"Helloo?" mom answers the telephone, her voice full of sleep.
"Hi, mom. I just got your message from last night. Everything okay?" I ask, a little concerned by the tone of her voice in the message.
"Oh!," she says, suddenly wide awake. "I was just calling to tell you that I'm a movie star."

( Read more... )

i had something thought-provoking and super-deep to post to make up for not posting since September (holy wow), but i'm swamped with work and other stuff, so here it is:

1) Three households of my family (containing 7 people and 3 dogs) are without power in The Motherland and are "roughing it" in two RVs parked in a warehouse in Tulsa. Apparently, all houses except Grandma's have been damaged somewhat by broken tree limbs and such, the worst of the three being my brother and Amy's house, at which a huge tree in their front yard has been uprooted. Apparently, my niece and nephew also suffered the loss of their fancy newish playset in the backyard, which was snapped in two and then crushed by a huge tree. The same tree also hit the newly refinished home office in the sunroom. R.I.P., fancy little play-fort (and possibly home office). Mom says most of the city looks like a warzone, or like a tornado swept through. Yay....should make for an extra-long drive next week for Poobears and I, if mom doesn't try to lay down the Mom-Hammer and make me fly home. Stay tuned...

2) I really need to stop a) buying Christmas presents, and, more importantly, b) dreaming about having babies. *Shiver!* No offense to any on the FList who have them or want them...heck, I love kids, so long as they're someone else's. I think they're great. And cute. And playing with them and holding them is fun. But, for someone who is at least a little terrified of being responsible for the well-being and happiness of another tiny person (and teaching it things like right v. wrong, how to speak, manners, etc.), dreams about breastfeeding the wrong way and having babies in moving cars while mom drives to the hospital and Ben cuts the cord with one of our good KitchenAid knives and naming the baby something that is original that no one else likes (OLIVER!) are simply NO FUN. Well, I take that back. It was kinda funny the first time it happened a few months ago. Now, it won't stop. This last one (scary public breastfeeding experience with strange green-colored "milk") makes about 9 or 10 now. I think it's my way of freaking out about turning 3-0 next month. But I mean, seriously. STOP IT, Brain!

3) There is something seriously Effed Up about turning the heat off, sleeping with the windows open, breaking into a sweat during a walk-jog (newly dubbed "jalk" by The Mister and myself), and wearing shorts out in the evening in the MIDDLE OF DECEMBER. Especially when the week before was so very chilly. And double-especially when other parts of the country (to which we'll be traveling next week) are in the middle of an Extreme Winter Weather Crisis (EWWC)^TM. There's also something really wrong with driving through the neighboorhood with the windows down in the evening, looking at Christmas lights. What the Eff?

my quest to be a not-too-terribly fat bride is back underway. i have 116 days to complete this quest (note the presence of the quest timer in the upper right-hand corner of your screen). that's 16.57142857 weeks, for those keeping along at home. will i do it? can i lose at least 20 pounds in 16 weeks? history tells me that i can...i've done it before. my friends in the past have been: Weight Watchers (always), no red meat, no eating out, no birth control (so.not.going.to.happen.). this time: my actual friends, Ben, Weight Watchers, the gym (oh my good God, how i've missed the gym!), and not eating like a crazy person.

and so, it goes. after nearly 3 weeks of alternating between not being able to eat anything, eating lightly and blandly, eating "normal" food, and completely overdoing it, i am back on the Fat Wagon.

( a cut because i'm nice like that. )

Ben and I grabbed a bite at Ted's, which has become one of those places I will never say 'no' to, and took in a movie. This movie was not just any movie. No, sir. This was the holdover from my birthday 3 weeks ago. The movie i just had to see. The movie that was going to get him off the hook for promising to take me to all of those other girlie movies I wanted to see over the course of nearly a year and which he never took me to see. I'm stubborn, so Brokeback Mountain it was. My reaction to Brokeback Mountain can be summed up by some of the snippets of reviews on www.rottentomatoes.com:

• "Because 'Brokeback Mountain' has made such a profound impact on so many viewers, I almost feel guilty that I can't rave about it."--Betty Jo Tucker, REELTALK MOVIE REVIEWS



• "If the filmmakers weren't trying so hard to deny the characters' failings, Brokeback Mountain might have lived up to its immense reputation."--Jeffrey Westhoff, NORTHWEST HERALD (CRYSTAL LAKE, IL)



• "An unconventional love story that doesn't match its hype."--John Wirt, ADVOCATE (BATON ROUGE, LA)



• "This is one of the best serious films about homosexuality ever made, but though it's sad and sobering it's still only a rough draft of a great movie."--Kyle Smith, NEW YORK POST



• "a monotonous and often inadvertently campy romance that rivals The Hours as the most overrated movie of the decade"--Jon Niccum, LAWRENCE JOURNAL-WORLD



• "I never became emotionally involved in their story"--Sean McBride, SEAN THE MOVIE GUY



• "I love gay people and I love a lot of gay movies - just not this one."--Kevin N. Laforest, MONTREAL FILM JOURNAL



• "And no, they do not eat any pudding."--Jimmy O, FILM SNOBS

...and so, there it is. For the record, I didn't shed a single tear. What's wrong with me? Did I miss that one special moment of the movie that would have done it for me when I got up to pee? I just don't get it...

So, anyhoo. We're holding off on celebrating V-Day for real until Friday (post-payday for both of us). True to form, it wasn't a particularly spectacular day...Mom and John closed on the house, which I'll probably get into later, as it kind of bothered me a whole lot more than I expected it would. It's kind of fitting that my dog Booger is buried in the backyard of that house...Booger who was put to sleep on Valentine's Day in 2000. :/ Now that I think about it, Valentine's Day kind of...well, sucks.

i feel compelled to post, but i'm just not sure where to start. it's been forever, which i wouldn't have even noticed had it not been for kim's post. hmm. i guess i'll start with a list:

• mom and john are officially coming to Georgia for Thanksgiving and the entire week before. the tentative plan is that they are parking their motor home at ben's parents house rather than at an RV park 30 miles away. should make for an interesting week...let's just hope john keeps the obnoxious behavior to a minimum. the mom's will no doubt get along, as they are the exact same person.



• in recent news, you know your refrigerator is dead when: a) your "frosty" beer glasses are only slightly colder when they come fresh out of the freezer than they are when they come fresh out of the dishwasher; b) the brand new tub of butter is melted before you even remove the safety seal; c) you've dumped over $800 into said fridge to fix various things, only to be told that nothing else in the world could possibly be fixed, and yet the damn thing still doesn't work. all this is to say that tonight's post-dinner activities consist of shopping for a new fridge that we certainly can't afford, which is why we've asked both of our moms to pitch in together and call it a gift for both of our birthdays and christmas (and potentially an early wedding present). being a grown up is such fun. i can't believe no one told me about these kinds of things before.



• speaking of being poor, we went to Target over the weekend and came back, both depressed about money and how little of it we have, and i decided to open some mail that had been sitting there for a few days. lo and behold, my very eyes did see an upgraded credit card! huzzah! it seems that Target is doing away with their store credit cards, and mine was expiring soon, so they upgraded it to a Target Visa, which means i can use it anywhere. they also increased my credit limit by about $2,000, which in the long run will be a bad thing, sure, but temporarily it will surely help us out if we need to do things like, say, pay to have a tree removed, a tree that is one strong wind away from falling completely over and crushing our brand new fence.



• in the last couple of weeks, i have gotten back in touch with my best childhood friend. it is great hearing from him again. hopefully he'll be in the motherland for christmas, as he just moved from New York to Dallas and thus has no excuse to stay away over the holidays anymore.



• speaking of my best childhood friend, one of our favorite childhood restaurants, Casa Bonita, is officially closed. last friday was a sad, sad day. now the only surviving Casa Bonita restaurant is in Denver (and for the last few days, i have been dying to find the "Casa Bonita" episode of south park). from what i gather, the owner of the Tulsa location is opening "Casa Viva" in its place sometime soon...but it won't ever be the same. this site had some good photos, not just of Casa Bonita, but of other random buildings around Tulsa that are closed or are being closed. that site led me to this other site, which is great. something about abandoned buildings both creeps me out and fascinates me. so, the moral of this story: shitty mexican food yields some really good photography.



• i need a haircut, but i also need to buy groceries. and birthday presents. and wedding presents...and the list goes on and on.



• The Jonesesesez went back to New Orleans today to see their house and take pictures for the insurance company, etc. they're coming back on Friday, maybe before. i hope everything goes okay, or as okay as things can go...i also hope that their insurance company and/or FEMA starts reimbursing them for rent, etc., soon, in the interest of being able to buy said groceries instead of said haircut.



• i'm ready for it to be fall. bring on the cold weather!



• Serenity didn't suck. like, at all.



• i want to get paid to write funny things. how do i go about doing this while i'm getting paid to write boring things and still actually manage to do both? also, how do i go about writing funny things when i don't feel the least bit funny anymore? i'm going to commit to NaNoWriMo this year in the hopes that i can force myself to sit down and write. i think the lack of writing is what's putting me in such a bad mood all the damn time. well, one of the two things, at least.

okay. off to make dinner.

many thanks to flerly and aoide for taking care of my drunk ass on monday night--that's right, i said monday night--after one midday margarita with some coworkers turned into a 6 hour drinking festival, leaving the three of us completely unable to drive ourselves home. it should be noted that we chose to have "a margarita-which-turned-into-a-pitcher-each" at an establishment directly across the street from where we work. that's just how much none of us gives a shit right now.

my main point to the story is not that i am a drunk ass (because this is common knowledge), but that you know your friends love you when they'll drive your ass all the way to powder springs from marietta (when they live in midtown and dunwoody, respectively) on a monday night after you've stood them up because you were too drunk to drive to go meet them for margaritas in midtown, as was the original plan. what can i say? margaritas make me a) crazy, and b) lose my earrings...and i'm still wondering how i broke my cell phone. i owe the two of those chickies (kim and kit) bigtime. sliced bread(s). best thing(s) since (it/them).

on a more serious note, mom finally got an email from my aunt judy (who is not really an aunt, but a second cousin, but so much more aunt-like than actual aunts), one of the only other branches of my family that doesn't live in The Motherland; she, her husband, and their son live in New Orleans:


[Original Message]
From: Aunt Judy
To: Mom
Subject: RE:

Hi cuz! Yes the news is pretty bad. But we still have hopes that at least some of our house is not flooded.
And today we think the paper is setting up temporarily in Baton Rouge which will make things seem more
normal. The cell phone situation is abnormal but it made me learn to text msg! Also the land line here works well,
our hosts' phone is 225-xxx-xxxx. We are fine and the xanax is working well for me! Thanks for the thoughts
and prayers and we will keep in touch.

j.


judy and dave both work for the newspaper in New Orleans. judy evacuated the city with their son sunday, and dave stayed behind to help man the newspaper's offices. he ended up leaving for Baton Rouge yesterday, after talking to judy who instructed him to take a few treasured items (quilts my great-grandmother made by hand, paintings that my great-grandmother's aunt had done, etc.) to the attic so that they would be safe. or, rather, that they might be salvageable. dave, seeing how bad things really were, decided to ignore her instructions and loaded the items she wanted to save into the car and drove them to Baton Rouge. it's probably best that he did, as hopes that their home will still be standing after it's all said and done seem to be dwindling. at times like this, saving family heirlooms, as treasured as they may be, seems so unimportant. i'm just happy to know that they're all safe and well.

so, my garage flooded for the umpteenth time since hurricane season started. granted, it's nothing like erin's flood, but seriously...standing water covering a good majority of the floor of your garage is never a good thing. ben and i are going to try to do something to fix it after work today. i have no idea what. i think it's got something to do with the lousy drainage "system" i have going on right next to the driveway. i'm sure it doesn't help that i have one of the steepest driveways in the history of mankind, so all of the water from the road is rushing down to the driveway, and the tiny hole that is supposed to keep my garage from flooding is overloaded. poor little guy. it's kind of like drinking oneself to death, i guess...i mean, it would be if one were a drainage system. but i digress. the 2 things i do know are:
1. i am so ready to be out of this stinking house, it's not even funny anymore. SRIUSLY. GET OUT. OUTAHYR. DUMHAUS.
and
( 2. )

so, anyhoo. despite the impending doom of flash floods and whatnot, i'm enjoying the rain immensely, like some other people i know. sleeping with the windows open rules...and it's frickin' the middle of july! where else can you do that this time of year? not in oklahoma, that's for sure. your skin would melt.

speaking of oklahoma...it's still there. and so will we all be--ben, his parents, and myself, i mean--at Christmas. during dinner with them last week, they said something about wanting to go to the Motherland the next time we went, and we mentioned that we'd be there for Christmas. but they said they wouldn't go unless they were invited, so my mom called his mom yesterday and officially extended the official invite...and they were officially on the phone for over an hour. not the 4 hours that ben predicted, but quite a long talk, nonetheless. so, it looks like, not only will the parents be meeting, but the parents will be staying in the other parents' house during what i'm sure will be a holiday full of fun, family-type festivities (read: fainting goats and jupiter jumps. oh, and lots and lots of food).

so, things are excellent, save for the job and the impending doom, but i'm working on that (and my resume, accordingly). impending doom i can't do much about...unless i sell my house before the garage floods again. here's to hoping...

( ...and here's one for the road. )

so, my great uncle, Uncle Charlie (grandma's brother), died yesterday. he'd been in the hospital for about two weeks, most of that time on a ventilator in sort of an induced coma-like state. it's very sad, but i can't help thinking it's probably better this way. he's never taken extremely good care of himself, and the last couple of years, it was really starting to take its toll.

i can't make it back for the funeral, which is sad, but i'm also kind of relieved (as terrible as it may sound). it seems like most of my visits to the motherland in the last year and a half have been for funerals of family members. i ordered one of those huge stand-up flower arrangement things to be delivered today, though, and while i was looking on www.1800flowers.com for a basket to send, i was appalled, shocked, and horrified by two of the most inappropriate floral arrangements i've ever even heard of:
1)the broken heart:

this is one of the tackiest and most distasteful things i've ever seen. but...
2) the bleeding heart is even worse:

i mean, seriously. this has got to be the trashiest thing i've ever seen. if i went to someone's funeral or to a viewing at a funeral home and saw this, i would take it upon myself to remove it from its stand and stomp on it and/or throw it away where the grieving family couldn't see it. it's just...not right.

am i wrong?

i mean, i decided that 1800flowers could do without my business if they were going to pimp products like that, but it turns out that my company has blocked access to a lot of other flower-shopping sites. i guess people were wasting too much time looking up ridiculous and wildly inappropriate floral arrangements on the company's dime. so, 1-800-distasteful-flowers it was...