Long Time Gone

My grandmother died at about 2 a.m. Monday morning. That's where I been -- traveling, remembering, spending time with family. There's so much I want to say about my grandmother. A lot of you knew her and will will agree she was a saintly lady. But it seems like my heart and mind won't link up enough to tell you everything that I need and want to. I think its because I'm just worn out. The week before this happened, work was especially hectic and I was already pretty drained. There really wasn't a break between that busy/emotional work week and that busy/emotional family week. So now I'm kind of just sitting here staring at all my projects -- and a house that ain't cleaning itself -- and feeling pretty overwhelmed. The words just aren't coming to me. Which is frustrating on on two fronts: 1) writing is how I express myself and 2) I am getting BE-HIND on my writing projects.

Also? I haven't told very many people this, but I am participating in two upcoming craft shows. Its not that I'm hiding my crafty side, its just that I'm a little bit scared no one will want to buy my shit, specifically my Rag Monsters. I have been working for months on getting enough inventory together to actually participate in the shows and now I'm scared people are going to be all WHAT IS THAT? IS THIS WOMAN DELUSIONAL? PFT. And I'm scared I'll reply MY DEAD GRANDMOTHERS TAUGHT ME ALL I KNOW ABOUT SEWING. WHAT KIND OF HEARTLESS MONSTERS ARE YOU? Then finish it with a right hook.

So. Yeah. So that's where I am emotionally right now -- feeling very raw and exposed and fighting the urge to punch anyone who looks at me funny in the throat. If that's not an endorsement that makes you want to hurry over to my booth at the craft shows, then I don't know what is.

Tip Of The Day: Don't Anger Killer Whales

Dear PETA,

If you're trying to win me and my legions of fat women over to your cause, this is NOT how to do it:

I can tell you that NOT ONCE has comparing me to a large, fatted animal ended well. Just ask my second grade archenemy. That bitch will tell you that I took a lot of abuse, but the day she decided to call me "Pig Thighs" a line was crossed and I snapped. I punched her in the nose, which you'd call a snout if you saw her today. The years have not been kind of my first enemy. She lives in a singlewide trailer in the same town we grew up in. She's not even 30 yet, but she's got several baby daddies and been married more times than Elizabeth Taylor. And to this day she remembers the fury of Pig Thighs.

But I digress.

Here in lies the rub. PETA, I agree with you about a lot of things. The conditions of animals testing facilities are horrible. Forcing feeding geese is repulsive. I don't like skinning animals just for their fur. Mike Vick makes me want to puke. I once saw a man beating their dog and called 911. It's not my fault that the call center lady thought that the dog was a small child. And sent swat in to grab the victim. While I hid in the upstairs of our house and watched out window as our worthless neighbor had his front door broken down.

Are you picking up what I'm putting down, PETA? I am one of those people that loves their dog more than most other human beings. Lets just say that if Ripken and a the little boy from down the street were trapped under a burning car and I could only pull one of them out, I would be faced with a major moral dilemma. I wish I could say that I'd do the right thing, but I'm pretty sure this scenario ends with me sending sympathy flowers to my neighbor. Let the hate mail commence. Yeah, I just chose the life of my dog over that of a person. But trust me, my dogs is way more loyal than that kid. In fact, that little bastard threw rocks at our house and dented my car. So I say he had it coming. Hypothetically, of course.

So see, PETA, I'd even sacrifice human life for an animal. Okay, so I'm rambling. And apparently a heartless person who cares naught for children. Please pause with me a moment while I regain focus….

Okay, PETA, what it comes down to is this: How can it be unconscionable to treat animals poorly, comparing them to holocaust victims and slaves, yet still not see a problem with discriminating against fat people?

The obese are the last demographic in this country that is still socially acceptable to mock, laugh at and discriminate against. PETA would never suggest a minority member to change their race in order to help "save" an animal. They'd never ask a gay person to go straight. Nor would they dare to suggest that a woman have a sex change to become a man. So why is it okay to compare an over weight woman to Shamoo?

Also? This is an excellent way to get stabbed, PETA.

Sincerely,

Momma "Pig Thighs" Pug

And To Think That I Used To Want To Be Laura Ingalls

So. Um, yeah. Spending one night alone with the three dogs and angst-ridden cat went pretty much exactly how you'd expect it. All you really need to know about the experience is that I spent most of the night googling the phrase "rusty nails and tetanus shots" and the words "emergency care" paired with my zipcode. That. Is. How. Great. It. Went.

I totally brought it on myself, though. I had just let the dogs out to (fingers crossed) take a shit in the yard and not, say, on my bed. What do you know! There they were, pooping outside! Immediately I began planning the parade and ordering a cake for the celebration I was going to throw. Oh, how stupid and cocky, I was! Thinking to myself PFT, THIS IS SO FUCKING EASY! EVERYONE IS BEING SO GOOD. Then I opened the door and called for the dogs to come back in. And was greeted with the sound of god laughing really hard at me. Which sounded exactly like that damn 14-pound Silky terrier gnawing through the fence to attack the neighbor's Pit bull.

Grrreat. So I stepped out on the back stoop and started yelling at the little fucker to STAND DOWN. But because I am irony's bitch and was only wearing my nightgown the cat decided that moment would be a perfect time to make a break for it. Also, I was barefooted. Did I mention that? I never thought to get dressed in my hiking boots and body armor just to let the dogs out. Thought I could do it like my husband does, you know, without incident. My mistake.

So I run out to grab her. Barefooted. In my nightgown. Just as I was about to reach down and scoop the little shit up, I feel something hard and cold slip between toes on my right foot. Assuming that a MOTHERFUCKING SNAKE ON A MOTHERFUCKING PLANE is attacking me, I jump like six or eight centimeters in the air -- which is sorry hang-time even for a fat white girl -- and squeal like pig. By the time I realize that that it's not a snake but rather just an old board with industrial strength nails left over from Hurricane Ike, the cat has escaped my grips. The Silky, however, is now giving me his full attention. By barking at the board, which he is trying to convince me really is a snake.

Eventually I caught the cat and wrestled Deuce inside. Only to find Ripken puking on the couch. (Escuse me for a moment… ON THE COUCH? REALLY RIPKEN? WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ABOUT? WHY IS THE FLOOR NOT GOOD ENOUGH TO YACK ON? WHY MUST IT BE SOMETHING HARD TO CLEAN? LIKE THE COUCH? HMMM? HOLY SHIT WHAT ARE YOU? A COW? HOW MANY STOMACHES TO YOU HAVE? JESUS SHITTING CHRIST!)

And that’s how we rolled with the husband.

I spend the rest of the night cleaning puke off every conceivable surface in the house. Then feeling really guilty for yelling at Ripken for being sick, so I let him sleep in his daddy's side of the bed. Only then we didn't sleep, because that insufferable Silky was barking at every shadow, cricket and creak of a floorboard.

Thankfully, husband came home yesterday bearing gifts! I was so happy to see him that I was prepared to engage in sex on a weeknight. Yeah, buddy! And then he was all LETS GO OUT FOR DINNER. And I was all YES! CAPITAL IDEA! But as soon as we got to the parking lot of any restaurant the Storm of the Century blew through and knocked power out. WHICH NEVER HAPPENS! And so we went home to suffer in the heat and dark with a grouchy pug barking every ten seconds because he didn't know if we knew it or not but THERE IS NO AIR CONDITIONING PEOPLE. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! And so now we are totally boycotting the power company.

The moral of the story? Sonny the Pug and me would have made lousy pioneers

Top Ten Things Likely To Happen While The Husband Is Out Of Town

10. Go to sleep in the recliner in the living room at 8:30 p.m. with the cat draped across my lap, thus providing a very scary glimpse into an alternative reality in which I actually did become and The Creep Old Cat Lady.

9. Eat takeout for every meal. Chinese is the breakfast of champions.

8. Call 911 after mistaking the sound of the cat scratching in the litter box for a gang of convicts breaking into the house to rape and murder me. Twice.

7. Watch Sunday night's episode of True Blood again, never once having to respond to the husband asking me: "Haven't you seen this already?" (In case you were wondering. Yes, I've seen it before. Just like he's watched Star Wars 10,000 times. But I'm not judging or bitter or anything.)

6. Convince myself that some major appliance (most likely the air conditioner) is broken and about to set the house on fire. And because we're the kind of people who I'm betting don’t even own a smoke detector – much less replace batteries in one – I will die in the fire with the three dogs. The cat will be only one smart enough to escape.

5. Call the husband 17 times during his meeting to ask him if we have smoke detectors and when was the last time we changed the batteries.

4. Convince myself the husband has befallen some sort of tragedy and is too incapacitated to answer the phone. I knew that we should have gotten the oil changed in the Civic before he drove to the other side of Texas. Now, he's dead in a ditch somewhere because the engine ran out of oil, locked up and forced him into oncoming traffic. Why, god, why? Because we're the kind of people that don't perform proper smoke detector maintenance!

3. Call husband for the 18th time. I'll just let it ring for a while. If it were an accident, why wouldn’t some at the hospital call me? (Ring.) Because its not an accident, that's why! (Ring.) He's with another woman! (Ring.) Someone younger and beautiful! (Ring.) That dirty, husband-seducing tramp. (Ring.) I'll pull her Brett Michael hair extensions out! (Ring.)

2. Husband will answer his phone after pretending to not feel it vibrate for the billionth time. In a hushed tone he will say something along the lines of: MY GOD, WOMAN. HAS THE HOUSE BURNED DOWN? (Not yet.) ARE YOU HAVING A MEDICAL EMERGENCY? (No.) DID THE DOG SWALLOW ANOTHER GLASS EYEBALL? (Not that I know of, but maybe. I'm not sure.) WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU? (Mental illness, probably.) I AM TRYING TO GIVE A PRESENTATION HERE. (Yeah, yeah. You're important, I know.) AND I CANT FOCUS. I WILL CALL YOU BACK AFTER ITS OVER. OKAY? (Fine.)

1. Refocus all my death-destruction-fire energy writing a blog entry that the husband will find neither entertaining nor funny.

We Are THOSE People

For those of you I haven't called and cried about this to, let me officially announce that we are mourning the passing of our dear, longtime companion, our home air conditioner. We're still going through the 12 steps of grief. You know, anger, fear, denial. Shit, I can only name three. You're going to have to trust me on this then. Or google it. Because clearly I don't know as much as grieving as I thought. Anyway, we're just now getting past the denial part. After trying to convince ourselves that the house wasn't that hot and surely things were going to be fine, last night we finally threw in the sweat-laden towel and headed for a local hotel. To get to this point, it took our local A/C repairman pronounced her dead and only being able to return in the morning with parts to revive her.

It wasn't until we sat down in that hotel room with the thermostat set on a glorious 65 degrees that we realized how hot it really had been at hour house. I openly wept at finally being reunited with my old lover, the A/C. Just as I was offering the window unit a blowjob, Sonny the Pug threatened to call the SPCA if we ever subjected him to such heat again.

To which I was all HA! YOU THINK THEY'D TAKE YOU BACK, YOU LITTLE ASSHOLE. YOU'VE COST US A MODERATELY SIZED FORTUNE! THEY'D PUT YOU DOWN BEFORE SPENDING THEIR MONTHLY MORTGAGE PAYMENT ON YOUR HIPS!

And he was all WHUT? I'M A GREAT PET! STOP IT WITH YOUR LIES!

And then husband chimed in and was all STOP TALKING DOING DOG VOICES AND TALKING TO YOURSELF. YOU LOOK LIKE AN INSANE PERSON. AND FRANKLY, I CAN'T TAKE ANYMORE CRAZY RIGHT NOW.

And I was all SUCK IT. I GOT SUNSTROKE.

That's when he pointed out that I hadn't been out in the sun at all so it must be heatstroke, but that wasn't very likely because I was sitting under a fan and sipping ice tea the entire time he was running around in the yard with the A/C repairman and doing manly things like climbing through 1000-degree ventilation ducts in the attic. And I was all PFT! MERE DETAILS!

That's when the husband heroically volunteered to make a food run, thus leaving me with the voices in my head and three very apprehensive dogs. So I opened up the laptop and started to check email and complain via Twitter of how unfair life is. Just as I was about to write this very blog that you are reading right now, I was distracted by COMPLETE FUCKING CHAOS, thus why I'm writing now and not last night from the hotel room. Because just as my fingers began to touch the keyboard, Deuce decided to attack the hotel room door. He only weighs 14 pounds, but he put everything he had behind his small stature and went to town.

This, of course, sent Sonny the Pug into a barking fit, which resembled an epileptic seizure.

Meanwhile Ripken was all HOLY FUCK WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS ROOM??? WHY ARE THERE NO CLOSETS TO HIDE IN??? WHAT KIND OF CRACKPOT IDIOT ARCHITECT DESIGNED THIS HOTEL??? QUICK, MAMA, HELP ME KNOCK DOWN THIS WALL AND CONSTRUCT A MAKESHIFT HIDEY HOLE. IT'S CRUCIAL. DAMN IT WOMAN, WHY ARE YOU NOT WITH ME ON THIS??? CAN YOU NOT HEAR THE TINY DOG BARKING??? WE! MUST! HIDE! NOW!

An eternity later, I am able to determine what has made Deuce loose his shit. It's just a small child laughing. How dare that little kid be happy! In the public hallway! Oh the humanity! Just as we're all settling back down, the door creeks open and before any of the attack dogs can determine its just their daddy returning with food, Deuce starts in with that god-awful bark. It’s the type of bark you'd expect from a Doberman strung out on meth. Before the husband can tell them to pipe down, the phone is ringing. Great. No one knows were in the hotel yet because I haven't been able to work that in due to the dogs so we have a pretty good idea that it’s the front desk.

Apparently there had been "complaints." Ha. No shit, is all I can think to say. Luckily I'm not the one talking to the management. Husband is all calm and assertive and assures them that we'll settle down our rowdy crew before our 40-person kegger gets broken up. I've never lived down stairs from us, but it would appear that me, the husband and three dogs sound like tap dancing elephants that like to bang cymbals on the walls. OH, and could we shut that Doberman up and maybe take his crack away from him? Just for the one night? Please?

And so that's how it went for about 10 more hours.

At first light we showered, dressed and left. Add the La Quinta to yet another place I can't show my face. Today, the husband is wrangling with a long-standing doctor's appointment, the Houdini of A/C repairmen and making sure we get our car out of the shop in time to drive to Mississippi tomorrow night to visit my ailing grandmother.

It will not surprise me at all if somewhere along the way we are all abducted by aliens and taken hostage aboard their spaceship. Because at this point? My life is a circus without a ringmaster and a ride on an UFO doesn't seem so bad as long as it's got air conditioning.

Slapshot

Know what's awesome?

Me at SlapFest.

That's right, SlapFest 2009 is currently going on at Casa de Pug. If you're unfamiliar with this, allow me to explain: My husband and I engage in smacking/slapping each other at inopportune times.

For example, while the husband driving down the freeway I was taking a nap. He so focused on the road that he didn't notice that I'd woken up. So I pounced.

SMACK. Right across the kisser.

This elicited an "JESUS! WHAT IF I HAD KILLED US?!?! SLAPFEST IS NOT FOR DRIVING."

And I was all "WHAT EVER MAN, THAT ONE TOTALLY COUNTS."

Then he was all Ruley McRulemaker and tried to parameters on when SlapFest is and isn't appropriate: "NOT IN THE CAR. ON THE FUCKING FREEWAY. GOING 70 GODDAMNED MILES PER HOUR. IN HEAVY FUCKING TRAFFIC."

Nay, I say! SlapFest knows no boundaries.

Well, there is one tiny exception: If one of the two parties engaged therein is of the female sex and the other is of the male persuasion, then the male cannot under any circumstances return full-powered slaps. The male must only use the sort of slap that he would use on a baby's bottom or his mother's cheek.

I remind my love of this as we are barreling down the freeway, my hand print glowing on his left cheekbone.

"Whoa, there cowgirl," he said. "So basically SlapFest is ME letting YOU beat the piss out of me?"

Immediately I brighten, so he DOES get the concept, after all! PLAY IT COOL, Slick.

"No, no, no," I said. "You can tap me. Or mock-slap me. But you're a boy and therefore stronger and it wouldn't be fair play if used all your brute manly strength."

Then I bat my eyelashes. And he's totally taken in by my wildly charms and use of the phrase "brute manly strength." His sight returns to the road ahead and ride in peace for a moment.

We start settling into the kind of comfortable, relaxing silence that comes with being totally at ease with the person you love most in the word. I lean over and kiss his cheek. He puts his hand on my knee and we let the sounds of the road lull us for a while.

SMACK.

"JESUS H.!"

Didn't see that coming did ya, Internet? Yeah, neither did he.

You should totally go over to The Mark Up and ask him about that time during SlapFest that I slapped his sunglasses off his face in the Arby's parking lot. And he was all OH THAT WAS JUST A LUCKY SHOT. YOU CAN'T DO IT AGAIN. And I was all YOU WANT TO BET. PUT THEM BACK ON. And he was all cocky and smirky and totally put 'em back on. And before he knew what hit him I'd knocked those sunglasses off his smug face for a second time. Oh, and that time? Was yesterday. That's right, baby. The SlapFest Ninja was all up in the Arby's parking lot, slapping faces and taking names. Bet you'll think twice the next time you try and order a delightful Arby's sandwich.