That's My Bix!

Once upon a time (two years ago, which is eons in internet years) I got the impression somewhere along the way that my beloved Diaryland was a piece of spinach on the teeth of a diarist’s url. The mood of the journaling community then seemed to be that if you weren’t Dubya Dubya Dubya Dot Something Dot Com, then you were just part of the Great Unwashed or just another thirteen year old girl with a butterfly cursor and love poems to 98 Degrees or something.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

However, I think the winds of change are coming. And no, I don’t mean a Scorpians cover band. Diarylanders have been honored with seven of the thirteen Diarist awards.

Yes, that’s right. Tygerchild received one for Best Collaborative Entry. The new girl on the block (last quarter, she was awarded with Best New Journal) Lizardspace took home the Best Rant trophy (ok, it’s just a jpg but still very nice just the same). Diaryland icon UncleBob was finally recognized as the comedy god that he is with a Legacy Award. Right Sexy Mutha Shut Yo Mouth I’m Only Talkin’ ‘Bout Disco The Kid was honored with the well-deserved Best Writing nod. Our lovely wangtacular Marn has dashed her hopes of being the next Susan Lucci when she scored not one but two of the prestigious awards, one for Best Comedic Entry and one for Best Journal Overall.

Is it possible that Diaryland has finally arrived?

And more importantly, will there be an Induction To Online Society ball in which we all wear white dresses and dance with handsome cadets from the local military school? Because damn, there’s just nothing like rug burn from a fresh crew cut.

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I still have that ‘Hi’ voice stuck in my head. I think my brain has finally gotten tired of putting songs on random repeat. Or maybe there’s a parrot stuck in there. Hi. Hiya. Hi. Hey there. How ya doing? Hi! Or maybe I’m just insane and instead of having angry voices inside my head, I have perky friendly ones. Maybe it’s Julie Your Cruise Director.

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So I think’. I don’t want to say it’ but I THINK’. We might not have a mouse problem any more.

It’s been like two weeks since the last Incident, and I did seal up the holes in the garage with squirty stuff (yeah, I’m just one tool belt shy of making someone a really good husband). The live traps inside the house are untouched. Tilly has been stalking in the basement but has come back each time empty-pawed.

I haven’t wanted to let down my guard on Mouse Attack 2003. Each time I let myself think that maybe there are no more mice, I hear that freaky-assed midget lady from Poltergeist say ‘This house’is clean.’ And we all know that was about five minutes before the big scary giraffe skeleton appeared in the hallway and the ghosts tried to get in JoBeth Williams’ underpants.

So if this page doesn’t get updated again, you know that the mice fought back and I’m stuck in some homemade people trap in my basement that has been baited with plus-size DKNY clothing and a shiny new laptop.

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Attentive readers of Dumber than A Box of Rocks may remember that I got my sister a job my sister and I both work at the same company.

It’s not so bad working at the same company. It’s a large company, roughly 350 people. I hardly ever saw the little beast her because I work on one end of a very long building and she on the other. The only real detriment is the fact that my sister and I look almost nothing alike. She’s average height, has more of an olive complexion and a long straight nose and takes after my mother (think Cher) in body type. I, on the other hand, am tall, rather pale pink colored, with freckles, a sorority girl turned up nose, and take after some mystery ancestor in that I have big hooters and a total hourglass shape (ok, more like a three-hour glass, but still). We would be the classic ‘Weetabix is the smart one and Mo is the pretty one’ if Mo weren’t also very smart. And because we both have different last names, only a few people at work realize that we’re sisters. So we get the ‘you look nothing alike’ thing a lot, which is sort of like ‘Wow, Mo is thin and pretty and Weetabix’ is Weetabix.’ The alternate side of that is that they always think Mo is the older sister and I’m the younger one, which is almost like saying that Mo looks ten years older than she really is. (Heee!)

Mo just got a promotion. And has relocated her workspace. To literally twenty feet away from my desk.

Insert pained look of sibling proximity here.

But now’ now she’s in spitting distance. In fact, because I have this enormous wide open desk that encompasses the back corner of our department and sits right next to a tiny conference room, she can watch me work if she hangs her head into the doorway of her cube.

God, I’m 31.96 years old and I’m still stuck sharing a room with my little sister.

I predict that the greetings of ‘Hey Dork’ ‘Hey Loser’ will increase dramatically from this point forward.

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OH! I almost forgot!

Have you ever wanted to be Weetabix for a day?

Well, here’s the thing… my birthday is next week and I thought it might be fun to take a few days off, but I had to let this page langor for that time, so hence, a contest. Mostly because I hate langouring in general. Langour, langour, bangor langston hughes, it’s all the same and it bugs me. So give a girl a break. Pen a Weetabix entry (sort of like what I did for UncleBob last year) by Tuesday morning. I’ll run the best ones (the ones that either sound the most like me or make me laugh). And then the readership will vote on the finalists.

Sound fun? I’m giddy. Really. GIDDY. Besides, you guys kicked my ass with banner ads last October, so I’m certain that you’ll put me to shame in the entry competition.

The winner will get…. something. I haven’t decided yet. Maybe a Bad Bar CD or somethin’. I dunno. We’ll figure something out.

So get writing! I can’t wait to read about what’s going on in my pretend life.

Sometimes I suspect that there are cramps and then there are Cramps. And then there are the things I’m having right now, which might just be Cramps of Mass Destruction. Esteban sent me a dozen roses, though, which was lovely. They are apparently ‘Sorry You Have To Be A Girl’ flowers. He also fetched me cheese and mushroom pizza from one of my favorite pizza places, one that doesn’t deliver. He is very understanding of my plight. Esteban says that he’s an atheist, but he seems to believe in God once a month, when he utters a prayer of thanks that he was born with a Y chromosome.

I spent most of last night in bed, watching some show that was like American Idol but with models. I have to say that I’m addicted already. I’ve set up Ricky Fitts to record the entire season, even though it conflicts with the ‘Less Than Perfect’ show (which I have been watching much like a scientist observing a germ under a microscope, because it is essentially the show about my life, except that I would never be content as someone’s assistant nor would I hang out with Andy Dick). My only regret is that the ‘big girl’ is crazy. Not that she’s REALLY a big girl. In fact, she and I are the same height (5’9′) and the weight she lists is well within the healthy weight for our height, but they seem to always bring up that she’s destined to be a ‘plus size model’. Like, she’s pretty. For a plus size model. She has a good look. She’ll be a plus size model. Just like saying ‘Hitler was a good artist. For a mass murdering psychopath.’ It’s like they’re trying to say ‘ don’t forget, y’all, we let in the fattie! Who says the modeling industry is cruel, look at us with the heifer!’ But no, they can’t have a regular normal healthy girl. Instead, she’s crazy. They have to have an uber diva who simpers when she’s chastised. Oh lawd lawd lawd yes lawd. I want to like her, but I already know that I’d hate her and I’d be hanging out with the excruciatingly thin Elyse, who also happens to be the prettiest one there. I hope she wins. And uses her earnings to buy herself some chocolate.

Are there any male readers still here? Hi! How are you doing! You rock!

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So McGriddles.

I’ve been mainlining them for the last week in the worst way. In fact, after the really bad day when Gen died I remember thinking to myself ‘Hey, cheer up, tomorrow you get to have another McGriddle!’. And it cheered me up just a little bit. And if that’s not proof that deep down I’m really a trailer trash princess, I don’t know what else is. I mean, there’s syrup right in the pancakey bun things! And they’re hot. And filled with sausage. Sausage and syrup and pancakes that you can eat as you drive to work. It might very possibly have been the most perfect food.

But then yesterday.

Oh lawdy lawdy lawdy yes lawd yesterday.

I shouldn’t have been tempting fate. Sometimes when I have a migraine or, in this case, extreme abdominal trauma, the idea of food is not a good thing. I know. I don’t understand it either. It’s like being told that instead of clothes, now everyone will wear suits made of noodles. It just doesn’t add up. But there it is. Sometimes even the fat girl says ‘No thanks, I am really not hungry. No. Really.’

Except that the idea of a McGriddle sounded good. As did the effervescent bubbly cup of icy cold Diet Crack. And then in the middle of eating it, it happened. The world turned upside down and instead of a lovely steaming pillow of goodness, I was now eating essence of pig between two grease sponges and I could taste every bit of disgusting thing that pig ever wallowed in. I attempted to just eat a pancake thingy but it was done. My love affair with the McGriddle. Never again. End scene.

Ah McGriddle. We hardly knew ye.

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From the Girls Always Dig the Philosophical Guys Department:

Esteban: watching a really boring documentary in which the narrator droned on about danger on the high seas) I wonder why they always call it ‘the high seas’. Why not ‘the low seas’.

Weetabix: Because the low seas just sound wussy. Like a kiddie wading pool.

Esteban: Maybe it’s because ‘low seas’ sounds sort of like ‘feces’.

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Have you signed up for the Web Writer’s Weekend (aka JournalCon) yet? Have you? Have you? Have you? Well, click on the link down there. You’ll see me there. And also Invincible Girl, who is way funny. And supposedly my arch nemesis will be there as well. And you don’t want to miss the smack down there. I’ve already told her ‘Bring It.’. And I’m certain it gone be broughten.

Ouch. That actually pained me to write like that.

So go. Sign up. Get yo’ ass to Austin.

That didn’t hurt as much. Perhaps I’m becoming immune.

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There’s a new Quoted up.

Very tired.

So tired, must resort to Entry In Bullet Points because it’s just to hard to make the effort to convert it all to a cohesive narrative.

• Before Gen’s death, we had made plans to install the hardwood flooring on Saturday. Thus, despite our all-over weltschmerz, we had a ton of prep work to do before that could happen. Thursday night, we emptied all of our crap out of the living room (with help from the always charming Eric, who in no way resembles sperm, nope, uh-uh), ripped the carpet out of the hall. Because the hall is the only way to get to the bathroom, we had to time the sealing of said hall very carefully. Originally, Esteban had planned to do it on Friday while I was at work, but since we had the funeral on Friday, that was derailed, and thus we sealed it at 11 pm Thursday night and went to bed very thirsty.
• We had the funeral proceedings on Friday. We were at the funeral home for something like six hours. I think time slows down in funeral homes. At the two hour mark, I almost fainted when someone told me what time it was.
• Weird moment: Joel stopped by and told me ‘You look very nice.’ ‘Thanks Joel.’ Then he made this weird click noise. ‘What was that?’ ‘What?’ ‘That click noise.’ ‘Well, I don’t know’ it’s just that, it’s a sad day and even still ‘ damn, you’ve got it going on.’ Joel is my new best friend. Actually, I did think I looked good, even with the Junior League hair, sedate light plum nail polish and similarly toned plum lipstick, a step away from my normal Rock Star tousle, deep red polish or French manicure and glossed lips. Even undercover, I can’t stop my inner diva from shining through. Of course, I was sporting The Boots. I mean, jeez, just because it was a funeral didn’t mean we had to be all Amish and stuff.
• Gen’s friends from her old apartment building stopped by. I adored them and wanted to hug each one of them, especially this one little feisty lady in a walker. She couldn’t have even been four feet tall. And she was smiling and loud, like an elderly cheerleader. She was so cute I wanted to pinch her, or ask her if she was available for parties.
• They also made me want to cry. I walked with them up to the casket and you could just tell that they held her in great regard. I almost lost it when I heard one tell another one ‘I never would have thought she would have left so soon.’ Just that concept struck me. It’s like it wasn’t a death to them, it was just leaving the room and not coming back. Their understanding of life is just so much more profound.
• In a surprise appearance, my mom and Mafia Grandma stopped by as well. I was shocked, quite honestly, although I’m sure that either Mo told them or my Mafia Grandma saw it in the papers. I was very touched that they stopped by to give their respects to the family. It makes me ashamed because I don’t give my family enough credit.
• There is something about funerals that always pisses me off. I don’t know what it is, but I always end up getting extremely angry at the other participants. For instance, Esteban’s Aunt Leticia was being a real jerk. She showed up very late (as usual), had changed what Gen was to be wearing at the last minute, away from the two very nice outfits Gen herself had arranged to wear, to a very casual and very mid-80’s blouse and sweatshirt cardigan set, so it appeared like she was on her way to a craft show. And what was more, she had set up these picture boards, but only used pictures of her family and Gen, rather than including Esteban’s Aunt Tari or anything with Esteban and Gen. According to the boards she had set up, Gen only had one grandson (Aunt Leticia’s son). So the entire time, that made me angry. Then her husband brought his mistress Tequila, so Aunt Leticia was giving everyone a ‘Poor Me’ speech. I overheard the same speech no fewer than six times to various people.
• Of course, my anger is bipartisan. There is something about Tequila that always brings out my inner-snob in the worst way. Her hair was all stringy and kept falling in her face and the v-neck dress she wore was so large on her that it kept falling off her shoulder down to her elbow. Then later in the smoking lounge (she smokes 3-4 packs a day, doncha know), she bragged to Esteban that her entire outfit cost less than ten dollars (the dress was $4, the shoes were $3, the slip was from a tag sale for 50 cents. She must have not counted the undergarments or been gifted with a rare flash of propriety and not given the itemization.) Also, she invited a bunch of her family to the free dinner after the funeral. And they showed up wearing jeans and dirty athletic shoes and braying their low class laughter everywhere. Oh, and they brought Ziploc bags to take home leftovers. I am not making that up. And I even saw Tequila go back up to the buffet and score a plate piled high with chicken and bring it back to a greedy table all waiting with their bags poised. How is that ok with anyone? How? Seriously, how much does cold fried chicken cost? 12 pieces is maybe $15 at the local delis. Is it worth $15 to be white trash? I just don’t understand it. Oh, and they all took home the funeral decorations too. Tequila was seen carrying out the very nicest plant before we went to the dinner.
• Interesting moment: One of Esteban’s relatives came over to me and asked me who Tequila was. ‘That would be Rod’s’ um’ significant other, Tequila.’ ‘And Leticia?’ ‘Is Rod’s wife.’ The look on her face’ I am a very evil person, but I enjoyed it to no end. ‘And’ um’. Tequila you say? She’s Rod’s’?’ ‘They live together. Yes.’ ‘And Leticia?’ ‘Is still married to Rod.’ Confusion. Oh the lady was so very confused and didn’t know what to say. I shouldn’t have relished such confusion so, but I could have been far more evil and instead said, ‘Oh, I don’t know’ why don’t you have Rod introduce you?’ and then sat back and watched as Rod received the full brunt of the social indignity.
• Oh, and there was this little interesting gem: Mo, June and I were talking and someone said something about their house being a mess. I replied ‘Mine is too. It’s a constant battle.’ And June mentioned ‘Yeah, Dad said that he noticed you’ve been doing a better job of keeping it clean, ever since you started losing weight.’ Ok, there are so many things wrong with that sentence I don’t even know where to begin. First of all, why do they assume that I am the sole responsibility for the state of the house? If it is dirty or clean, why is it only my fault? Why doesn’t 50% (or more, because honestly, when he’s on a trip, I do the same amount of housework, only to achieve an incredible level of cleanliness, since there isn’t a little human clutter tornado undoing everything) of the blame sit squarely with Esteban? And why is cleaning it up my responsibility? Is he not an adult? Does he not have control of himself? Why does his inability to take action inside the house reflect poorly on me? Also, what does losing weight have to do with housework? Are there no longer dozens of discarded buckets of chicken littering the floors? Was I confined to a bed somewhere, watching The View while sucking down Crisco? Do fat, sloppy and lazy always go together? Or is it just that I now have so much free time, since I’m no longer shoveling mass quantities into my face? It all just boggles the mind. Damn Baby Boomers and their impossible perceptions of the world will be the death of me.
• After that rather exhausting day, we went home, stripped off our funeral clothes and laid in bed in our underwear while we let the day evaporate from our skin like vapor. Then we put on our grungy clothes and continued ripping the carpeting out of the living room. Esteban pulled up the tack strips along the perimeter (which were so old that they came away in toothpick size splinters rather than solid stripes) while I slid around the floor on my stomach, screwdriver in one hand, pliers in the other, and pried no fewer than 8493 ancient staples from the floor. Finally, around midnight, we sealed the floor and then fell into a stiff, aching sleep.
• Until six thirty, when I woke up, got dressed, and met Ward to go back to the funeral home and help him with the remaining funeral details. Aunt Leticia met us there and insisted that we help her take all of the floral arrangements to her place of employment. She also reached in and grabbed some of Gen’s jewelry, without saying a word to Ward or myself. I think she was hoping we hadn’t seen her do it. Then she went along with us, so that she could get some face time with her boss. Again, the anger and petty bullshit went on in my head. I should really try harder to be more forgiving. I suppose now that Gen is gone, she really has nothing holding her to this family any longer. Her husband is shacking up with a decrepit bar fly and doesn’t care to hide it, therefore doesn’t need Leticia to keep appearances.
• Then Ward and I went back to my house where Esteban had managed to rouse himself out of bed and we continued what I have decided is the pinnacle of our generation. Hardwoodstock. Three nights. Five trips to Home Depot. Six Million cans of Diet soda. The day was incredibly long. Longer than any day has a right to be. In the way that funeral time is slow, home restoration time is glacial. I suspect by the end of the evening we were onto hour four thousand. I made four different costume changes throughout the day (when I woke up, it was damn cold, thus long black track pants, black shirt, grey hoodie; then as it got warmer, I dumped the hoodie, and changed into a black t-shirt, which promptly got a white splotch of something on it. Then I switched to an old golf shirt, but also had to change bras, because a black bra and a white Polo shirt do not like each other. THEN it got warmer outside, so I dumped the track pants and put on beige cargo shorts. Then when it started to get cold outside again, I put the hoodie back on, but knew that if I took off my shoes to change pants, I’d never put them back on again, so stayed in the shorts and shivered, undoubtedly burning tens of extra calories in the process and thus negating the four doughnuts I ate throughout the day. Holy long parenthetical, Batman!). We gave up around ten o’clock, when it was too dark to see outside in order to operate the saw and everyone was ready to drop. End result? All done but for one rather perplexing row of wood in the hallway (requiring lots of angles and precise cuts around four doorways), the trim, and the doorway pieces that must apparently be ordered via the internet.
• I’m sore like I’ve been riding broncos all day. I have various cuts on my hands, including a rather annoying one on the knuckle of my ring finger. I have bruises. My hips hurt. I do not know why my hips hurt. Normally, they only hurt like that when’ well, let’s just say it shouldn’t hurt from just laying hard wood and never speak of it again.
• Also, the cat is going crazy. She’s been locked in the back part of the house (dining room, master bedroom, spare bedroom) for three nights, listening to strange sounds coming from the front of the house and then when I let her out last night, the delicious smelly warm wooly thing she used to lie upon is gone. No more cat urine fragrance. No more mysterious spot that she’d roll and roll and roll in. No warm golden sun bakey spot by the window. Gone. All gone. All smooth and pristine and smelling vaguely of formaldehyde. And we did not consult her even once. And then we had the audacity to only lie on the bed groaning and whining rather than lavishing her with attention. She is definitely holding a grudge. She probably wishes that I’d gain weight and stop with all of this nonsense.

My brain is fried. My living room is empty, but very pretty, much like the head of a fashion model. I actually put on the cutest pair of DKNY sunglasses yesterday while shopping for rugs and thought ‘Cute, but ugh, I have enough stuff.’ And they were on sale. ON SALE! I know. Next thing you know, I’ll be happily buying pork rinds at Wal-mart and sleeping on 123 thread count sheets.

Shudder.

Have you tried the new McDonald’s McGriller’s yet?

I was just going to have a Luna bar breakfast this morning, but couldn’t resist it when I swung through to pick up my summer staple, McD’s Diet Crack’ er, Coke. It’s like an Egg McMuffin, but instead of a dried up English muffin, they use two pudgy little pancakes. Pancakes that have a Golden M imprinted on either side. That, right there, is disturbing. There was a period of my childhood when I refused to eat anything that was shaped like something. For instance, animal crackers. It had to be Nilla Wafers instead. Nothing looking up at me with sorry eyes. It made me upset if I’d extract from the box a headless camel or a little quadriplegic lion. I wanted to get them into government programs, rehabilitate them somehow, and make them contributing members of the animal cracker society once again. I was a very sensitive child. Or wrong in the head. Your call.

So, right away, the M branded into the pancakes bothers me. Are there little McCowboys, herding up flocks of unbranded pancakes? Do they sing little pancake songs around a little campfire? Sometimes I should remember not to engage in pre-caffeinated thought.

But the taste? Oh my. Oh my. Oh. My. Two little sweet pillows, slightly permeated with artificial maple flavoring, surrounding a nice artery-clogging sausage patty. It’s proof, right there, that Satan is a stockholder in McDonald’s. Because only sin could taste that good.

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I’m in a weird headspace today. It was a delightful weekend and for a moment, just a moment, it felt like summer vacation, but then almost as quickly, it was gone and it was just another weekend and I had to go to work tomorrow. Which is today. Which is arrgh.

Uh oh. Do you smell that? I just got a whiff of a whiny diary entry.

You know something? One of my most secret truths is this: I am a bit egotistical with my writing. I’ll never be the prettiest, the smartest, the strongest, the thinnest, or the most clever, but damn it, I can write. In fact, I always secretly suspect that I’m one of the best writers out there. Like I’m on par with John Irving and Margaret Atwood. We’re a peer group, hanging out and having tea with Douglas Coupland. Ernest Hemingway? I’m way better than him. Shakespeare? If I wrote in iambic pentameter, I suspect that I’d be lauded by millions too.

Now, in truth, I know damn well that Atwood is a freaking goddess of the written word and there’s no way that I can touch John Irving. (Although even in my most lucid moments, I still think I can do better than Hemingway.) And most days? I’m totally fooling myself. One could argue that to write at all, one must contain a healthy dose of hubris, if not to just assume that anyone has a desire to read whatever it is that you’re writing about. Especially if it’s just a bunch of fart jokes.

And perhaps the very proof that I am no Irving, no Atwood, not even a passable Helen Fielding, is that fact that I can’t even explain the egoism or the need for such a thing without sounding like a pompous ass. I am a good writer. I NEED to be in order to write. Which is the chicken and which is the egg. It’s the delicious conundrum that drives most artists to abuse substances or succumb to insanity, chasing the truths that we are both brilliant and idiots at the very same time.

Those rejections from the graduate programs both confirmed my inner-suspicions and shocked the hell out of me. In fact, they haunt me still. Thank god writing isn’t brain surgery. Or maybe it’s too bad that it isn’t, because if it were, we would never have been inflicted with the tumor that is The Bridges of Madison County.

The truth of the matter is simply that there are a finite number of words that must be written before something brilliant comes from your pen. And for someone like Margaret Atwood, that number is something like 132, whereas for someone like Wally Lamb, the number is probably in the six-digit range (go ahead and kvetch in the comments section but I really really HATED She’s Come Undone and I read it when it came out, pre-Oprah, pre-Renee Zellweger film, pre-everything. It was schlock. It could have been good and instead, he beat the reader over the head with every bit of schmalz he had stored in his noggin. And he had the focal character commune with whales. With WHALES. I’m getting mad again just thinking about the bad plot devices in that thing. So, seriously, I’m glad that the book changed your life and made you cry or commune with your inner fat girl, but it just didn’t work for me.)

And me, I’ve just got to remember that in order to be good, one must simply work towards that internal word limit. You’ve got to earn it. No matter how much as it sucks. No matter how much easier it is to just play Warcraft for hours on end and rest my weary head upon a freelance article, a fiction competition or a Diarist Award. Like miles on a long road trip, you have to concentrate on the road left to burn. Even if you go about the entire trip pretending that you’re already there.

Thus ends the proselytizing. Sometimes what I write here is just for me. Sometimes I forget that.

This is your Weetabix. This is your Weetabix on vacation.

I am so happy that I took tomorrow off for a nice round four-day weekend. Those four days are spreading out in front of me like an open highway and me, I’m sitting in a 59 Cadillac convertible with a rocking sound system and a B-52’s cd playing, and I’ve got a vintage scarf on and red movie star lips and my high heeled foot to the floor.

In reality, the weekend is spreading out like my ass sitting on the couch watching my Buffy DVDs. Either way sounds delightful. Because I need some time off. I have literally no patience any longer.

I had a meeting today with one of those presenters who reads every single thing on a PowerPoint presentation; even though the slide is lit up on the wall and the audience does, in fact, know how to read English. She once blew twenty minutes in a meeting, reading three pages of comments on a survey that each of us had a copy of right there in our very hands. This time, she sent around a printout of a spreadsheet that resided on our network. She had thoughtfully put the file path for that spreadsheet on the spreadsheet itself, so if you found yourself inside the spreadsheet and weren’t certain how exactly you got there, you could look down and say ‘Wow, I am here.’

No. That didn’t irk me. She felt the need to read to us the exact elongated network path we would need to find the spreadsheet we were holding in our hands. Regardless that we had all received an email on the presence of the spreadsheet. Regardless that many of us had already updated the damn thing. Regardless of the fact that it was placed in the ONLY place we ever store interdepartmental stuff. Regardless of the fact that it was written right there on the very paper we were all looking at.

There is simply not an adjective to describe how completely stupid that was.

Of course, it shouldn’t bother me that much. Not everyone feels as comfortable with public speaking as I do and she probably grasps onto anything that allows her to speak with confidence, even if she does waste our time. Or maybe she just relished having that moment of control that she rolled with it. At most, reading the network path took an extra twenty seconds, right? But it made me want to scream ‘You know, most of us have already read it to ourselves. Maybe you couldn’t tell because we didn’t have to move our lips to do it.’

Gah.

So I’m thinking some time off is probably a good thing.

We had originally planned to go to Chicago to see the sharks at the Shedd Aquarium, but Esteban is uberworking this weekend, trying to finish up some big computer dork article or something. I don’t know. When he starts telling me about it, my brain goes mentally shopping for lipsticks. We’ll probably do the Chicago thing next weekend or perhaps for my birthday. Because I love me some sharks. It’s probably not natural, the way I love sharks. I mean, they have that whole chomping thing and the evisceration thing but I still think they are one of the most beautiful creatures out there. Sharks. They’re a good thing.

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Booyah! The live trap just caught the Haley Joel Osment mouse! I’m certain of it. It was fucking adorable, that’s how I’m sure. And huge. It was the size of a mofo gerbil. It actually made and held eye contact with me from inside the trap. I’m certain this mouse has an agent.

Instead of letting it go at the forest four blocks away, I drove it all the way to the Wildlife Sanctuary about a mile away. I wanted to be completely certain that this was our final farewell and I really didn’t want the little bugger to hitch a ride back or build a little motorcycle or something. To make it to my house from the Sanctuary, he must go through a trailer park, past two fast food restaurants, a Chinese restaurant, a mini-ghetto, two busy streets, the forest, another busy street, and a million houses. I’m hoping this bit of subterfuge will confuse him, although with my luck, he wrote down my license number. When I opened the trap at the Sanctuary, he scurried back across the street and then couldn’t get up the curb. I lost him in the dusk, but I think he used a bunch of leaves to get up. Strange thing, watching the mouse run off. It was like he had places to go, things to do, headshots to distribute, busy busy busy.

I am so ready for the mouse thing to be done. You have no idea.

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Weetabix: Um’ where are my Oreos?

Esteban: Oh. I took them to the lab.

Weetabix: You took my Oreos?

Esteban: Yeah?

Weetabix: Just took them?

Esteban: Uh’ you said that you weren’t going to eat them, so I figured, hey’ Oreos.

Weetabix: No’ no’ no’ no no no no no no’ that’s not what I said at all.

Esteban: That’s not? You said you didn’t like them. They are reduced fat and you said they tasted like Ass Of Oreo.

Weetabix: Yes, I did say that, but I bought them BECAUSE they tasted like Oreo Ass. This isn’t so hard to understand.

Esteban: So’ you don’t like them.

Weetabix: Right.

Esteban: But you want them.

Weetabix: Right.

Esteban: Even though they taste like ass.

Weetabix: Exactly.

Esteban: See’ I LIKE them. I don’t mind the Ass Oreos. Thus, hey, Oreos at the lab. You won’t eat them anyway.

Weetabix: That’s not what I said! I swear, you only listen to every other word!!!

Esteban: GAH! What is the problem?

Weetabix: You stole my OREOS! This is what I’ve been saying! Without even asking me first. Just took them!

Esteban: You said you didn’t like them.

Weetabix: We’ve been over this.

Esteban: You said you wouldn’t eat them.

Weetabix: WRONG! I said I didn’t like them’ but I’ll still eat them. Because, hey, they’re Oreos. Assy Oreos but Oreos nonetheless. But I might only eat one Ass Oreo, whereas with wonderful full fat Oreos, I will eat infinity Oreos. It’s very logical.

Esteban: Hooookay. (under breath) Crazy. Now what are you going to do?

Weetabix: Make brownies.

Esteban: Brownies that taste like ass?

Weetabix: (incredulous) No’. regular brownies. Why would I make them consciously taste like ass?

Esteban: Because I’I’I’ just when I think I have you figured out’ curveball. Oreo curveball.

Weetabix: Boys’so dumb sometimes!