Just Bloggled: When Life Gets a Little Baffling

The Cable Company Can Kiss It

2009-11-08T17:19:00.004-05:00

So you know how I said in the last post that sometimes you just have to vent? Well, I'm about to. Pardon my language, but Charter can kiss my ass. Once again I had to schedule a service call because my cable was going to black and white on the premium and On Demand channels only. It started doing it about four hours after the last technician left two weeks ago. Knowing that they would send someone out who would say, "Oh, it's just the box," yet again, I thought I would be smart this time and test out that theory. Last night I took the box downstairs, which has never gone to black and white while downstairs, plugged it in upstairs, and watched with satisfaction as it, too, went to black and white. I then called Charter, told them what was going on, listened as the guy on the phone agreed with me that it was most likely the line, and scheduled a new appointment.

A lot of freakin' good that did. The repair guy who came gave me the same spiel as the guy two weeks ago. The only way that the signal can go to black and white is because of the box. Really? Then why did the box that never goes to black and white from downstairs go to black and white upstairs? He didn't have an explanation for that other than, "Uh, it might be the TV." Again, I say really? Then why does it not go to black and white on channels 2 through 96? That question caused him to spout off a bunch of technical jargon about 0's and 1's and some plus or minus 12 nonsense that he had to know the layperson has no clue about.

He also claimed that a cable line can never have a short in it. Seriously? So if a rat got into the wall and chewed on it or someone accidentally cut part of the line while installing something else in the wall (another type of outlet, a picture hook, etc.), that can't cause a short? I say B. S. In fact, I'm shouting it. A wire is a wire, coaxial or otherwise, and a wire can be bent, cut, frayed, burnt, and otherwise destroyed. It doesn't take a genius or a cable repair man to figure that out.

As for why I can see two days' worth or programming downstairs but only one day's worth upstairs, no matter which box is plugged in, again Mr. Zeroes and Ones had no explanation. I think he thought I was making it up because he kept mumbling, "I don't know what you're talking about. I can see tomorrow's lineup." Yeah, but could he see what tomorrow's lineup was about when he pushed info. Uh, no. Could he downstairs? Yes.

So if any of you have cable installation knowledge, could you please enlighten me on what's wrong with my reception, and could you also dummy it up in language I can understand? While you're at it, can you tell me how I can tell if it's the box, the line, or the TV without having to have one more person who won't listen come to my house and waste another one of my Sundays? I thought I knew how, by switching out the box with one I knew worked, but obviously that didn't go over so well with Charter. Should I switch the TV in the bedroom with a newer TV in my house? Do I go blow $300 or more that I don't need to be blowing on a HDTV? Seriously, what do I do to prove to Charter that I don't have the cable TV version of Munchhausen Syndrome? Is there anything, or should I just give up and resolve myself to only watching TV downstairs?

And if you're wondering, I'm asking these questions earnestly. They're not rhetorical questions. I'd love for someone who was a cable repair man or woman in a past life to tell me how to figure it out because right now I'm tired of paying out my nose for sporadic cable reception.

Rules of Seven, a Thursday Edition

2009-11-05T15:49:00.006-05:00

I wanted to lighten the mood from yesterday. I'm sorry I struck a nerve in so many people, but my neighbors make me absolutely nuts. I don't have my mother to vent to anymore. My father and sister rarely answer their phones, my grandmother is too busy talking to everyone else, and my nephew has kids he now plays with after so school so I can't vent to any of them. Since I have to let my frustrations out somehow, that pretty much leaves this blog and Twitter as my only outlets. Sometimes you just have to type what's pissing you off to fully get it out of your system.

Anyway, not much has happened today other than Wendy's didn't give me the almonds that went with my mandarin chicken salad so I had to go inside. The older guy at the register, who might have been the manager now that I think about it, apologized for me having to stand in line just to get almonds and offered to give me a free soda for my troubles, and then--get this--I turned him down. He said that the drink was on him, which I thought meant he would have to buy it, and I didn't want him to have to do that since he wasn't the one working the drive-through. Plus, I really wanted an icee from Quiktrip, and the drinks there cost half of what they cost at Wendy's and are less watered down.

Since my Wendy's experience wasn't all that exciting, despite the entire paragraph that I just devoted to it, I thought I would do this meme that I found on Squidoo called the Rules of Seven. The meme requires you to give seven answers to the following seven questions or prompts.

Seven Things That Scare Me

My father's old toupee.
Circular saws.
My sister walking in heels.
My grandmother's toenails.
Semis that drive too close to the line.
Wharf rats.
Bella near an inground pool.

Seven Things That I Like

Wolfgang Puck organic soup.
Movie theaters with stadium seating.
Electric blankets.
Milk Duds.
Veggie pizza.
A good whodunnit.
The smell of a real Christmas tree.

Seven Random Facts About Me

I once caught the dishwasher on fire in law school.
When the original 90210 first started, I was so obsessed with it that I recorded every single episode, and that was back in the days of VHS.
In junior high, I dotted my i's with hearts because Stacey from The Babysitters' Club books did the same thing.
My sister bought me a thong one Christmas because she said my Hanes Her Way were "little girl underwear." To humor her, I tried to wear it the next day but only made it an hour. I haven't worn one since. I'd rather have panty lines than having something riding up my butt all day.
In the fifth grade, I had a killer hamster. Literally, the hamster killed its cage mate one night while I slept. Try waking up to a gutted hamster on a Sunday morning.
If I didn't have dogs, my dream car would be an apple green VW bug.
I failed the driving part of the driver license exam the first time.

Seven Things I Want to Do Before I Die

Learn how to scuba dive, preferably somewhere beautiful and not in a pool.
See the Eiffel Tower in person.
Write and publish a novel.
Find a job that I love and have it find me back.
Have LASIK surgery. I've been wearing contacts since the sixth grade but should have worn them sooner. I want to know what it's like to swim and wake up in the morning with clear vision, to go somewhere without having to first make sure I have my rewetting eyedrops,and to be able to use allergy eyedrops without taking out my lenses first.
Live at the beach.
Get out of this neighborhood. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Seven Things I Can Do Well

Procrastinate.
Trip over my own feet. I've practically made it a sport.
Along those same lines, walk into furniture. I'm great at it. In fact, a few hours ago, I walked into the coffee table for the 100th time and bruised my knee.
Retain soap opera history. Just don't ask me to retain real history.
Tetris.
Microwave.
Color inside the lines.

Seven Things I Can't Do But Wish I Could

Cook an edible, from scratch meal without blowing something up or burning it.
Splits.
Cartwheels. I can flip over. I just can't go in a straight line.
Drive a stick.
Reach the top shelf at stores without standing on the bottom one.
Wear a size 7 shoe.
Fly a plane.

Seven Phrases I'm Known to Use

Seriously.
Well...
Bite me.
Whatever.
Y'all.
Like. (I was like, and she was like, not I like this or that.)
No, bad dog.

A Question for Parents

2009-11-04T18:42:00.004-05:00

Today I had intended to do a meme, mostly because the time change has me in such a brain fog that I couldn't think of anything else to do. I have decided, however, to save that meme for tomorrow and ask this question instead. Why is it that more and more parents just don't care anymore?

I don't mean care in general. I'm sure parents, as a general rule, still care about their kids. The kind of care that I'm talking about is caring about what their kids do. Why is it that more and more parents let their kids do whatever they want, whenever they want, and the rest of the world be damned?

Case in point: this afternoon. Weather-wise, today has been a really nice day. It has been sunny since I woke up this morning with not a cloud in sight and temperatures in the low 70's. In other words, it has been a perfect day to spend some time outside before winter gets here, which is what I had intended to do. I guess the brain fog must be worse than I thought because I temporarily forgot that I can't do that in this neighborhood.

The dogs and I weren't outside for more than 30 seconds before two boys began circling the backyard with sticks. They went from the right side of my house all the way to the left, stopped, and then reversed directions. On the return trip, they started hitting my fence with the sticks just as hard as they could. They would stop and hit it an extra time whenever the dogs would bark or I'd yell for the dogs to come to me. When they got back to the right side of my house, they stopped walking and started banging on the corner of the house, where the wooden fence meets the vinyl. The banging caused my dogs to run behind the AC unit and bark at the kids, which caused the kids, in turn, to bang even more.

At that point, I started yelling so loudly that I think the dogs became more scared of me than the boys with the sticks because they hightailed it to the back porch . The kids, in contrast, could have cared less that an adult was yelling at them. They just kept on hitting my fence and my house. It wasn't until I told them that I was going to call the police if they hit it one more time and that I was then going to go get a stick and hit their house to see how their mamas liked it did they finally leave.

Of course, I won't be calling the police. I have already done that once before for the exact same behavior, and I was told that there was nothing the police could do because they were kids. In other words, the police in this county could care less about trespassing, destruction of property, animal abuse, or any other crime committed by a juvenile, so long as someone doesn't get shot in the commission of that crime. Only then will the police intervene, which is why the department's gang task force is an absolute joke. After all, the kids in those gangs don't usually start out with murder. They usually start with the smaller stuff. Isn't it better to intervene then than wait until the kids go on a killing spree?

Basically, my only recourse is to live a life with the blind shuts and the dogs inside. I can't sell the house thanks to a combination of the economy and these kids. I can't rent it out for the same reason. I can't speak to their parents because I know from past experience with those parents that they just don't care, but like I asked in the beginning of this post, why is that?

Parents used to care. I have said this before in this blog, and I'm going to say it again. When I was a kid, if I had ever done even a fourth of what these kids have done (just do a search for the term "neighbors" on this blog to get a clue of what I'm talking about), my mother would have torn my butt up. I'm not saying she ever beat me; she didn't, but there were times I had to go to the backyard and pick out my own switch. I'm sure I'm not the only one reading this blog who did. Meanwhile, if I had done even half of what they have done, I guarantee you that my grandfather would have shipped me off to military school or one of those alternative places where you have to kill your own food. They have those in Georgia. I even know a guy who had to go to one.

The thing is I would have never even thought to do those things. I knew what the rules were. I knew what my mother expected of me, and I knew what time I had to be in by (and it was not 12:30 a.m. like it seems to be around here). I also knew that, if I broke those rules and expectations, I was going to be in trouble when my mom got home.

Now before any of you answer my question by blaming it all on parents who work or single mothers, you should know that, after my parents got divorced, my mother worked full time. She didn't really have a choice, seeing as my father only paid child support once in a blue moon. At first, we had to go to daycare after school, but eventually we moved up to my grandparents' house and then our own as we got older. Thus, there were plenty of times that we were unsupervised, yet we never acted like the kids around here. Even if my mother wasn't looking over our shoulders in person, she was there in spirit, and we did not want to get in trouble with Mama.

I remember there was one kid on our street who acted like the kids in this subdivision do--Rusty. Rusty tore up fences. He broke car windows. He hit neighbors' dogs, including my own Pekingese once, yet when he got caught doing those things, he was held accountable. His mother would take hold of his arm, march him down to the victim's house, apologize for his behavior, and then make him apologize. She never blamed the victim. She owned up to having the kid from hell.

The mothers in this neighborhood don't do that. The few times that they have managed to get off their behinds and see what's going on, they have just made excuses for their kids' behavior. Nine times out of ten, these excuses involve blaming you for whatever their precious angels did wrong. Kids banging on my fence and house? Dog feces in my mailbox? My doorbell being rung at 10:30 at night? The pine straw in my flower beds being dragged into the middle of my yard? Well, according to the parents, I just brought those things on myself since I'm just oh-so-mean and always glaring at their babies. (Funny, the glaring didn't start UNTIL they did those thing, and, as with stray dogs, I try to avoid direct eye contact.)

The mothers never apologize. They never make their kids apologize. They don't even tell the kids not to do it again. For all I know, they're patting them on the back and buying them a toy for a job well done the minute the kids get inside.

Why is that? Are all kids like this now? Are all parents? If they are, then why? Is it global warming? The economy? Violent movies and video games? A secret alien invasion?

Seriously, I want to know why bad behavior is now rewarded instead of punished because here I am 33 and not getting any younger. As it now stands, every time my biological clock even remotely ticks, the kids in this neighborhood come along, yank it out of me, throw the clock's battery through my front window, and stomp its gears into dust. At the rate I'm going, I'll be in early menopause by the time I'm 35.

A Post Office Enigma, Plus A Lovely Blog Award

2009-11-03T13:23:00.007-05:00

I think that my sister and grandmother should work for the post office.

I forgot to respond to my Mystery Guild mailing last month. Let me rephrase that. I forgot to respond to one of the three Mystery Guild mailings last month. That's right. I said three. As if it wasn't hard enough to remember to respond when there is just one mailing a month. Now out of the blue Mystery Guild decided to throw three in there, most likely to trap people like me who were just expecting the one. Desperate economic times calls for desperate measures, I guess. As a result, I got a not-so-nice surprise in the mail yesterday--three books that I would never, ever read. (I think it's pretty much a rule that when you forget to respond to a main selection, that main selection will never be a book that's at the top of your must read list.)

Since I refuse to shell out $54 for books I do not want or need, I had to go to a place I hate going to almost as much as I hate going to Walmart--the post office. Why do I hate it? For starters, it's on the other side of town. To get there, I have to drive down one-way streets that seem to be congested at all hours of the day. Sometimes it takes me longer to get there than it does to get on the interstate and drive to downtown Atlanta. Once I pull into the parking lot, I feel like I'm riding a bicycle during a Nascar race at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. I'm dodging speeding traffic right and left, and I never seem to have the right of way, even when I do. Then there is the line. The line is always to the door, and while there seems to numerous employees in the building, only one or two ever seem to be working the counter. (Kind of sounds like Walmart, doesn't it?) Once I'm done, I have to pull back onto those one way streets and past the courthouse where I used to work. Those of you who have been reading this blog for awhile know that that courthouse does not hold fond memories for me. Sooner or later I know that I'm going to drive past the courthouse while Judge Combover is walking out the front door. When that day comes, it's going to take every last ounce of willpower that I have not to give him the one-finger wave from my car. Consequently, the drive home is always filled with a sense of dread, in particular the dread that I'm going to be arrested for lewd and obscene behavior.

Anyway, as much as I didn't want to, I swallowed my pride, hate, and dread this morning so I could go to the post office. I was hoping to send the books back by media mail, since it seems to be cheaper than first class mail, but I questioned whether I could. You see Mystery Guild tried to soften the $54 blow by including "free" gift wrap, gift wrap that I'm sure I would have been charged for had I not returned it with the books. I didn't know if that gift wrap voided the media aspects of the package.

So I asked the postal employee who was working the counter if it did. This was her response: "Well, I'd have to weigh the gift wrap to tell you."

That response wouldn't have bothered me if I had shown up with a big box that could have theoretically contained a roll or two of wrapping paper. However, I didn't show up with such a box. I showed up with the box that the books came in. If any of you are members of Mystery Guild, Doubleday, Literary Guild, or the Book of the Month Club, you know exactly what that box looks like. It's only big enough to fit the books inside. In fact the box fits the books so snugly that it's almost like the warehouse shrink-wrapped the books in cardboard. There is no room for a roll of gift wrap. At most the box can hold is one folded-up sheet.

Which is what I told Post Office Polly, more or less. The thing is I shouldn't have had to tell her that at all. She should have looked at the size of the box, which was the size of three, hardback books stacked on top of each other, and realized that logically any gift wrap stuck inside could not have weighed more than a piece of paper. After all, the last time I checked, paper is exactly what the majority of gift wrap is made from. It is not, as far as I know, made from sheets of steel. That realization, however, seemed just out of Post Office Polly's mental reach. She vacantly stared at the box for another minute, sighed, and then rang it up as Media Mail like she was doing me a favor.

Now I know why my mail is delivered to the wrong address so often. The post office will hire anyone, even those who don't get that 2 + 2 = 4 and paper doesn't weigh as much as steel.

Now onto something that was delivered correctly, a blog award. Vicki from Frugal Mom Knows Best has given me the One Lovely Blog Award. The rules say to pass it onto 15 new blog discoveries. I still haven't come up with a list of 15 new blogs for that other award that required it so I guess what I need to do is combine the two awards and pass them out to the same 15 blogs or, in the alternative, come up with a list of 30 blogs. Either way, the list is going to take some work, and I tend to procrastinate at times. Just in case it takes me a month to get the list posted, I wanted to say thank you to Vicki now so she knows that I greatly appreciate the "lovely blog" endorsement. Thanks, Vicki! Hopefully, I'll be able to get that list up and the award passed out in a few days.

By the way, Vicki, I know that you said on your blog that there was a second award, but I'm having my own dumb moment today. I wasn't sure if the second was the Best Blog or the Friends. I didn't want to be embarrassed and pass on the wrong one (I almost did that once--long story), so if you could let me know, I'll post it as well. Thanks.

A Memo to My Sister, Plus Top Droppers

2009-11-02T15:57:00.004-05:00

TO: Your Royal Highness

FROM: Your Disgruntled Sibling

DATE: November 2, 2009

SUBJECT: Late Night Calls

Halloween night you called me at 1 a.m. While I was not asleep at the time, I could have been, a fact you seem oblivious to. As that night was not the first time you have called me during what you consider normal hours but what the rest of the world considers bed time, I thought it was time we established some ground rules.

From now on, please abide by the following terms and conditions when you call me:

1. Do not call after 11 p.m. unless one of the following conditions apply:

Someone that I know has died or is about to die.
Someone that I know's dog has died or is about to die.
Either Publisher's Clearinghouse and/or the team from Extreme Home Makeover is 15 minutes from my house, and you want me to put on a bra before they knock on the door.

2. Enunciate when you call. I know for a fact that you don't eat rocks on a regular basis since none of the local fast food joints sell them on the dollar menu. Therefore, there is no need to sound like you have a mouth full of them every time you speak to me.

3. If you want to speak to me, speak to me directly. Do not make your nine-year-old son, who has obviously been on a six-hour, Halloween candy binge, act as your intermediary. If whatever you have to say is important enough for me to hear in the middle of the night, it is important enough for you to say yourself.

4. If you're going to prank call me, please try to stick to the classics. Breathe heavily. Tell me that you saw what I did, and you know who I am. Ask me if I have Prince Albert in a can. Just please don't ask me if I think the world is going to end in 2012. If it's past 11 p.m., chances are I'm not going to have the patience to explain to you in slow, one-syllable-worded speech that 2012 is a fictional movie starring John Cusack. It is not--I repeat, is not--a documentary.

If you promise to abide by these simple rules, I promise not to get in my car, drive four hours, sneak into the house, and beat you senseless with one of Daddy Goff's old canes.

_____________________________________

Now for October's Top Entrecard Droppers:

Hugz Before You Go
The Way I See It
Junk Drawer
CAP News
Bloody Computer!
Cute as a Buggy
Recycled Frockery
Mama Asid's Entrepod
BadGalSays
Better Spines

Thanks for dropping!

Why I'm an Intellectual Anomaly in My Family

2009-10-30T18:30:00.003-04:00

Have you ever had one of those moments where you seriously wonder whether there was a mix up at the hospital and your family went home with the wrong baby? Or that your whole birth was a soap opera type cover up, and the truth is that your parents found you in the dumpster behind the local bar, treading water in a Walmart toilet, or crawling through a cabbage patch? I had one of those moments last night.

Around 10:30 or 10:45 p.m., my phone rang. I looked at caller ID and saw my grandmother's number. Chandler had called me earlier in the evening to complain about how mean my sister was being, denying him access to his new Wii game. (Boo hoo, right? I guess taking away the Wii is a tragedy of monumental proportions in a nine-year-old's world.) I figured that he was still up and was calling to complain again. Consequently, I answered the phone like this:

"What now, Chandler?"

All I got was silence.

"Chandler, what do you want? I'm trying to watch Private Practice."

Finally, I got an answer, albeit from my grandmother, not my nephew. "Hello?"

"What?"

"Hello?"

"Hello."

"Who's this?"

"Staci. Who the heck do you think it is?"

"Staci?"

"Yes, Staci. Your granddaughter."

"I didn't call you."

"Uh, yeah, you did."

"No, no, I didn't."

"Well, you're talking to me now, and I didn't call you."

"Well, I, uh, hit this thing here...this, uh, what's it called? Uh, re...uh...re..."

"Last number redial?"

"Yes, that's it."

"Well, obviously I was the last number dialed."

"No, you weren't."

"On that phone, I must have been. Chandler called me earlier to complain about Tina."

"But the phone just rang."

"So?"

"So did you just call me?"

"No."

"But I hit redial to call that person back."

"Oh...my...god...You don't hit redial to call someone back."

"Yes, you do."

"No, you don't. You use redial to dial the last number dialed."

"But the phone just rang."

"Again I say so?"

"So that's the last number dialed."

"Good grief. Seriously? How long have you been using a phone now? Like a hundred years? Redial means the last number you dialed, not the last number that dialed you."

"It does?"

"Yes, it does."

"Well, tell me how do I get the number off of here."

"Just scroll through the caller ID screen and hit delete."

"No, not the number of whoever just called. Your number."

"You want to get rid of my number?"

"Yes, so I can hit redial and get the right number."

"Did you not hear a word I just said? Redial will not allow you to call the last number that called you."

"But I need to call them back."

"So look at their number on caller ID and dial it."

"But I'm going to have to delete your number first."

"No, you're not."

"Ah, hell, Staci. Just tell me how to delete your number."

"You can't delete it! All you can do is dial another number, and then that number will be the last number dialed."

"Well, don't tell me how to do it then. I'm sorry I bothered you."

My grandmother hung up on me at that point, I'm assuming so she could call one of her friends and have them tell her what I wouldn't. It was either that or her cigarette was finally coming to an end and burning her fingers.

I don't know why I'm surprised by the exchange. After all, this is the woman who once scrunched up her nose, pointed her finger at our Himalayan's testicles, and asked my mother, "What are those?", the same woman who, on a different occasion, chastised my mother for calling me a bitch because, in her words, I had a father. Obviously, I didn't get my brains from her.

Is it too late to be adopted?

The Night of the Tell Tale Clock

2009-10-29T15:25:00.010-04:00

Since my old dentist fixed my back tooth, I have been sleeping significantly better. Instead of tossing and turning all night, I have been falling asleep within 15 minutes of my head hitting the pillow. Just yesterday I was thinking of how lucky I was to be sleeping normally again. Then last night happened. Here is a little peek at how my night went:

Tick.

Ah, I love my new pillow.

Tock.

What the hell is that sound?

Tick.

It's the stinkin' wall clock again, isn't it?

Tock.

Damn, it's loud. I should have never replaced the battery.

Tick.

Maybe if I turn over it won't be as loud.

Tock.

No, it still sounds like I'm stuck inside a Timex. Takes a licking. Keeps on ticking...and ticking...and ticking...

Tick.

Maybe if I put the pillow over my head, I won't be able to hear it.

Tock.

I'm suffocating! I'm suffocating!

Tick.

Air! I need air!

Tock.

Sweet, beautiful air! I don't care if you smell like a dirty dog. I still love you.

Tick.

Will it ever stop? It's okay. I can ignore it. It's all about will power.

Tock.

You do not exist. You do not exist.

Tick.

You do exist! You do! Is this water Chinese water torture feels like?

Tock.

The Smurfs' all time show. You'll have a good time. We know. We know. We know.

Tick.

Where the hell did that come from? Out of my head! Out! Out! Out!

Tock.

There's a smile in my pocket, and it belongs across my--we know, we know, we know. The Smurfs' all time--

Tick.

Stop! Just stop! It's like the clock is making every song from my childhood emerge from my subconscious.

Tock.

What's next? Rags to Riches? She-ra? Jem & the Holograms?

Tick.

Jem. Jem is excitement. Ooh, Jem. Jem is adventure.

Tock.

Great. Talk about the power of suggestion. I might as well ride it out.

Tick.

Glitter and glimmer. Fashion and fame. Hum, hum, hum.

Tock.

Jem, the music's contagious. Outrageous. Jem is my name. No one else is the same. Jem is my name.

Tick.

That's it. I'm getting a baseball bat.

Tock.

Crap. I don't have a baseball bat. That's okay. I'm getting the broom.

Tick.

Double crap. The broom is downstairs.

Tock.

Earthquake. Please let there be an earthquake.

Tick.

No earthquake. Why didn't I move to LA when I had a chance?

Tock.

Oh, hell. I'm getting up.

Tick.

If I could just reach...Oops. Sorry, fish. Sorry, dogs. Mommy didn't mean to drop it.

Tock.

The light! The light!

Tick.

Okay. Now I can see. Tape? Why oh why did I tape the battery to the clock?

Tock.

Stinkin' nails. Every time I cut you, I need you. I think I--

Ti--

got it. That's right, clock. You are mine.

I'm an Honest Scrap, and Here's Why

2009-10-27T15:31:00.007-04:00

Last week Marilyn at A Lot of Loves gave me the Honest Scrap Award. I would have posted it then, but the award requires you to write ten honest things about yourself, which I presume are ten things that you haven't talked about before on your blog. When I read that requirement, my mind went blank. Seriously, I couldn't think of one honest and interesting thing about myself to put on the list. Had I not been required to do so, I could have probably rattled off ten things in under a minute. However, because I was being told to do it, my brain just shut down.

Anyway, I have finally come up with ten honest things, but first I'm going to do the slightly easier part of winning the award, which is stating the Honest Scrap Award Rules and the bloggers I'm going to pass it on to.

The Honest Scrap Award Rules

Present the award to seven bloggers whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design or who have encouraged you.
Tell those seven people that you have given them the Honest Scrap Award.
Share ten honest things about yourself.

The Seven Brilliant or Encouraging Bloggers

Necole at The Creative Mixx
Kat at Candles, Crafts & What Not
Grace at Hugz Before You Go
Buggys at Cute as a Buggy
Margo at Life in the Short Lane
Vicki at Frugal Mom Knows Best
RE at Mama Asid's Entrepod, Recycled Frockery, A Bad Gal Says, & Bad Gals Radio

Now for the ten honest things:

One of my bucket list items is to visit the Grand Canyon. If I don't have another opportunity to go or someone to go with before 2018, I'm going that summer with my nephew. I figure if we wait until he's 18, my sister, who's always afraid that he is going to fall of the side of a mountain/cliff/sidewalk/Ferris wheel/anything over an inch tall, can't say no. However, since I want to do more than just visit--that is, I want to hike, camp, and go white water rafting--I have already warned Chandler that if he starts smoking or gains 300 lbs. so we can't go, he is one dead kid.
My first crush was on Dirk Benedict. For those of you too young to know who that is, he was the guy who played Templeton Peck aka the Face Man on The A-team. Here is the cover art for the Season 1 DVD set if you need a reminder:

Kids Incorporated

In college, if I ran out of underwear and was too lazy to go to the laundromat, I'd go and buy new ones at Target instead. I hate to say it, but I have done that a few times since college as well, like, uh, last month.
Also in college, whenever my sophomore year roommate and I would run out of plastic utensils, we'd go to Wendy's, order a combo to go, and then raid the plastic utensil stand when no one was looking.
I have a weakness for Chick-fil-A milkshakes. Every now and then I have to throw $3 and my lactose issues to the wind and buy one.
I came this close (pinches an inch in the air) to being name Ora Ida after my fraternal great-grandmother Ida. My parents also considered naming me Kent Clark if I was a boy. Can you imagine how much teasing I would have gotten from either of those names? Like high school wasn't bad enough. Try adding a french fry or superhero-related name to the mix. Just thinking about it gives me the shivers.
Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar on Me puts me in a good mood 95 percent of the time.
I have an incredibly bad habit of picking at my lips. In fact, I'm doing it right now. Since Chapstick doesn't seem to stop me from picking, I may very well need to join a 12-step program to stop.
Last Saturday, I finally did something everyone else in America seems to have done--I watched Twilight. I had originally opposed the movie because I figured it was just one, big, Buffy ripoff. I will now admit that I was wrong, that the movie was good, that I actually want to see the sequel, and that Robert Pattinson is, in fact, hot. However, I still have not done two other things that the rest of America, if not the world, has done--join Facebook or buy a Tivo.
I used to have this thing about sleeping with the closet door open. I could not go to sleep unless or until it was shut. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was because I grew up on horror movies where bad things always happened in or came out of closets. Case in point:

Maybe I used to have nightmares about closet monsters as a kid. Maybe I just didn't like the dark. Whatever the cause, an opened closet door at night irked me like nothing else could. However, I got over that aversion my first night at college when I asked my freshman year roommate to shut her closet door before going to bed, and she, in turn, looked at me like I was a fruitcake. Needless to say, I never asked again.

Thanks again, Marilyn, for the award!

I Know That I Said I Wouldn't, But...

2009-10-26T18:36:00.009-04:00

I know that I said I was done discussing my DIY projects, but my brain has been permanently fried by craft paint and cheap craft paint at that. (A word of advice: don't buy the $.50 stuff at Michael's. You'll end up putting on more coats of paint than you have fingers.) Consequently, I'm going back on that promise and posting the pictures. Then I'm getting on the treadmill--there's nothing like watching an episode of Tyra about a man who gets sexual gratification just by having a 500-pound woman sit on him to get a person up and moving--and loading the dishwasher. Fun times on a Monday night.

Here is the decoupaged nightmare of a table before I redid it:

It looks that bad because at one point in the past I had tried unsuccessfully to pull off some of the decoupage on top. I had also attempted to strip the crackle paint finish with Ready Strip, that green paint stripper that they use to have on those late-night infomercials. Never buy it. Trust me when I say you'll be wasting your money and digging yourself a deeper craft hole. You may not be able to tell it in the picture, but the Ready Strip dried on the table and would not come off. Even after applying two other brands of paint stripper and using a heat gun on the green, dried up mess, it was still stuck on a good 25 percent of the table. I finally just had to paint over it.

Here is the after shot:

I'm not completely happy with it for several reasons. First, the places with the Ready Strip are bumpy. I would have preferred that they be smooth. Second, I had to finally give up on the brick red paint that I was using and switch to the more tomato red paint that I had used on the buffet. It was that or spend the next decade applying coats of brick red. Third, the light purple paint looked like it was going to be the same color as my wall color, only slightly lighter, when I looked at the swatch on the bottle. It wasn't so now there is a clashing issue. Fourth, the clear acrylic coat that I put over all the colors dried goopy in some places. Fifth, as you can see from this picture, the table is not the same height as my other side table.

It also doesn't match it. However, seeing as Target no longer sells that side table, and I was trying to save money by redoing what I had instead of buying new, it's just going to have to do.

Nevertheless, the project is finally done, and the lamp on top has been rewired. Consequently, as soon as I get through steam cleaning tomorrow, I can get caught up on other projects, like reading all of your blogs, returning EC drops, designing my nephew a header for the short story site he wants to start, redoing my Twitter background, and passing out the blog award that I should have passed out last week.

Plan Your Own Amazing Race During Accor's 3-Day Super Sale

2009-10-26T17:19:00.005-04:00

I watch The Amazing Race for the same reason I majored in international relations. It may be as close as I ever come to traveling outside the southern United States. I still can't believe Mica and Canaan got eliminated over a water slide in Dubai last night. While I'm not that fond of heights myself, I have been down plenty of water slides at Wet n' Wild in Orlando and Crystal Lake in South Georgia. (No, it's not that Crystal Lake. To my knowledge, no one by the name of Jason Voorhees has ever drowned and/or gone on a killing spree there.) If you get queasy when you look down, you just close your eyes and go. If there's a million dollars standing between you and the pool at the bottom, you go even faster, but that's just me. Obviously, it was not Mica and Canaan.

I would love to audition for that show, but even if I had a promotional hook (the beauty queen and her husband, the recently separated couple, the newlyweds, the Big Brother stars, etc.) and the looks for it, I would never make it past the first episode. Here's why. First, I have a horrible sense of direction that is pretty much genetic. I could get lost in a cardboard box, even with a GPS, a bread crumb trail, a film crew, and a big sign that says, "Exit here." Second, my bladder just could not handle it. Remember that episode last season where the woman got eliminated because she had to use the port-a-potty? That would be me, except I would probably have to use a second one right before Phil said I was out and then a third afterward.

So basically if I want to travel the world one day, I'm either going to have to stock up on Depends or do it on my own ticket, not on CBS's. Now would be a good time to visit Asia Pacific on my own dime, thanks to Accor Hotels 3-Day Super Sale Asia Pacific. Between October 27 and October 29, online prices for one million hotel rooms in the Asia Pacific area will be slashed drastically, some going as low as $30 per night. For instance, say I wanted to learn how to surf in Bali. (I pity the surf instructor who would have to teach me, but that's an entirely different subject.) If I were to book a room on Accor's web site during the 3-Day Super Sale, I could possibly get a room in Bali for $75 per night. That's cheaper than a room here during race weekend.

Say I wanted to then try some authentic shrimp on the barbie or chocolate thunder from down under somewhere other than my local Outback Steakhouse. During the 3-Day Super Sale, I could book a room in Australia for $87 per night. I could also visit the orphanage that Angelina Jolie adopted Maddox from for $50 per night or give out of breath hiking the Great Wall of China for $58 per night.

Travel dates booked during the 3-Day Super Sale must be between December 9, 2009 and April 10, 2010. The sale coincides with all time low prices on airfare in the Asia Pacific region so you should get a great deal all around. For more information on the 3-Day Super Sale, click the "Support My Sponsor" link below.

While I'm tempted to take advantage of the sale myself, I realize that I would have to visit all those places by myself, which isn't necessarily the most fun way to do it. I would also have to board my dogs or find someone to babysit them while I was gone. I can just imagine it now. I would shell out the money for tickets and a hotel room. I'd get my first passport. I'd buy some cute traveling clothes. I would get excited about all the places I was going to visit. Then five minutes after I arrived at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, I would get a call from the vet or the pet hotel that was keeping the dogs. "Uh, ma'am, I'm sorry to bother you, but Bella is howling and hyperventilating, and she won't let any of us near her. We can't do anything with her so you're going to have to come get her." My "amazing race" would subsequently become a not-so-amazing race to pick up my dogs in rush hour traffic on 1-75, not a trip around the world.

Oh well. At least I still have the show.

The Redneck Mobile Strikes Again

2009-10-23T12:15:00.007-04:00

Dear Car,

I think we need to talk. I couldn't help but notice that you have been acting out lately. In fact, it seems that every time one of the dogs gets sick, you have to try to out sick them. For instance, when Bella broke her foot earlier this year, you broke your air conditioner and started overheating. When Bella developed a skin infection and had a polyp appear on her rear end a few weeks ago, you nuked your battery and your alternator twice. Now that Bella has a bladder infection, you've made the heater go out. What gives?

Are you throwing these temper tantrums out of jealousy? Do you think that I love the dogs more than you? I assure you that Mommy loves all her babies equally. If I could bring you inside and let you sleep on my pillow, I would, but let's face it. You're a little too big for that. You can't even fit into the garage, let alone in my bed.

Are you ashamed of the nicknames that I give you? If so, I'll admit that the Redneck Mobile and Bessie aren't the most flattering monikers ever. I mean I wouldn't want to be associated with the punchline of a Jeff Foxworthy joke or a fat, slow cow that couldn't make it up the hill either. So tell me, what would you prefer to be called? I could always call you Cam. Granted, it's not that original, being that it is just a shortened form of Camaro, but it is better than the other two. How about the Dark Knight? Sure, Batman has pretty much cornered the market for that nickname, but if you down ten shots, spin around three times, and squint really hard, you could pass for the Batmobile...sort of.

Are you envious of the cars next door that get washed every other day? If so, don't be. It's flu season, and there is such a thing as being too clean. All that washing means that sooner or later, the good bacteria is going to die off, the bad bacteria is going to build up a resistance to the anti-bacterials, and then, with the good bacteria gone, they're going to take over. Once that happens, those cars are going to turn into a Nyquil commercial on wheels. I'm leaving you dirty for your own good. Besides, a light coating of dust merely gives you more character. Can the cars next door say that?

Is it that you want me to get your dents and paint job fixed? Is that why you keep throwing fits? Well, guess what. I have a lot more dents that need to be fixed than you do. In case you have forgotten, Dr. Evil botched up my nose and chin job eight years ago, and I still need to get them fixed. Then there are the droopy eyelids, the barely existent lips, the wrinkles I can't stand underneath my eyes, the yellow teeth, and the tracheotomy scar that I'd like to get done. Unfortunately, I can't afford to fix even one of those things, let alone all of them, so you're just going to have to learn to live with your dents like I have.

Are you scared that the ~~nightmare~~ dream that I told you about will come true? You know the one where my father and Tina's babydaddy repaint you to look like the General Lee. If so, I can promise you that I will never paint you orange and that I will never allow the Dixie flag to be painted onto your roof or any other part of your body. I'd sooner drive a Schwinn.

I hope that this little talk quelled some of your anxieties because your weekly temper tantrums are costing me an arm and a leg. Seriously, I spent $130 getting your heater fixed this week, and that's a lot more than I spent at the vet on the same day. If you wanted my attention, you got it. Now please, please, pretty please with a cherry on top stop breaking things and just chill for awhile. I don't want to be on a first name basis with the Goodyear auto mechanics.

~~Hate~~ Love always,

And I Thought I Had Issues

2009-10-21T21:31:00.005-04:00

First, let me say that I'm nixing the mail order husband idea. If you want to know why, stop by this site: MailOrderHusbands.net. The first guy's forehead is bigger than the rest of his face (see Andrew from South Dakota if the order of the mail order bachelors changes). The guy six down is missing his front teeth (David from Perth, Australia), and I swear that I've seen the third guy on To Catch a Predator (Philip from Wisconsin). If that's the cream of the crop, I'd rather marry a goat.

Second, the life-size dolls are looking few and far between as well. Basically, all I have to choose from is a gladiator, a construction worker, and this guy that looks scarily like the love child of Ron Jeremy and a dollar store float:

***Shudder.***

So once again, farm animals are looking better and better. This guy--at least I think it's a guy--may very well be my future husband.

Hey, don't judge. I'm from Georgia. I'm pretty sure it's legal here, and if it's not, well, Senor Munch and I will just move to Alabama.

Third, the whole adopt-a-kid thing might be a little more expensive than I thought, so if anyone has one of those talking Cricket or Corky dolls from the 80's in their attic, let me know. They might be as close as I can get to instakids. Plus, if I pose Cricket and Corky just right, I might be able to take a convincing enough picture to gain temporary admittance into the Mommy Bloggers Club.

Fourth, look what I got today, my first spammy comment from a crazy person:

I am a lawyer and I f***ing hate litigation.
I was a stripper after I got my useless BA. Men are pigs (the ones that go to strip clubs are).
I hate the lawyers in my big law office, and I hate my boss and some of opposing counsel treat me much better than the ridiculous huge auto insurance company I work for.
I am miserable.
45 minutes ago I confirmed I have BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder)
I assume my psychiatrist already knows this, and I've known for quite some time.
A right wing Republican lawyer at my office today freaked on me when I said, unknowingly she was a Sarah Palin "drill baby" freak, when I spoke the words "we need to get off oil."
You know, like get out of their "hold land" of Saudia A, Iraq, Afgahnistan/Pak., etc and then we can try and save ourselves from the bombers.
Other energy sources are real and can be done quickly, and I told the Right Wing freak who I had just given clothes to for her welfare grandchild, that I should not have to educate her on alternative energy sources (I feel that it's someone's own responsibility to remain uninformed or not)
I want to quit my job and go sit quietly as a law clerk for a judge and be bored to tears.
Litigation sucks.
I have defaulted on my student loans, $167,000 after 7 years of interest and payments of interest only on the private portion of the loans, now the loan mgmt. company is changing their "rules" (gee I thought I had a contract) and I must pay both all of my private and Fed loans unless I am unemployed or make $260 per month.
I make junk and there's no jobs in Big City, all the Big Firms are laying off highly educated youngins'
Someone jumped off a building in Big City last week a couple of blocks from me.
Maybe that high school suicide attempt should be re-inacted, that jumper maybe had the right idea.
Seriously, I am losing my mind working for an insurance company with 22 year olds telling me, after 100s of arbirtations and bench trials and at least 30 jury trials, what the value of a case is.

The guy or girl--I'm not sure which--left the comment on that post I did about doing the solo lambada for my neighbors. Since it has nothing to do with that post, I was tempted to delete it. Then I thought, "Wait. The only spam I ever get has to do with herbal Viagra. I've never gotten anything this good before. I can't possibly delete it. I need to print it out, cross-stitch it, and hang it in a frame."

Too bad I haven't cross stitched anything since the fifth grade.

I guess I'll just have to settle for this:

Look, everyone! Staci has her first crazy! Yay, me! I'm a real blogger now!

Now let's break out the balloons and champagne.

Bored to Death Mondays

2009-10-19T15:12:00.005-04:00

I spent close to five hours yesterday reading other blogs, commenting, and returning around 130 Entrecard drops. As of 10 a.m. this morning, only about 30 people had even bothered to drop and run in turn, and I only had two new comments. Those two facts made me realize the following:

Blogging may very well be a waste of my time.
Entrecard may be an even bigger waste.
I'm incredibly boring.
The people of Blog World don't care about tooth pain, dogs, homeowner association rules, cleaning, yard work, my car, things I find in my yard, dumb things that I do, dumb things that my sister does, dumb things that my neighbors do, or anything else that happens in my incredibly boring life.
The people of Blog World do care about the dumb things that their children do, dumb things that their husbands do, computer know-how, inside scoops on the rich and famous, caption this contests, what-the-hell-is-this contests, cats, memes, and YouTube videos.
People who said they wanted to see a picture of the chair when I was done were only being polite.
No one got the "I should consider myself lucky that the hygienist did not like my bra" joke.
No one gets any of my jokes.
My blog has a bad case of comment cooties.

In light of this epiphany, I've decided to do the following to increase my readership.

Buy a mail-order husband online. If I can't find one interesting enough on clearance, I may have to settle for a lifelike, blowup one, like Lars and the Real Girl, only in my case it would be Staci and the Real Boy.
Adopt a couple of kids from China so I can join the world of mommy bloggers. While I'm waiting on my visa, I'll just borrow a few rug-rats from Octomom and Brangelina.
Teach my dogs to answer to the name "cat."
Master photoshopping pictures of cats' heads onto my dogs' bodies before posting them on this blog.
Go back to school and major in computer technology.
Apply for an internship with TMZ.
Scour the Internet for pictures and videos I can steal and post here.
Buy a bunch of junk at the Dollar Tree that I can give away in contests.
Stop talking about and/or posting pictures of my latest DIY project.
Stop giving daily recounts of my incredibly boring life.
Stop making jokes that don't begin with "knock, knock."

Since most of the things on my blog improvement list will take awhile to achieve and because I pretty much have nothing left to talk about, I decided to steal a meme from another blog. This one comes courtesy of The Blue Door. The meme doesn't have an official name that I can tell of other than maybe "Monday Meme", so I decided to call it "Bored to Death Mondays." It involves 50 questions that will bore you to death; feel free to fall asleep by the tenth one.

What is the color of your toothbrush? It's not just one color; it's three--blue, yellow, and white.
Name one person who made you smile today. The lady at Walmart who carded me for paint stripper and who then said I didn't look old enough to buy it. Either she was nearsighted as hell or the adult-onset acne was throwing her off. Just the same, it was nice not to be called ma'am or told you look 33 for once.
What were you doing at 8 a.m. this morning? I was laying in bed listening to my dog scratch herself on the floor and silently hoping that she and my other dog had yet to realize that I was awake.
What were you doing 45 minutes ago? I was calling the vet to schedule an appointment for Bella's newest health issue and watching ~~The Olivia Show~~ General Hospital.
What is your favorite candy bar? Snickers. I like to eat the chocolate around the sides first, then the chocolate off the bottom, and then finally the top, nuggety part.
Have you ever been to a strip club? Yes, if an all-male review at a night club during Kappa Delta hell week counts. We left when one of my new sorority sisters found out that her ex-boyfriend now moonlighted there.
What is the last thing you said aloud? "Mommy's sorry she yelled at you."
What is your favorite ice cream? Mint chocolate chip when I'm not PMS'ing; chocolate chip cookie dough when I am.
What was the last thing you had to drink? A coke from Hardee's. (Carl's Burgers for you West Coasters)
Do you like your wallet? Yes, but it's time for a new one. Plus, I wouldn't mind if it had more money in it.
What was the last thing you ate? A Hardee's Thickburger and fry.
Have you bought any new clothing items this week? No, but last week I got two pairs of jeans on clearance for $5 a piece and ordered a lightweight jacket for $30.
What was the last sporting event that you watched? Does the wrestling match on Real Chance of Love count as a sporting event?
What is your favorite flavor of popcorn? Caramel.
Who is the last person that you sent a text message to? My sister.
Have you ever been camping? Yes, when I was a Girl Scout, but we slept in cabins, not tents.
Do you take vitamins daily? I try to.
Do you go to church every Sunday? No.
Do you have a tan? No. I had skin cancer as a baby so I slather on the sunscreen and try to avoid tanning on purpose.
Do you prefer Chinese food over pizza? No. I'm a Papa John's girl through and through, although I don't mind a good serving of General Tso's chicken every now and then.
Do you drink your soda with a straw? Only if a straw comes with it.
What did your last text message say? Something like "Bailey no teeth." It was attached to the picture of him that I took after he had three teeth pulled.
What are you doing tomorrow? Taking Bella to the vet so she can pee in a cup and get some antibiotics for yet another UTI.
What is your favorite color? Purple.
Look to your left. What do you see? A purple wall.
What color is your watch? Silver with a white face.
What do you think of when you hear the word Australia? Crocodile Dundee and Jasper "Jax" Jacks.
Would you strip for money? It depends on the amount of money and whether stripper shoes come in a size 5. I wouldn't want to break my neck for $5. Not to be a strip club snob or anything, but it would also depend on the place. Don't send me to the redneck or homely girls club please, even if I belong there.
Do you go into a fast food place or just hit the drive through? It depends on who I'm with. If I'm with my nephew, he makes me go in. If I'm alone, I go through the drive through.
What is your favorite number? Dont' have one. Don't care to get one.
Who is the last person you spoke to on the phone? The vet receptionist.
Do you have any plans today? To finish stripping my side table (yes, I just broke one of my new rules) and to watch Twilight for the first time.
How many states have you lived in? Two, Georgia and Florida.
What is your biggest annoyance right now? Bella's health problems, followed closely by the crack I have to fix in my tub...again and the ich in my fish tank that won't go away.
What is the last song you listened to? I can't remember what was playing on the radio in the car today so I'll go with the song that is paused on my iPod, Kenny Loggins' I'm Free (Heaven Helps the Man).
Can you say the alphabet backwards? Not without a lot of thought, so I'd probably fail a field sobriety test stone cold sober.
Do you have a maid service clean your house? Yeah, me. I just don't get to wear the cute, French maid outfit.
What favorite pair of shoes do you wear all the time? My Earth Spirit sandals. I don't care if they came from Walmart. Their arch support rocks.
Are you jealous of anyone? Yeah, Angelina Jolie.
Is anyone jealous of you? I doubt it.
Do you love anyone? My dogs most days, although today I'm ready to trade them in for a new model.
Do any of your friends have children? I really don't have any real life friends so I guess the answer to that would be no. My imaginary friends don't have any children either.
What do you usually do during the day? Lately, I've been refinishing furniture (there I go again, breaking that darn rule), blogging, and picking up the same mess over and over and over again.
Do you hate anyone that you know right now? Yeah, the members of the tax appeals board who only came down a few thousand dollars on the value of my house. I'd like to see those idiots attempt to sell this place for what they think is the fair market value when I couldn't even sell it for half that. Better yet, let them come live here and get written up every time they fart. I also hate whoever let their dog take a dump next to my porch, failed to pick the crap up, and thus caused me to kick the maggot covered turd across my yard.
Do you use the word hello daily? Only if I answer the phone. Since it only rings once a week now that my mom no longer calls, I guess the real answer to that question is no.
What color is your car? Black with patches of white undercoat and rust.
What size wedding ring do you wear? I'm not married so your guess is as good as mine. Is there an old maid size?
Are you thinking about someone right now? Yes, the idiot builder who installed the piece of crap tub that I have to fix a crack in once again before I go to bed. I'm hoping his own tub falls through the floor with his sagging, naked butt in it. It would serve him right for not replacing the tub when the first holes and cracks opened up in the tub just a few months after I bought this place and while the tub was still under warranty. Obviously, his repair job didn't work.
Have you ever been to Six Flags? Yes, with my church youth group in high school. Now that I live in Atlanta, I want to go again, but I don't want to go by myself.
How did you get your worst scar? Tracheotomy in the 12th grade.

Now that I've bored myself into a coma, I'm going to go find some toothpicks, prop open my eyelids, and start searching for that mail-order husband.

From the Dentist's Chair to the Painted Chair

2009-10-16T18:23:00.007-04:00

I said this on Twitter yesterday. Now I'm going to say it here. Validation is a better pain killer than Extra Strength Tylenol.

I also need to rephrase what I said in a previous post. I don't hate all dentists. I just hate the stupid, jerky ones who don't listen to their patients.

I saw my old dentist yesterday. I took him awhile, but he eventually found the brown spot I was talking about on my back molar. (I think my drawing helped, LOL.) After a lot of poking and prodding, he determined that the spot wasn't a cavity but a bruise of sorts. It seems that my teeth have moved just enough that, when I close them, the bottom back molar knocks into the top back molar and causes a bruise. Since I open and close my mouth all day long, the top tooth has never had a chance to heal, and the bruise has just gotten worse and worse.

To give it that chance, the dentist filed down and rounded out the area with the bruise so that the two teeth no longer touch at that spot when my mouth is closed. While the tooth is still a little sore today--the bruise still has to have time to go away--it feels a hundred times better than it did at the beginning of this week, when I was being told that the pain was just from sensitivity and that there was no such spot. In part, the improvement is from the teeth no longer knocking together; in part, it's also from someone finally believing me that I was in pain.

I have to say, too, that, while my interaction with the dental hygienist was very minimal yesterday, it was still an improvement over Tuesday for three reasons. First, the hygienist did not point at the tracheotomy scar on my neck, scrunch up her nose, and say, "Ew, what happened there? Did you have surgery or something?" She didn't then give me a vacant look and a long "Ohhhh" when I explained to her the scar was from a tracheotomy that I had in the 12th grade. (For Drop Dead Diva fans, the oh was quite similar to the oh's Stacy always gives Jane after Jane says something really smart and Stacy pretends she understands.)

Second, the hygienist did not, just a few seconds later, run her fingers through my hair and say, "Your hair is so pretty. I just had to touch it." I, in turn, did not bit bite my tongue as I thought, "Girl, you can't just go around touching strangers' hair, and you can dang sure can't do it when that stranger has curly hair. Haven't you ever heard of frizz?" I also didn't have to mumble an "Uh...thanks?" a few minutes later to diffuse the awkwardness of the situation.

Third, I did not have the following epiphany an hour after leaving:

I should consider myself lucky that the hygienist did not like my bra.

Now for those of you who wanted to see the pictures of the chair after I finished painting it, here they are. I finally got through with it yesterday.

Before:

After:

My next project is the side table in my bedroom. I never got around to taking a before shot of the table today(long story about running errands with blisters), so I'll just post both shots when I'm done with it.

One last thing. If any of you think my dogs look miserable in the previous post and attribute said misery to the Halloween bandannas, you're misreading the situation. My dogs were pissed because (1) they were hungry, (2) they wanted to run around the yard but I kept making them sit next to each other, (3) the sun was in their eyes, and (4) they don't like having their pictures taken. It was not the bandannas. In fact, when I took Bella's off of her sometime later, she actually started crying and hitting me with her paw and tried to stick her head through the bandanna on her own. I had to put it back on her until bedtime just so she would calm down. Bailey, on the other hand, acted like he could care less whether it was on or off. All he cared about was chasing Bella around the house in an attempt to steal her bone. (He had his own, but he likes Bella's slimy leftovers better.)

I do not abuse my dogs or intentionally make them miserable just so I can dress them up in cute outfits. I am not Paris Hilton. If my dogs had acted like they did not want the bandannas on them, I would have taken them off, as I have in the past with other purchases. For instance, I bought Bailey a sweater one winter because he was always cold, but he refused to even walk in it. That sweater remains in my dresser drawer, unworn and unused, to this day. He did not act like that with the bandanna. He was running around like it was no big deal inside right before the picture was taken. Outside, however, he was a lot less happy, not because of the bandanna, but because of the camera. He's scared of it. Always has been. Always will be. I just tried to turn the pictures into a stupid story because I couldn't think of anything else to write that day. In doing so, I apparently gave off the impression that the dogs were miserable because of the bandannas. I just wanted to clear up that they were not.

For those of you on Entrecard, I once again apologize for falling behind in returning your drops. I was trying to finish the chair. I will try to catch up on them this weekend.

Mommy's Howl-o-ween Pictures

2009-10-14T09:00:00.001-04:00

It's that time of year again, that time when Mommy decides to dress me and my sister up in some holiday getup and then tries to get us to stand still long enough for her to take a picture. I don't want to complain. This pirate bandanna is a lot better than the Christmas penguin outfit she bought me one year, but what was Mommy thinking when she bought Bella jingle bells? Seriously, what? Did she have a brain fart and forget that Bella scratches herself only 100 times a day? That's a 100 times a day I have to hear her jingle. It's already giving me a headache. See:

I think the jingling is giving Bella a headache as well. Then again, knowing my sister the way that I do, she's probably just giving Mommy that look so she'll go back to Petsmart and buy her a pair of sunglasses. Spoiled much?

Hey, Mommy. Remember me, your other dog? How about getting me a pair, too? The sun is doing nothing for my headache. I practically look hungover. (No, I did not get drunk from one too many rawhides. I walk this way because of a bum leg, I swear.)

As you can see, we let Mommy take a couple of halfway decent pictures facing the other direction. The sun was still in Bella's eyes, ha ha ha. She was too stupid to look in the other direction like I did.

Then Bella started getting mad. It way past her feeding time. Nothing, and I mean nothing, stands between Sister Tub-a-Lub and a bowl of dog food. Trust me. I tried once, and Big Butt ran right over me. If you look closely enough, you can still see the skid marks on my back. Mommy calls them doggy dandruff, but I know better. They're skid marks, and they're all Bella's fault.

I knew what was coming next. Halloween may still be a few weeks off, but Howl-o-ween was just about to begin. This is me preparing for the inevitable and wishing I had stolen Mommy's ear plugs out of her bedside table.

And there she goes. It's a bird. It's a plane. No, it's Loud Mouth Lassie, wanting to go inside. Thanks, Mommy. Eardrums are highly overrated. I didn't need to hear anyway.

I can't wait to find out what Mommy has in store for us for Thanksgiving. With my luck, it will probably be a turkey costume.

Hey, does anyone know how to type an eye roll?

I Hate Dentists

2009-10-13T14:36:00.005-04:00

I seriously hate dentists.

I seriously hate dentists who walk out of the room just because the patient is telling them that her tooth hurts in a place different than the one they are pointing out even worse.

I went to get my teeth cleaned this morning. I haven't had them cleaned in awhile because I haven't had the insurance or the money to pay for it. However, I got a coupon in the mail last week from a new dentist that had opened up across from the Target shopping center. For only $59, I could get an exam, a cleaning, and x-rays. I thought that wasn't too bad of a deal, given what my deductible would be if I went the insurance route. I temporarily forgot that age-old axiom "you get what you pay for."

What did I pay for?

For starters, I paid for a bladder that went into overdrive the minute I sat opposite the water wall feature in the waiting room. Water and small bladders do not mix. Water, small bladders, and hygienists who take 30 minutes to gossip with one another before cleaning your teeth mix even less. I actually had to ask the hygienist to stop cleaning my teeth halfway through just so I could run across the hall to the bathroom. If I had waited any longer, I would have either been in tears or sitting in a warm, golden puddle of my own urine.

I paid for my blood pressure to be checked, something no dentist has ever done before and I doubt will ever do again. Too bad they didn't check it before I left. They might have been surprised at how much it had gone up.

I paid to have the hygienist grab my tongue with a gauze pad and flip it over. Again, that was a new and not-so-tasty experience. I guess the fact that she didn't say anything afterward means that I don't have tongue cancer.

I paid to have the hygienist tell me I had substantial bone loss in the back of my jaw. Really? How come my other dentist--the one I went to for over four years--never mentioned it? Did I somehow magically lose all that bone in the two years since I have been to see him, or is the truth closer to something like my sinuses are making my gums swell back there and therefore make it seem like the bone is a lot deeper down the gum? (FYI, I pretty much keep a sinus infection these days so my guess is that the latter situation is more likely than the former.)

I paid to have both the hygienist and the dentist lecture me on my alleged "aggressive teeth brushing." I will tell you what I told them. My gums have been receding pretty much my entire life. It's genetic. My mom's teeth and gums looked exactly like mine. Same size, same color, same amount of recession, same everything. My dad's gums, meanwhile, were so bad that he had to have all his teeth pulled and replaced with false ones. In other words, my mouth is subject to a DNA double whammy. It doesn't matter how gently I brush my teeth; my gums are going to continue to recede until I have to have a gum graft. It's a fact that I have come to accept. I just get tired of every time I see a new dentist, I get the same "brush in gentle circles" lecture. No one ever believes me that I already brush my teeth in that manner and that I never brush aggressively from side to side.

I paid to get a second lecture on the fine art of flossing. Once again because of the receding gum line I can never get anyone to believe me that I don't just go up and down with the floss; I also clean the gum line. When I tell them that, the dentists and their hygienists all look at me like I'm on The Steve Wilkos Show and they're about to reveal the big, bad results of my lie detector test. I am not lying. I floss properly. My gums just don't care.

I paid for an x-ray that cut off the part of the molar that contained the brown spot that has been hurting me for months.

I paid to argue with the dentist for 15 minutes after he told me that the spot was not on my tooth or the x-ray, that the pain I was experiencing was from the receding gums, not from a cavity, and that the way he was going to treat it was with Sensodyne and Act mouthwash. Like with the flossing and toothbrushing situation, he refused to hear me when I said repeatedly, "The spot is neither near the gum line nor the valley. It's at the top of my tooth on the backside corner." He also refused to even consider filling the non-existent cavity. He told me I had to live with the mysterious spot for another six months, at which point he'd reassess the situation and decide whether he wanted to do a crown, not a filling. Sure, why do a $200 filling now when you can do a $1000 crown six months from now instead?

I paid for the jerk to leave the room when I verbally expressed my frustrations with his inability to see the brown spot and with his desire for me to continue living with dental pain. (No, I did not yell. I did not cuss. I simply asked, "Will the Act make it better or just stop the progression?" He answered, "It should stop it." I then said, "So if it's not going to make it better, then it's going to continue to hurt. Are you saying I'm supposed to keep hurting like this for another six months and quite possibly the rest of my life?" He didn't answer; he just said that that was his treatment plan, got up, and left. End of discussion.)

And, of course, I paid for a stupid doggie bag with samples of toothpaste, dental floss, and a toothbrush, a whopping $3 value at my local Dollar Tree.

What I didn't pay for was a second opinion. I called my old dentist, the one I should have gone to to begin with and paid full price for. The receptionist said it would be at least $75 for him to look at the tooth and take an X-ray of it, another good chunk of money I don't really want to spend but will if I have to.

So what do I do? Do I pay the $75 or spend the next six months trying to magically heal a cavity with Act mouthwash? I'm too pissed to make the decision myself right now. Maybe tomorrow I will have calmed down enough to decide whether another $75 is worth it.

In the meantime, I continue to wonder if the man would have behaved differently if I had insurance. It wouldn't be the first time a doctor--medical, dental, or otherwise--has treated the insured differently than the uninsured. Maybe he thinks he can better pay for those flat screens on the ceilings and walls if he overbills an insurance company than if he takes less money directly out of my checking account. Yeah, good luck with that. If he treats other new patients the way he treated me, I doubt he'll see them or their insurance companies for the full-price, followup cleaning in six months.

Missing the Obvious

2009-10-08T15:55:00.005-04:00

The good news: The droopy siding is no more. See:

The bad news: It took two hours, not five minutes, to fix it. As it turns out, the whole dang thing was falling down--the gutter, the soffit, the fascia, all of it. (Don't you love how I can Google the proper terms for "that droopy thing under the roof and next to the gutter"? It makes me sound all smart.) My dad had to basically pull off half the fascia, knock loose half of the gutter, wedge his hammer in between the gutter and soffit, nail the soffit back to the roof, nail the gutter back to the soffit, and then replace the fascia. He did all this while hanging onto the open window with one foot and, on occasion, one hand. He was making me so nervous that my Chick-Fil-A breakfast kept threatening to come back up. Should he ever have to climb back out there, I'm either not eating or I'm choosing dry toast.

The I-can't-believe-they're-that-stupid news: After my dad got through fixing the gutter, I took the pictures you see above and attempted to email them to Subdivision Services. The first email came back undeliverable since the violations email box was full. I tried calling the number in the letter several times but only got a busy signal. Having called them before, I know that the number has multiple extensions so unless someone was on every extension, the phone wasn't busy; it was off the hook. After 30 minutes of trying, I finally got someone to hang the phone up, answer my call, and give me an alternate email address. I sent them the pictures plus a message that said that my father fixed the gutter and siding this morning.

A few minutes ago I received the following response:

"Thank you for sending us this information. Please provide me with a date when this was done."

Are they kidding me? I sent the email TODAY. I said the gutter was fixed TODAY. Now maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but could that date be TODAY?

I'm guessing Little Miss Clueless either didn't have a calendar in front of her or didn't bother to read the email. She just looked at the pretty pictures. I wanted to email her back, "Today, dumbass," but I didn't. Instead, I just told her, "Like I said in the previous email, he fixed it today, October 8 (this morning)." The lawyer in me then added a line saying that I was within my seven days allowed by the letter. I don't want a $250 fine so I'm going to do everything I can to cover my butt, even if that means pointing out the obvious.

I can't wait to see Subdivision Services' next response. I suspect it will be along the lines of, "And what year was that in?"

It will be all I can do not to email back, "2179."

I look pretty good for 203.

You Have Seven Days, Plus Several Belated Thank You's

2009-10-07T14:42:00.008-04:00

Before you die, you see the homeowner's association.

That ought to be the tag line for my neighborhood. I must have really pissed someone off with my singing because I got a letter in the mail Saturday telling me that I had seven days to repair the siding or whatever it is called that is drooping underneath the overhang of my roof on the second floor. Now I know that the siding needs to be fixed. I have no problem with that fact or with the HOA telling me that I have to do it. What I have a problem with is that the siding has been drooping since last year. Why has it taken the HOA so long to tell me to do something about it?

For those of you who have been following this blog for awhile, you may remember that something similar happened with the for sale sign I had in my yard. The sign was there for 10 months before the HOA sent out one of their "you have seven days" letters. I was royally ticked then as well. Like now it wasn't so much that the HOA was pointing out a perceived violation of the covenants but how they were doing it. First, there was the timing issue. If my for sale sign was ruining the beauty of this neighborhood--as if there has ever been any beauty to ruin--why wait nearly a year to tell me that? Shouldn't they have said something the minute it went up? Second, there was the random enforcement issue. I wasn't the only one with a for sale sign, but they only went after me. Why me and not the 15 other houses with one?

So here I am again, asking myself those same questions. The HOA management company cited the same beauty clause that they did before, which means that my droopy three feet of siding is an implicit violation of the covenants. What about other implicit violations that are far more "ugly" than mine? Take for instance the 20 to 30 houses that have $5, mismatched lawn chairs on the front porch. I think that they're hideous and bring down the value of this neighborhood a lot worse than my droopy siding, especially considering you have to look up, way up, to see the siding, but the ugly chairs stare you right in the face. Why don't they do a darn thing about that? Then there's the house down the street with the gigantic pirates flag on the front porch. If one didn't know better, one would think that the owners of that house have gang affiliations. Why not do something about that?

Then there are the explicit violations. The house next door has their trash can on the curb 24/7. They never put it in the garage or behind approved fencing in the backyard as they are explicitly required to do per the covenants. Surely, when this member of management drove by my house and saw the droopy siding, he or she had to see and smell that trash can. Why not make them move it? Why not threaten them with a $250 fine in seven days like they did me?

What about all the tacky idiots with the fans in their open windows? Homeowners are explicitly prohibited from having fans and air conditioners in their windows per the covenants. Why won't the HOA force them to abide by that rule, especially considering that the ugly fans also violate a second clause, the beauty one they keep accusing me of violating?

What about the lawns that are full of weeds or the ones that are so brown that even weeds won't grow in it? The covenants explicitly require you to cut and fertilize your grass. Again why aren't they being forced to drive to Lowe's or the Home Depot and stock up on a bag of Scott's and Weed-n-Feed? If my lawn looked like that, I'm sure the HOA would make me.

Then there are all the things that ought to be against the covenants--the loud music, the kids who set the grass on the side of the subdivision on fire Saturday right after I got my letter, the dog feces in my mailbox, all the pit bulls that keep me from walking my own dogs, and all the condom wrappers, candy wrappers, potato chip bags, and cigarette butts that I have to fish out of my yard on a daily basis. Don't they bring down the value of our property as well? Can't the HOA stretch the beauty clause to prohibit that activity?

See my problem isn't the violation or the covenants; it's the random enforcement. I can't so much as fart without being written up for it. Meanwhile, some of my neighbors can do whatever they want whenever they want, and the HOA gives them a free pass. The only thing that I can figure is that someone on the board has it out for me. I don't know what I did to that person or what that person thinks I did, but it must be a real doozy.

My seven days are almost up. My father is supposed to come tomorrow and try to fix the droopy siding for me. He hasn't been able to come before now because of the rain we have had this week. Climbing out on a wet roof probably isn't the greatest or the safest idea ever. Please keep your fingers crossed for me that he's able to fix it. I don't want to have to pay someone $200 for 10 minutes worth of work, and by the time I could even get someone else out here my seven days would have expired. Also cross your fingers that he has enough sense to wear tennis shoes or work boots, not cowboy boots. He'd probably slide right off the roof in the latter.

Furthermore, if anyone knows some great songs that I can put on my iPod and annoy my neighbors by singing, especially if those songs somehow involve hating your neighbors, let me know in the comments. I am completely open to suggestions.

Now to things I have been putting off. Last week, Kat at Candles, Crafts, and Whatnot gave me the Friends Award. I meant to post it then, but as usual I got sidetracked. I started working on that chair I talked about in an earlier post. I thought it would only take a day or two to complete, but I'm still working on it. Ugh. Anyway, the chair has kind of distracted me from things like blogging and posting awards. Thanks for the award, Kat, and sorry it took me so long to get it up.

Rondi at WAHM Resource Site also gave me the Best Blog Award last week. This one requires me to pass it on to 15 newly discovered blogs. I haven't had a chance to find 15 new ones yet, so I'll have to edit this post later with those blogs. I'm determined to get that chair finished this week, and, of course, there's the whole siding issue that will take up a good part of my day tomorrow. I will try to get to the list this weekend. Meanwhile, thanks for the award, Rondi.

I also want to thank Necole at The Creative Mixx and Kate at Om Shanti Handcrafts for the box full of goodies that I got in the mail. Necole and Kate were running a contest on Necole's blog, and I actually won it. I ended up getting some great smelling products from Kate's Etsy store, including Everything Citrus Ever Lip Balm, Lavender Citrus Cuticle Salve, Patchouli Vanilla Soap, and Kyphi Massage & Bath Oil. So far I have used everything but the cuticle salve--I keep forgetting to put it on before bed--and I must say that I love all the products that I have tried. Usually, I can't use things like scented soaps, but the Patchouli Vanilla Soap hasn't bothered me at all. I think it may be because the soap is made with natural ingredients and is scented with essential oils instead of artificial fragrances. I actually keep sniffing my skin because I'm not used to it smelling like anything stronger than Dove Sensitive Skin. I also have to be careful with where I place the tub of lip balm. My dogs charge me every time I use it because I guess they smell the citrus scent and think that it's food. I'm scared that I'm going to turn my back for a minute, and they're going to find a way to open the tub and devour it. If you're looking to purchase some natural products, check out Kate's store.

Now I have to go clean carpet in case Step Mommy Dearest shows up tomorrow, too. I don't want to have to listen to Little Miss OCD complain about yellow spots on the carpet.

The World is a Stage, and So Apparently is My House

2009-10-04T21:59:00.006-04:00

Last Saturday night, post-buffet finishing, I went dancing. Now before all of you applaud me for actually going somewhere on a Saturday night, you should know that this dancing didn't occur on the dance floor or in some bar. Instead, it took place in the upstairs of my own house. After neglecting the upstairs rooms for weeks, I decided Saturday night was as good of a time as any to clean.

I'm sure you're probably wondering what cleaning has to do with dancing. Well, in my world one has a lot to do with the other. Sometimes the only way I can motivate myself to drag out the broom, mop, and can of Scrubbing Bubbles is to put on my iPod, turn it to some high energy song, and dance while I scrub the dirt away. The music not only keeps me going, nine times out of ten it also keeps me from getting distracted by the TV and Internet.

Saturday night was no different. I turned my iPod to some cheesy dance movie soundtracks, and within minutes doing something about the dirty clothes on the bathroom floor, the paint-splattered newspapers, and the pieces of kibble that Bailey had scattered from one side of the master bedroom to the other no longer seemed like such a daunting task.

First I cut loose with Footloose and my laundry hamper. Then I assured anyone who would listen that I was going to live forever, and I was going to learn how to fly. (FYI--Putting paintbrushes in a cup is a lot more fun if you do pirouettes across the room first.) While subsequently picking up the tools that I had used on the buffet, I even attempted to imitate the Pour Some Sugar on Me dance from The Search for the Ultimate Coyote Ugly, all the while miraculously avoiding a concussion from the swinging hammer and a jab in the eye from the paint scraper.

Finally, Baile Latino's Lambada came on my iPod. When I originally downloaded the song from iTunes, the Kaoma version of the song--the one that is actually featured in the movie The Forbidden Dance--wasn't available for purchase so Baile Latino's version was as close as I could get. It's the same song, just a different person singing it, but I digress. The point is, when it came on, I was suddenly inspired to reenact the solo lambada scene from the movie, the one where the kidnapped Nisa tells the evil, tree-cutting guy, "You want to see the lambada? I'll show you the lambada."

For those of you who don't share my passion for cheesy dance flicks or who have never seen the movie, this is the scene I'm talking about:

Now picture me in my ratty paint clothes, my pink fuzzy socks, and my half-ass ponytail, holding a Swifter duster in one hand and a trash bag in the other, looking absolutely nothing like Laura Herring in her red dress, standing in the middle of my spare bedroom, and attempting to do that dance. Now picture me halfway through the song turning towards the window and realizing for the first time that the blinds are wide open, that there are people outside, and that, thanks to the ceiling fan light, the room is lit up like a stage. Now picture me dropping to the floor like I was dodging bullets from a drive-by. That was my Saturday night.

At that point, I had two choices--sell my house or crawl over to the window and shut the blinds. I chose the latter. However, the embarrassing realization that my neighbors were probably getting ready to run me over with the hot tamale train put a damper on any further dance festivities. I spent the next hour singing as I cleaned instead.

It wasn't until I started to go to bed that another realization hit me. If I could hear the people outside, chances are they could hear me and my loud, off-key singing as well.

Great. I bet they really loved my rendition of the Divinyls I Touch Myself.

Maybe moving isn't such a bad idea after all.

Studying for the Gas Exam, Plus Top Droppers

2009-10-01T16:06:00.006-04:00

This past Thursday I did something that I have never done before; I bought a can of gas. I know big whoops, right? Well, it was a big whoop to me. I bought the empty container months ago, but I lost my nerve to fill it up. While I told myself that I would continue to use the weed eater to cut the grass because it was easier and because I could have half the lawn cut by the time I filled up the can, it wasn't the truth. The truth was I didn't want to look like an idiot at the gas station.

You see I was the daughter who got the book smarts, while my sister was the one who got the common sense, was being the operative word. These days she has neither common sense nor book smarts, but that's the topic of an entirely different post. Ask me to write a 20 page, legal order on the validity of a DUI stop and arrest, and I can write you that order, no questions asked. Ask me to boil an egg, and I might have to call up Martha Stewart and take a few notes. It's just the way that I am.

So when my dad got one of my mom's old, gas-operated lawn mowers fixed for me a few months ago, I was excited at first. I thought, "Great, no more blisters. No more strings breaking. No more randomly scalping the grass." Then I remembered that I didn't know how to work a lawnmower, let alone fill it with gas. That's when my excitement got replaced by this thought: "Crappity, crap, crap, crap."

I know what you're thinking. I thought it too at one point. It's gas. It can't be that difficult, right? You just take the nozzle, stick it in the gas can's hole, and pull the trigger. It's not brain surgery. It's just pumping gas and cutting the grass. I'm an adult. I have a high IQ and two freakin' degrees, for crying out loud. I even passed the bar exam on the first try. Surely I can fill up a gas can.

I even told myself those sentiments when I bought the gas can months ago at Walmart. Then I went home, read the directions and all the "Warning: you may die if you do x, y, or z!" inscriptions on the can, and started to doubt my ability to do something so simple. What if I overfill it right as someone throws a cigarette out of the window? What if that overflow catches on fire? What if the fire spreads to my clothes and skin, and I end up looking like Freddy Krueger? What if someone rear ends me on the way home, and my car blows up? What if I don't put on the cap on correctly, the can falls over in my car, the gas spills out, and the Redneck Mobile smells like Eu de Unleaded for the rest of my life? What if I pull into the QuikTrip and the guy inside comes over the speaker and yells, "Gas can virgin, pump six!" the minute I get out of the car, the way that guy at the Texaco did when he had to tell me and everyone else at the gas station that I was hitting the sticker, not the button? What if? What if? What if?

So I chickened out and left the empty container in my garage. After the floods last week, I took the container out again because the grass was so wet that I was scared to cut it with my weed eater. I psyched myself up. I told myself I could do it. All I had to do was get in the car, drive down the street, and make that gas can my bitch. Then I sat on the sofa and read the label on the gas can another 20 times, just in case there was a pop quiz when I got there.

Did I make that can my bitch? Yes and no. I put the nozzle in the opening and poured about a gallon into the container without any problems. Then I made the mistake of getting a little too confident with my gas-filling abilities.

What did I do? I attempted to fill up the entire two-gallon container.

Oh, I filled it up alright. Up, over, and out.

I think that means I made a C on the pop quiz, but look on the bright side. At least I passed.

Now onto a different type of pass--who has passed by my blog this month. Here are my Entrecard top droppers for the month of September:

All Blogspot Templates

Blogger Templates

Duck and Wheel with String

Mama Asid's Entrepod

Thanks to all who have visited. I have a couple of blog awards that I need to pass out as well. I'll try to get to them tomorrow.

What a Way to Start the Week

2009-09-29T16:45:00.007-04:00

"I know you probably think I'm nuts, but I swear there was something hanging out of her butt last night."

That's how I started off my week yesterday. I told you when my car battery died again the week before last that it was only a matter of time before something else expensive broke. I'm sure you all thought I was just being pessimistic at the time, but I wasn't. I was speaking from experience. When one thing breaks in my life, something else tends to follow. This time the something else turned out to be my dog's butt.

Sunday night I took the dogs out for what I call "the last call of the night," i.e. the last bathroom trip before bed. Normally, it's a quick in and out trip, but it wasn't this time thanks to Bella. She was taking an unusually long time to relieve herself. My first thought was, "Great, she is either constipated or has diarrhea. Either way, I'm probably going to have to bathe her again." I had just gotten through bathing her a few hours before. I really did not want to do it again, especially at midnight.

When Bella finally came to the door, she was waddling and attempting to tuck her stub tail between her legs, a task that's not all that easy considering her tail ends a good three or four inches above her legs. Her canine impersonation of Howard the Duck only furthered my suspicions that she was suffering from some form of digestive upset. Stopping her before she could clean her dirty rear end on the carpet, I lifted up her tail, saw she had what I thought was feces still stuck to her behind, and muttered a few words that were equally as dirty. I then ordered her upstairs. After ignoring the first few "Tub! Now!" commands, Bella begrudgingly went upstairs and let me put her in the tub. (Translation: After realizing that I could see her hiding behind the toilet, she came out, stood in front of the tub, locked her legs, and growled while I lifted her up and over the side.)

That's when my stressful night truly began. The "feces" would not wash off. After about five minutes of ~~trying to rinse Bella~~ chasing Bella around the tub with the shower head and wetting only the walls and floor, I gave up and turned her butt around to the light. As it turns out, it wasn't a misguided turd at all; it was something red, wet, and bloody.

About six years ago, Bella had a bout of hemorrhagic gastroenteritis, which, in layman's terms, means that she started crapping what looked like strawberry jelly and had to be pumped full of fluids and antibiotics at the emergency vet. Consequently, anytime Bella has anything remotely bloody looking coming out of that end of her body, I freak out. Then I go on the Internet, read a lot of worst case scenarios, and freak out even more.

So of course I started freaking out Sunday night. I started imagining everything that could be wrong with her--hemorrhoids, an infected anal gland, colon cancer, an alien being from the planet Zircon slowly making its way out of her intestines. The more I freaked out, the more she and Bailey both glared at me. They weren't freaking out, and I don't even think Bella was in that much pain. She just wanted to go to bed, but I wouldn't let her because I was too busy examining her butt every five minutes.

When we finally did go to bed, I barely slept. I mostly alternated tossing and turning with checking the comforter for blood. As illogical as this may sound, I was scared that Bella would end up bleeding to death at the end of the bed while I slept. When morning finally rolled around, Bella was in a bad mood. I was in a bad mood, and the weird, red, bloody thing was MIA.

Which brings me to the quote at the beginning of this post. It's bad enough having to take your dog to the vet when she has something hanging out of her butt. It's even worse when you take her and the thing that was hanging out has mysteriously disappeared into thin air. Luckily for me, the vet eventually found the thing. Unluckily for Bella, the way she found it was with a latex glove and some petroleum jelly. Ouch.

Diagnosis: Bella has a polyp right at the opening to her anus. It may have to be surgically removed in a few months if it doesn't shrink on its own and sent off to a lab to be tested for cancer.

Diagnosis #2: Bella has a yeast infection all over her body, thanks to allergies from hell. The vet said that normally when she checks the slide for yeast (the slide was first rubbed against a hot spot), she is lucky if she sees one or two spots of yeast. In Bella's case, the slide was covered with yeast cells. As a result, Bella will have to take antifungal meds twice a day for a month to clear up the infection.

Diagnosis #3: Bella may be the world's first bubble dog. Okay, that wasn't the official diagnosis. The official one was more along the lines of Bella is uber-allergic, like I didn't know that one already. Per doctor's orders, I must spend the next few weeks trying various allergy meds--Claritin, Zyrtec, and Chlor-Trimeton--on Bella to see if any of them work better than Benadryl at controlling her symptoms. We tried Claritin yesterday. The vet said to give her the adult dose. I did, and it knocked her out for hours. When she finally woke up, she wobbled around and looked stoned for the rest of the day. This is your dog...This is your dog on drugs...

Today we tried half the adult dosage and, also per doctor's orders, an all-over shaving. As you can see from these pics, Bella still isn't too happy about the latter.

You can also see how inflamed her skin is. I'm supposed to give her regular baths with antibacterial shampoo until the antifungal meds run out and spray her with something called Calm Gel twice a day. If her skin hasn't improved by then, I'm looking at a big bill for allergy tests, allergy shots, and a possible move to the middle of the desert.

Diagnosis #4: Wallet-drainitis, better known as Staci will be spending a lot of money at the vet over the next few months. I think that might be the most depressing diagnosis of all.

The Big Reveal: Buffet Photos

2009-09-26T17:00:00.012-04:00

As long as it has taken me to finish my mom's buffet, I feel like I should have Ty Pennington standing in front of it saying, "Move that bus. Move that bus." Too bad he was all booked up today, LOL. Anyway, I did the best I could with the photos. It's storming, and my camera's flash still hates me. I tried changing the exposure in both directions, and the pics still came out with this big glow in the middle. Either the room is too small for the flash, or the flash was reflecting off the paint. I'm just not sure which. Regardless, I gave up and just took the darn things without a flash, which made them darker than I would have liked. The colors also aren't as vibrant as they are in person. For instance, the "warm butter" color is a lot more yellow than it looks in the picture. Still the pics will do until the sun comes out in Atlanta and I can take some better ones.

The last one is a little fuzzy. I had a picture that was less fuzzy earlier, but the colors were all wrong. I cropped this one out of another picture so you could see why it took me so long. That's avacado green on the bottom, then dark blue, red, brown, dark green, brown, red, blue, red, brown, dark green, and finally avocado green.

Here is the paint sample so you can see the real color of the buffet.

Here is where I got the colors from, although again the colors are a little screwy because of the weather and the flash. The lighter green comes from the the border around the main part of the poster.

I had to add a little blue to the buffet, which I don't think is in the cafe picture, so I could display my mom's blue and white vase, plus tie it into my blue curtains and futon cover.

The only things that aren't original to the buffet, other than the color, are the flower on the bottom drawer and the knobs. The original flower is just gone period. I have a feeling it's probably lost somewhere in the junk store that my mom bought the buffet from. As for the original pulls, they used to be on the buffet, but were taken off post-purchase. Unfortunately, I could not find what my mom did with them. I have this vague recollection of telling her once that I would keep them so she wouldn't lose them, but I can't find them in my house either. Until I do, the green glass knobs will have to do.

The brown swirls, meanwhile, aren't freehand. They depict where the wood is engraved. I just went back and added brown paint in the engravings to make them stand out. For the two drawers, I had to buy a wood engraver and make the engravings deeper because, without the damaged veneer surrounding them, they were so shallow that I didn't think they would stand out.

I know that the colors aren't everyone's cup of tea. I'm sure even my mom would have just painted it one solid, neutral color like white or beige. However, as you can see from this picture of my kitchen chairs, I like color.

Plus, I thought the colors might distract you from the areas that are still damaged and where my spackling is less than stellar.

Here is my next project. I found this chair at the flea market several years ago. Since it has legs and flowers on it very similar to the buffet and is in the same room with the buffet, I want to paint it to match. I just have to reglue the legs first.

After repainting it, I plan on using a bright green dress of my great grandmother's that looks like it was made in the 50's or 60's to recover the seat. Hopefully, it's a project that won't take anywhere near as long as the buffet. If I end up hating it, I can always strip the chair later and restain it.

For those of you who didn't see the before shot of the buffet, here is a link: Before Shot. I wish I had a before picture of the whole thing, but I don't. Maybe at Thanksgiving,I can find one in my sisters' box of pictures. If I find one, I'll post it so you can see the difference.

As for my fellow Entrecarders, I will try my hardest to catch up on drops tomorrow, assuming I can stay clear of the Entrecard viruses and disabling popups. I'm sorry I haven't been returning your drops drop for drop, but at least now you can see why I haven't. I'll be making a list of blogs as I go along, too, in case I hate the ads TPTB plan on running next week. I'm not saying that I'm leaving Entrecard as of yet, but I am definitely thinking about it.

I Finished It!

2009-09-25T19:29:00.003-04:00

The buffet is finally done. I'd do a happy dance to celebrate, but I'm scared if I do, I'd end up jinxing myself and waking up tomorrow to find that the buffet has fallen through the floor to the garage below. I finished it 15 minutes ago and tried to take a picture--several pictures to be exact--but they either came out too dark or overexposed from the flash. Consequently, sometime tonight I'm going to have to read the online instruction book for my new camera to figure out how to adjust the flash. Hopefully, I'll be able to figure the whole thing out. If I can't, I'm just going to hope that it's sunny tomorrow so I can take a picture that doesn't glow. Check back after lunch sometime if you're interested in seeing the final result.

What's with Men and Clean Cars?

2009-09-23T22:11:00.006-04:00

In case you have not seen the Weather Channel lately, the Atlanta area has experienced significant flooding this week. Here are a few shots, courtesy of the AJC.com and the WSBTV.com. The first shot is of Six Flags:

Luckily, my neighborhood wasn't flooded, but we did get lots and lots of rain. So, given the fact that we got so much rain that I was starting to think that Steve Carell and Morgan Freeman were working on another ark, why was it necessary for the guys next door to wash their cars today? They weren't muddy. They weren't dirty. They weren't even dusty. So why the need to suds them up just a few hours after they had dried?

I just don't get it. Maybe if I was married or had more males in my life than a 15 pound Chihuahua mix and a nine-year-old video game fanatic that only talks to me via web cam, I would have greater insight into the male mind, but I'm not and I don't. Thus, I'm just dumbfounded by this male need to wash a car that has already been washed by Mother Nature.

It's not the first time that I have witnessed this behavior. The wannabe race car drivers down the street wash their cars all the time after it rains. They weren't washing them today, but I wouldn't be surprised if they get out the bucket and the sponges tomorrow, especially now that the guys next door have beaten them to it. Heck, I'd almost be willing to be that they and just about every other male on the block will have washed their vehicles by this time Saturday night.

Again I say why? Their cars are clean. Washing them again won't make the 20-year-old rust look like the paint on a brand new Lexus. It won't make them any more macho or compensate for certain...uh...shortcomings. It won't even make them more popular with the ladies. So why do it?

If anyone knows the answer to this question, please let me know. Otherwise, I'm just going to file my neighbors under the category "Freaks of the Week."

Sorry About Today's Commenting Issues

2009-09-22T22:24:00.005-04:00

Echo had some kind of outage today, and apparently it's still affecting my blog. I have had four comments disappear, even though they appeared on the blog after hitting submit. I have also been informed that my comment form has disappeared for some of you. If you have left a comment today and it is now gone, I am so sorry. I have a ticket in to see if the outage is to blame. If you're looking for the comment form, hopefully it will come back soon. I can see it at the moment, but I guess some of you can't. I know you're all just itching to leave a comment about the nasty picture down below, LOL. (Okay, I get it's gross and I probably shouldn't have shared it, but like I said in the comments before they started disappearing, try having it live and in color on your front porch. Also be glad computers haven't become scratch and sniff. It smelled like death.)

Seriously though, I'll post something nicer looking tomorrow, I swear, unless I wake up to another front porch surprise.

Also a little reminder for CommentLuv users. If the URL line does not show up for you, try hitting reload or Control F5, which is supposed to load the page from a clean cache. If you're logged into the comment form, you have to manually add your blog via "Add another site" to get it to pick up your feed. Theoretically, you can do this no matter how you are logged in (Twitter, Google Friends, JS-Kit, etc.).

Again sorry for any inconvenience this is causing you. Hopefully, it will all be worked out soon.

EDITED AT 10:40 PM: The comment form has now disappeared for me as well.

Sigh.

I guess I jinxed myself by saying I could see it.

EDITED AT 11:08 PM: And now it's back again. If it's not for you, please email me at justbloggled@yahoo.com. Thanks.