-spheres. As I was cruising along the initial pilot episodes (Hurley! I missed you! Whirrrrpooghghffsssss EXPLOSIONS!) the camera swept up the beach and there he was, ol' fuckface Mc BOONE, swiveling his carefully highlighted skull around on top of his beastly neck. It all came flooding back: BOONE. GODDAMN BOONE.

Indisputable fact: Boone was a useless slackjawed moron with a fat neck. Except, in the years since Lost, the former sister-boner has somehow turned his life around. No longer is Ian Somerhalder Boone: dumbest character ever, he's now Damon Salvatore: popular vampire teenage dream, watch him put his hands on me in his skin-tight jeans la-la-la-la-la, and while almost the entire population of the earth would agree that even with its multitude of faults Lost was a better show than The Vampire Diaries, the key difference is that Ian Somerhalder is 95% of The Vampire Diaries' draw AND I LIKE IT THAT WAY.

I watched fucking Boone fumble around the fuselage, searching futilely for a pen he couldn't understand no one needed, and I started to wonder -- How did this guy manage overcome the life handicap of being fucking Boone to pop up a few years later a decent actor and attractive human? How did I completely overlook his potential ability to smolder while holding a cat? Did he sell is soul to Satan/Beyonce? Is he a goddamn wizard? How does one recover from a case of the BOONES?

How did this happen? Because Boone was a terrible character.

Boone was a terrible character. I mean John Lock and Jack and Sawyer and Toothy and Ben and Boone's sister-lover and Agent Snappy-Snap Rodriguez -- they were all terrible characters to some degree or another, but Boone was the terriblest. When he got crushed by a falling beach ball or whatever and kicked the bucket 30 episodes later, I poured myself a tall glass of vodka and toasted to his eternally annoying damnation.

He was stupid, whiny, over dramatic, and only seemed to pop up when the writers wanted to stretch out a side story to maximum brain-numbing capacity. His back story stalled out right past the part where he wanted to whisker-kiss his sister and he never contributed anything to group game night. He was useless at best, and managed to complicate things miles away while standing still on an empty section of beach away from all sharp objects and bears. While he admittedly had some better moments as the show went along, I could just never shake my initial impression of fucking Boone. That was it for me. Done. Nope.

How did this happen? Because the guy who played Boone was a pretty good actor.

Despite my admittedly irrational hatred of BOONE, capital I idiot, none of the above actually had anything to do with Ian Somerhalder, "actor." In fact he was such a good actor he took acting like a moron to the absolute limits of reality. He pulled a rope out of his chaps, lassoed stupidity, and committed to it utterly and with his whole soul. We wrapped his hands around the throat of stupidity and choked the life right out of it.

Ian Somerhalder is such a good actor I really BELIEVED he was a moron. He never had the opportunity to be anything less than a complete idiot, and he fully embraced that challenge like a goddamn PROFESSIONAL. Do I hate Boone? Yes I do. Was that Ian Somerhalder's fault? NO. It was his RESPONSIBILITY as a man, and as a human, and as a surrus act-or. I hated Boone because I was supposed to hate Boone, because Boone was so deliciously, perfectly, hateably killable. In that bizarre and twisted way that only Lost can manage, my hatred of him may actually qualify as his extreme success.

How did this happen? Because Boone was a the fifteenth wheel on the blind date from hell.

Not everyone was as oblivious to the guy's potential good qualities as I was. There were plenty of Lost fans who didn't roll their eyes and scream at the TV every time Boone's face hung open on screen attracting a cloud of tropical flies eager to fill up that vapid space in his skull and start a breeding colony. The trouble was Sawyer, or more accurately, Sawyer and his abs and his Kate & Jack PB&J love-triangle, pushing out its elbows and hogging up the sexy-time sized portion of every 46 minute block of mystery.

There was only room for so much man-candy on that god forsaken island, and Boone was constantly in peril of slipping into a Dharma Initiative-styled redshirt. He didn't have the screen time to bloom gently in the sun and open his petals, and the show didn't have room for him anyway. Do you know how much confusing shit was going on on that show? THE SHOW WAS CALLED LOST, AND I WAS. There was no room in my bank of conspiracy theories for the guy that might-be-hot mucking things up in the background, not to mention that his every appearance was part and parcel to his sister's and she was just as unlikeably irritating as he was.

In essence, Somerhalder was never going to be a leading man in Lost world, so he kept his head down and used his awesome skills at acting terrible to land himself a right proper gig as everyone's sassy, drool-covered kitty-treat.

...On the other hand, someone could have just walked up to him on set and said, "Hey man, you'd be pretty hot if you could keep your mouth from hanging open all the time like Lady Chatterly's glovebox. You should try that, maybe you'll get your own show." And then he did.

MYSTERY SOLVED.

can you hear my springasm from there?

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 16:02:00 +0000

I've been having an elicit, filthy love affair with this tree, for very obvious reasons, which came to a dramatic and unfortunate end last week when some asshole thunderstorm showed up and said, "But Jamie, I thought you were only in outdoor love with ME?" and I was all, "Sorry thrilling thunderstorm, you know I love anticipating your barometric pressure changes but that tree and I have something special for one week out of every twelve months and I'm not going to let you stand in the way of our special romance. Also I love lakes and trees not covered in blossoms, and scenic views and I'll get freaky with pretty much any sunrise ever. So, you know. It's not like we're exclusive." And then the thunderstorm flipped out in a jealous rage and was all, "I WILL DESTROY YOU, BEAUTIFULLY FLOWERING TREE." And then it did. The end.

Nature really needs to get a grip.

I think you and my friends should hang out (on the weekends)

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:33:00 +0000

I wrote a highly scientific breakdown of whether or not I would have clam-on-ham relations with James Franco the other week, and then a very kind reader messaged me and said she knows a guy who knows a guy long story short, James Franco and his bropal read my post and shared a hearty chuckle.

Whether they were laughing with me, or at me, or at the idea of attending the festival of clam-jam your guess is as good as mine, but in my head they were all eating pizza because my default imagination-station setting for all celebrities is to picture them rolling around on the ground in a beanie, eating pizza and getting snoopy.

Janet Jackson: snoopy! Walter Cronkite: snoopy! Gary Busey: snoopy! Congratulations, I guarantee I just made your life a million times better.

After breaking out in an awkwardness rash and high-fiving some enthusiastic looking couch pillows, I laid down and tried to sleep off the fact that James Franco read something where I used the word "bonealicious" unironically in public and then compared his face to a mystery burrito. Later that same day I fell out of my chair and knocked over a large potted plant.

- - - -

The happiest I've felt in weeks joy-punched me in the chest right in the middle of reading a 400-page document about SQL database program management. Halfway through what by all accounts should have been the world's most tedious document little callouts started appearing in margins that said things like, "This table field is completely ineffective. The reason why they set it up this way eludes me," and "Warning: If you do this with your external database it will give your Administrator terrible nightmares."

The further I read the more convinced I became that the author had gotten midway through the epic task writing it and lost his goddamn mind. I started sending screenshots to my coworker and giggling maniacally into the arm of my sweater. I leaned across our cubicle wall, "Psssst! Hey! Hey! Are you seeing this stuff? This dude is great!"

My coworked leaned past his monitor just enough to make eye contact, sighed, and leaned back without saying a word.

I sat at my desk all afternoon, reading the musings of a person driven insane by poor programming and sending a deluge of screenshot after screenshot to my coworker's computer, occasionally punctuated with exclamations of, "Comedic gold!" while he continued to ignore me.

When I got to page 243 (2-4-3!) the first sentence read, "This is the chapter that has been years in the making. And it's a real yawner." I threw my head back and cackled with unbridled glee, "Oh man, DJ HUNT IS KILL. ING. IT."

"..."

"The only way this could be any better is if his name was Mike."

".........."

"Mike? Mike ... Hunt?"

"................................."

After a while I declared to no one in particular, "This room is the same temperature as my skin. I think my organs are going to float out into space."

Finally, he leaned back over, "...Are you high?"

Tomorrow is a bright new day my friends.

woke when it was dark, wait for day to start

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 20:19:00 +0000

For as long as I can remember I've had moments in my dreams where part of my brain wakes up but my body stays asleep. In the midst of an unremarkable dream a switch flips and suddenly I'm awake inside my head in the darkness and I try to open my eyes, move my head, make a sound, but my limbs are dead weight and my tongue is an anchor.

I can feel the panic starting to crawl up my throat and I can feel Jon's skin, warm underneath my hand. If I could just squeeze his arm -- I try over and over and over and over to force my fingers to move, desperate to let him know I'm there. Nothing happens.

I'm screaming and screaming inside my head, straining against a body that might as well belong to somebody else, chewing on the effort of trying to force my jaw to spit out noise. The minutes feel like hours. Sometimes the minutes are hours. Nothing happens.

The past six months I've been walking through a waking dream. Things happen and I'm not really there. I look in the mirror and I don't recognize my face. I sit down to gather my thoughts and stare at an empty page.

I suspect I might be made of wires.

I've been waiting for the fog to lift and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting waiting

Nothing happens.

morning light

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 20:15:00 +0000

you only live thrice

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 29 Mar 2013 15:54:00 +0000

This week Jude told me his first real joke. I mean he says plenty of things that are jokes, but usually only to me because I'm insane and we're doubly insane when you put our insanebrains together. I would blame Adventure Time but trust me, we were like this before. However until now rarely have his jokes been things you could tell to say, a stranger in the grocery store and expect any kind of reasonable reaction.

I was standing at the sink in the kitchen, diligently rinsing something probably I don't really remember when suddenly Jude ran in from the living room and started poking me in the back of the knee.

"Hey mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Hey Mom! Mo-"

"YES, YES, YES. WHAT." I scrambled, as my left knee buckled and I pitched forward into the sink. "Hi, what can I help you with?"

He looked up at me, with maniacal glee shooting out into space from the whites of his eyes. ".......... Guess what?!"

"I don-"

"CHICKEN BUTT." And then he clutched his stomach and laughed and laughed and laughed and snorted and fell on the floor and laughed again. "CHICKEN BUTT. Mom! Chicken butt! That it! That's what I said. You laugh now."

This wild new fad as continued every hour on the hour three or four hundred times, now with random words inserted after 'chicken' like 'chicken... PEANUT!!!' and 'chicken TOOTHBRUSH!!' because he ascribes to the chapter guidelines of the Gertrude Stein Non Sequitur School of Joke-Telling, just like his mother.

And so it begins.

I was walking for miles before I fell in

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 14:43:00 +0000

sometimes you have to burn everything down so you can have nothing at all

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Thu, 21 Mar 2013 19:26:00 +0000

I'm loathe to admit it but I finally understand why so many pesky people warn you about all the perils of age 3. Within the last few weeks Jude has reached a before unknown level of unmitigated jerkiness, and I'm not quite ready to say 3.5 is my least favorite age but let's just say if I get punched in the chest one more time I might turn into a 300-foot irradiated lizard and destroy a nearby village with no memory of how I got there. Just... the irrational rage, and the screaming, and the punching? Really just the punching. Can that stop now? Thanks in advance.

Here's an example of an everyday conversation in the grumbles household right now:

I walk into the living room, holding an empty cup. "Jude, Dad bought juice. Would you like some juice?"

Jude turns his head and starts staring me down, searing off my skin with the heat of one thousand suns. "I DON'T CARE ABOUT YOU!"

"Well that sucks, sad story man. But..." I point slowly and emphatically at the cup, "Do. You. Want. Some. Juice?" Point at cup. Point at cup.

My clothes are actually afire now from the power of his death stare and terrified mice are abandoning ship, pouring out of my orifices.

"-- YOU'RE NOT MY MOM ANYMORE." And he turns his head back towards his puzzle/alphabet game/episode of Phineas and Ferb and continues on his merry way.

"...So no juice then? Great." Shuffle back out of the room, /end scene.

He's the most adorable anarchist I know.

--Except, of course, when he isn't being a huge asshole/typical 3.5-year-old he's the smartest, funniest, most ridiculous person I know and I can't get enough of him I just want to eat him up gnahhhhhh. Ten minutes after the punching stops I'm ready to scoop him up and nom on his Jude-face while he screams in terror because his mother is a love-raptor with a hunger for moar love.

The good news for the safety of the public at large is that this very special behavior seems to be reserved for me and me alone. There's a little white-linen covered table in the corner of his heart with a placard that says I Heart Mom!! and then he runs over smashes the table to bits with a hammer and gets up in its face and tells it it sucks real bad. Is this the price one pays to raise a lovely, spicy young human? Because OUTSIDE the table in his heart which is reserved only for me he is funny and polite and quick to be helpful and kind. He seems to be getting along in life quite fine, great, even, except the part where he is mean. To me.

There seems to be a special developmental phase that only comes around right before he learns something big. Some awesome new skill is rolling around in there, sucking up all his brain bandwidth and holding it hostage with learning, meanwhile his skills of acting like a boy instead of a feral dog are rendered null and void. The week before he learned to walk he screamed like mad for hours on end; the week before he started talking in sentences he threw things at my head; the month before he started asking me existential questions about the purpose of space and stars he threw my heart in the trashcan and set it on fire.

By Monday he'll be ready to rebuild a motorcycle engine with his eyes closed. RIGHT? I mean, totally worth it.

does not compute (into awesomeness)

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 15:44:00 +0000

I can barely understand how this is a real thing I saw with my actual eyes.

IT'S JUST ME HERE AND ALL THESE GODDAMN DUCKS

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 04:13:00 +0000

Every February 28th at 11:34pm a man in a blue suit stands up from behind his desk, adjusts his tie, and turns off the switch at the end of the hall. It's his only job, his life's purpose, and he takes it quite seriously. He goes back to his desk, waits 26 days, and then turns it back on.

Every February 28th at 11:34pm I go crazy and stop talking to other humans and considering running off into the woods. Goodbye forever two-legged mammals I once knew, I will stay here and become one with the trees and maybe stop remembering you probably.

I'm in strict denial that I have seasonal affective whatever because hey! I like winter just fine. December? Fine! January? Delightful! The blustery grey dearth of early February? Okay! February 27th? Yo baby, what's up? March 1st -- BAM! WOE, WOE AND PAIN. SADNESS AND DEATHHHHHHH. LIE ON THE COUCH. EAT ALL THE CHIPS. I'VE LOST MY WILL TO LIVE REAL LIFE. IT'S ALL SO FUTILE. I CAN'T MOVE MY ARMS AND LEGGIES. WILL THE DARKNESS NEVERR END >.

...You know, that general sort of thing. It's super duper.

I haven't even been able to stir up the effort to write about how I don't have the effort to write about anything which, wow, that's a pretty low bar to not shuffle over on your way back to the couch. Weak effort, really. Go flog yourself. (I have been! I seem to have plenty of energy for self flagellation which seems appropriately angsty.) Meanwhile the best introspection I've come up with are four sentences about standing next to some ducks and an essay on walking to and from the bathroom a lot of times. It's a thriller, let me tell you.

The greatest part about this little seasonal phenomenon, besides shouting, "I CAN'T RELATE TO YOU, HU-MAN" at strangers in the grocery store checkout line, is that one day a month or a week or two days from now I'll wake up and look outside at the plants and stuff and snap back to normal like nothing ever happened.

Since I seem to disappear on mental spring break without fail at the exact same time every year, I've been trying to cut myself some slack about voting in absentia, which is a great idea but also not really happening. Even knowing that things will be back to normal soon I've given myself five or six black eyes and torn off my left arm which I only use to play video games anyway. I'm not sure if that means I should just duck and cover until it's over and power through it, but something will happen one way or the other or I'll fall asleep.

This morning while I was driving to work I saw the sun for 30 whole seconds, and even though it was blinding me and I was about to careen off the road and die in a fiery explosion I couldn't look away because SUN? IS THAT YOU? THIS MAY BE THE ONLY TIME I EVER SEE YOU AGAIN AND I MISS YOU SO MUCH PLEASE DON'T LEAVE ME ARGGGHHHHH MY EYES ARE BURNING.

Writing about writing is the barfiest. My mouth feels hot and it won't stop snowing. GAH.

and here's where your mother sleeps, and here's the room where your brothers were born

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:33:00 +0000

I love most everything about our old, old house, even some of the little quirks most other people would find unlivable. The stereotypical drafts, the 100-year-old dust everywhere, that time we thought it was slowing giving us brain damage, when you randomly don't have electricity in your garage for three years – all delightful side effects of not living in a cookie-cutter tract home no one has ever died in! Look what you're missing out on, slackers!

(Pro tip: The murder remnants build valuable character, you see, it's the perfect environment for raising really crazy children and everyone knows those are the very best kind.)

When I was six months pregnant we renovated our kitchen, and by "renovated" I actually mean taped it off from the rest of the house, put on a respirator, and destroyed everything within reach with a goddamn sledgehammer. When we tore into the 11-foot wall in the center of the room we discovered the entire thing had been constructed with little scraps of plywood and stuffed full of old newspaper, also a figurine of a monkey holding a some bananas and a bunch of live wires that went noplace.

Is this normal? No! No it is not! Hey, welcome to old house life.

Important facts about living in an old house:
1. You can't fix anything without ten other things breaking
2. You'll never figure out why the people before you did any of these strange things
3. Yeah, maybe just tape over that giant hole in the bathroom wall with duct tape though, it'll be fine
4. Code? What is this "code" you speak of?
5. You're all going to die here
6. Mice!

Every time we go to replace something, no matter how minor, twenty other irreplaceable prehistoric things break along the way and absolutely nothing is ever "to code." Do you know what kind of building codes they had when our house was built? Ulysses S. Grant was President, I'm pretty sure most people still lived in tents made of animal hide.

Anyway, it's been standing strong for 138 years so somehow I think we'll all probably be okay and not dead. It's that kind of faith in the ability to endure the very depths of human madness that I find so endearing about all this old crap in the first place.

I've made peace with the the tradeoffs one must accept to live among awesome oldness, so when we discover our ceiling is held together with little strips of rotting muslin or that our water pipes are traveling in an infinite loop inside the walls I nod and smile and learn how to solder pipes and restructure wiring, but I think I've finally found the one thing that will make me draw a line in the sand and challenge my house to a fistfight.

Do you know what a sink that won't drain is? A GODDAMN BUCKET. Will I wash myself in a bucket? NO I WILL NOT. If I wanted to live in a field with Laura "Singalong" Wilder I WOULD GO TO THERE. Look here, house, my expectations are pretty low, in the grand scheme of things, but I'mma need all the sinks to drain in a timely fashion.

Our bathroom sinks have been plagued with slow drainage since sometime before the Carter administration, due to a combination of old-as-fuck and no-seriously-old-as-fuck pipes and until recently my go-to solution was a half-gallon of Draino and a good snaking, which is a terrible long term plan but it returned things to a temporary state of usability without having tear apart the entire wall so eh, you know, whatever.

Unfortunately, after New Years our downstairs bathroom sink finally kicked the middle finger into high gear and no amount of Draino was going to help, and I know that because the pipes started leaking underneath because holy crap, you can't just cure all your problems by pouring acid into them. WHO KNEW!

(...I knew.)

In a fit or rage we took the whole damn thing apart and threw it away. During the process of replacing it with an orgasmically adorable new sink (which I will now go rub my face on and make sex noises) and its adjacent plumbing, Jon discovered that the pipes inside the wall were full of bottle caps because HEY. OBVIOUSLY. OF COURSE THEY ARE.

Lesson learned.

update: still the most ridiculous person I know

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Wed, 06 Mar 2013 17:23:00 +0000

...No, seriously.

roundup: where I've been when I'm not here

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 16:51:00 +0000

Victoria’s Secret Model Cameron Russell Condemns Modeling In TED Talk: ‘It’s Not A Career Path’
If you are ever wondering if I have thinner thighs and shinier hair will I be happier, you just need to meet a group of models, because they have the thinnest thighs, and the shiniest hair, and the coolest clothes – and they are the most insecure people on the planet.

Hack The Planet: Burger King, Guy Fieri, & Jeep Hacked By Internet Pranksters This Week
There’s nothing quite like watching a corporate meltdown happening right before our eyes, even if their jokes are terrible and we have no idea what they’re talking about.

Life Advice For Lark Voorhies From ‘Saved By The Bell’: Stop Giving Interviews About How Crazy You Aren’t
Unfortunately for the former Lisa Turtle, going on television to tell everyone how crazy you aren’t is typically not the best way to look sane. Also, don’t make… that face.

Ke$ha Drinks Her Own Pee In New Documentary, Smells Like “Shrimp On A Diaper”
Among the wide range of reasons we could choose to disapprove of Ke$ha, now she’s drinking her own urine because hey, otherwise you might try to steal it from her. Yeah. I know.

Justin Bieber And Rihanna Hooked Up – And Selena Gomez Is Not Happy About It
Unfortunately for poor, tiny-faced Selena Gomez, not only does she now have to reconcile the idea of boyfriend-boners past, but Justin and Rihanna may have been making magic sandwiches as recently as this past November when they were very, very alone, repeatedly, at length, deep inside the Hotel Giraffe. Oops?

five shot challenge : light

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Thu, 21 Feb 2013 17:43:00 +0000

Shireen tagged me for a five shot challenge with the theme of light, and even though everyone was pissed that these weren't pictures of sunsets and trees I am digging on them and lighting candles and playing them Boys II Men in the evenings. The most interesting part, which I neglected to mention because I like to keep things mysterious, is that they are all miniature scale models. Now go back and look again. BOOM, brain 'sploded; life changed.

(I've taken pictures there before. That tiny shit, man. It gets me every time. I can't resist a good scale model.)

the state of the union

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Mon, 18 Feb 2013 16:42:00 +0000

For the past few weeks I've been punishing myself the way only a woman can because I'm convinced my new job is making me fat. Everyone at my office is utterly lovely and treats appear for every occasion/non-occasion, and now that we can afford to eat regular food at home instead of ramen and cans of green beans, well, I have concerns, is all I'm saying. This morning I finally stepped on the scale to calculate how many hours per day I should spend flogging myself and crying and discovered I have gained... one pound. I am now having a donut. If money and metabolism allowed I would live on frozen taquitos and indian food alone. It's probably a good thing I'm not rich.

Sunday morning we were awoken by a chorus of, "Dad! Dad! Dad! Daddy! Dad! Dad? Dad!" from Jude's room at an hour much too early for standard brain function. He's been on a tear lately and insists that Jon appear at the crack of dawn to entertain him. After the fifth shout of, "DAD? What's that sound? IS THAT YOU?" I dragged myself out of bed and stumbled towards his room, except as I rounded the corner I saw that the ghost attic door, directly across from his room, which closes with a sliding lock, was standing open. I turned around and walked the other direction because OH HELL NO. Jon asserts that our recent houseguests mustn't have latched it all the way, which is a plausible theory except it's still so goddamn creepy.

Attn houseguests: Did you thoroughly latch this door? Please respond asap so I know whether or not to bring an extra donut home for my ghost.

Jude has recently stumbled upon the eternal treasure trove of humor that is butts and farts. Never has my life been so full of shouts of "You look like a ...BOOTY-BUTT!" followed by maniacal laughter. Hey, I can't even be mad, that's a pretty funny joke. In the car the other day he told us that his best friend told him a secret, and the secret was that they are special brothers. "I'm his brother, and he's my brother. That's our secret." Then their tiny bro-love killed me forever and I died.

Jude's ridiculousness has reached such enormous levels I no longer have any idea how to translate it into words, though I feel like I ought to so I can remember it forever and never let it go. Quotes alone don't do justice to what it's like to have a conversation with him anymore, so when people ask me about my kid I've taken to telling them I gave birth to Bam Margera. He has started calling me Bro-Mom, and I've been instructed that Gangnam Style is HIS JAM and "THAT OTHER WEIRD MUSIC" is my Bro-Mom jam.

I have never been more proud that I didn't give birth to a boring, suburban human. I'd rather hang out with him than 90% of the adults I know, even though he rolls the dice and comes up asshole 70% of the time. Those seem like pretty standard odds for someone three and a half, so I'm not holding it against him. I can't wait for him to be a teenager so we can eat cereal and fight and watch cartoons. That's pretty much what we do now except I won't have to feel guilty if he says butt all the time.

I am thisclose to going crazy and cutting his beautiful snowboarder hair. We all dig his current style, Jude especially, but he refuses to let me brush it so most of the time he runs around looking like a mop that took a bad turn through a meat grinder. If something doesn't give I'm going to sneak into his room in the night and chop it all off and laugh, oh how I will laugh and laugh.

TRY AND PUNCH ME NOW, HAIRBRUSH HATER. Sounds like something Bam Margera's mom would do. Mess with the best, die like the rest.

sunrise, take twenty

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Mon, 11 Feb 2013 15:36:00 +0000

she walks that thin line, in and out of my bed

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Fri, 08 Feb 2013 16:51:00 +0000

With great reluctance I gave in and bought some "natural" deodorant, the kind without antiperspirant or aluminum or parabens or other actual stank-controlling ingredients. Did you know that the great sentient hippy gurus of our age are convinced antiperspirant is responsible for all kinds of nearby cancers, and by "nearby" I mean in the vicinity of your armpits?

Whether or not that is "real science" I have no idea, but it's well within the realm of things that are possibly possible, like getting alcohol poisoning from too many crepes and not washing your hair for 194 days.

...On the other hand, some of those same people believe Dr. Mercola is a real human being and not a soul-sucking alien robocorp, also that you can leech the toxins out the soles of your feet with children's stickers and putting a lighter to the side of your head under a full moon will scare the brain-ghosts away.

...On the other hand, I don't want my armpits to mutate into mouth #2 and mouth #3, respectively. One centrally face-located mouth is plenty for me right now.

I tried to take the plunge a year ago and I grabbed the Tom's of Maine version of "deodorant." They seem to be the go-to compromise for those who aren't ready to make their own beauty products in their backyard from discarded baking soda, essential oils, and unprocessed chicken grease.

I picked the scent that least smelled like Bonnaroo, which still mostly smelled like the cross between a head shop and the old camping gear my parents have stored in their attic. I took a shower, gritted my teeth, and slapped a liberal dose of naturally-derived magic on my freshly-shaven pits and congratulated myself. Sure, I smelled like shit, but LOOK AT ALL THE CANCER I DIDN'T HAVE!

After a few hours of sitting in a frigid, windowless office where I partook in little to no movement I smelled like I had spent the day doing 5-10 years of hard labor in the hot summer sun. At Bonnaroo. I drove directly home and spent the next two hours holed up in the bathroom desperately scraping my skin with a carrot peeler and antibacterial handsoap.

If you have to douse yourself in kerosene to get rid of the smell it probably ruins any "natural" properties the stuff had in the first place. I threw my $5 directly into the trash and gave it the finger. I do not need assistance smelling worse, faster, Tom's of Maine. No thank you forever.

That experience was so scarring I swore off even considering another go at it for an entire chemical-laden year. However, in the interest of not having mutant flesh I've once again found myself pacing the aisles of the hygiene section scanning labels for something not made of poison. This time I scrounged up a paraben free! antiperspirant free! aluminum free! deodorant from the dusty back shelf of the men's section. It smells like lemons and when I put it on it feels like I'm sloshing room-temperature jello onto my skin. Is this really the best that science has to offer? I smell conspiracy. Also, lemons.

Anyway this go around it's been a mostly unremarkable experiment, which is fine because I don't really need my armpits to be that remarkable. The trouble is not that this new stuff doesn't do the job. It seems passably adequate, if not disturbingly packed with citrus. The trouble is that my old, preferred deodorant smelled so goddamn good I routinely wanted to sex up my own armpits, which FYI is impossible and makes you look crazy.

Several times recently I've found myself lying awake late into the night, thinking about how much I smell like lemons and how it would be so easy to retrieve my old deodorant from the back of the closet where I've hidden it and lovingly rub my fingers all over its smooth, hard case and then work its magic up and down all over my armpits. She's always there waiting, looking at me with those sultry eyes because we both know it's just a matter of time before she'll be back under my arms.

with you, love

noreply@blogger.com (the grumbles) — Tue, 05 Feb 2013 15:45:00 +0000