Today, I'd like to explain the circle of life. Not The Circle of Life, because that is a song from The Lion King, which is not my favorite Disney movie of all time, so I don't really have much to say about it. It's okay, but Sleeping Beauty is obviously the best Disney movie of all time. Obviously. This is a fact, not an opinion.

Anyway, the circle of life is the fact that whatever one does will come right back; for instance, whenever I make a large purchase, I know that something in my house will break. It happens every time, so we just prepare ourselves to live with something broken for a while, in order to break the cycle. If we would just buy a new one of whatever broke, something else would just break, and so on and so on, so we try to live with it for a while. Right now, we have a dryer that dries perfectly well, but the timer has broken and can't be fixed, so we have to make sure to set a timer and go turn it off or our clothes will get really really dry. The kind of dry where they will go into the dryer fitting an adult and come out of the dryer fitting a Barbie.

Also, one has to realize that whenever there is an extra of something and one is given away, what is kept will break and the one that's given away will run forever. I had an appliance that I'd used for years and had never had any trouble with, and I received a hand-me-down one from my mom which was larger and would enable me to make more stuff. So of course I give mine away, and less than a month later, the new one breaks. I am now using an old cast-off that is smaller than the one I started with, which is okay, because it being smaller and older means it won't break on me. Also, we had a computer that was acting a little sketchy, so we got a hand-me-down one that was newer and much nicer and gave the sketchy one away. Yep, computer died this weekend, but the sketchy computer is still working nicely.

We have no one to blame but ourselves. We should've known better. I think I'll just start giving our new stuff to other people and keeping the old stuff that I know works. I don't know how that'll work out, though. Maybe I should just keep a stockpile of old appliances and electronics in my shed until I know for sure the new one isn't going to die.

The circle of life isn't just about things breaking. It's also about time. If someone has a morning off, with nothing to do, and he spends that time being productive, no one will call, but if he spends that morning off playing computer games and watching reruns of Scooby-Doo, he should be aware that a huge pile of work will get dumped into his lap at the end of the day so he has to work until late.

I suppose one could call all of this Murphy's Law, but it's not just about things going wrong. It's about things going wrong in response to my behavior. 

Or maybe I just didn't have enough coffee this morning so I'm being whiny. That is a definite possibility.  

All weekend long, while I was away from my computer having a life, I was thinking that for Monday I should do a really spectacular blog post. So here you go, fresh from my brain.  


In case you ever need to know, and because it is very important, here are my top ten things, and my ten least favorite things, all in descending order:


FAVORITES


10. Ponies
-I realize number ten is pretty low on the list, but I like a lot of stuff and there's no way I was going to be able to move them up any further on my list. They have to be there, though. Come on, they're ponies.


9. Mythology (all sorts)
-I liked this stuff way before Hollywood made really expensive action movies with incredible effects about it. Oh, and that doesn't mean that I don't like the movies. I just really like reading about it and making up the way the people and gods look for myself. I always thought Zeus should look younger and meaner to reflect all the crap stuff he did.


8. Games (again, all sorts)
-If it's not a real game, I'll turn it into one. I don't care about winning, I just like to learn things and see how people play. Not Spoons so much, though, because last time there were injuries. Bridge is also way more fun than I thought it would be, but it makes me feel stupid because I forget the rules half of the time. It's okay because I get to throw that back on other people when we play trivia games. Ha.


7. Murder Mysteries (TV/Movie)
-I don't like graphic ones, where there's a lot of blood, and they show the violence. I like the old ones, where there's a super smart detective that figures it out with just his/her smartness, like in Columbo or Ellery Queen or my favorite: Murder, She Wrote. I know someone who's just like Jessica Fletcher and it makes me giggle. Midsomer Murders is also good, even though it's a little bloody.I think the cheesy synthesizer music helps tone it down enough for me. Of course, I like Monk, too. He makes me feel like I need to wash my hands even more than I do now.


6. Cleaning my house
-Sometimes I'm a little slow to start, but I flipping love cleaning my house. I have a day scheduled for it on my calendar, and we don't really deviate from the schedule unless it's pretty important. I'm guessing this one may be a little hard to understand, but I like my house and my stuff so much that I like taking care of it and keeping it clean. If I had a bunch of stuff I was ambivalent about, I wouldn't be surprised if I didn't want to dust it all, either. Or maybe the OCD would just kick in. I'm not sure.


5. Murder Mysteries (Books)
-If I had to choose between the TV ones and the book ones, it'd be books every time. Why? Books are way creepier to me: I like the way the words look on the paper, and the way the old books from the library smell and have weird stains on the pages (which grosses me out, too, but I can always go wash my hands if I need to). Books are just the best. Again, this is not including books by people like Stephen King or anyone recent. I love old books, especially from the 1930s and 40s, where they use weird slang terms and they're incredibly sexist and non-PC. Or the Inspector Maigret books, because they have a mystery and then Maigret feels sad about the case sometimes, which is cute. Plus, they drink so much beer and eat all kinds of sandwiches, and I am also a fan of those things.


4. Baking
-Pretty self-explanatory there. I'm pretty good at it, so I have to limit myself to certain things that I can fit into my diet, like cookies. For instance, a couple of weeks ago, I made homemade Danish pastries, which was a disaster. They were so good, we couldn't stop eating them and then we didn't have anything else for two days, using all of our allotted calories on pastries. You may not gain weight that way, but your stomach will rebel at some point. Worth it, though? Heck yes.


3. Music
-All kinds, really, listening and singing and playing. Anything to do with music. That's about all there is to it, except that I hope to one day convince everybody that Mozart wasn't all he's cracked up to be, and that things that sound less perfect can be more interesting.  Listen to someone else, like Debussy or Prokofiev, and you can hear what I'm talking about.


2. My family
-Where else can you have a farting contest, eat nothing but cake and posole for three days and make videos of yourself and/or chin puppets lip-synching Christmas songs? Nowhere except my parents' house, because my family is awesome.


1. My husband
-Okay, it was a tie between cake and my husband on this one. I'm sure he understands, because he knows the depth of my feelings towards cake. He won, though, because cake never takes out the trash, and my husband knows how to fix way more stuff than cake does. Plus, he's super cute.


LEAST FAVORITES


10. Reality shows
-Seriously, can we get some more shows that are not real?  I get enough reality in my own reality without wanting to watch other people's reality that looks suspiciously unreal.  There you go.


9. People that make out in public
-That is just gross.


8. Exercise thong lady
-Okay, so I don't know if everybody does this, but my husband and I have nicknames for people we don't know that we see frequently, and this is the one that I'm pretty sure annoys us both the most.  She's always right after me at some appointment and she's always wearing a really short shirt and a super-tight pair of spandex bike shorts, under which is a very obvious pair of thong underwear.  MSN had an article about people who wear thongs during exercise getting fecal matter traveling up the thong to the other side (you know what I mean), so now we can't stop laughing every time we see her.  Plus, she's always doing stretches or jogging in place while she's waiting for me to be done, which is also annoying/hilarious. It also leads me to:


7. Women in their 40s/50s and above who dress like they're 16
-I don't mean stylish women who wear things that are fashionable. I mean the ones who are wearing skinny jeans and short, tight tank tops. That stuff even looks like crap on most of the teenagers who wear it. Come on. Please. Step away from the junior's section. I don't mean you need to wear a sack, but it's embarrassing for the rest of us, and I can't even imagine how your kids must feel. When your boobs are threatening to peek out from the hem of your shirt, it's time.


6. People who bad-mouth their spouses
-This doesn't refer to complaining to a girlfriend that your husband is being a poo. Everyone needs to vent. This is people who say that they hate their spouse, or that their spouse is stupid or that their spouse has some sort of flaw as a human being, in front of a group of people that they aren't particularly close with or even in front of the spouse. That is craptastic. If you wouldn't talk about your kid that way, why would you talk about the person who is your partner that way? Geez. Stop and think about it: Maybe you're not so perfect, yourself, and maybe he or she talks about you that way too. Doesn't feel so great, does it?


5. No familiar tense used in English
-I realize thee and thou sound old-fashioned, but I love the usage of the familiar. Especially in the Bible, as it makes it sound like God's familiar enough with us to use that tense, and it's also pretty great in poetry. I think it's sad that we don't use it anymore. Then I could say, "Thou art lame," without sounding like a freak.


4. Beets
-Beets are disgusting. That is all.


3. People being mean in the name of God
-Wait, aren't we supposed to love everybody? Doesn't that mean all people, not just the people you think are living the right way? Yeah, that's what I thought. No good reasons, just people being mean. I think you all just need to calm down. God loves everyone, you should too (note that this doesn't keep you from laughing at people; I'm pretty sure that God does that too, because we are hilarious).


2. People who are mean to old people
-I see a lot of old people in the course of my day, and I see a lot of grumpy caretakers.  I know it's a hard job, and I applaud you for taking it on, but I will take my stapler and cram it up somewhere it's going to be hard for you to remove if you keep talking to that old man like that.  Seriously. Give him a minute; he's old and confused, probably freezing his butt off, and he can't remember why he is where he is. Just talk a little nicer to him and remember that someday you'll need someone to care for you, and you'd better hope that someone isn't me, because I will force you to watch reruns of Murder, She Wrote all day long, and then we will discuss each episode in great detail.


1. People who take everything very seriously
-If you can't laugh about anything (or everything), your life is just going to get more and more painful:  Everyone's life is hard, everyone's kids are ungrateful, everyone's parents are aging, and everyone's job is stressful. However, you should also keep in mind that:  Everyone farts, burps, poops, pees and has diarrhea. That means all of those things are fair game for making fun. Also, most people say stupid things at some point or another, and wear stupid clothes at some point or another. There you go. You can also play the radio in your car, and look out for people who are walking to the beat of your song. That is pretty fun. There's always drinking beer and eating nachos. That'll brighten up any one's day, plus later, you'll probably have some bodily functions stemming from the beer and nachos, which will also be funny. Try to find things to laugh about, as it's just as easy as finding things to be stressed or worried about but you'll be a much more pleasant person to be around, and it will definitely lower the odds of me making fun of you in my car on my way home.




Ta da! There you go. I realize I left off big things, like starving children and that kind of thing, but I just wasn't feeling up to solving all of the Earth's problems in one post. Maybe later.

People that think they're busy and important are irritating. I know people who are very important and are also busy, but they generally don't seem to think they're terribly important, so they don't annoy me. Oh, and in case you haven't realized it, I do make mental lists of people who I don't like, so you probably want to stay on my good side, because otherwise I may make your life miserable.

As I type, I can hear all the people who know me laughing and snorting at my lack of scariness.

When you approach me and say things like, "I need you to help me RIGHT NOW! I HAVE A MEETING!" (seriously...this happens, and you can hear the all-caps), it does not make me want to help you. It makes me want to make fun of you. However, I enjoy having a job, so I don't. This does not mean I won't make fun of you later, in my car on the way home; rather, it means that I will smile politely and say things like, "Ooohhh...sorry...I can't help you for another three weeks."

Okay, that's a lie. I wouldn't do that. Really, I will just do the smiling politely part and get you exactly what you demand. Inside, though, I'll be crossing my fingers that a violent bout of explosive diarrhea hits you in the car during five o'clock traffic, and you'll ruin your $250 dark-wash designer jeans along with the driver's seat of your $75,000 SUV. Nice, huh? I started doing this when I was about six years old and my mother told me she killed the nasty boss my dad had at his college job by saying a bad word at him when he did something mean to my dad. Well, I know now that what happened is that a lifetime of hard living and being a poo probably caught up to him and he had a heart attack and died, but six-year-old me got this brilliant idea that if I thought something hard enough, it could happen. It doesn't always work; for example, my constant wishing that unicorns will just start living in my backyard hasn't come to pass just yet, but sometimes when I'm having a craptastic afternoon and wishing for a highly caffeinated beverage, someone happens to drop by with one. It's my own personal brand of magic.

So if you've been horrible to me and you can't stop pouring tea all over your lap, shooting stuff out of your nose every time you talk to your boss, or breaking wind every time you are on a first date or are in a job interview or church, maybe now you know why. Maybe you should also bring me a cake. Just an idea.

Alrighty, it's time for a blog with a purpose. Today is the day. That purpose is speeling spelling.


Ha ha ha. I am so funny sometimes, even I can't stand it.


Seriously, though, today I am going to solve one of those little life mysteries, because although an occasional misspelling happens to everyone (yes, even me), there are some people who are putting massive bodies of work out on the internet, and because they have no editor, their work has massive mistakes. So, I'm going to be a big help to them, right now. Ready?


That little red line you see under half of your words is a spell-check line. That means that the computer, which is a machine and has no feelings about you and cannot be vindictive because it doesn't agree with your post, is telling you that it thinks the word you just wrote is not spelled correctly. Here's what you do then:  Highlight the word with your mouse (the hand-held thingy that goes click-click), open a new tab in your browser, go to google.com and paste the word into the search area (the little empty white bar that says "Google"). Voila! A suggestion for the correct spelling of the word should pop up. Now, go back to your original browser window and put the correct spelling of the word into your document. That pesky, angry red line should go away. If not, you may have to resort to (gasp) a dictionary.


Oh, and you don't EVER need an apostrophe when making something plural. EVER. If you're, say, writing a letter about your family and saying something like, "This year, the Smiths went to Africa on a safari,"  note the absence of an apostrophe where I made it plural. Not Smith's, but Smiths. It's only Smith's if you're referring to something of theirs, such as, "the Smith's dog," or, "the Smith's machete." Oh, and "it's" only has an apostrophe if you're saying "it is." Otherwise, no apostrophe, as there is no possessive for its. 


Do I know everything about everything? Yes, and that's why I feel free to be so judgmental. On the other hand, would you really know if I was just making this stuff up so I could laugh about it later? (All this was inspired by a blog post that had the main verb in its title spelled incorrectly TWICE, and also used "it's" incorrectly. I can't let this kind of thing go, people. It's just not right.)


Ah, here I go again, saving the world from poor spelling, bad grammar, and lazy/non-existent hand-washing. Wait. I didn't remember to talk about hand-washing. Well, I guess that's another topic for another day, but in the meantime, go wash your hands. There are rampant floating fecal/skin/b.o. particles out there, and they want to invade you through your hands. For reals.

Here it is!  What you've been waiting for!  Post #2!


Yes, I did just giggle when I wrote #2, and you should've too. Why?  Because bodily functions are hilarious.  The minute I stop laughing about farts, I'll know I've turned into a less-fun version of my mom. If you're not a fan of this kind of humor, you're probably reading the wrong page, because the top item on my Funny Things list is gas.  Second, of course, is #2, placed there because, well, come on.  You know.


I'm not going to write a whole blog page about that (today), but I thought I'd address it up front because that's the kind of person I am.


So my afternoon yesterday consisted of driving, going to a class, then going to Costco.  Usually, Costco is a great place and I love it there.  I would rather spend time in Costco than pretty much any other store I can think of, except Target, which has basically everything I like to look at, including funny t-shirts, all in one store that has a snack bar, which is a genius idea.  When fat girls are shopping they look for a conveniently placed snack bar, because we all know you can't go too long without your nachos.  I can say this, because I am a life-long member of the fat girl club, and it has nothing to do with size (well, in my case it does) and everything to do with your state of mind.  Moving on, we're at Costco.  I don't have anything I need there, so I'm not super excited about the whole trip, plus I'm with my mom so I know it means keeping up with her throughout the whole store, which is challenging in even the best circumstances.  In addition, after the first few minutes I realize that I'm going to be the one stuck with the cart.  When my mom goes into a store she becomes a completely different lady.  Normally, she moves kind of slowly, is easily distracted, and will chatter happily the whole time she's with you.  When she's shopping, she is focused, determined, and moves like a cat.  You have to keep an eye on her all the time, because she will just disappear.  It's pretty much magic:  One second, she's right in front of you, the next, she's gone.  I don't know how she moves that fast, but I think it's some kind of secret Mom-Powering-Up station, like in a video game, except it's for real and all the stations are in stores.  When I was a kid, if she sent me to go get salad dressing at the store, I knew I was in trouble because I wouldn't find her again until she went to the checkout line, which could be in 5 minutes or an hour.  There was no way of knowing, since she doesn't follow any sort of list or pattern while shopping.  Yesterday, therefore, I was determined not to lose her.  Then I have the realization about the cart.  That completely changed the game. See, I'm slightly obsessive-compulsive.  Okay, maybe more than slightly.  At any rate, I would rather lick the bottom of my own shoe than walk around a store for 20 minutes, clutching the nasty poop-particle-covered handle of a filthy shopping cart. It's a dirty hands thing.  Can't explain it, it just makes my skin crawl.  The cart wipes they have at most stores are ineffective at best, just enough to save me from sudden death (from said poop particles), and since they had that recall on tainted wipes that made people sick, I just can't bring myself to use them.  So I usually just carry my purchases or let the person I'm with push the cart.  That wasn't happening yesterday, however.  Mom was on a mission.  So I have to keep track of her, while being completely distracted by the cart handle issue.  Oh, did I mention my mom will completely stop, right in the middle of a busy aisle, whether there are people behind her or not? Yep.  It's awesome.  So I have to try to anticipate so I can go off to the side when she's going to stop.  Didn't work too well, but I survived.  So we make it through the store, and we're in the checkout line, and I'm congratulating myself on not only sticking with her the whole time, but also not hitting her (or anyone else) in the butt with my shopping cart.  Then I look up and realize that she's decided not to stand next to me in the line.  She's standing next to the young guy in front of us.  Not saying anything, just standing right next to him, smiling.  I'm not sure it was as much fun for him as it was for me, as it was a very long line and she stood next to him until we went up to check out. I forgot to ask her why she did that, but it doesn't really matter, because that was pretty much the high point of my day. We checked out, got her stuff into the car, and headed off. At this point I was still pretty psyched that for the first time ever, I didn't lose her on a shopping trip.


Next stop was Trader Joe's.  Lost her in about 2 minutes.  Had to go sit in the car and call her cell phone.  I failed.


Yes, I do make everything into a sort of contest with myself (which I lose about 50% of the time).  At least this was just a fail at tracking my mom in the store, so that's really not too big of a deal.  I fail at bigger stuff than that all the time, just so I don't get out of practice.  In addition, I just wrote a whole page about tracking my mom at the store, and you just spent five minutes reading it.  So I guess we're all failing together.  How special is that?  Plus, I feel really good about the whole #2 part at the top of the page.  I'd like to end on that note.  There you go.

Well, I did it.  I'm pretty sure I did it wrong, but at least I did it.  This may or may not be the only post I ever make, but I've thought about doing a blog for a long time, and so many of my friends and family have a blog, I was starting to feel retro.  Not the cool kind of retro where you have those awesome thick glasses and do your hair in a 50s style, and everyone assumes you're very deep and wants to be your friend.  More the kind of retro where you wear mom jeans and just got the Rachel haircut, and all people under the age of 25 feel embarrassed to admit they know you.


So I jumped on the bandwagon.  Basically, I'm a follower, so I'm pretty comfortable with that.


Speaking of mom jeans, I was recently asked by a mom (not mine) to define the mom jean.  Why did she ask me?  I don't know.  It could be because of my status as an international fashion icon, but I think it's more likely because I never wear my shirts short or tucked-in.  Even if I did wear mom jeans, no one could tell, apart from the tapered legs and the fact that they're usually two inches short.  I do wear high-waters, but that's a story for a different day.  Anyway, I had to think about the true definer.  Is it the wash?  Is it the high-waistedness?  Is it the way it makes even the smallest butt look ever so wide and unattractive, with its high waist, poofy hip area and teeny tiny legs?  It's hard to say.  I'm pretty sure she meant this as a casual comment, but I thought about it for around five minutes.  She may have been worried that I was having some sort of total body freeze or something, but she was polite about the extended pause.  At the end of all that, I had no answer. I told her I thought the mom jean was a combo of the three, and let it go at that.


It's been haunting me ever since.  I think it's mostly because I'm scared that they're going to make a comeback, or that someone other than my family will see those pictures of me when I was 10, sporting the mom jean look the first time around.  It's that kind of thing that keeps me awake at night.


As you can see, I'm really a very shallow person.  A shallow person with a blog.