That's My Bix!

So after weeks of bemoaning my need for a banner ad for Diaryland, I finally created it.

Lucky for me that my niece Abigail is some completely cute. That’s her posing for the ad. She does not, in fact, have lobsters down her pants. That was my idea of “clever”.

I sat there and hit refresh on diaryland’s member site for no less than sixty times, waiting for my ad to pop up.

Esteban snarked “as long as we’re getting our money’s worth out of our broadband.”

“Is that a snotty comment?” I asked.

“What do you think. You’re being a dork.”

Yes.

I am a dork.

But now I’m a dork with a banner ad.

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Just forget what I said this morning about Esteban being so sweet and caring.

I lied.

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I went home sick this afternoon. Actually, just missed the last two hours of work. I felt really clamy and sweaty and pukey and dizzy, like I had just done 4 times on the Gravitron at a bad county fair after eating two foot long corndogs and deep-fried cheese curds. I have had huge guilt about it but two of my coworkers declared that I had to leave because I looked like I was going to urp at any moment.

Really, I wish that I knew how I had looked. That would be a handy face to make at stressful times.

“Hey, there’s an angry client that I’m transferring over to you, Weetabix, because she said that you’re the only one here qualified to fix her problem… hey, you don’t look so good. Are you feeling ok?”

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The thing that sucks about my copywriting endeavors is that it can sometimes be months after deadline before I get paid. Not really complaining, but… Ok. I am complaining.

If you pity me, I accept all forms of cash or checks. Even Paypal.

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“Get Fuzzy” has a book out now. I am happy.

I really miss the cartoonists of the 80’s. Bloom County was clever and well-written. Sometimes several jokes in ONE strip. Opus, Cutter John, Steve Dallas, Lola Granola, Milo, Binkley, Alphie Mushpie, and Hodge Podge the rabbit. I never really found Bill the Cat as humorous as most of America. But the 80’s were a cocaine decade, so I suppose that might explain some things.

I’m willing to bet that Berkeley Breathed rolled some sweet joint during the making of that comic strip. The whole dandelion patch was a thinly-veiled metaphor for marijuana. Something the MAN was trying to keep away from the people. Harmless but really made you feel good. Sometimes made you take off your clothes and just lie around.

Breathed, I’m on to you, man.

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Plus, I think I really liked the idea that Bimbos are funny. Because they are.

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I use the word “they” like I’m not a bimbo.

Ok, I cleaned up the photo of the Naked Porn Twin and have a similiar photo of myself for your perusal.

Here’s the Porn Twin….

And here’s the Weetabix (this was taken about two years ago at my and Esteban’s wedding, but I’m too lazy to look for one from my college years, so just deal, ok?)

Send me your thoughts… is it she my Porn Twin, or am I just wishful thinking? Operators are standing by… no, not really. Just send me an email and let me know what YOU think! Be honest. I can take it.

Edited to note: It just occurred to me that you might view this as a cheap “am I hot or not” kind of thing. Don’t worry. I completely understand that I am not, in fact, hot. Just trying to, in the words of my 11th grade guidance counselor’s evaluation for college applications, “trying to mix things up a bit”.

So right now I’m eating an old “binge” favorite: chocolate bar dipped into Jif creamy peanut butter. Don’t look at me that way, it’s my lunch damn it! Anyway, I prepped by bringing in two Hershey’s chocolate bars and the jar of Jif. Just finished one and you know what? It’s not as fun to eat when it’s a “legal” meal. It just isn’t.

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I went shopping today as it is Esteban’s mother’s birthday and we must pay homage to her tonight. We’re smack in the middle of the stressful time of year for “event anniversaries”. It starts with Esteban’s parent’s anniversary, then Mother’s Day, then OUR anniversary, then Esteban’s mom’s birthday, then MY birthday, then Father’s Day, then Esteban’s Dad’s birthday, then the 4th of July, which thankfully does not require gifts.

I got her a gift certificate. She’s really hard to buy for. She’s the Martha Stewart of De Pere, WI and whatever she wants, she buys. I would have gotten her a paper shredder but she already has one.

I also picked up some toilet paper. Somehow, it is my responsibility to make sure that we have ass wipe. Ah yes, it is part of “All the is not Kitchen”. Anyway, this morning, Esteban needed to go and move his computer lab, so he woke up early and left this morning, apparently using the last 50 yards of toilet paper which was on the roll. I had estimated that we’d have enough until, say, Sunday at least, but no. When I woke up this morning, no toilet paper. Luckily, I just had to pee, so I peed and then took a shower. I found this to be most resourceful of me. I was a Girl Scout at one point, after all. Then I dressed and busted over to get some because I seriously couldn’t see us showering after each trip to the bathroom all day.

Just got peanut button on my keyboard.

Anyway, the mall was fucking packed. Because it’s raining and this is Green Bay which means that there is NOTHING to do here. So everyone heads to the mall instead. Ridiculous.

So I ended up spending WAY more time there than I wanted to because the One Hour photo place should really be renamed the Whenever We Fucking Feel Like Making Your Photos place. Because they totally have you, you know. You fill out your little “One Hour” slip and plan on paying the extra amount to get your pictures faster and then you carefully plot out one hour of time (which, honestly, was far longer than I wanted to be there anyway, but I figured I’d be leisurely and tough it out). Then when an hour is up, you go and get it and they tell you 30 more minutes. So know they’ve got you by the balls and they KNOW it. If you say “Fuck it” and leave, well, then you might as well have put your photos in the 2 Day cheap developing method because now you’re going to have to come BACK to the Mall of No Return anyway. So you wait it out. And bitch. And stare at the photo-tards behind the counter.

Unclebob is a Bank Drive Through Vigilante. I’m wondering if he can give me some pointers on being the One Hour Photo Vigilante.

And let me just say this. I am overweight. I know this. I’m one fat bitch, as some might say. But I realize that one should NOT wear stretch pants that show every curve and terrain of your cellulite. The photo-tard was wearing stretch denim leggings. And a short shirt. Like maybe three months ago when she decided that it would be a good outfit, the shirt was longer and covered the bumpy horrible area of her butt/thighs. I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. But now, apparently there has been a dryer mishap and the shirt has shrunk and no longer covers that region. So time to find a longer shirt, is all I’m saying. Or don’t wear tight pants with it. Cover yourself, photo-tard girl. That’s all I’m saying.

And I’m saying it as I try to dig a piece of chocolate out of a jar of peanut butter.

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And that brings up another good point. Just because you can find something in your size, doesn’t mean that you should wear it.

For instance: the Avenue right now has t-shirts with horizontal stripes on them. In size 30-32. Not the best idea but not completely horrible.

The Lane Bryant catalog sells the aforementioned stretch denim leggings as well as other crimes of fashion.

Belly shirts. Shirts that show off your mid-region. Not pretty above size 20, I’m certain. But they have them.

Let’s use some common sense, people!

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And why is it that whenever product packagers have something that is stretchy, they write the word “STRETCH” on the package in an elongated fashion?

S T R E T C H

As though the word itself were stretching out to show how stretchy the product is?

Is there someone on this planet that does not know what the word “STRETCH” means and has to have it demonstrated for them.

“Well, Marge, I was gonna buy dese here athletic socks, but I want them to be a little elasticy and I’m not sure if they will have elastic in them. There’s this word here, ‘stretch’ but I don’t have a thesaurus or any other such book and I’m stumped. Aw, to hell with it.” (and puts the package back down)

No. I don’t think so. So then I wondered if possibly they were doing it for people who couldn’t read. But then I thought, if I couldn’t read, would I realize that the letters were stretching out? Or would I just ignore all words entirely?

So I’m clueless on this, but it annoys the hell out of me.

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My old personal website on Chickpages is no more. Guess I’ll have to get on the stick and finish my new one. I’m lazy that way.

If you’d like to see it, it’s up but partially finished.

http://www.wendywoohoo.homestead.com

Pictures aren’t up yet and a bunch of links don’t work. But I found a chubby Tinkerbell to put on it, so I’m pretty happy about that.

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Mwah!

I used to be a child of hippy parents.

Those of us who haved lived this weird situation know what a hell this can be. You can always tell we sorry few if you’re watchful. We eat junk food with a mixture of bliss and extremely guilt on our faces, as if we know that we’re responsible for killing entire rainforests but at that moment the Cheeto in our face is just that much more important. We have an urge to eat bulgar wheat in strange ways. We knew all about the hemp revolution WAAAAAAY before the Indie crowd picked up on it. It’s subtle but when we meet, we have the haunted knowing look on our faces, similiar to that you see at P.O.W. reunions.

My mother was “fairly” normal single mom. She did the pot thing for years, dallying in “wholistic” approaches. I had a lunch box even though brown bags were cooler, because lunch boxes didn’t kill trees. My sandwiches were always wrapped in wax paper because it was ecologically safer than plastic bags. Not to mention that wax bags never properly closed and the top part of your sandwich is always a little stale and dried out.

Then she started with men who had progressively paler skin and longer beards. Guys who didn’t wear underwear. Who wore ponchos. She started growing her own alfalfa sprouts. The kitchen always smelled a little yeasty. There were copies of “Mother Jones” and “Whole Earth News” lying around the house.

Then she met Paul, who could have been a younger Jerry Garcia. Paul was whole earth. He moved in, we bought an older house in a folky turn-of-the-century neighborhood. That’s when the weirdness started.

They’d hold “house concerts” in our home. That’s where folk musicians play in someone’s home and people pass the hat to pay for the performance. All forms and sorts of hairy-legged women, long-haired men and grubby children attended these. All of them wearing natural fibers.

They started putting in time at the natural foods Co-op. Large glass jars of various flours, grains, and whole wheat pastas began appearing. They created a PANTRY. We were involved in ‘anti-nuclear war’ movements. We knew what hummus was. We ate vegetarian for at least half our meals. During none of our childhood did we have Kool-Aid mustaches.

Only people who know how hard it is to try to spread natural peanut butter (which needs to be refrigerated) on bread can fully understand my pain. A natural peanut butter sandwich on whole wheat bread is perhaps the driest substance known to man. You can’t even breath when you eat that sandwich. And jelly? What the hell is that? There’s no nutritional value in jelly, so why bother? Just lots of sugar and preservatives and artificial colors. Thus for years, my sister and I could only grunt and mumble because our chops were glued together with Arlo’s Natural Peanut Butter.

And then there was the honey. White sugar was verboten, “over-processed unnatural rot”. We had the biggest container of honey I’ve ever seen. We’d bring it to the Co-op where they had a big honey machine and watch it glurk out into our sticky container. Honey doesn’t spoil. If it gets crystally, you just steam it in a water bath. Thus honey in everything. Not bad really until you think about cereal. Ever tried putting honey on your Rice Krispies instead of sugar? There is no Snap Crackle Pop after you weigh down the boys with that shit. And it does not mix in. Instead, you pull up your spoon and you have a fist-sized dripping ball of cereal and honey and you just gnaw on it. That’s what I’m talking about. And be careful when putting the honey on the cereal in the first place. Because if you do cereal-honey-milk, the honey forms a moisture-proof barrier that will not allow the milk to touch the cereal. If you pour the milk on too fast, it will hit the honey and then spray up onto your shirt. Your best bet is cereal-milk-honey. Trust me on this.

And then the packed lunches progressed into some strange shit. For instance, falafel is bean patties on pita bread with sprouts. Do you realize how hard it is to TRADE lunches when you’re packing that crap? “Hey, what have you got today?” “Um, Wonder bread sandwich with cheese and turkey, Doritos and a Zinger…how about you?” “Um, Baba Ganoujh on flat bread, dried apple slices and a carob brownie.” “No trade” “yeah, I thought not.” One time my mom put carrots in my thermos instead of soup. Our school had a rule that you had to eat everything in your lunch, so the lunch room monitor made me drink the water that she packed the carrots in. When the glorious day came when the folks relented and allowed us to get school hot lunch, we were ecstatic. We were the only kids in school who enjoyed the state hot lunch program. Pizza! They had pizza! Without eggplant or tofu or anything!

It’s hard to explain the changes that you go through. Some things are completely normal, maybe even more normal than the norm. Either my mom or Paul cooked dinner most nights and we ate like a family. We ate a full breakfast most mornings before school, at least until I was in junior high and had a different starting time than my little sister. But we had Buckwheat pancakes and Not!Sausage rather than the norm. But it was honest to goodness maple syrup that we poured over the pancakes. Because that was more natural than Aunt Jemima. However, had you asked my sister or I what we would have liked for breakfast, we would have said something like “Coco Crispies” or “Egg McMuffin” or even “Wonder Bread toast with grape jelly”.

Natural lip gloss. Natural clothing. Natural soap. No microwave (puts evil rays in yer food, zaps the nutrients, etc). No Tupperware or Rubbermaid. We used Coconut Oil rather than sunscreen. We had clove toothpaste, not Crest or Aquafresh with it’s cool 80’s stripes. We went junk picking for antiques. My mom developed a HUGE 300×200 vegetable garden in the back yard. Every fall, we canned and blanched vegetables late into each night.

I’m the only kid I know who came home from summer camp (which we earned by selling chocolate bars to “less enlightened” kids) and found the folks from “Greenpeace” living in our house. While we were away, they sailed into our town to investigate the pollution of the Fox River. They sent divers down and caught a major paper company lying about how much they were polluting the river. The crew of “The Fri” needed a place to stay and shower and the folks offered up our house. When I came home, there were two lesbians sharing my twin bed. Our phone had been tapped by the FBI. There was never any hot water. Hairy people in sensible shoes gathered in our living room discussing ways to make the local paper companies “pay their retribution to Mother Earth”. I went and slept on the Greenpeace sailboat which was docked on the sludgy polluted river instead. It was quieter.

There were some cool things. For instance, we were allowed to watch movies with nudity in them because “it was nothing to be ashamed of” but we weren’t allowed to watch a movie with violence in it. I made a lot of great friends with the children of my folk’s friends. For the first time in my life, I was not considered weird for having a divorced set of parents or having “Mom’s boyfriend” living with us. Their parents all drove Volvos too. They had things like bagels (which were NOT yet cool in the Midwest) and hummus for lunch. They considered us lucky because we had “normal” first names. They had names like “Ewen”(a girl) and “Sunshine” and “Happy”. It was rare for a hippy couple to be married… they all just lived together, so all my friends were starting phrases like “my Mom’s boyfriend” or “my Dad’s girlfriend”.

We’d go to Solstice celebrations and camp with the hippy friends. We’d bath in rivers. We’d go kayaking and gather cattail roots for dinner. We watched bald eagles mate. We saw the hippy friends eat food that was weirder than the stuff that we were eating at home, so we’d realize that putting honey on our cereal wasn’t THAT bad. At least we got to eat Rice Krispies. We weren’t stuck with Kashi and Grape Nuts like our friends Cumin and Stash. Or poor Lark, who’s mom couldn’t decide if she was a lesbian or not and had a boyfriend AND a girlfriend living with them.

Eventually, they broke up. Paul got married two months after my mom moved out. He’d always been after my mom to marry him throughout the seven years they’d been together, so I suppose he married the first girl who said yes. He lives in Florida now. My mom then had a new boyfriend. Then she had my little brother. Now she doesn’t have a boyfriend (at this point).

Now, she’s more or less abandoned the whole “hippy” attitude. My little brother… he eats actual hotdogs, not Not!Dogs. On white bread buns, even, not whole grain sprouted buns. And he can eat regular peanut butter. But she still retains some of the oddities. Stir-fry is still the primary source of food. And she still makes bran muffins and carrot stuff. And she has a minimal garden. No more folk musicians or hairy-legged activists anymore though.

As for my life, I find that I enjoy wheat bread as well as white. I unconciously reach for honey for my cereal. I crave Guerilla cookies some days. I feel guilty when I put on deoderant. I listen to the Indigo Girls because their harmonies remind me of a certain folk duo that passed through our living room.

And every now and then, I come upon a child of a hippy. We’re in our late twenties or early thirties now. When we recognized each other, a look of rememberence comes over us…a hollow look. And we nod slowly to each other in alliance.

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Forgive me for my weird exposition today.. tomorrow I’ll write a real entry.

Our bathroom is being overrun by silverfish. The most hated of all fish which walk on land.

Silverfish have always been a problem, ever since we purchased the house. Let’s just get THAT out in the open right here, shall we? They were there from the beginning. Longer than us, actually.

So I heard this thing on public radio about how to get rid of silverfish. Ya see, they eat starch. You’ve got to hand it too these little vegetarians. They live on starch and like dark moist places (no comments, please!), so it’s a natch that they’d hang out in our windowless and, up until recently, exhaust fanless bathroom. And they eat that little toilet paper dust. That’s like silverfish caviar. They love tissue and books and the tops of Q-Tips and those things that we keep in the bathroom. Kudos to them that they found their perfect environment.

So the public radio guy suggests making a mixture of corn starch and BORIC ACID. He also suggested that if you had pets, you should make a little silverfish tea bag by wrapping up this mixture in a loose-weave piece of cheesecloth. He said this like it was no big deal, too. I do not have cheesecloth in our house. I do not MAKE cheese. I buy it, prewrapped and preferably presliced. I don’t know anyone under the age of 50 who has cheesecloth just lying around the house.

I dragged Esteban to Menard’s to purchase the Boric Acid. The NPR guy had sworn that this was a “common household chemical”, which in our house was about as common as the cheesecloth, so it didn’t seem strange that I had to go buy it. But here’s the thing, when we find the Boric Acid, it’s with the insect poisons. And the smallest jar, which is “cow killer” size, has a big ugly picture of a ROACH on it! We searched and searched for a jar with a picture of a silver fish on it, but to no avail. Esteban wanted to ditch the whole mission at that point because he didn’t want the 16-year-old cashier thinking that we had roaches in our house. People knowing that we’ve got silverfish is ok, though.

We toughed out the cashier and brought home our boric acid and promptly forgot about it. Because the nature of silverfish is to be secretive and insidious. They don’t WANT you to see them. You might make a killer tea bag and then where would they be?

Have you ever noticed that you never see little silverfish carcasses around? That’s because the little buggers live for 2 YEARS, people. 730 days or longer is the lifespan of the much hated silverfish. Such a long lifespan for a creature that cannot walk in a straight line, only ellipses.

So we were pretty much living in a symbiotic relationship with the silverfish for awhile. You know, we left tissues on the floor in the bathroom, spilled water on the floor to make them happy. And they made us happy by not showing their wicked little bodies to us. And all was fine.

Until a predator entered the picture. You see, apparently, there are a lot of silverfish now, or at least so many that a CENTIPEDE noticed them. Because out of nowhere, Esteban finds this crazy looking centipede in our bathroom.

Have you ever SEEN a centipede? They have these incredible LONG fucking legs that are just going every which way! And they sting, too. And they are, if possible, even faster than the silverfish. Plus, they move in straight lines.

Esteban smushed the Centipede, but then a few days later, I see one in the kitchen (which shares a wall with the bathroom). So they heard about the silverfish banquet to be had in our bathroom, and I believe they’re coming in like retirees with Early Bird Savings coupons.

Part of this, Esteban believes, is my fault. It has to do with that “bathroom cleaning” thing discussed in earlier entries. You see, there is some unwritten law which divines that Weetabix shall clean all that is not Kitchen. And truthfully, I’ll admit that I haven’t been cleaning the bathroom as much as I should. At one point, I made a moritorium which stated that I would not scrub the bathroom floor again until we got new tile or linoleum in there. Because I just can’t get it clean. We thought that part of it had this dark design in the rosette things and then after a frenzied scrubbing attempt on my part, I realized that it wasn’t a design… that was just the weird imprinting in the floor FILLED WITH GRIME! And I do not have enough anal retentiveness within my soul to scrub that fugly linoleum one more time.

Anyway, last night Esteban was reading a book that had been in our bathroom, on top of the book stand, which sits a few inches above the floor. He’s happily reading and suddenly says “GAHHHHHH!!!!” and starts crushing the book together (MY book, I might add! Which I’m on page 117, halfway through!).

“What! What?” I say.

He sneers at me. “There was a silverfish in the book.” and then proceeds to litanize on how this is my fault. Because the bathroom is, of course, ALL THAT IS NOT KITCHEN and therefore my responsibility.

And now there’s a smushed silverfish inside the book I haven’t read yet. If it is beyond page 117, I might just throw out the book and buy a new one. Damn Esteban!

Anyhoo, if you have a “good riddance” scheme for silverfish, centipedes, (or even lazy, occaisionally gender-biased husbands), send me an email. I’d love to hear from you.

Or send me a small, hankerchief-sized square of cheesecloth.