Ganked Meme

I got this meme from Joan, who got it from Teeni. I believe it got its named “Ganked Meme” from something to do with Betme’s vocabulary. Yeah, yeah, I’m working, but this was quick and fun so I did it.

Here are the rules:

Step One – pull out a book on the book shelf.

Step Two – go to page 123.

Step Three – read and write out the 5^th sentence. (I wrote out a whole paragraph, because I couldn’t resist.)

Step Four – tag 5 more people. (I’m not doing this step ‘cuz I’m scared of incurring anyone’s wrath.)

I grabbed Dark At The Roots, A Memoir by Sarah Thyre. You might know Sarah as the gym teacher on Strangers With Candy (I own the boxed DVD set!), or as Andy Richter’s real-life wife. She’s also a writer and I love her. There, I said it. I love Sarah Thyre.

From Page 123:

I had a bad feeling about this. Why had she told a cashier at the filling station she was pregnant, but none of us in her immediate family? As far as I could tell, Dad hadn’t noticed her bulging stomach. Not surprising since Mom spent most nights on the couch. Sofa.

“Don’t tell anyone,” Mom said. “Your father doesn’t know yet.”

Dad found out pretty soon, and he was not happy.

“Whose is it?” he asked. “Mike?”

Mike was our garbage man. When I heard Dad say that, I got more excited and this whole pregnancy deal. I couldn’t wait for my adorable biracial half-sister. She’s had a creamy Lady Marmalade complexion and a wild, tawny Afro that I could pick out for hours….Right away, I called all the girls in my class to tell them don’t worry: my mother was NOT fat, she was pregnant.

“Thank god, I was beginning to wonder if she’d let herself go,” said Ellen Lacour. “Oops! Gotta run — I just got my period!”

 

Technorati Tags: Sarah Thyre, Dark At The Roots, Strangers With Candy, memes

Today’s Happy Headlines

I’m still buried in work but I wanted to share with you today’s happy headlines: the heat, the cost of food and fuel, and those bastards the Lakers. Today’s headlines are just awful. As reported, it’s still hot as a bastard. Speaking of which, I recently discovered that tacking “as a bastard” onto the end of just about everything is a New England thing. As in:

“It’s hot as a basdid today.”

“It’s cold as a basdid today.”

“I was sweatin’ like a basdid.”

And the driving related: “Didja see that guy? He was goin’ like a basdid.”

The person who brought this “bastard” business as being a New Englandism to my attention is from El Paso, but he went to college in Boston and he’s well-traveled. So when I said something about it being “hot as a basdid,” he started laughing and said he hadn’t heard that expression in years. Then he told me we’re the only people who use this expression and that we use it for just about everything. I found this amazing.

Well, back to work.

Technorati Tags: El Paso, New England

Working

 

  I’m busy working. Just wanted you to know. Although I’m not in this fish cannery photo above, I feel like I am.

A Page From Lily’s Diary

El Paso, 3:20 PM

110-degrees

5% humidity

I ended up re-doing Lily’s Diary in the hopes of getting a better shot. This was the best I could do (my tripod wasn’t cooperating for some unknown and mysterious reason). Lily, by the way, belongs to Little Miss Sew N’ Sew.

 

Technorati Tags: Dogs, Chihuahuas, Diaries

Just Workin’ On My Blogroll

Photo from www.inesc.org, National Educational Service Centers Inc.

 

It’s about 6:30 PM in El Paso right now and the temperature is 108-degrees, humidity is 8%.

Seriously. I’m not making that up…I looked it up online.

Anyway, it’s 108-degrees and I’m sitting outside smoking a cigarette and trying to get caught up on my blog reading, and it occurred to me that’s it’s taken forever for me to add a blogroll to this blog.

I’ve got a blogroll on my Life With Buck blog, but I never added one here because I never really intended to spend much time over here, even though I’m supposed to be posting 365 days in a row. As it’s turned out I don’t post every single day but this is where I do the most blogging and I totally need a blogroll. (My LWB blog requires my transcribing tape recorded interviews, which is exactly what I do for work, and I’ve been very lazy about it.)

So I’m slowly but surely building my blogroll over here. And I mean slooooowly, because it’s 108-degrees and I really can’t move too quickly. So if you don’t see yourself over there on the blogroll, it’s only because I’m moving so slowly. I’ll get to everybody, but if you don’t see yourself and you’d like to remind me please do.

Also, over here I’m kind of listing some people’s names rather than the name of the blog, because being a simpleton I sometimes get confused about who belongs to which blog. You’re probably saying, the what with the who now? But for instance, I forgot that the hilarious aberclay is The Leaky Brain. As a result, I haven’t gotten over there in awhile, which is tragic, because she is, as I said, hilarious.

 

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogrolls

No Garden, But Plenty of Cactus

While just about everyone I know has dandelions growing in their yard during the summer months, I  have cactus sprouting up. Here’s one:

Here’s another:

They’re growing at the base of a pine tree:

 

I’m amazed by these baby cactus but I have no idea what to do about them. Am I supposed to leave them and let them grow, or treat them like dandelions and pull them from the ground?

If you know me, or if you’re a regular reader of my blog, you know I was a gardener in New England, I wrote a garden column for several years, and now it’s been a good four or five summers since I’ve had a garden.  I have some strange sort of azalea lining my Wonder Wall, but for the most part my backyard is desert terrain. Here’s a section of my backyard:

Last summer and over the course of the winter I’d planned digging up that patch of desert this spring and filling it in with rich soil and raised beds for a garden. I  ordered giant alliums and lilies from a catalog, studied what perennials I should buy at the garden center, and designed an herb section so I could get back to using fresh herbs in my cooking. Then in March a friend asked if he could park an old Volkswagen there for 8 or 9 nine months until he gets around to fixing it and selling it, and before I knew it my garden plans evaporated into the dry El Paso air.

That being the case, another summer is here and I have no garden. There’s a lot of dusty dirt though, so I guess I’ll have to settle for these little cactuses sprouting up around my yard. Does anyone know about cactus? What the hell are these things? Do they have a name besides cactus? Am I supposed to water them? Will I grow to love them? Can you make scones out them, like with lemon thyme? Can you put a bouquet of them next to your bed like with zinnias and black eyed susans? Or would that be asking to poke my eye out in the middle of the night?

 

Technorati Tags: cactus

10 Things Meme

I got this meme from Joan Harvest. I like it, and Like Joan, I’m not tagging anyone for it but if you want to do it I’d love to read it. I’ve thrown some photos in here that have nothing to do with anything…I just wanted to break up the text.

1. What does gobbledygook mean to you? As un-PC as this sounds, gobbledygook is when people are speaking to me in a foreign language like Chinese or mathematics, though I have recently adopted Maxine’s phrase of “hibbityhoo” which is far more descriptive.

  2. What do you like about yourself? I have no idea.Maybe that I’ve gotten to know myself over the years, which has made my life a lot easier. I no longer sign up for classes like “Conversational French” or agree to go to baby showers.

3. What activity do you enjoy doing, that you never thought you would until you tried it? Watching Denise Richards: It’s Complicated. 

4. What have you learned about yourself from your previous (and current) romantic relationships?  I’ve learned to back off and stop trying to be alpha dog. I’ve also learned to heap on well-deserved praise, and really listen to what Buck’s saying. All anybody really wants is to be heard and appreciated, and life’s too short to withhold these things from your spouse or anyone else.  

5. What physical traits do you find attractive in the opposite sex? — I look for no physical traits whatsoever. My turn-ons in the opposite sex are humor, intelligence, creativity, masculinity, being well-read, and loving me for who I am and be supportive of my writing. Must love dogs; all animals, really. Oh, and having a healthy interest in sex without being a fucking pervert; sexy lingerie is cool (Victoria’s Secret is the only store where Buck will let me use his credit card) but if anyone ever asked me to don a zipper mask and urinate on them I’d call the police. 

6. Do you believe in any superstitions, or have some particular ritual? I’m not superstitious (I was born on the 13th) but I have created my own personal religion in my head where Karma plays a big roll and I make up the rules as I go along. For rituals, I make coffee the night before and set the timer on the coffee machine so I can just wake up and stumble to the kitchen where my coffee is ready and waiting. Or maybe that’s a phobia, a fear of waking up and not having my coffee ready. 

7. What’s the nicest thing you’ve ever done for somebody? I had to really think about this and this is what I came up with: I was in a new-age store once when a hysterical woman ran inside screaming and crying because her house, which was next door, was being auctioned off by the bank at that very minute. She had her grandson with her, a toddler whom she was raising, and she was scaring this little kid with her hysterics. I took her outside and calmed her down and gave her grandson a box of donuts I had in the car, and because I was helpless to stop the auction, I had a long talk with her about how this could be a new beginning for her and her grandson both. I told her that every day after this could only get better and better, that these past few months must have been fucking hell for her with this looming foreclosure, and that every time one door closes another opens. She stopped crying and really thought about what I was saying. She smiled, she laughed, and I drove her to her sister’s house. She felt a lot better, and I was really glad I could help her in that small way. I hope Karma didn’t make a liar out of me.

8. If you could do something with your blog (cost, time and other factors irrelevant), what would you do?– I’d add video and audio, or a webcam, which is do-able but I just haven’t figured it out yet.

9. Books, chocolates, sex. Make a sentence with it. After sex women should be presented with a big box of chocolates and a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble to buy books and magazines.

10. If you were dead now, what would people most remember about you? That girl was insane; where else could you attend a funeral where they blasted the Dandy Warhols’ “Bohemian Like You” on giant speakers and handed out hot fudge sundaes and copies of Franny and Zooey? And who invited all these dog? That German Shepherd over there just bit me.

_______________

Bohemian Like You  (This video contains very brief nudity used as HUMOR…so if that’s something you know will freak you out DO NOT WATCH IT or your eyes and nose will bleed. You know who you are, so hopefully you’re not even here and if you are here don’t come crying to me after the fact.) I think of this song as the theme song to Buck and my relationship, though if he was aware of that he’d probably disagree because he’s a die-hard Cure fan.

Technorati Tags: memes, Dandy Warhols, life in general

 

Lone Sea-Monkey Lives, Etc.

      I was standing at the toaster this morning waiting for my toast to pop up and wondering if it would be terribly gluttonous of me to use both butter and peanut butter on honey wheat bread, when out of the corner of my eye I spied movement in my abandoned Sea-Monkey tank. Yes, after I tossed in the packet of monkey eggs several weeks (months?) ago and they didn’t hatch, I just left the little mess in a corner on the counter and tried to forget about it. But this morning I thought I saw movement in the water so I looked closer and by Jesus there was A THING swimming around eating algae. A THING that must be a Sea-Monkey.

I nearly puked.

But there it is, a lone Sea-Monkey swimming in my tank. Good thing (I guess?) that I didn’t throw it out.

It probably ate its brothers and sisters for all I know.

_________

     I’m way behind on my Dog Diaries, but I was fussing around with Lily’s Diary (Lily belongs to Little Miss Sew N’ Sew) last night and I’m having a helluva time trying to photograph it. I’m using a tripod but it’s just not coming out well. Here’s a preview of it, but I’m still working on taking the photo so you can actually read her diary. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I was able to do it once before with Oliver’s Diary, so I don’t understand why I can’t do it now. It’s WICKED IMPORTANT that I wrestle this problem to the ground. I have a lot of Dog Diaries to do…Joan Harvest’s dogniece Tess comes to mind. Tess belongs to Joan’s sister, Barbara, and she’s a deeply Catholic dog on the cusp of sainthood. I’ve started reading her diary and  it’s filled with her fascinating healings and mystical visions, so being able to photograph it with finesse will be key.

     Speaking of dogs, I have shaved Sydney. Even though I watch Groomer Has It on TV, I’m no groomer and I have a tendency to stop when the dog wants me to. The end result is always quite shocking, partly because he has giant freckles under his hair are visible only after a shave, and partly because he looks like I used a lawnmower on him. He gets a quick shower every day, so he doesn’t smell bad, he just looks bad. When he’s wet he likes to roll in the dirt, and I let him. The dirt dries quickly and then most of it blows off in the wind. (The wind here is like the A-bomb wind in Nevada in those grainy videos you see on The History Channel.) Sydney doesn’t like his face, feet, ears, or tail shaved or tampered with in any way. Mostly he likes his back shaved, and that’s it. His diary is incomprehensible, the ramblings of a madman scratched onto an old pizza box with a broken toothpick dipped in red paint. It’s disturbing. When it’s photo-ready I’ll let you judge for yourself.

In conclusion I offer up a photo of Buck I took this morning. I turned around after photographing the Sea-Monkey and saw that Buck was having an idea. His idea was, “I should go to Home Depot and get some stuff!” And then he got in the truck and went there. The idea must have been jettisoned to him via my precious Jesus Nightlight over there in the right-hand corner. That’s what happens if you don’t shut it off in the daylight; it jettisons ideas to whomever. In this case it was Buck.

Sayonara,

Wendy

Technorati Tags: Sea-Monkeys, dog grooming

, dogs

Dear Diary, Today I Used A Clothesline

[Photo from smartdrying.com by the Vermont Clothesline Co.]

 Today it’s so hot and windy it seemed like an obscenity to run the clothes dryer. So I hung a clothesline and put the laundry out to dry…but half the laundry had dried before I finished hanging out the whole basket of clothes! It left me in such awe, it was like some kind of freaking science project, like making a clock out of a potato.

People from the Southwest will think I’m insane to be so awestruck by laundry drying in five minutes, but in New England the humidity is such that laundry takes all day to dry, and sometimes it never dries at all and you find yourself taking damp laundry off the line as the sun is setting (even though it’s been hanging out there for 8 or 9 hours). Yeah, those were the good old days. If you’ve never had a broken dryer and sat waiting in vain for diapers to dry on a clothesline on a humid summer day while your kid run around bareassed, you haven’t lived.

So, wow. I’m so impressed I might do this all the time. And to think it’s only taken me four years to discover this. There should be a book filled with all these tips called “So, Now You Live In Texas…”

Or better still, “The Dummies Guide To Living In The Southwest.”

 

Technorati Tags: laundry, clothesline, El Paso

The Land Of 1,000 Naps

El Paso

900-degrees

0- humidity

I’m double posting this, so please forgive me. I’m just trying to get caught up on my blogging and while I do have plans for a Life With Buck transcript/post, I thought I’d just kill two birds with one stone and post this particular post on What I’m Doing Right Now as well. Having vanished from the Interweb for the past couple of weeks  I’ve had a lot of inquiries lately as to whether or not I am still alive. This is flattering, thank you, and the answer is yes I am alive and Buck is alive. 

Buck has been busy but what the hell have I been doing? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

During this hiatus, my youngest son Max was visiting on his break between school and his summer job on Fishers Island. Below is a photo of Max and I in a park in downtown El Paso that we call Alligator Park (I don’t know the real name, we call it that because they used to keep live alligators in the fountain back in the Old Wild West days). Max is affecting the sarcastic fake smile he always puts on whenever you’ve taken a couple of photos of him frowning and you yell at him, “Smile for crying out loud!” Then he does that smile. If you’re lucky (read wealthy) enough to be “summering” on Fishers Island this year and decide to drop in at the yacht club, Max will be among those who are preparing your meals. You may not recognize him, however, as he will be clean shaven and dressed in chef’s whites, but you should ask for him anyway and tell him you saw him here in my blog. He’ll be appalled, but he’ll (more than likely) be polite about it.

At this so-named Alligator Park, they have stone alligators in the fountain to remind you of what once was. Alligators, as you can imagine, were quite an oddity in El Paso back in the 1800s.

 

We also went to the flea market that day. Here’s Max in front of a vender who sells only Mexican wrestling masks. Try as I might, I was unable to convince him to buy one.

He made me tiramisu while he was in El Paso, helped Buck trim the notorious palm tree growing up through the middle of our house, and also helped Buck set up my pool. Remember my pool from last summer? I can’t recommend these inflatable pools enough; if you’re not a swimmer and you’re just looking to cool off, these pools are the ticket: 10-ft across, 30-inches deep, and holds 1,000 gallons of water for your cooling pleasure. They’re $49 at K-Mart and come complete with a filter a bunch of chlorine tablets. I keep mine in the shade because El Paso has been about 100+ degrees every day (and night) and I don’t want to boil myself. I take a good refreshing soak about twice a day. It’s good for the soul and keeps me from passing out. Plus, it’s inflatable, so in the winter you can store it in a box.

Although the temperature has been ungodly, Buck has been painting our courtyard every fucking day, ten or twelve hours a day, for two weeks. This courtyard is inside our house, but there is no roof. The doors were a horrible flesh color, like a crayon, and the stucco/abobe was riddled with cracks that had to be filled and painted. Here he is starting on one wall:

Here’s that same wall after he painted it, it’s a kind of cafe color now (with jalapeno doors) and I love it:

We’re having a new floor of stone tiles put in here, and then we’ll be able to add a nice potted garden and a (tasteful) fountain of some sort. In the meantime, the only thing I can grow here In El Paso is a strange grouping of cactus that we inherited with the house. I don’t really “grow” them, they just keep living, but at least they bloom in the spring when I give them some MiracleGro. Here they are getting ready to bloom:

During the day while Buck is painting in the horrid-horrid heat, listening to Coast to Coast on CD, and drinking gallons of ice water or Gatorade, I’ve been hiding in our guest room (because you can’t hear the telephone in there) and reading The Hummingbird’s Daughter by Luis Alberto Urrea (which I am obsessed with), Rolling Stone magazine and Vanity Fair. I also make notes about my own book, and take thousands of catnaps. Thousands and thousands of catnaps. The heat does that to me, even when I’m in an airconditioned house. When the sun goes down (and it’s still 900-degrees outside) Buck and I hide in the living room (which is cavernously dark and as cool as a refrigerator) and eat barbecued chicken and fruit salad (which I’m also obsessed with) while watching re-runs of The Office and My Name Is Earl. Below is a bowl of my current food obsession:

And that’s what I’ve been doing, indulging myself in what many people would consider nothing. But for me it’s a good thing. I feel good, good enough to go outside and have a soak in my pool before I retire to the guest room for some afternoon reading.

Peace Out,

Wendy

Technorati Tags: El Paso, summer, inflatable pools, fruit salad, heat, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, naps, blogging