It’s Not Easy Being Green

I didn’t know the color for „pissed at the whole world for little reason,“ so green will have to do. And I’m wearing a green shirt. Will the coincidences never end?

L.H. got back from Sweden at 11 pm on Monday, and at 9 am on Tuesday, one of his former grad school colleagues [to be ever-more known as “The Sponge”] called from the train station that she had made it to Germany and could we please pick her up? WTF. There had been some mention *way* back at the start of the summer about her stopping in to visit while on a year-long exchange to Berlin, but I seriously don’t remember a request to *crash with us for 4 days* upon arriving in this country, and neither does L.H. She hasn’t really been underfoot—she biked into town Tuesday and had a meeting at a town just north of here Wednesday—but she and L.H. were not, you know, friends or anything back in grad school, which he graduated *2 years ago.* I get the impression that she is planning to mooch her way across central Germany until she can get into her student housing in Berlin. She’s leaving here tomorrow, so I guess I can keep my head from imploding until then.

Wednesday, it was like frickin’ Grand Central Station around here. Right after D.D. and I got home from school, the neighbor locked herself out, so we invited her to hang with us until her BF got home. She had been walking her 2 gay-named Yorkies, so she tied their leashes to the stair rail to keep them out of the way. They were well-behaved and quiet; no prob. Until Missy Cat tried to come downstairs, spotted them, and began hissing her threat to disembowel them. I herded her back upstairs and locked her and Eliza in the bedroom. Back to peace and quiet. Except for me and D.D. fighting about her homework. They’ve been getting a lot more this year, which is kind of to be expected, so she hasn’t always had enough time to finish it at after-school care. Anyhow, as soon as she finished her math, the doorbell rang. It was D.D.’s friend. I let them watch a movie while I cooked dinner and chatted with the neighbor, who’s American. Then the BF came, and he’s very nice, but a bit loud and boisterous. And L.H. came home in the midst of all this, so he was talking to the BF, I was talking to the neighbor, and there was a movie in the background. If The Sponge had walked in right then, I might have lost it. Right now, I feel like, “Where is my beloved rock for hiding under?”

I had to put another estrogen patch on this week, so I have a sneaking suspicion that part of my lingering foul mood proceeds from that. I have had very few thoughts this week that don’t contain some form of the word “fuck,” so that might give you a clue how pissy I am. [As a side note: While the neighbor was here, I hurt my foot and whispered, “Fuck!” She seemed taken aback, and actually said—laughingly—“You said the F-word?” Dude, I just ripped half the skin off my toe on a *metal bolt* sticking up from the floor; you’re lucky I only whispered it. I don’t know if she thought Texans don’t curse, or women, or—hell, I have no idea what assumption she was going on, but really. Damn.]

I will now try to sedate myself with posting and more coffee, although I don’t actually expect either to help. On the plus side, I am now mentally prepared to put words to paper for my term paper, having finished my prep work yesterday, so maybe that and losing The Sponge will make me more pleasant next week.

A Tisket, A Tasket, A Pile of Random Crap-et

Here’s something you never expect to hear from your sister-in-law:
“You’re digging your Christmas grave!”

***

I didn’t mean to imply in my last post that I don’t like cartoons. Au contraire. To wit, The Simpsons, Spongebob Squarepants, Dave the Barbarian, and Fillmore! are some of my favorite tv viewing. And I signed up to be the president of the fan club when I saw the commerical for The Dragon Slayers; any show that's about dragons and with a theme song by The Cure is all right with me. Even if it comes from France. Gasp!

***

I don’t know what exactly this IUD is doing to my body, but I suspect it has something to do with the fact that I have had the physical coordination of a gifted 4-month-old lately. The last time I was this clumsy, I was very pregnant. [It would take micro-surgery and/or a miracle for that to be the cause this time.] All I know is that I’m sick of spilling, dropping, bumping, and breaking everything. The way I’ve snapped off the tips of several of my fingernails by banging them into wooden furniture and ripped my cuticle so it bled (while wrestling bags of cat litter into the back of the car), I’m surprised I didn’t chop off a finger making stew.

***

Thanks to the power of low-budget tv programming, I have come to realize that Quincy was a really preachy show. Emergency rooms should always have surgeons at the ready. Child molesters/killers should be locked up and the key thrown away. Well, DUH.

***

We’ve almost reached the end of geranium season. I haven’t dead-headed them in days, and I miss it. The stems are satisfyingly crispy when I break them off, like snapping green beans. And I’m so anal, I find searching for dead blooms among the mass of flowers to be quite satisfying and even relaxing. One day I will have a yard, and I will plant geraniums and make compost, and my life will be complete.

***

When we were in Paris, I saw what some might term “high fashion,” but that I felt to be “mummy chic.” In a shop window, someone draped a mannequin in strips of cast-off linen mummy wrappings. At the time, I chalked it up to that wacky sense of Parisian fashion. But in Salzburg a couple of weeks later, I spotted a woman wearing a very similar shirt, but more toilet paper-y looking. She had paired it with pants that tied at the ankles, so I figure she might have had a lobotomy? Who can say.

***

We were watching tv, and a commercial came on for some phone service. That reminded Darling Daughter that she needed God’s phone number so she could call him and tell him what she wanted for xmas. My SIL pointed out that you never see God and Santa in the same place, and that they both know when you’ve been naughty and when you’ve been nice, so it would be easy to confuse them.

Who Needs Reality TV When There Are Commercials?

Most of my television-watching these days consists of cartoons interspersed with 5-minute CNN bits whenever D.D. goes to the bathroom. The only bright spot in my endlessly animated days are the commercials.

My favorite, which has since gone off the air, was for a men’s deodorant or aftershave (I can’t remember which brand). It’s supposed to be a product for manly men, so it shows the first guy punching through the medicine cabinet mirror to get out his aftershave. He jumps out the window onto the top of a bus, where some other men are already sitting, reading the paper. A cop turns a donut and skids up to the window of a coffee shop, where the girl has his coffee waiting for him. At the office, guys are flipping their cars into their parking spaces or dropping from a helicopter through the skylight into a meeting. A delivery guy, who is *on fire* jumps his motorcycle through the front window of the building, and the security guy shows no reaction other than to point to a sign that shows “no helmets.” If I were a guy, I would definitely have bought their product.

D.D.’s favorite, which is a classic in its own right, is for Kinder Chocofresh. This is a chocolaty, creamy, cool dessert that should be a food group all on its own. In the commercial, a mom and her two kids (one of each) ask the grocery store guy where they can find them. He pulls them off the fridge shelf and starts emoting about how wonderful they are while opening the package and wafting them in front of the children as he cracks them open to show the delicious middle. When he pops one in his mouth, the little girl—who looks about 5 years old and has a cutsey lisp—cracks: “Give me one or I’ll knock over your cooler shelf!” That is a self-confident child.

And I just now came across this ad for Carlton Draught (via Making Light), and I almost peed my pants. A meta-ad set to Carmina Burana has to be the highest form of advertising. EVAH.

Here's the promotional photo for a new show: "When Teddy Bears ATTACK"