little known fact

i always like learning new things about people. i also like holding some things about myself back in reserve to whip out and surprise people at unexpected times. i have one friend, jana, who i've known for about 13 years and we've spent countless hours talking, laughing,  and crying together. she thinks she knows me so well, but then out comes something random about my life that makes her shake her head and wonder if she even knows me at all. like the fact that my brother has called me choc for most of my life. and no, it has nothing to do with chocolate.

i'd love to hear something about you. something that maybe is a secret or maybe isn't secretive at all. perhaps it's just something that you haven't thought of in a long time. or something that goes way back to your childhood and has nothing to do with you now, but you can still claim it as your own.

i'll go first.

in my childhood i spent a lot of time swimming. my grandparents had a nice pool and i was always up for any opportunity to go for a dip (not of the skinny variety). i'd taken some swimming lessons over the years and felt that i'd mastered the craft of the different strokes and the end of pool flip, along with some basic dives.

when i was about thirteen, i signed up for synchronized swimming classes to give myself a new water challenge and hopefully become like the awesome ladies in the olympics.



unfortunately, no other people wanted to participate in the class. i went every week for three months and received private lessons, which sounds nice and personal, but actually was a little bit awkward. my instructor never got in the water, so i was only synchronized with myself and my own inadequate rhythm. i learned a few cool pool tricks, like i can float on the top of the water with almost my entire body sticking out, as if i were lying on something just below the surface. and i can flail my legs about out of the water in some fun patterns that look almost fancy, and not so much like a 4 year old does when they first learn to go underwater with their face.

but i never learned the synchronicity part.

how about you? tell me something about yourself. something interesting or obscure.

i'm waiting...

there comes a time in everyone's life

sometimes when i write my facebook status, i like to put some thought into it. figure out a way to use words for the optimum punch. other times i go through a dry spell where the best i can come up with is, "went to the library" or "cheese is my friend."

last night i was feeling the need to status update and i was wracking my brain for a good one. i kept hearing the line "there comes a time in every woman's life when she..." but i couldn't come up with a good ending. so i decided to throw it out there like bait and just see if anyone else could come up with a great suggestion or wisdom or humor. of course it didn't take long before i got a bite. and then a couple of my girl friends copied it to their own status and got some great bites of their own.

here are some of the gems that i've peeled off the statuses i've seen where people contributed their wit and wisdom. there comes a time in every woman's life when she...

"realizes her body composition is literally 42% sharp cheddar cheese. Oh, wait, that's just me....."

hmm, that slicer looks disturbingly like that thing i used to slice up my feet.

"takes off her bra, lets the boobs drop, and has a little 'o' right there, standing in the living room."

"Realizes she should have used wrinkle cream BEFORE the wrinkles appeared."

"Prefers pants with an elastic waist."

"renounces perfection in favor of joy"

"wishes she was a man"

"looks at the guy next to her and says, "I married that!?" (this from our very own al penwasser)

and my very favorite of the night was actually the first one that arrived on the scene. my fantabulous friend rachel who never fails to make me laugh said, "throws away her crotchless panties."



in following with a couple of the other posts i've written that stemmed from something on facebook, like "if we woke up in jail" or "how did we meet, but make it a lie" i'd love to see what delightful suggestions my lovely and unerringly funny blog friends can come up with.

"there comes a time in every woman(or man)'s life when s/he..."

would you rather...

we were cruising down the road in vanny, ancient road princess of squealing and chugging. chris is deaf in one ear, so being in vanny is almost guaranteed to cause a relay of  "what"-yelling, interpreting, clarifying swarm of irritation for all of us. whining commenced, frustration flared up, brakes were applied enthusiastically as we swerved over the side of the road and threatened to go back home and skip the movie.

i was sitting there, feeling my blood pressure rise, trying to maintain my tentative hold on my composure when i suddenly snarled, "i would rather STICK MY HEAD IN A TOILET than listen to any more of this CRAP!" of course my fellow vanny riders immediately said, "what? what did you say?" because no one can hear each other in our shrieking mystery machine.

that led to a round of "would you rather" which is always sure to lighten the mood.

would you rather.... eat a booger OR drive the wrong way in traffic?
i think i'm going to have to go with the booger on this one. because hospitals and pain are even worse than the shuddering yucks caused by boogers on my tongue.

would you rather... get a tongue kiss on the lips from a dog OR walk around publicly with a big wedgie where the back half of your pants have been eaten by your crack?
i think i'd prefer the dog kiss. i can't stand to feel or see a giant wedgie when i'm out. when someone in front of me has one, i just want to go ask them how they can possibly not feel it & please to dig it out so i can look away from their rump region.

would you rather... step on a big juicy slug with your bare foot OR step in dog poop?
i've actually done both and the slug was much worse. it exploded between my toes and filled my toes with the kind of jam that cannot be washed off for far too long. and i kept having flashbacks of the exploding slug for days afterwards, always causing me to convulse violently. poop can be washed off & leave your foot as good as new once the stench dissipates.

would you rather... go for a swim in a pool filled with worms OR have dinner at the food court of the mall topless?
this one is a bit troublesome for me. i would not AT ALL like to swim with worms, but i don't know if i could stand the staring of dining sans shirt at the mall. maybe if i wore a sign taped on my back skin explaining my predicament about the worms...

would you rather... eat a live hissing cockroach OR get arrested?
can i pick what the arrest would be for? because i think i'd prefer a few hours in jail for jaywalking to consuming a hissing roach. or more likely it would be for the indecent exposure at the mall. maybe i should just suck it up & chow down on that giant beetle. *shivers* ugh.

would you rather... step in a nest of fire ants OR go on a date with an unwashed hobo?
i would have to pick the hobo this time because i could choose an outdoor eating place for our date to improve the smell situation & i'll bet that hobo would have some interesting stories to tell.

what about you guys? got any good "would you rathers"?

i'm number 1 and 2 and 3 and...

i was looking at my stat tracker thing & it has a new feature on it showing where you rank on google for a particular phrase. imagine my surprise when i was scanning through the various searches people have typed into google leading to me when i found that i had a #1 ranking on there for the phrase "my abs look like shit." this makes me a little bit sad. not that it's untrue, cuz in all honesty, my abs do look like shit, but still, it hurts a little to see it in black in white for all of the googling world to see.

i also rank number 1 for "status: tell me how & where we met." ever since i put out that post where you guys were so awesome about coming up with crazy ways of how we met, i've gotten a lot of hits there. i also get gobs of hits & therefore the top spot for "games for when you are sick" because i wrote something about how i was keeping brooke amused when i was super sick with pneumonia and ear & sinus infections last fall.
and i come in numero uno for "what are the only kind of bees in the world that make milk." and also for the phrase "boob arm rest." i kind of like that i've got the market on the boob arm rest, cuz that's funny.

i come in number 2 for "hair bonanza" and "obsessed with mole hair." those 2 i understand, but then i get hit with another meanie one - "do my abs look gross." again, i say yes, but let's not dwell on it, shall we?

i rank #3 for "dressing room pantyhose," "a personal fear," and "she makes me look like shit." oh and "bring it on wedgie."

there are so many more unflattering searches that bring people my way that i haven't even listed here. i've noticed that many of my posts that bring in a lot of google hits are posts that are poorly written or just plain dumb, much like this one i'm working on right now. i kept getting so many hits from "cat pee" that i finally deleted the post where i'd written about it.

what brings people to your blog? are any of the search terms particularly funny or disturbing?

weirdo

i suspect at times that maybe i'm a little bit odd. i know, you guys all want to reassure me that i'm perfectly normal. and i love you for that, even though we both know it's not true.

tonight i poured myself some milk in a cup that i won at a new york state fair when i was in 8th grade. it's a plastic mug with a picture of the california raisins on it, though, to be honest, there's really no picture left. just a couple scraps of paint that resemble nothing anymore.



what it kind of looked like originally



what mine looks like today



and in thinking about my grubby old mug, it led me to thoughts of brooke's veggie tales mug. i wonder if she'll have it when she's married & in her 30's. and i wonder if she'll pour her kids a veggie tales mug of coffee some days, like i do for her now.

 i clean the litter pan almost every day. except it's almost never day when i do it. it's almost always about 2am when i clean it. and i ask myself why the hell i'm cleaning the stink box in the middle of the night & tell myself that tomorrow i'll do it differently, but i never do.

most nights i make multiple trips to the windows in the back of the house to check for raccoons. because i feed them on my deck (shut up, i know i shouldn't feed wildlife) & they're my furry little buddies even though i'm not stupid enough to actually go near them. i just play patty cake with them through the glass on the back door. i'm pretty sure they love me.

i let brooke take her stuffed animals into the bath with her. some days she gives them just the standard grooming treatment, other days they get the special treatment that includes every liquid soap, shampoo, acne wash or conditioner within reach of the tub.

i like to sit in my backyard on the deck steps & use the ped-egg on my feet. i was doing that the other day when my landlord on the other side of our duplex came out & looked at me really funny & asked me what i was doing. and at the time, it didn't even seem strange to me that i had one foot hiked up & was grinding it down with a series of blades while a steady snow shower fell all around me. he should thank me for doing it outside where the snow & blood don't end up in the carpet.

to me, reading a fun book during daylight hours feels positively decadent. i feel like the ultimate lady of leisure when i drape myself across my bed or the couch & read without even needing a light turned on because clearly i am shirking all my responsibilities in the light of day when others could see me.

a friend of mine came over with her 3 little girls a couple weeks ago. her 2 yr old is about the most edible delight of a child that i've ever known, so i was holding her on my lap & squeezing her little chubby self. that's when i noticed that her fingernails were pretty long. so i just snatched up my handy dandy pair of nail clippers that are rarely out of reach of my body and proceeded to clip that baby's nails. it wasn't until it was done & they went home that i wondered if maybe her mama thought i was weird to be giving her toddler a quick pedicure before dinner.

i would love it if you guys would share your own weirdness with me. i know you all have some. i bet you're thinking of it right now. go ahead, type it in the box. i've got to go, i think i hear a raccoon chewing.

if we woke up in jail...

remember when we had so much fun doing the "how did we meet" post? you guys were awesome participants and made it such fun, at least for me. well, i've got another silly facebook game that i want to play with you guys because i know you're way more creative than most of my facebook friends.

here's the deal, i want you to tell me, in 5 words or less, what you would say to me tomorrow morning if we woke up in a jail cell together. be elaborately simple or bizarre and outlandish. feel free to feed me as many lines as you can think up, my friends, i'm ready.

what kind of bees make milk?

i like to have a little fun when i'm writing sometimes, by recounting the moments when stupid or embarrassing things happen to me. most of you have probably figured that out by now. i also love hearing the stupid or embarrassing stories that have happened to others. especially when those stories come from people who normally don't share or volunteer such things because they have dignity & class and generally don't stoop to the level of revealing their shamefully hilarious events. what, for most people, would be something to tuck away & try to forget, i relish every awful detail & try to remember it clearly so i can tell or write the story later.

one of the funny, embarrassing things that has happened to me many times in the course of my adult life is that i tend to drop things into my cleavage. i know, i know, if i wore shirts with higher necklines, that wouldn't be such an issue, but sometimes, a girl's got to show off her assets a little bit, especially when out on a date with the husband. and turtlenecks just aren't very sexy.

i dropped a big blob of ice cream down there in a restaurant once & had to try to wipe it out without flashing anyone. and i drop pieces of popcorn down there all the time when we go to the movies. i've had bits of chips fall while at social gatherings or queso drips when we're dining on mexican fare.

but my favorite story on that topic happened one day when i was taking communion in church & managed to drop almost a whole wafer straight down between the girls. at first i thought i'd just leave it there & fish it out later, but alas, it must have broken on its journey into the abyss because suddenly i felt the scratching & irritating from a nasty little broken edge & i knew it had to come out. for some reason it didn't occurr to me to go into the bathroom to deal with this. looking back that seems pretty obvious, but at the time, all i could think was "should i go in from the top or the bottom?" i attempted a discreet dig from above, but by that point, it was too low down. so then i tried to slowly maneuvre my hand up my shirt all the while singing along with the congregation & trying to keep a neutral face so i wouldn't give away that i was getting to second base with myself. i did finally manage to free myself from that scratchy lil morsel, but then what to do with it? i didn't want to eat it after it had been hanging with the meat balloons, but they don't serve napkins w/ communion. so i settled for putting it into my pocket, only to be reminded of the incident when i found the remants in the laundry a few days later.

i got an email from a friend today, telling me that she dropped a slice of cheese down between the ta-tas while fixing dinner today & that was my inspiration for this post. i'd love to hear from any of you who've had one of these hilariously unfortunate events. share with me, if you will, a time when your boobs ate the keys to the car you just finished test driving. or your girls were unwilling food storage containers. or you lost your cell phone & then found it under your left hooter. whatever your story, i'd love to hear it!

where did we meet?

you know how on facebook, sometimes people will write in their status, "tell me how we met each other and then make this your status so i can return the favor." i always thought that was kind of stupid because aren't we supposed to already know how we met our friends and family members? and if you tell me how we met, why do i then need to tell you how we met? will the stories be different?

tonight i saw a different take on it, and it was an idea i had to borrow. it says to leave a message telling how we met, but make it a lie. i added that the more creative & amusing the answers, the more cool points one would receive. you know, from God, or whoever's in charge of cool points.

i got some great responses that actually made me laugh.
" We really bonded in that state facility after our frontal lobotomies. I think the shock therapy was really beneficial for you, but the ice water immersion really didn't help me much long term. Hope you're doing well - I still don't like wearing my helmet, but at least my sitter has started letting me use scissors on craft projects!"

i had one from one of my blog friends, creatingme, who had clearly read my last post.
"I was the nurse tech at your first mammogram. Nice tush!"

i apparently met one former church friend at a gay bar where she was checking me out & i also give a mean prison tat. i was taught by monks in the mountains and got breast implants with my aunt where she questioned my judgement since she seemed to think that DD was big enough. silly, silly woman. bigger is always better.

i had a great one from my brother.
"Almost can't even remember those early years in the orphanage anymore... I mostly just remember it was so overcrowded... But I will never forget the pillow fights! That was the only time we boys were allowed to interact with you girls for any length of time. Your plan to convince Ms. Wadsworth to alter your birth certificate to match my last name in order to get Mom and Dad to adopt us both and get you out of there was devious, but brilliant! Love ya, "sis". "

and a naughty one from my friend who i've never met face to face. she's a frisky one, this girl!
"Sherilin and I used to date before I had my sex change... she inspired me to switch teams... haven't regretted it yet. Although some days I feel "clueless" as a woman, and I get" Blue" missing being "Steve." Least Sherilin can't send me to the doghouse anymore.Cause she liked it Ruff,ruff,ruff. :P"

and another friend who loves to mock me when i get a little too excited about the raccoons & possums who come up on my deck to eat the food that i put out for them (shut up, i like them) wrote,
"The great raccoon expedition '90.....I was completely enthralled by your lecture "Befriending Earth's Creatures". Later, while you were talking with the raccoons brought in for exhibit, I approached you about their diets and how important it is......fast friends we were.....fast friends for sure!"

now, i know many of you bloggers out there are wonderfully creative and hilarious and i'm wanting to play this game with you too.  feed me a big, fat load of crap and tell me about our imaginary meeting. the wackier, the better! i would like to make the best commenters guest authors on my page in the near future, if you're up for it, so bring it on!