I ain't no Miss Muffett

I was sitting in bed trying to figure out where to put the pole at the wedding ceremony when a fat spider dropped from the ceiling and plunked itself on the edge of the bed. It poked me with one of its hairy legs and said, "Fluff, you seem pretty calm these days. Did you forget about the Upcoming Event?"

"No," I said, "I'm just not going to worry about it until it's nearly upon me."

"Speaking of which," I continued. "could you back your hairy butt up a tad, you're encroaching on my personal space." I said this in an extremely calm fashion, for I am well-composed these days.

"Really?" it said. "So you aren't in the least bit rattled by the Upcoming Event or my gross appendages?" This while feathering a few strands of my hair with two of the eight.

"Dude," I said, "No touchy the hair." and I gave it a resounding SMACK on its left pedapalp. It gave a bit of a squeak, startling me for I would have thought a giant arachnid would bellow or roar, not squeak like a silly little girl.

"Well there's no cause for violence," it said while moving over a skosh. I thought I saw the glimmer of tears in one of its four eyes, and my heart softened just a tad. Still, it was a spider; I adjusted the magical covers and went back to thinking about the pole.

I'm learning to deal with spiders these days, and I've had a couple of recent successes. Take, for instance, the cupcakes.

We had a birthday celebration. We ordered cupcakes made to look like pool balls. We agreed to pay an arm and a leg.

I sent the cupcake shop a picture of pool ball cupcakes. I asked if they could do that in the time allowed. I went to pick the order up at the agreed-upon time.

Now, take a moment to open a new browser. Using BING or google, your pref (but I highly recommend BING), do an image search for pool ball cupcakes.

See all those pics? All with 1 - 8 on solid balls, 9 - 15 on stripes? In order, yellow, blue, red, purple, orange, green, burgundy, black? I sent the decorator one of those pics. She spent four hours decorating 15 cupcakes. Solid yellow was numbered 1, striped yellow was numbered 9, a greyish sort of solid was numbered 8, and there all resemblance to any of those pictures stopped; not a single one of the remaining cakes was appropriately matched to color or number. And they were glittered.

I discussed the issue with their storefront representative. The discussion was calm, cool and collected on both sides. She wanted to "redo" the numbers; I had no time to wait. I asked if I had to accept the order; she said, "No, of course not! It's our fault."

I left the store. We went to the party at the pool hall. I was a little sad that the birthday boy didn't get to see the cool pool ball cupcakes, but heh, no big deal, we had another cake there anyway. I made it up to him later, too, by taking 20 pictures of various women's boobs. I think he will find that a reasonable consolation.

The next day, the cupcake shop owner/manager called and left me voicemail telling me she was going to still charge me the $60 because her decorator spent a lot of time on the order and the cupcakes were absolutely darling.

I left her voicemail that she did not have my authorization to charge the card and we weren't paying for darling.

This started an email trail that her head decorator eventually tagged onto. Here is a snippet from that convo, a comment from Heather, HEAD DECORATOR at New York Cupcakes:

Heather: "You seemed extremely laid back about what you were expecting, and never once was it mentioned that these needed to be an exact replica of an actual pool ball set."

Good LORD, Heather, why on earth would we want accuracy? What the hell do you think the PICTURE was for?

Good thing we weren't putting the irish lad's NAME on the cake, eh?

Still, this inspires me to add a feature to my schizophrenic blog, Wreckorators and their wrecks of art, starting with this one...for Heather.



That's some pile of...cake, eh?

Fuzzy Logic

Main Entry: Boolean algebra
Function: noun
Date: circa 1889
: an algebraic system that consists of a set closed under two binary operations and that can be described by any of various systems of postulates all of which can be deduced from the postulates that each operation is commutative, that each operation is distributive over the other, that an identity element exists for each operation, and that for every element in the set there exists another element which when combined with the first under either one of the operations yields the identity element of the other operation

Huh? This is why I live in Dictionopolis, not Digitopolis -- no rigamarole. (Main Entry: rig·ma·role, circa 1736, confused or meaningless talk).

I had a dream last night, one that did not require the intervention of my Dream Angel. It wasn't pleasant, but it was empowering. In my dream, my mother came to visit. She was sitting in the toe of the shoe with one of my girls at a table made from the trunk of a tree; the other three were just coming in from playing in the snow with me, and their cheeks were all aglow.

A meal was on the table, and my mother was dishing up. As the first of the three latecomers removed her foxgloves and slid down the hardwood arch to slip gracefully onto her toadstool, my mother said, "You're ten minutes late, you owe me ten minutes of work after dinner." The child meekly nodded her acceptance of the pronounced sentence and sat down. Grandma dished her up a plate.

The second of the three approached the table, and my mother growled, "You're twenty minutes late, you owe me twenty minutes of work after dinner." The child meekly nodded her acceptance of the pronounced sentence and sat down. Grandma dished her up a plate.

The third child approached the table, and Grandma said, "You're late, you owe me $85!" to which we all gasped for this child had no money and was currently struggling to make ends meet in her own little shoe down the cobbled way.

"Mom," I said, "that's not fair! You've pronounced reasonable sentences for the other girls; why not in this case?"

"Because I'm in charge," she said, and I paled.

"But grandma..." said Child Number 3.

"We'll hear no more about it!" said Grandma. "Now sit down, you two, and eat; the shoestring potatoes are getting cold!"

I looked at three shocked faces around the table. I looked at one darling daughter with tears in her eyes. I looked at the stern countenance of a face that I...suddenly no longer feared.

"No," I said. "Pardon me for disagreeing, but this is MY shoe, and I make the rules. If a child is late to dinner, I will determine what an appropriate consequence would be AFTER taking into consideration mitigating circumstances. If the child is late and IN MY COMPANY, there will be NO punishment at all for it won't have been her fault.

I appreciate that you cooked us such a splendid meal, but you really should have inquired when we might be expected home. We were spending the day together and there is nothing more precious than the time I have with my children.

Now that's the end of this discussion. Would someone please pass the buttercup?"

The lives and time of Vagina Prick

My name is Vagina Prick. My parents are quite proud of their "wit." I hate them with a passion.

They came up with that little gem because their last name is pronounced preek. "Wouldn't it be fun," they said somewhere between a 2004 Domaine Serene Chardonnay and the Glen Fiona Syrah, "if we named the baby Vagina, but pronounced it vageena?"

They weren't actually pregnant at the time; that happened shortly after the Vintage 1922 Barbeito Malvazia Madeira. They've made an art of putting the cart before the horse.

Sadly, I inherited neither their sense of humour nor their inclination to fine wines. I drink Vodka (pronounced Wodka by the way, with a Russian accent).

See? I have a sense of humour; just not theirs.

Strangely enough, in spite of being saddled with the worst name in the history of womankind, I lead a charmed life, I truly do. Whether that is because I was conceived on some pretty heady alcoholic fumes or because God must always be on top, I don't know and I don't care. I only know that I am wonderfully and amazingly still alive.

I've been thrown from a seventh floor window, hit by a rock n' roll tour bus and shot twice with a nailgun. Oh, and there was the guy who tried to poison me and ended up dead on the floor in/at my place. My weekend help was not at all pleased about that one, the deceased soiled himself from multiple orifices AND his nails turned black. I was pretty happy, though, since it was supposed to be me.

Despite so many people wanting me dead, the cosmos are clearly on my side and I'm fine with that. Perhaps they have an overwhelming sense of compassion for a person who has gone through life being alternately referred to as the "c" word and the "p" word.

I have a boyfriend. He sports the more (but not entirely) normal name of Thom Thumb, pronounced (you guessed it) thom tum. He doesn't get as much grief for his name and no one wants him dead, except me sometimes but only when he's being the "p" word. He never calls me the "c" word, he suspects his life is not quite so charmed as mine and values it that much more for the lack thereof.

So why do so many people want me dead? This is a question I regularly ask myself and my therapist. She doesn't know the answer yet, but reassures me she is getting closer to discovering it - and to publishing her book, coincidentally.

She's getting paid $300 an hour, so she's likely not all that motivated to reach the point of enlightenment anytime in the near future. I wish she's hurry up; there's no telling when someone else might want to take a nailgun to me...

Fastest Draw in the West

Speaking of blood...

I went to give again today. You may recall I made a commitment several months ago to donate; I was rejected (and soundly, I might add) because I had been drinking diet coke that day.

I've since learned that the woman who rudely spewed me from the blood bus was full of shit. There is no such rule that one cannot donate blood if all one drinks is diet coke.

Still, I was glad to take the pass; I wasn't actually prepared to squish that particular spider. But, I've grown up since then and am beginning to more agressively challenge my socially anxious self. I determined, as part of my self-improvement program, to once again sign up to donate.

Today was the day; the bus was out front, and Adam showed up promptly to make sure I kept my appointment. I made one weak attempt to circumvent the inevitable, but he persisted and I caved.

He reminded me, "No need to mention the diet coke, just say yes when they ask if you've been drinking water."

"I don't need to lie," I told him, "I've calculated that I HAVE actually had 60 ounces of (carbonated) water so far today."

We climbed aboard and I went through the questionaire with alacrity; I knew the drill and I was prepared for all the carefully worded questions. Yes, no, no, no, yes, yes, no, no and no. Turn the paper in. Step into the sound-proof booth. Answer the same questions, this time in person.

Tap my foot. Read the sign about Kenya. Try not to look at the bottle of curettes or the blood-red trash receptacles. It isn't blood, it's a spider and we are here, the technician and I to squish with firm resolve.

There's cool music being piped into the sound-proof booth which isn't really a booth, it it is a large field of lavender, and I am in the field with my darling daughters. We're picking lavender to make sachets for Mother's Day. There is no bus, no whitecoat, no sharpies in sight. Just me and my girls and a field of nose-tickling scents.

What medication did you take from the watch list? Feldene. How long ago? 35 years ago. How long did you take it? Two weeks.

When did you have a transfusion? Thirty years ago. Was it human or other animal? Human, I assume.

Where have you been outside the US/Canada? Europe and Mexico. How long were you there? Two weeks in London, 1 week in France, 1 week in Mexico. When did this travel to Mexico take place? 2 months ago. Where in Mexico?

Sayulita.

On the coast?

Yes, about 40 miles north of Puerto Vallarta.

When were you there?

March 6th through the 13th.

Now, he didn't exactly strip off his gloves and throw them in the trash. He didn't spit me from the bus as though I were a nasty taste in his mouth. But he did give me a note.

That says I cannot donate for a year from March 13th.

I am one happy camper in a spider-free tent, oh yes, I am.