Nursery Creepiness

Last night, around ten, the mobile in Zelma's room started playing its music box lullaby, the little stuffed animals going round and round over an empty crib. Nobody had touched it, and Zelma was asleep in the other room.

On a scale of creepiness, a mobile going round and round in the dark, playing "Lullaby and Goodnight" to no one, is pretty darn creepy.

I guess you could explain it by saying that temperature and humidity changes in the air in our house turned it on? It's a wind up thing. It played for a minute or so, which is a long time when you're wondering if the nursery is haunted.

Sweetie Cat and Brian seemed completely unmoved by this, although Zelma let out a cry in her sleep when I looked in on her (I thought maybe it was a sign that I should check on her).

It wouldn't have been so strange to me, either, except that I saw that ghost in the bedroom the one time. And it was pretty bizarre.

Just Me




Do I really look like this? I'm not sure. Brian took this of me the day before yesterday.

I just had to clear your visual palate after that last entry!

Good Hair Day?

There used to be a really horrendous picture here, which I thought was funny in its awfulness, but I thought it was effecting people's desire to look at this blog, so I took it off! The picture was called "Androgenic Hair," and I still have no clue what it really was. I just thought it was funny for reasons I can't explain.

It's Cold!

It's so cold today, I saw a tall man spit on the street, and it looked like the spit froze before it hit the ground.

When it's this cold, our digital thermometer malfunctions. Anything too far below zero, and the display says, "LL.L". You know when you see that LL.L that you just shouldn't bother going outside. Brian says it should say, "BR.R".

It was actually -10 f, according to the radio this morning. Negative ten Fahrenheit isn't too cold, depending. It all depends on what you're used to. I mean, if you're used to Neptune, for instance, where temperatures dip down to -270 Fahrenheit, well, you see, negative ten is toasty warm!

I just feel sorry for those cold blooded people in Washington, who don’t have hearts to keep them warm. But then, I guess they can probably already feel the fires of hell nipping their toes, so they’ll be all right.

You're Soaking In It!



This commercial was on all the time when I was growing up. It is ingrained in my brain. I should have better things ingrained in my brain. It is so horrible, but mostly in 3 ways: (Yes, another pointless list from Cellar Door.)

1. Why do they assume that only women do dishes? Washing dishes is the one household chore that I have, in my life, most often seen men do, and I was born in the 70's. Am I alone in this experience?

2. I know that half of the population has below average intelligence, but why is it so often assumed that it is the female half? I mean, who the hell could have their fingers in Palmolive and not notice it? Or did the woman think it was some sort of nail solution?

3. Palmolive is horrible for your skin! It sucks all of the oil out of it and dries your hands until they crack open and bleed.

There. I'm glad I got that off of my chest.

My street this morning at 10 AM



The sidewalk was already completely cleared, after nine or so inches of snow in the past 24 hours. That's the Midwest work ethic for you!

It's beautiful, no?

Wrastin' Cool!!!

This video is a precurser to Das Klique. Watch it slowly. Take notes. You will be tested.

Or, just get out a folding chair and go for it, baby!!!!


It's Progress, Ma!

I believe that kids have a way of becoming whatever they are going to become, in spite of their parents, and therefore, it is possible (although not very likely) that your offspring will be the complete opposite of you in all sorts of ways, possibly to your complete horror.

That's the premise of Brian's joke that Zelma will grow up to be a *soccer-playing **horse-loving ***lumberjack. In some distant future, so he claims, Zelma will be driving one of those massive tree killing bulldozers through an old growth forest, while I stand resolute in front of her, waving my "save the trees!" sign in protest. Zelma, snazzy in her lumberjack flannels, yells out in her gruff voice, "It's progress, Ma! Move out of the way!" revving the engine as I beg for her mercy. ****Brian will meet her later for soccer practice and a horse ride.

* I dislike soccer
** I dislike horses
*** I love for trees to be left where they are growing

****This is all, of course, complete silliness, because by the time Zelma grows up, either,

A. (As I hope) everyone will have come over to my point of view, and no one will cut down any trees anymore,
or, (as Brian sees it)
B. There will be no trees left to cut down.

I was responsible! I swear!

Brian has been in Florida most of this week. He got back late last night. This morning, he said, "You fed the fish while I was gone, right?" Um... well, at lest I fed the baby and the cat! Such high expectations.

The fish survived.

Poor Use of Punctuation

Isn't this a good use of pink slippers?



So, today I thought I'd be a good mommy and take Little Z to play with other babies at this mommy's club that I saw advertised on the internet, and it was supposed to meet at noon at Whole Foods, and it's like 12 degrees out, so I bundle us all up and get going finally and drive on down there, and there are no babies nor mommies anywhere to be seen, so I ask at the front desk and the nice Whole Foods workers say, "Oh, they haven't met here since, like, October," so I feel like a real idiot, but just then my old friend Sean walks in, and it turns out he works there now, but he'd rather do anything but work, and it occurs to me just then that Sean has almost the exact same personality as my old roommate, Alice, only he's a gay man, and I wonder briefly if Alice could, in fact, be a gay man trapped in a woman's body?

A Not So Scary Story


I lived, for a year, with my grandmother, in a big house, when I was ten years old. The house had a main *floor, a second floor, a basement, and an attic. My grandma told me a funny anecdote once. Years earlier, one of my aunts was having a slumber party, and all of the girls were gathered near a window on the main floor, telling ghost stories. Grandma, mischievous lady that she is, thought she would give them a ghost. She went upstairs to a window directly above the window that the girls were sitting next to. She opened the window, stuck her arm out, and dropped a single white handkerchief outside into the night air. Quietly, she waited for the screams. And scream they did.



* I would say "four stories," but then my dad would comment, "What was the first story about?"

She didn't notice us.

I don't normally think of our house as haunted, but the truth is, I did once see a ghost here.

It happened one night a couple of years ago. I was lying in bed. Brian was next to me, dozing. Suddenly, a little girl of about two or three years old, with blond hair and a very blank expression, dressed in an old fashioned nightgown, just floated up out of the floorboards to my left and slowly drifted up above my head. She didn't seem to notice me or see me. She glowed a little. I got the feeling she wasn't in the same time as us. I screamed and said to Brian, "A ghost! A ghost! Look!" and pointed frantically at her, before she drifted up into the ceiling and disappeared. I got the feeling that she was just passing through. She just didn't seem to have any business with us.

Of course, my heart was beating fast and I was scared shitless. I asked Brian, "Did you see her?"

"No," he said. "You must have just hallucinated it. You were just asleep with your eyes open. It was a dream."

He gradually came to convince me that it wasn't real because, if it was, he would have seen it, too. It must have therefore been my mind playing tricks on me as I was on the brink of sleep. That made me feel better about the whole thing. At least, I felt better until a few months ago when I told the story to someone, and Brian confessed that the reason he didn't see her was that he never actually opened his eyes. He was too scared!

I guess I can't blame him. But that does now make me believe wholeheartedly that she was real.

Things You Notice and the Same Things You Don't

Sometimes, when I become friends with someone who is a bit different from me, I notice the difference first, but slowly I forget that it's there. Like when you're friends with someone of a different race from you, you might notice it when you meet them, but slowly it just starts to become a part of them in your mind, but not the most important part. (I think we're all a little bit racist, but we shouldn't be afraid of that, as long as we're trying to be good to each other.)

Anyway, I think that's how the public has been with Barack Obama. At first, he was The Black Candidate. And now he's just the candidate who might win.

Lately, I've gotten into the habit of listening to Democracy Now with Amy Goodman, for the sole reason that she's on at Zelma's nap time. I realize this gives me a totally scewed view of the world, but it's news, at least. It's interesting. Today though, I think Amy Goodman went totally off the deep end. She introduced the segment as being "A Debate About Barack Obama." Then she introduced three people who were going to talk about Barack Obama. And all three of them were black men.

So, I've got to wonder, does Amy Goodman think that the only people who could possibly understand Obama are black men, like Obama? And if so, what is she smoking? In addition to the three black men she interviewed, she also had a few sound bites of people talking about Obama--- sound bites of Jessie Jackson and Colon Powell. This seems to me to be the journalistic equivalent of a teacher like me picking out the only black kid in a class and saying, "So what's it like to deal with the legacy of slavery?" While the rest of the class stares at them. It's just messed up.

Conspiracy Theory

I think that the Republicans are doing all that they can to get Hillary Clinton to win the Democratic nomination, because so many people dislike Hillary that they would rather vote Republican than see her win!



The Clintons and I go way back, of course.

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