That's My Bix!

This will go down in history as the Summer of The Biblical Plagues on my house. Seriously. First it was the mice, which I took care of with four live traps and one cat. Then these itty bitty ants showed up in the kitchen addition. Some Terro ant stuff took care of that. Now, when we came back from our trip this weekend, there are like nine houseflies in our house. We went from having zero flies to nine. Or maybe nine hundred. They’re hard to count because they keep moving around. It’s weird because we NEVER have flies in the house. I don’t even own a fly swatter. Mostly because the ones that do get in are stalked and quickly (and disgustingly) crunched by Tilly. But she seems to be mostly apathetic to the fly invasion. Perhaps she is resting on the mouse laurels. Which sounds like mouse slang for their reproductive organs. If mice had slang. Or something. Er. Yeah.

At lunch yesterday I have halfheartedly embarked upon a new project. I want to make pretty glass magnets, but sort of cutting edge ones, for my cube shelf (to replace my plastic toy dinosaurs, which were looking a little’ Jurassic Era on Acid). Eh. I’m going to try it. And then most likely abandon it to my storage bins which are called Where Good Projects Go To Die. I’m already not happy with it. I couldn’t find the right-sized paper punch for the glass bauble thingies. And the glass thingies are irregularly shaped, which bugs me. And I couldn’t find good magnets. Yes, I’m anal about the damn magnets that you won’t even see. Ah well. The entire thing is resting upon needing the correct sized paper punch, because I am completely inept at cutting circles. Also, I’m better at conceptualizing than follow through. Too many water hazards and I’m all ‘Screw it, let’s go drink martinis in the clubhouse.’

So after I finished gathering glass thingies and magnets at a Craft Store Of Gay (TM Gawain), I wandered over to the hardware store where I found fly strips, of the type you see in stereotypical dirty diners and also crack dens. Six for a buck. Seemed far less messy than trying to hunt and kill them with a fly swatter. Also, I had slammed two of them with a West Elm catalogue and both had flown away in sort of a crooked pattern, obviously a little shaken by the lovely home furnishings in subdued green and lavender but no worse for wear. I liked the idea of the strips. It would show the other flies that I wasn’t messing around. I was instating Fly Purgatory.

Hard to believe that I was once a vegetarian, is it not? It’s sort of ridiculous, my sliding scale of the preciousness of life. Spiders are ushered gently outside (unless they are very ugly, in which case I either shriek for Esteban or ignore them and hope that they leave the premises insulted, vowing never to return.) I refused to kill the mice. I will almost kill myself to save a butterfly. But ants and flies? They took their lives into their own hands when they crossed the threshold of my house. In fact, in rereading that statement, the butterflies are Lacy Peterson, while flies are ugly people and I apparently am the American public.

Thus, I purchased the fly strips and figured that I’d have the problem taken care of in no time. I went home and read the instructions. Unwind with a gentle circular motion. Ok. I pulled the string on it and almost gagged. Out came this intestinal track of sticky sweet-smelling eviscera. Of course, where to hang the trap before one opened it? I however did not. I wandered around the kitchen. The logical place seemed to be from the light in the center of the kitchen, but I would certainly walk too close to it and end up getting dead flies stuck to my face (which, actually, is more preferable than the disgusting fly strip). Every place which seemed logical would either certainly catch me or the cat. Then it went for my breast and I realized that I had mistakenly purchased a strip that was infused with the strongest epoxy known to man. It seemed to be a mix of molasses and some James Bond super stick stuff. I suspect that it could snag 747’s out of the sky. It was then that I realized that stringly my house with this stuff was frought with disaster, and threw the strip in the garbage, where it promptly stuck to the wall and then my fingers as I attempted to stuff it into the bag. Then it somehow wrapped around a discarded box and somehow closed the garbage bag of its own power. It frightened me. It really did. I thing it is really the Blob. Or strips of dead Blob that were turned into jerky. Yes. It’s Blob jerky.

Off topic for just a second, but seriously, the Blob was the best movie monster ever. There was no rationalizing with the Blob. Frankenstein was swayed by pretty girls and kittens. The Mummy could probably have been distracted by a sexy Egyptian woman in a gold bikini and dark fringe bangs. The Wolfman was only a problem one night a month. Cripes, my period does five times the damage of the Wolfman. And Dracula could be taken out by any number of ingenious methods. But the Blob? He was Jell-o, man. There’s no stopping the Blob. The Blob did not need a prop.

But back to the fly strip.

You would think I would have learned my lesson, but you know me. I cannot back down. I opened another strip, but this time did not unwind the entire thing. No. I made sort of a Tower of Death with the tape and set it carefully on the kitchen counter. Take that! By the time I went to bed, there were three flies defending their life on that thing. Ha! Excellent. Hopefully all nine (hundred?) will have committed sticky suicide by the time I get home. Vindication is sweet.

Note to self: use barbeque tongs to throw Tower Of Death away.

Note to self x2: throw away barbeque tongs.

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More Gold and SuperGold folks. I love you all. I want to have your babies.

Elsworthy
JessMess818 (who came through on her promise to upgrade last Friday)

And I renewed Quoted’s account too.

You know’ I’m totally getting out easy on this upgrade link lovin’. Marn is writing whole guest entries for people.

Those generous Canadians!

I’d use other adjectives but I’m pretty sure Marn can kick my ass.

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In other news, what the heck is up with NBC spinning off Joey Tribiani onto his own sitcom? Because now this means that there is no way he’s going to get together with Rachel. Even though I am seriously against the pairing, I was willing to suspend my disbelief. I WANTED them to be together if only it meant that everyone was paired off in twos, the little Noah’s ark of the sitcom world. You know’ Phoebe and Mike, Monica and Chandler, Rachel and Joey, and Ross and’ umm’. Gunther? I don’t know. Argh. But now no? They’ve been stringing me along with the Joey loves Rachel and then Rachel doesn’t have anything for Joey and now Rachel loves Joey, but now Joey is going to go to freaking California to have some yet-to-be-determined love interest and group of recycled ‘It’s Like, You Know’ actor friends?

This is pissing me off. Worse than when they do the ‘Hey, Monica used to be fat’ ha ha’ fat Monica! Riot! We are a riot!’ jokes. Worse than when they tried to convince us that Chandler isn’t gay. And where did the duck and chicken go? Huh? Huh? We were on a break!!

I think I need some time to myself now. I’ve clearly snapped.

Number of Weddings attended: 1

Number of Weddings attended at Renaissance faire: 1

Number of Weddings attended at Renaissance faire in lifetime: 1

Sane reasons for getting married at a Renaissance faire: 0

Miles to Wedding: 154

Average posted speed limit: 65 mph

Miles driven while obeying the posted speed limit: 0

Miles driven exceeding 110 mph: 2

Times Weetabix used the term ‘ball sac’: 5

Times Esteban used the term ‘sex shop’: 14

Bottles of Dasani consumed: 12

Number of potty break stops in questionable gas stations: 2

Extra shirts Weetabix brought along ‘just in case’: 2

Extra shirts that came out of the laundry with miscellaneous spots that were discovered after leaving Green Bay: 2

Minutes of wearing only clean shirt before getting mystery coffee splots on shoulder of all places: 23

Miles off the highway to nearest store selling plain t-shirts: 6

Length of wedding ceremony in minutes: 4

Minutes late to wedding ceremony: 23

Dollars saved by breathlessly running up to security guard and explaining that we were late to the wedding and could we just enter through the employee gate: 34

Certainty that the security guard was a lesbian: 94%

Bare girl asses seen at the Renaissance faire: 13

Bare boy asses seen at the Renaissance faire: 0

Geeks who dress as though they kick some medieval ass, but in reality, they could only kick ass with a twelve-sided die and a magic ring of regeneration: 187

Esteban’s aunts and uncles in attendance at the reception: 18

Manhattan’s consumed by Esteban’s Aunt Neat during dinner: 4

Times Esteban’s Aunt Neat referred to her vagina at dinner: 43

Times Weetabix stated ‘I’m going to have hysterical deafness in three’ two’ one’ yep, there it is.’ Or simply covered her ears and sang ‘lalalalalala’: 12

Number of times Esteban’s younger cousin tried to brag about her mediocre life: 15

Number of times Weetabix stopped herself from saying ‘Oh, really, three trips in five years? Yeah, I’ve been on three trips since January’: 2

Number of times she chanted ‘Bitch’ in her head instead: 112

Fashion violations at reception:

&AAk-

Visible foundation: 2

&AAk-Pantyhose with open toed sandals: 15

&AAk-Trucker hat: 1

&AAk-Harley Davidson T-shirt: 1

&AAk-Jeans with paint splatters: 1

&AAk-The combination of the above three on one person: 1

&AAk-Wearing a skirt with Reeboks and white socks: 1

&AAk-Way too much time spent in tanning bed: 5

&AAk-Way too much time spent watching QVC: 43

&AAk-Bad hair (Weetabix included): 18

&AAk-

Distance in feet from hotel to reception: 86

Trips Ward made in his minvan from hotel to reception: 4

Degrees in Fahrenheit that Esteban insisted keeping the hotel air conditioning set to: 63

Times the noisy hotel air conditioner must kick in to maintain a steady temperature of 63 degrees overnight: 483

Dreams about Ren faire geeks fighting Star Trek geeks: 2

Dreams about hair plucking: 1

Dreams about hair plucking inducing a strange rattling air conditioner sound: 1

Stops at the Krispy Kreme donut place: 2

Donuts purchased in total: 8

Donuts discarded because they stopped being ‘good’: 6

Choco-Tacos consumed: 2

Miscellaneous ground meat products in some kind of casing consumed: 5

Servings of fruit consumed: 4

Servings of fruit consumed if bar cherries do not count as fruit: 0

Guilty looks at people when they asked about recent weight loss: 12

Songs by the Beastie Boys played on the way back home: 12

Songs by the Beastie Boys that Weetabix realize that she likes: 4

Cars Esteban pointed out that he’d wishes Weetabix liked rather than a Lincoln LS: 18

Alternatives Weetabix pointed out: 3

Average cost, in dollars, more expensive the alternatives when compared to a LS: 20,090

Times Esteban sang his ‘Go back to Illinois’ song when being passed by a car with Illinois plates: 4

Number of mysterious houseflies which have appropriated residency of Casa Bix over the weekend: 9

Emails received while gone: 26

Emails received which were spam: 23

Inches grass grew in 36 hours: 5

You’ll notice that I brought the old layout back. There’s Chubby Tink, back to her normal job of sprinkling the title bar with fairy dust. Wave at her. She likes attention. She’s a diva.

Much thanks to everyone who signed up for the Diaryland coolness. I hope that we took some of the heat off of Andrew’s server bills. I mean, thirty bucks for a year? That’s like, one movie with popcorn and soda. Seriously, I would think a year’s worth of Diaryland is more fun than an evening spent with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which, by the way, blew major amounts of ass). And if you are already Supergold, maybe buy 10,000 banner ads or something. Right now, you can buy 1000 ads for just 99 cents. It’s a good deal and you’ll gain new readers too. Hey, SquirrelX has about eight gazillion readers, right?

According to the comments, the following people have moved from being freeloaders (yeah, I said it) and are now upstanding goldly Dlanders, or upgraded to Super Spiffy Gold:

Girlsdontcry
Leiascully
Windylady
Teralyne
Emiline220
Jessmess818 (Who promises to go gold on Friday)

Big thanks to Cruel-Irony and Dichroic, who have both offered to sponsor a gold membership. So you have no excuses. Go. To quote Cruel-Irony, ‘Save the words’. And it’s not like you’re not getting something out of it. Comments! Banner ads! Images! Statistics! Super secret membership stuff that we don’t talk about with non-gold members! Go! Hurry! Run!

I’m beginning to feel like National Public Radio. And now back to A Prairie Home Companion, where the women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children are look suspiciously a lot like Carl Krepsbach.

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There is a tiny little dwarf with a pickaxe who has somehow gotten into my skull and he’s going at the gray matter like there are diamonds to be found within the wrinkles.

It’s migraine time again, kiddies. Oh happy day. I went home mid-morning yesterday, after fighting the burgeoning pain with caffeine and Advil liqui-gels and the Etoys song. Most music actually makes my headaches worse, but the Etoys song, with the ubiquitous humming of the crazy man going through a medley of songs made famous by muzak, it gives that white dull throb something to chew on. It’s like Ritalin music. I don’t even understand it. But even a heady dose of Oooooh Hooo Hooo couldn’t stay the migraine from its course and by 10:30, there were white spots of light and nausea and my face was a study in grayscale. Thus, I gave up, went home, piled up my down comforter into a comfortable nest, and broke open my new pack of Crayolas. Then spent half an hour sorting the colors into blues, purples, reds, orange and yellows, browns and other ucky colors, and the oddities (white, black, shadow, copper), because hi, I’m anal retentive. Then I sat there and colored graceful little arcs of pacific blue, manatee, and indigo until the vise loosened around my head. Then I drew the portrait of a mermaid with blue skin and then tragically gave her this magenta hair (ok, it wasn’t magenta, it was ‘mauvelous’. And now I want to die. Mauvelous. ) And then I drew a very lovely sign for the men using big Tonka trucks to tear up the road next to our house. I taped it in my dining room window, so they could look at it all day. It said ‘Love you!’ and there was a picture. Only instead of the word ‘love’, I used a different word. And I think what I drew broke the laws of some southern states.

And did you know that there’s a crayon called Beaver? I didn’t. But there is.

Things started getting better when around 6 pm, I realized that my nausea had slowly turned into a growling stomach, which was understandable, since I hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours. The prospect of food still was a little iffy, but the bland thin-crust pizza of a local deli sounded good, so I put on my darkest pair of sunglasses and made a quick jaunt out into the light. And called the construction workers a bunch of punk assed bitches, but then karma smote me with a blinding throb of pain. I tried to be clever and take a back route to the deli, but a large semi truck decided to pull out in front of me. Slllloowwwwllly. I honked on my horn five times, yelling inside my car ‘Would! You! Fuck! Ing! Go!’ He then punished me by making the next stop sign the Longest Stop Sign In All The World. Which I rightly deserved. I still hate him though. I shall color a picture of his truck falling over a cliff into a sea of dirty hypodermic needles and crack whore mermaids. And the color of his shirt will be mauvelous with horizontal stripes. The kind of horizontal stripes that aren’t flattering. And he will be wearing an asshat. A Beaver colored asshat.

Today, the migraine is still with us. It did not take a swan dive into my unconscious last night. I growled at Esteban when he came to bed and then blamed him for the fact that I had to pee.

I had more to write about but this little window is too bright.

The migraine does not need a prop.

If there is one bit of wisdom that I can impart about aging, it is this:

People don’t change as they age, they simply become more themselves.

It’s like a personality slowly condenses, like water evaporating from a boiling pot. Or, in the case of some people, milk slowly curdling. Quirks (or faults) that were mildly present at age 21 become the main event by 31. Perhaps they drop the artifice they were hiding behind. Perhaps they just stop caring. For instance, you can almost plot the course from angst to curmudgeon to bitter old asshole. Or, conversely, from giggly to ditzy to taking too many anti-depressants.

Of course, when I’m talking about myself, I use the term ‘becoming more comfortable in my skin’ or something that makes it sound like some miraculous transformation rather than the more colloquial ‘turning into a fruit loop’.

But regardless, once the cement of self has been set, there seems to be no turning back.

For instance, feet. You know how much I dislike feet. I used to just be grossed out by certain feet. Boy feet, for instance, of the type that paraded around in smelly tube socks and ancient Chuck Taylors. Then somewhere in my late teens to early twenties, I developed an actual aversion to any adult feet with the exception of girl feet that are obviously well-tended. Esteban’s feet horrified me, but I could still, for instance, wear his clean socks in an emergency. I didn’t go apoplectic if he touched me with his bare feet (unless his Toenails of Death drew long bloody furrows into my ankles). Now, however, I am squicked by even the nicest of feet. I don’t want to touch them. I don’t want to see them. In fact, my own feet gross me out if they are not right out of the shower. I started to hyperventilate while getting a pedicure at the sight of the feet of the woman in the chair next to me and the fact that they were shaving off foot skin and it was flying EVERYWHERE and then I had to walk on little paper sandal things that were hardly santitary across this minefield of discarded foot flesh. Actually, that is probably understandable, but in the pool the other day, Ward’s feet came within three feet of my face and I actually paddled the floatie away as though I were being pursued by a questionable Baby Ruth-esque brown log. And he’d been in the pool for several hours, so they were obviously clean feet. There’s no rationalizing with my brain. It just prefers that people keep their feet in their shoes, thank you very much.

Also, it really bugs me if the toilet paper comes over the top of the roll rather than from below. I can deal with it in public restrooms and the like, but in my own house? Under the roll. However, Esteban is an Over The Roll kind of guy.

I didn’t learn this until recently because for the first seven years of our cohabitation, he never actually replaced a roll of toilet paper. I made him promise to do it, in return for only buying Northern Quilted which is something he feels quite strongly about (I actually prefer Charmin because it reminds me of my great grandmother, but whatever). So’ now there the toilet paper is replaced, unless he’s feeling really lazy and leaves the mysterious four squares on the cardboard tube.

Note to singletons and young couples: You know that rule about ‘Don’t Sweat The Little Stuff’ that Dear Abby used to go on about? Let me tell you something’ the Big Stuff probably got sorted out by the time that you move in together. The Little Stuff is all that is left. The divorce rate would be much lower if people practiced a little more bathroom diplomacy. Thus ends Relationships According To Bix.

I suspect that he doesn’t consciously thinks about which way the toilet roll should hang, but it must be habit from his days with Ward and June. And one day I told him how much it bugs me and he promised to do it the correct and proper way from then on. And then he promptly didn’t. So then I offered some auxiliary marital acts in exchange for his willing participation in my psychosis. And we’ve since had 99% compliance.

Last week, we hit the 1%. Unfortunately, it coincided with my recent purchase of a pack of Triple Roll Northern. It shouldn’t bother me. It really shouldn’t. But each time I’m in there, the roll mocking me, the end hanging somewhere behind the roll, hard to grasp, clinging to itself. Each time, I write a treatise in my head, to explain to the world why the toilet paper coming from underneath the roll is the proper way to hang it. Because gravity works with you. Because it just looks nicer. Because I like it that way.

You know, maybe I feel so strongly about it because it was actually the first thing on which I developed an opinion. I remember having a discussion with my mother when I was three about why people hung the toilet paper differently, and then ended the conversation ‘I think I like it hanging against the wall.’ And there it was. The birth of a toilet paper diva.

Thus, all weekend, I’ve been fighting with myself to not switch the roll around. Because that’s just giving into the obsession. However, a triple roll, by its very nature, lasts almost as long as Christina Aguilera’s career. I find myself using extraneous amounts of toilet paper. For everything. I used toilet paper to take off my makeup. I used toilet paper to clean the faucet. I even tore off a square to use as a bookmark in my latest bathroom read (The Bad Girl’s Guide to Getting What You Want, which comes with a handy waterproof cover, as though it were destined for bathroom reading). I stopped just short of sentencing Esteban to use up improperly rolled toilet paper on his numerous trips to the bathroom by making chili with extra beans.

And I just don’t know what to make of these growing compulsions. Do I have full blown OCD to look forward to in my aging years? Will someone use this entry as a resource for their psychological profile when I am committed? Will I someday get arrested when I ram some guy throwing his cigarette butt out the window of his car, like the entire world was his damn ashtray? Will my other little quirks wrap themselves as indelibly into my personality until I become that cat woman who talks to herself and has mazes of twenty-year-old magazines in her house? It boggles the mind.

But today’ There’s a nice lovely fresh roll hanging in the bathroom. Hung by myself. The right way.

Today is a beautiful day.

There are some days when I wish that I smoked cigarettes. Because the level of scorn I have is simply not complete without the prop of a smoking cancer stick that I could use to jab into the air as I made my misanthropic speeches about my job.

Yeah. It’s my job again. What a stress baby. Actually my job apparently took fertility pills so that it didn’t have just one stress baby. No. It has septuplet stress babies and is on the cover of Newsweek with chipped front teeth, begging for charity Pampers. I think my eyebrows have fused together in the middle of my forehead. My stress crevice wrinkle has become a faultline and I fear the tectonic plates may shift and move and my ear will be where my nose should be.

(There was a big tirade about my job and specifics that I realized probably totally broke the confidentiality agreement that I signed at some point, so I deleted it, but it was funny. Really. Very possibly the funniest thing I ever wrote. You snooze, you lose. Ok, it wasn’t really that funny. I’m just trying to make you feel bad. Because I’m cranky.)

When I was driving around for lunch today, I was thinking about how I wish I were a stay-at-home mom. Except that I don’t have children. Well, I do have one, but honestly, I wouldn’t have much to do while he’s at work. And then I stopped at the mall to see if they had another pair of DKNY sunglasses on sale (they didn’t) and then got all giddy when the muzak played Debbie Gibson’s ‘Out of the Blue’. Such a peppy song, that. The late 80’s were such a carefree time. You just had to perm your hair and then maybe spray it with Sun-In or something (which I did exactly once, and you know you did too, so don’t be giving me those looks) and then wear a Scrunchy that matched your socks, which were pulled up over your pegged pants. Or rather, one of the layers of your socks. I’m not sure what we were going for there. I almost think that maybe we were showing our financial superiority, in that we had so many coordinating articles of clothing that we had to wear many of them AT THE SAME TIME. I seem to remember friends doing that with Polo shirts too. In retrospect, it reminds me of those tribes that put the rings around women’s necks. People can convince themselves that anything is a good idea. Evidence the fact that Taco Bell continually charges various prices for the same seven ingredients in varying combinations.

And then I almost had a breakdown when the muzak started playing ‘Wildfire’. You know, the song about the horse? Dude, that was like my FAVORITE song in 1980. I used to request it at rollerskating all the time. I was nine and I had owned my own horse. Don’t judge me.

So, you know how the heroine of the song died? In a killing frost? Do you know what a killing frost is? It’s the first time in autumn that it gets cold enough to kill your flowers. That’s it. Like’ thirty degrees maybe. Michael Martin Murphey makes it sound like she’s battling these arctic winds and has tears freezing to her cheeks as she bravely rides on into the Nebraska’ I don’t know’ moors? Do they have moors there? Anyway, bah. It was just a bit nippy. But then suddenly there was a blizzard. So it wasn’t a killing frost? Which was it, Michael Martin Murphey? Make up your damn mind. And if the horse and then the girl were dumb enough to go running out in the blizzard, then it sounds like Darwinism in practice, non?

See, this is where I would take a deep drag of the cigarette, fix my eye upon him with deep contempt and then exhale dramatically.

Except I wouldn’t. Because smoking is bad, kids. Don’t smoke. It’s smelly and stinky and gives you skanky teeth. I’m just ruined in the head because every strong woman in my family smokes and has always smoked and being cranky just doesn’t seem right without a little nicotine buzz.

I had somewhere to go with this. I swear I did.

Gah.

Patsy Cline called me an angel in an email today.

Pay no attention to that woman behind the curtain.