Dashboard Processional

I was proud of Ramona when she sliced and diced the pigeon a couple of months ago. She’s a tough cookie, just like her mom (me, for anyone not fluent in Allison). She don’t take no sass from nobody. But evidently she heard me bragging, and she got a little too big for her britches.

Ramona tangled with a Tundra last week. 

She lost. This is what Ramona looks like, by the way:

This is what Ramona would look like were she human:

She couldn’t possibly look like anyone but Maxine from the Hallmark cards, except she would definitely be chain-smoking Virginia Slims. When I purchased Ramona, she smelled like the inside of a smoking room in a Motel 6 in Tennessee. She is now channeling Frankenstein...with all the replacement parts, not much of her is even a Subaru at this point. What seemed like a good deal in the beginning, I have paid for twice over the span of nine months. L-E-M-O-N. At least she has low miles at 150,000. Oh wait, I forgot. The odometer was rolled back. That’s actually 250,000.

Rick, my mechanic, called me at work Wednesday. We’re on a hug-hello, life-story basis at this point. After two days of trying to get the jammed hood open after Ramona’s brawl, they discovered that the pouring smoke (no big deal, right?) was just a radiator hose that needed replacing...25 bucks. Sweet.

Oh, and also another 400 for the body work so my hood would stay shut. He wouldn't go for my bungee cord idea. Hey, my undercarriage is being held up with dental floss. No lie.

See, I have a history of automotive woes.

Before Ramona was the Bunny Slayer.

Bunny Slayer was affectionately named after she chased down and ran over the biggest rabbit I have ever seen, in the middle of the Arizona desert. She steered directly for Bugs and thunkthunk. I lost all control over her. She had blood lust - what can I say?

Bunny Slayer’s rear windows only stayed up due to the fact that I had opened the door panels and shoved a year’s subscription’s worth of Lucky magazines inside. The windows still slipped down a bit, so I jammed ink pens and sticks into the rubber pieces to help hold them up.

I was towing Bunny Slayer once (I think on one of the Georgia to Texas moves) and didn’t realize I had to tow her with all four wheels off the ground. All these truck drivers kept honking and waving. I gave a few the one-finger wave. “I’m going as fast as I can, assholes!” When I got to Texas, Bunny Slayer was literally hanging off of the tow bed by one chain. Doh. I tried to drive her off, transmission gone.

Then I moved her to New Jersey. I came out of my Newark apartment one day, walked to my (always parallel) parking spot, to find her...not there. Hmmm. I called the police, who told me she had been stolen but was found the night before. Two days of back-and-forth later, turned out my dumb ass parked in front of a driveway and got towed.

Before Bunny Slayer, there was the Blueberry. 

Blueberry was involved in the world’s first and only drive-by rafting. I was driving with a friend in Portland (likely to a bar, luckily not from one) when everything suddenly went orange and BOOM. I pulled off to the right shoulder. My left side mirror was gone and my hood was dented. I looked around and saw a large orange inflatable raft on the left shoulder. A car had pulled off to the left ahead, and someone was running to pick up the raft. I yelled at him to pull to the right shoulder as my friend got his license plate. He collected his lethal weapon raft...and sped off. When I called the police and told them I had been involved in a hit-and-run incident with an inflatable watercraft, they told me to hold before they said there was nothing they could do. I wonder if they were laughing at me when I was on hold...

My first very-own car was Mervo:

Mervo was a late-80s model Ford wagon purchased for $800 from this woman:

My sweet friend Heather told me it wasn’t so bad...that it looked like a cross between a Mercedes and a Volvo. Thus, Mervo. Mervo broke down mucho.

I really think public transportation is the right option for me.

Brain Dump

A friend of mine used the term "brain dump" in an email today. I thought this would be an appropriate title, as my brain is 'bout to take a dump in this post. I keep a running list of blog ideas in my BlackBerry notes, and I plan to cover a few of them now. I will hold off on "sesame street techno pants'ed" and "short shorts lotion no shower." Mostly because I have no fucking clue what either of those mean. Also because I think each of those might be awesome enough to need its own entire post.

Let's get this show on the road.

I moved again. For anyone keeping track, that makes seven moves in the last two years - three of those in the last six months. After all that moving, I think I've become quite the interior designer. Let me give you a little tour of my new place.

I went for the minimalist look in the living room. Notice the placement of the quilt-wrapped flat screen - right near the cable jack, should I ever decide to pay for cable. And rain boots right by the door are a functional addition to any home.

Now for the study. I haven't decided exactly how to use the study, so right now it's my art studio, home office and gym. What a useful room!

And here's where the magic happens, bitches. Notice the placement of the air mattress. That's some good feng shui.

Because I know you are wondering, yes, my design services are available to any interested parties.

Whatever, living alone is the best! I spent the weekend unbathed and singing to my iTunes in the living room. Another special treat is having my kitchen back. My kitchen. Nobody else's weird-ass food (mini cocktail weenies in a jar, beans, nasty Chili's leftovers) taking up space in my grill.  Now it's only my weird food. You see...

I went sugar-free (or at least really, really low sugar).

So these diet staples...

...have been replaced with this crap.

If you look closely, you'll see hummus, tofu, mozzarella, green tea, soy milk, fruits and vegetables. In the freezer I have gluten-free pizza and vegan chicken nuggets. Why, you ask? I had eight photos of desserts in my BlackBerry. Candy breakfasts are no joke with me - they're a real thing. If I'm not careful, I'll end up with the beetis.

Plus I jump at any chance to be a culinary pain in the ass. I was a vegetarian for nearly six years. My diet consisted of grilled cheese sandwiches and Hostess cakes.

So I'm definitely planning a picnic dinner party like Grace Adler. Put down the organic goat brie cheese and return to the picnic area!

Since I have all this space, I've decided it's time to get a hobby. Do you even know how hard it is to find a Hobby Lobby around here? How can I be expected to choose a hobby with the Lobby? After browsing the aisles, I settled on drawing. Wah waaaah. Yeah, I know, boring, shut it. If the drawing doesn't pan out, I'll move on to my second and third choices: sword swallowing and bee charming.

So I guess my new sense of calm has somehow spilled over into my workplace. At our all-company meeting last week, I was awarded this:

Something about being a raving fan, yada yada yada. I got a scarlet letter. WTF. It is funny how this stupid little wooden R has washed a strange contentment over my professional life and alleviated the restlessness. Such a small recognition had such a pacifying, sedating effect. I'm fairly certain it's The Man trying to hold me back. Like drugs, those crimson wooden letters. They turn you into a lemming, and the next thing you know it's 30 years down the road. I ought to burn it, that evil voodoo witch letter.

But evidently, it also stands for "Retiree Bait." Check out my dating matches this week. No lie.

Um. I don't remember ever checking "Santa Claus" as my preferred body type. I can just imagine the third dude saying, "I've got a present for you, little girl. Just come sit in my lap." 

Brain elimination complete.

Happy Hands Club

Let's discuss my seemingly endless talent some more.

You probably already know that I'm an expert at The Sprinkler. However, you probably don't know the story of how I honed those mad skills.

Like most little girls, I took dance lessons. I started with ballet, then added tap classes, and eventually I progressed to...jazz. We spent a couple of hours in a second-floor mirrored studio with no air conditioning, practicing to craptastic 70s piano tunes on Mrs. Klagges' busted old record player.

I would typically be wearing something very similar to exactly like this, stirrups and all:

I can assure you, however, that I never did a standing split inside a tree trunk while I was wearing said get-up.

The shoes weren't much better. These are jazz shoes:

And these are tap shoes:

But around age 10, we graduated to high-heeled tap shoes. Which was soooo bad ass. Also, that's the reason I can totally walk so sexy-like in heels now.

Really the best thing about dance class was the location of the dance studio. It was right next door to an old-school candy store. Because I was blessed with my darling little sister, I would "get" to wait around for an hour before my class. Which basically meant that I spent an hour stuffing my face with Sour Patch Kids, Fireballs, Tootsie Rolls, Candy Cigarettes, and anything else that cost less than a dime.

All this tough practice led up to the annual recital, which was, of course, a major deal in Culpeper. It was always held in the high school auditorium (no need to specify, just one in the entire county at the time), which was super exciting for a fifth grader in a unitard and braces.

We wore makeup and itchy sparkly outfits with tutus and chokers:

Mrs. Klagges picked all the music. And let me tell you, it was almost never fair. For example, in 1989, my sister's class danced to this:



We danced to this:



But even though we got screwed with such a lame song, I got a solo. I got to arabesque (or something) myself all over the center stage. I was such a total prima ballerina, bitches.

After the show, my entire family informed me that I had some weird epileptic flutter-finger hands thing going on. Sure enough, upon inspection of the video footage, I took Mrs. Klagges' "soft ballet hands" instructions about 17 steps too far. I don't know what was going on, but those things were twirling and whirling like they were about to detach and take off. It was like I had a baton...but not.

So I quit dance classes after that. Stupid uncontrollably flailing hands.

Take Your Kids to Earth Day: The Musical

Today was both Earth Day and Take Your Kids to Work Day. A friend of mine had the idea that there simply must be a blog topic here.

There is. Kind of. Stay with me.

Back in the late '80s, I was a student at St. Luke's Lutheran School. I think I "graduated" from sixth grade with nine other kids, we wore knee-length dresses and attended chapel every Friday, and when I got busted for cheating on one little spelling quiz during the last week of my last year there, I truly thought (and kind of hoped) I was going to be brutally beaten and then assassinated by a firing squad. When I finally set foot in the public school cafeteria wearing red hairbows in my pigtails in seventh grade, "You down with O.P.P?" being shouted by some 13-year-old was truly music to my ears.

Anyway, back at St. Luke's, we were really into musicals. Not just any musicals, of course. One particular musical that comes to mind was called, "It's Cool in the Furnace."

Here's a sample. (This isn't my school, by the way, but this is pretty much identical to us 25 years ago.)


Now, I don't know why, but I somehow ended up with solos or lead parts in most of these things. Maybe it was because I ooze natural talent. Maybe it was because my mom was a kindergarten teacher at the school. Whatever. In the above musical, I sang a nasally solo about dreams...in a drop-waist diagonal-striped dress with Keds, of course.

In one production, "Androcles and the Lion," I was the rhyme-dropping lion.

One of the productions was some kind of Earth Day thing. We were actually pretty ahead of the times, us St. Luke's Crusaders (uh-huh), considering the holiday has only been around for 40 years now. I won't even go into the countless hours I spent outside with my classmates in the cold, crushing aluminum cans into little discs.

The part I landed in the Earth Day musical was Susie Soda Pop Bottle. Out of curiosity, I looked it up. It seems that "Susie Soda Pop Bottle is a 1950s rock 'n roll girl who loves to dance. She has a very bubbly personality." Well see, here was the thing about that.

Here was what I was wearing:

(Except I said "Soda Pop," of course.)

...plus a dash of...

Yes, I was a giant 10-year-old cheerleading, singing plastic bottle. I didn't want to come out of the bathroom. Once I was coaxed out of hiding, I was far from "bubbly."

So there you go, Grant, that's the best I can do tying kids and Earth Day.

Don't Do It: Babies, Bananas and Bachelorettes

I like Target. I don't own a lot of household items, clothing or accessories from Target, as their cheap (not-made-in-the-USA) crap tends to fall apart just as quickly as anything you'd buy from a cart in Times Square. But they tend to have a lot of polka dot items. And I like polka dots. Because I'm five.

And if you ever, ever say Target with a soft "g" and a French accent, I will slap you in the face. Two slaps for letting it slip out without any hint of irony.

So I went to Target last week to purchase a couple of necessities: a gift bag and post-Easter-sale Cadbury eggs.

When I got to the checkout line, the lady in front of me frantically swirled around and held up a pink baby outfit. "This is supposed to be for a 12-month-old, but doesn't it look like it's more for an 18-month-old?"

I don't think she caught the utter blankness of my stare.

"Is this more for a 12-month-old or an 18-month-old?" she asked, clearly in a hurry at the cash register.

"Uh, I uh, I don't know anything about that."

She held the outfit up a little higher, looked at it, looked at me, clearly expecting an answer.

"I'm really sorry, I don't know babies."

The woman was looking at me like I had three heads and flames shooting out of my butt.

The chick behind me came to the rescue. "Oh, that'll be fine for a 12-month-old," she assured the visibly irritated (at me) woman. And then she gave me an all-knowing-that's-OK-sweetie-I've-seen-those-shows-about-those-weird-still-single-in-their-thirties-women-that's-some-funny-shit-and-I-sympathize look.

Um, since when was every woman expected to have a Baby PhD? I missed that memo. I didn't even know how to change my (totally more adorable than yours, btw) niece and nephew's diapers when they were babies...like, last year. Why would I know these things?

So I paid for my sundries, and Little Miss Know-It-All behind me proceeded to the front.

"Excuse me, ma'am," she said to Large Marge at the register, "but I ate one of the bananas in that bunch. I was just going to pass out if I didn't. The man over there in the grocery area said I could."

I could instantly tell just from the expression on Marge's face that her opinion of Know-It-All was right in line with mine. Know-It-All - all 105 pounds of her - was decked out in her cute exercise outfit, with her hair and makeup just so. Her groceries consisted of bananas (minus one), bottled water, and two bottles of wine.

"Was the banana meant to be complimentary?" inquired Marge.

I slowly gathered my things.

"Um, no? But that man. He said I could. Can't you just ring up an extra banana or something? I was just starving."

"No. I can't just ring up a banana. You ate it, so it's gone. You took the banana."

I could just feel Know-It-All shrinking in her tights.

"Don't worry about it, ma'am. From now on, please be sure you pay for your groceries before consuming them."

The gift bag I purchased was for my baby sister's bachelorette party. (The other, ahemalsoyounger, sister is already married.) Being the, um, least conservative of the three, I was in charge of providing the penis straws. Which I did.

My sister aced the scavenger hunt I created for her, which included such items as, "Get a group of guys to sing You've Lost that Loving Feeling to you," and "Tell someone how great your ass is, and make him believe it." Kudos.



The most-heard advice of the night? "Don't do it." Agreed.

But, since my sister insists, I wish her and Matthew all the happiness in the world.

What Kind of Superhero I'd Be

There's a new movie coming out called "Kick-Ass." I kind of want to see it, but I avoid movie theaters and their $10 popcorn like I avoid Herpes, so fat chance until it hits Netflix. Anyhooo...





Now I'm not a comic book nerd or anything, but I got to thinking, if I had a superpower, what would it be? Ideally, of course, invisibility would take the cake. But that is cliché and defies the laws of physics. And pshaw, lame!

SO. Here are the things I'm good at:

Swimming. This one only counts if there's a time machine involved, which of course, there is. (OK, screw physics.) I mentioned before that I used to be a bad-ass swimmer, which is pretty much like being a superhero in and of itself.

Check this out.

Once you find my name (Hint: I was 17, still a female and did the breaststroke...yeah), look up a bit and you'll see the name Kristy Kowal, the silver medalist from the 2000 Olympics. Uh-huh. Of course, right below me you'll notice Misty Hyman, a gold medalist, but almost not worthy of a mention simply due to the fact that she has the worst. name. ever.

Yeah, the list is like some national age group top 16 list or something. And yeah, I was on it.



Punching. And not just for a girl, shut up, for real!! This is, by the way, a very marketable skill for a fledgling superhero.

Knowing stuff. I mean, yeah, I know a lot of dumb stuff, but it could come in really handy should I decide to become Trivia Woman or Quiz-illa. Maybe I just hang out with a lot of dummies. No, I know stuff.

Being cheap frugal. OK, cheap. I'm good at being cheap. This list sucks.

The Sprinkler. OK, this list totally just redeemed itself.

Pool. This would make a pretty super superhero, Pool Shark. And I could incorporate my swimming skills, with the help of my trusty time machine. I might be onto something here.

This, however, is what I wish I could do:



Pool Shark it is.

Guilty Pleasures

Facebook: My ultimate form of escapism. I can easily waste an entire day browsing Facebook, looking for dumb groups to join, which might explain why I'm now a proud fan of "Bob Ross and His Happy Little Bush" and a member of "Hardee's Breakfast is the Sh*t."

Cheaters: I originally began watching Cheaters when I moved to Dallas and found out that it was a local show. I got really into it when I moved to New Jersey...I recorded all the episodes and would always try to figure out where they were in the metroplex, as if one crappy apartment complex looks any different from the next. I'm pretty sure I've lived in at least two or three of them, though.

Chips and French onion dip: I can imagine what I must look like stuffing my face with handful after handful of chips (corn or potato, doesn't really matter), dripping in French onion dip, and then pretty much licking the jar clean. Hot. There is a reason this is a guilty pleasure.

Craigslist Missed Connections: Don't know about it? You better get up to speed. Missed Connections is a mix of lonely dreamers, pathetic dumpees who long to reunite with their exes, and spouses who are attempting to cheat with the hottie they met at the party last weekend. It is junk food of the Internet.

Fashion don'ts: I like when celebrities look like shit. Especially when they look like shit and fat. It makes me feel good about myself. Yes it does.

Napping on the couch: Especially in the winter, or on a rainy weekend. Necessities within arm's reach? Some type of snack cake, the remote control, and...ahem...my woobie...

The entire bakery section at the grocery store: It doesn't really matter if something is about to expire. To me, that just means it's cheaper. I'm going to eat it all in one sitting...pie, dozen cookies, pound cake, whatever.

The mall: I am really ashamed of loving the mall so much. I don't know why this is. It's a place that I only like to go by myself, and I usually look as grubby and unrecognizable as I possibly can. I even have a ritual, which always, of course, includes Sbarro...and Forever 21.

Jerry Springer: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so this is what the world thinks of America. That's way too much thinking when I've got a midget food fight and a Reverend Schnorr wedding going on. Look down at me all you want. I wouldn't be caught dead watching "Dancing with the Stars" or "The Bachelor."

Really, really, ridiculously long showers: I mean, the kind that turn your skin bright red and only come to an end when you run out of hot water entirely. My dream house (that I'll have when I get rich...really soon) will have one of those glass-enclosed marble showers with a seat. Droooool...


Do you have any guilty pleasures?