Back at Ya

As Mavis says, there are no free feels, so here's my return ego-stroke:

The Final Beer

This is our time

now

the drunks have all gone to sleep

or passed out

and you can finally relax,

stop playing the good hostess,

set aside all anxiety and fear.

I try to pace myself

put on hold my pursuit of oblivion

so we can share this final beer.

You smoke, talk,

I hope I listen the way you want me to

drunk as I am

your grace and the cadence of your voice

punctuate exquisite silence

what a perfect way to start the new year.

Dear House Elf

I hope you enjoyed your vacation. Now that you're back, there are a few things I'd like to bring to your attention. I'd like you to make these items a priority, please. They are becoming very disruptive.

1. My sock drawer is out of control. Please match up all of the socks and put them into the appropriately colored rows. I think this will greatly speed up my morning routine. The last few weeks have been stressful.

2. The animal hair tumbleweeds have reached Dr. Seuss-like proportions. Please run the vaccum ASAP. You may need to use a rake first and perhaps a shop vac instead of the Dyson.

3. Sheba Fatone's weight problem appears to be preventing her from adequately grooming her nether regions. Please keep an eye on that and help her out when you can. So far she has refused all assistance from the Beagles and the other cats.

Thank you,
Mavis

Drunken Rambling #2

Since I have the time on my hands....

On the topic of my Lists for Good Not Evil, here's my Top Five Albums for 2006. That means, these are the albums I listened to most in 2006, not that they came out in 2006....

1. Snow Patrol - Eyes Open
2. Death Cab For Cutie - Plans
3. Ben Folds - Songs For Silverman
4. Alkaline Trio - Crimson
5. Stevie Wonder - Talking Book

Feel free to add yours.

Although, as one of my bosses used to say, "There are no Free Feels".

Drunken Rambling #1

I'm sure there have been others but since I've just noticed the ability to categorize my posts.....

Two items of significance for today.

First, I committed a Random Act of Kindness (or as DMC said, I "Paid it Forward"). I feel really sneaky and happy about it. I just cleaned off some lady's car at work but no one saw me and she is having a rough time so I feel really good about it. She came out of work, way after 5, after a day of heavy snow belt snow and found that someone had cleaned off her car. I'm absolutely giddy about it and I'll never tell it was me.

Second, DMC talked me into signing up for the Winking Lizard World Tour of Beers. He did it last year but he is much stronger than me. I can't handle much beer these days so we'll see if I make it to 100 by the end of the year (I mean, I'm sure I will drink 100 beers, I'm just not sure I'll drink them all at a Winking Lizard). I'm half the woman I used to be - almost literally - so we'll see how that goes. Although, I AM a College Student so, I got that going for me.

Right now, I'm watching "Beerfest" for the second time in a month so DMC can write a paper for our Team Building class (I chose "Over the Hedge"). We just had several beers at the WL. I'm currently drinking a Southern Tier Old Man Winter and in my drunkeness, wrote this poem for my friend, PWTS (I know it's crap, just bear with me. I haven't written a poem since I was 14):

He moves and sits still
Both with stealth and silence
Like Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, Manson
He quietly observes
And imparts his will

No grocer murders, mayhem, madness
Only food and drink and smoke and talk
Buk and slang and music
He asks nothing more from me
Than to be who I am.

His presence brings peace, wisdom,
Community, reality and truth
Past and present combine
We only move forward,
We never move back.

Red Velvet Cake

A couple weeks ago the kids at work were having a bake sale and I purchased a Red Velvet Cake. I have to admit, I picked the Red Velvet Cake because of the scene in Steel Magnolias where they show the groom's cake, which is a giant, grey armadillo. Someone chops off the tail and it looks like blood and guts because its a red velvet cake. It was disgusting. Damn good reason to choose a cake flavor, don't you think?

I have to say, it was the best fucking cake I've had in a long time. I wanted to just stick my whole face into it and slurp it down like a kid at their first birthday party (excluding the wee one whose party we attended yesterday - she was disappointingly neat). Some church ladies made it and I will be purchasing another the first opportunity I get.

Anyway, today I went shopping at one of those suburban-fake-downtown shopping centers with my mom. Since we were being girly, we ventured into the Sephora (which I always see recommended for makeup in women's magazines but had never experienced). I was sniffing my way around the store when I came upon some bath products named after foods. There were Lemon Pies, Sugar Cookies, Butter Cream Frosting and.....Red Velvet Cake. Since I really really like bath products that smell like food (Sesame Ginger, Rosemary Mint, Mango Mandarin) I had to sniff every single one and the Red Velvet was by far the best.

It was the most delicious thing I'd ever smelt. Or smelled. Whatever. Point is I almost stuck my tongue out to take a taste. It's a Limited Edition flavor so naturally I bought it.

I had every intention of blogging earlier this evening but I was obsessed with my Red Velvet Shampoo/Shower Gel/Bubble Bath to the point that I had to take my second bath of the day. (I kept going into the bathroom to sniff it anyway.)

It didn't smell quite as good as a bubble bath but smelled great as a shampoo and shower gel. I twice resisted the urge to taste it. It's such an awesome color as well - sort of a dark pearly red/nailpolish sort of color. And the bottle comes with a recipe for Red Velvet Cake on it. While I was lounging in my delicious whirlpool tub, I read the recipe and decided to make a cake. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you look at it), I was out of cocoa powder.

So, instead, I'm sipping on Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate with a shot of Navan vanilla cognac. I tried putting red food coloring into it to make a Red Velvet Hot Chocolate but the color didn't quite turn out. It's just sort of a rosy pink.

It'll have to do.

Nature Shows

I used to love watching nature shows on TV. Not The Crocodile Hunter, although I enjoyed Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom as a kid, but video footage of animals with the only noticeable human presence being the narrator's voice over. The crueler the better. The high point came when I saw an episode of The Trials of Life, narrated by David Attenborough, that made me laugh so hard that I cried and gasped for breath.

This episode featured killer whales that deliberately beached themselves on the shores of Patagonia (Argentina) to capture baby seals and bring them back into the water. What I found so incredibly funny was the absurdity of a cute domestic scene of sibling seals playing on the beach interrupted by something the size of a house suddenly emerging from the sea to steal sis (or bro), and then this house flopping back and forth to get back into the water. Even funnier was that these whales didn't seem to have the slightest interest in eating the seals. They swam into deep water, then batted the seals back and forth to each other with their tails.

I know, I was a sick person. I'm better now. And I don't think my vegetarianism has anything to do with it, at least not initially, for I had already quit eating meat for several years when I first saw The Trials of Life. And, back when we let our cat outside, my wife was always perplexed how a vegetarian could take such pleasure in another creature's homicidal fury. No, it was another nature show which changed my perspective. All I remember was a scene of a lioness, at night, trying to kill a zebra. The lioness hung upside down, clinging to the zebra, with its jaws around the zebra's throat, trying to break the zebra's neck but being unable to. I remember the terror and pain in the zebra's eyes quite clearly. Anyone who thinks nature is perfect is a moron--there's every bit as much futility and suffering in it as in the human world. And there's nothing funny about that. So I stopped watching nature shows and switched over to astronomy. Even projections of our planet's future demise comfort me, maybe because that demise won't be selective but will affect/erase all life.

Until yesterday. In the wee hours of the morning, while grazing, I ran across footage of praying mantises eating birds and mice. Fascinating! My Marxist tendencies cause me to celebrate any upheaval of hierarchies, and what could be better than a reversal of the food chain? Then I had to witness my little revolutionaries being eaten by hedgehogs. Strangely, I wasn't saddened. Rather, the liberation from morality and discipline an eat-or-be-eaten mindset presents tempted me. Why should I be anxious about my consumption of natural resources and calories? Why should I worry about the homeless, the poor, the oppressed? It's only natural to be motivated by desires and selfishness, to be a consuming machine, right? So, guilt-free, I drove to the other side of Charlotte just to have lunch.

Thankfully, later that night the TV saved me. A documentary on MLK brought me out of myself. After all, if we have evolved compassion and conscience, why would we go back to a base and violent existence unless merely out of fear?

Oliver's Hot Monkey Love and OCD

I was reading Anonymous Coworker today, laughing my ass off as usual, when I came upon a link that has me planning a trip to Baltimore as soon as I can. Maybe Spring Break. I absolutely must visit a brew pub that brews true cask-conditioned ales served with hand-pumps at a perfect 54F. Especially when one of those Ales is called "Oliver's Hot Monkey Love". Who wouldn't want to experience that?

Now to the OCD part of the post.

I do have mild obsessive compulsive disorder - officially diagnosed (documentation available in my FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act). I'm not an obsessive handwasher or lock-checker. I keep a lot of lists and I am a horder (no, not "whored" or "horror", although some would argue those as true also), which in my case means I keep every piece of paper that may ever have any (even remote) possibility of being useful.

I'm not all that severe with either of these unless I get incredibly stressed and they mostly relate to how I handle things at work. In fact, if I hadn't just blabbed it all over a blog, you'd probably never know.

For 2007 I'd like to embrace my compulsions. I want to use my compulsions for good, not evil. I want to make some "Happy Lists" to combat all the To Do and To Remember lists. First, we'll do the Top Five Best Days of My Life:

1. The day I rafted down the Mohican river with my brother, PWTS and my friend Marshmallow. It took over 8 hours for a four hour trip and involved the most alcohol I have ever consumed in one sitting.

2. My wedding day. I honestly would have put this first except immediately following the reception I vomited profusely and broke out in hives. Everyone was there, good vibes, lots of fun otherwise.

3. Drinking real Molson Canadian (higher alcohol content!) at a patio karaoke bar with a guy injecting profane lyrics into every song he sang on my fifth wedding anniversary at Niagara Falls. The Serial Killer Museum, a Haunted House and a hotel suite with a view of the falls made it even better.

4. Sitting in a park reading a book about gnomes with my friend Aaron on a beautiful summer day in Bowling Green, Ohio.

5. The day I was driving back from a spontaneous Athens, GA road trip with some friends. We stopped at truck stops, played pinball and generally travelled like we never had to make it back home.

If you are so inclined, please share yours.