ramblurted

Correspondences with Mother*

2008-06-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

Subject: Spot, The Devil Cat

My Dearest Lauren:

Spotty is itching to get booted outta the family homestead. Allow me to inform you of his latest escapade (one in which he ended up with a broom to his arse).

As you may or may not have known, we had a darlin' little robin's nest in a tree just to the right of the deck. The operative word is "had," as Spot the Devil-Cat was found sitting in the tree alongside the nest yesterday afternoon. As he scampered to get away when I came out of the sliding glass door, the nest toppled and you could hear the shrieks of baby birds, along with the squawks of both parents, who were obviously doting on their precious young. I was devastated as I gave Spot a swift swat with the nearest weapon, which just happened to be the broom, thankfully for Spot's sake. He was lucky there wasn't a shovel handy. Or a pickax. (I might add that I was spewing some choice words simultaneously with the swatting that would have made even you proud.)

At any rate, the parent birds continued to circle the area as I tried to get Spot into the house, visions of baby birds being delivered to the back door. I finally enticed him into the house with a can of Fancy Feast (shredded), where he stayed the remainder of the night.

I checked this morning to see if there was any sign that the mama bird had salvaged her nest -- or if by some miracle -- any of the little ones were still around.

Nuttin.

There ends yet another saga of Spot the Devil-Cat, who is about to get deported to one apartment building on the east side of NYC. Seriously.

Love you,
Mud

P.S. And if a dead baby bird arrives on the back porch, I'm boxing Spotty up and mailing him to you. Or I may just ship him out on a slow boat to China.

*Reprinted here in its original form and without permission from the author. Kisses, Moms!

So appropriate

2008-06-10T12:43:00.000-07:00

(Who loves someecards.com? This girl.)

This?

2008-06-05T16:20:00.000-07:00

This is not good.

Sat  Jun 7 - 92° 

Sun  Jun 8 - 91° 

Mon  Jun 9 - 92°

Tue  Jun 10 - 92°

Wed  Jun 11 - 86° 

Thu  Jun 12 - 87°

Fri  Jun 13 - 84° 

Sat  Jun 14 - 82° 

So ...

2008-03-10T13:03:00.001-07:00

... I guess this means "I'm tired" isn't going to cut it as an excuse for not running tonight?

Way to go, dude. I officially have no outs for the next 73 years.

Suck it, stars!

2008-03-04T06:05:00.000-08:00

Onion satire hitting too close to home. Yet again.

Scorpio October 24 - November 21
Cries of pleasure and ecstasy will fill your bedroom this Thursday, forcing you to bang on your ceiling with the end of a broomstick.

Well, isn't?

2008-03-02T16:16:00.001-08:00

Reset button

2008-02-29T13:58:00.000-08:00

I've never been as uninspired to write as I have been this past year. You'd think that life in New York would provide good blog fodder, but I guess that's only if your New York life involves things like "doing shit" and "leaving the apartment." Bummer.

I've once again found myself in the what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life stage. You know, the one that hits post-college and ends, oh, never? I thought that the very essence of a stage is that it's something you pass through and progress from, but apparently I've fallen into some crazy time warp that allows me to get only THIS FAR before sling-shotting me back to where I started.

Why can't I just be content? I have a good job, I make good money, I live in "the" city. But I hate it -- all of it. It's like blue cheese. It stinks like ass and it makes me throat-vomit.

This state of cluelessness and frustration lost it's appeal after I rounded the 25-mark, and I swear to the lord jebus above that if I don't have my shit figured out by 30, I'm becoming a carnie. Because at least there it won't matter if I don't have dental.

With love, from my Valentine

2008-02-14T13:48:00.000-08:00

Love you, too, Teej.

Also

2008-02-13T12:14:00.001-08:00

I met one of these guys this weekend when I was in CO visiting Big B. It's a Burnese Mountain Dog and I want one. They get pretty large (you should have seen this puppy's paws!), so I officially present reason #3,598 of why I should move out of the city.

Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries

2008-02-13T12:03:00.000-08:00

I have three hours left of the workday before it's time to go home to put on the Hazmat suit. No, I'm not trekking down into the sewers or exposing myself to the plague, but I am going to be dealing with a hazardous material. Tonight I'm going to be in the same room with the one and only Clay "Freakboy" Aiken. I don't mean to be cruel, Clay, but you scare the bejesus out of me, and I definitely don't want to catch whatever it is that's floating around in your bloodstream. (T.J. also suggests I wear a condom, but since I have neither a penis nor the inclination to put one inside of Clay, I think the suit will be sufficient.)

Even though this guy(?) terrifies me to the point of nightmares, I'm excited to see the show (which I'm attending thanks to Alli's kind and generous parents). I've always loved Monty Python and have been itchin’ to see Spamalot, so I'm hoping it does the original Holy Grail justice. We shall see. I think a lot will depend on whether I can get over the fact that it's Clay, Clay AIKEN, who's up there dancing and singing on the stage.

*shudders*

Somebody thinks so ...

2008-01-09T06:56:00.000-08:00

Um ... okay.

2008-01-07T09:25:00.001-08:00

Whatever floats your crazy lil' boat.

Mister Max

2007-12-14T06:22:00.000-08:00

This is Mister Max. He lives down the hall from me, which makes my plot to steal him so much easier to carry out. (You really can't blame me ... look at those cheeks.)

Dear Santa,

2007-12-03T08:43:00.000-08:00

For Christmas this year I would very much like a coyote. And pretty much this woman's whole life. I want to live in a cabin in Wyoming and be a writer/photographer and ride a horse to the supermarket! And maybe have a jet pack so that I can return to the city whenever the other half of my split personality decides she needs the energy, creativity and daily emotional ass-raping that is New York.

DO YOU HEAR ME, KRINGLE?

To recap, I want:

(1) Coyote. Preferably newborn, and not yet accustomed to hunting its own food. If "prosthetic arm" or "vindication for my cat" ends up on my list next year, three elves are going to eat it.

(1) Cabin in some quaint, quirky, western mountain town (think light-hearted ABC sitcom and related wacky hijinks!).

(1) Horse. Name negotiable, but partial to variations of "Butterscotch," "Snuzzle," "Daisykins," and "Bitch Had it Coming IV."

(2) Jet packs. One for cabin in quaint, quirky, sitcom-worthy mountain town; one for NYC penthouse overlooking Central Park.

(1) Penthouse overlooking Central Park. (I may have forgotten to mention that earlier.)

Don't screw me over, fat man. I'm in PR. And I own a crossbow.

Love,
Lauren

P.S. Thanks, Dooce, for flagging the coyote blog and sending my already obsessed-over fantasy into hyper drive.

Thankful to be born in the age of the Hot Pocket

2007-11-26T12:06:00.000-08:00

I had big aspirations this Thanksgiving. Huge, even. I decided that I was going to cook something – anything – that didn’t taste like crap.

This was an ambitious undertaking as I am 100% inept when it comes to culinary creations of any kind. I can follow a recipe to the letter and the dish still comes out tasting like barn-smell. I’m not kidding. It doesn’t matter what it is – cooked carrots or cupcakes, once touched by my oven-mitt-of-death, the finished product tastes like a mixture of hay, manure, and pretty much the entire cast of “Babe.”

I think that part of my issue is that until recently I have been thoroughly uninterested in that big, scary room with all the mystery appliances. To me, the kitchen serves no purpose other than housing my folder of take-out menus and beloved microwave. And as far as food prep goes, if it can’t be unwrapped, microwaved, and ready to eat in 5 minutes or less, I generally don’t bother.

But on Wednesday, I decided to tempt the fates and try my hand at what seemed like a very simple recipe: pecan pie cookies. There were 8 ingredients – 8! Flour, baking powder, brown sugar, an egg, vanilla, butter, heavy cream and pecans. All I had to do was mix them all up, plop ‘em on a cookie sheet, and bake for 10 minutes.

They smelled really yummy while baking, and I have to admit that when I taste-tested one before putting them in a Tupperware to take home to the fam, they weren’t half bad. But somehow, in the 55-minute train ride between the city and my parents’ house in Jersey, the curse struck again. After proudly announcing my feat to the family, I took an in-good-faith nibble of a cookie to prove that it wasn’t toxic. And gagged. Hardcore.

Due to some weird science-can’t-explain-it phenomenon, the cookies were both soggy and dry. Soggy AND dry! With the trademark barn-smell flavor. They were god-awful, and that’s putting it nicely. My parents smiled through the pain and did the mandatory “I don’t know what you’re talking about – they’re great!” thing, but between my own offended taste buds and their poorly disguised tears, I decided to dump all 40 cookies down the disposal and promised everyone that I would never go near the oven again.

"Thankful" does not begin to describe their collective reaction at my proclamation. Freaking turkeys. (Couldn't help myself ...)

Weekend

2007-11-19T13:38:00.000-08:00

1. Something has gone terribly, terribly wrong if you're sore from bowling.

(a) With a 7-pound kiddie ball.

2. Delaware is a weird little state.

3. Seeing old friends is nice.

(a)Especially when they're so happy with where they've landed in life.

(i) See 1, 1a, 2.

Old hag

2007-11-14T07:36:00.000-08:00

It’s been a quiet few days. Went home on Saturday for a visit and bumped into a former high school classmate on the train. I’d seen him here and there throughout my college years, but this is the first time since I've fallen over the mid-twenties hump. It’s always weird to have run-ins with people I still picture as teenagers … they look and act so, I don’t know, adult? Senior year of high school was a decade ago, yet I perpetually feel like I’m 18 and as clueless as ever.

PULL IT TOGETHER, WOMAN: You're 28 and closing in quickly on gray hair, laugh lines and casual day-wear for misses. How terribly, terribly frightening.

Crazy

2007-11-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

Although it’s something I’m not really proud to admit, I’m a pretty self-conscious person. I know that generally nobody cares what I’m doing, or how I look, or whether that’s a piece of dry skin or a crusty booger on the side of my nose. People are too consumed with their own business to give a second glance to the sweaty girl on the subway (it’s the thyroid meds -- lay off!). But still.

For the most part, I think my self-consciousness stems from the fact that I am a huge people watcher. Like, huge. Like I watch people and don’t realize I’m doing it … I watch people and forget that it’s not a one-way street, that they can look right back at me and see me shoveling fistfuls of popcorn into my pie hole while glaring incredulously at their conversations. Oh this isn't the 5 p.m. showing of “Boring Girl Talks For Hours About Office Fax Machine, Unavailable Boyfriend, and Pesky Bunions”? My bad.

I figure I cannot be the only person who is an avid observer of human behavior, a.k.a. CRAZY LADY WHO WON’T STOP STARING, and thus my self-consciousness. I just know that someone on the subway, for example, is all up in my business. I sit down and immediately assume my best nonchalant I’m-totally-not-paranoid-or-in-any-other-way-mentally-unstable look, and then panic because oh my god, my hair is a little bit frizzy today and that senior citizen across the aisle is silently mocking me. You here for the show? You here for the show, old man? I see what you’re up to, pretending you’re all “asleep.” I know your angle! I invented it! Sheeeiiit.

Yeah. Maybe I’m a little less self-conscious and a whole lotta schizophrenic. Either/or.

Public Service Announcement

2007-11-07T11:32:00.000-08:00

My roomie and I have the sweetest little dog staying with us right now. Her name is Candy, and although about a quarter of his size, she reminds me very much of my dog Snickers. They’re similar in coloring and are both friendly, loyal dogs with rather unfortunate names. Candy? Snickers? Are you serious?

Anyway, this puppy is one of the cutest I’ve come to know. Her owners adopted her from Guatemala, where she lived with someone who beat her cruelly. She still has a hard time trusting new people, and although I knew to be very cautious with her and let her approach me when we first met, she cowered and whined when I ever-so-slowly reached out my hand to let her sniff me. Her old owner inflicted a number of head injuries and so when she sees an unfamiliar person reaching for her, experience has taught her that she’s going to be hit. I’ve never seen an animal so frightened. It completely broke my heart.

Gotta wonder what this nice little dog could have done to warrant capital punishment. She barked? She had an accident in the house? She shed a little? She breathed? Definitely cause to Michael-Vick this beast into submission, for sure.

Whenever I hear/experience stories like this, I have to force myself to remember that although there are a lot of messed up people out there who do these kinds of things, there are also a lot of people and organizations working to save abandoned or abused animals. Of course there’s the ASPCA, as well as the North Shore Animal League, the world’s largest no-kill animal shelter. I got Snicks from the Humane Society, and Spotty, my strangely dog-like cat, is a former Rahway street-rat who was abandoned by his original owners some time ago. He wasn’t in a shelter, but I have to mention him because he’ll cut me if I don’t. The streets are rough, man.

The real pernt (as my mother would say) of this whole diatribe is just to say that you shouldn’t be a douchebag and hurt animals. Amen.

Devil germs

2007-11-06T08:08:00.000-08:00

I was in the weight room of my building last night when a middle-aged woman came in to work out. I was the only other person in the tiny little gym, which is pretty rare for 8 p.m. on a Monday. The seven machines are premium real estate and it can be incredibly frustrating to claim time during peak hours. I was pretty psyched that there were only two of us to share the equipment, and so I gave her a hey-lady-neighbor-we-totally-lucked-out! smile. But this woman was having none of my friendliness. She shot down my smile with a death-stare and a way-too-audible grunt of disgust.

I found it pretty comical that this woman was so insanely bothered by my presence, and really had no idea (and could not have cared less) what her issue was. But then I saw that she was one of THEM. One of those overly germ-a-phobic people who freak at the idea of touching a doorknob without Cloroxing the crap out of it in advance (I call these people CRAZY and annoying as all hell). It wasn't my presence in the gym that was an affront to all that was good and holy – it was the fact that I was a grimy, germ-toting menace to society who had somehow escaped from the government-mandated quarantine where I so clearly belonged.

It was nuts. I would use a machine and, although I wasn't sweating or otherwise hygienically offensive, wiped the machines down (I follow the rules, yo). No dice! Apparently I’m either incapable of correctly using a disinfectant or a carrier of some as-yet unknown pandemic-threatening disease, because this woman simply had to re-sanitize the machines before she’d even think of sitting her own sweaty ass on the seat. Ridiculous, I tell you. Beyotch wouldn't even touch the pins with her bare hands – she had to use a paper towel to change the weights.

I really had to resist faking a coughing fit and then apologizing, “Sorry, it’s the damn TB. Now how’s about a high-five for a workout well done!” I think she would have dropped dead from the very suggestion.

I know that some people aren’t good about wiping the equipment down, but seriously? Get a grip. Germs are not your biggest issue, lady. From the looks of it I’d say your thighs are.

Third time's a charm

2007-11-05T07:15:00.000-08:00

This is the third – THIRD – blog I’ve started. It’s not that I don’t finish what I start or that I have A.D.D. (too terribly); it’s that I invariably go back, read what I’ve written over the months, and become so embarrassed by either the content or writing that I feel the need to abandon ship and start again. I did the same thing when I was younger and kept a traditional diary/journal. I have absolutely no clue what I thought/felt from 8 through 18 because every single one of my journals has been torn to shit. All that I've been able to piece together is that in 2nd grade I received a blue Puffalump for Christmas (it was "sooooooo cute!" -- heart, smiley face, heart) and when I was 11 I thought some guy in my grade had “a really great body.” I have no idea how that latter page survived the shredder (or how the girl whose parents fast-forwarded through kissing scenes learned the phrase “really great body” at age eleven).

Anyway, needless to say I’m starting again and hoping that I can stick it out/not be so goddamned neurotic. We shall see.

Blogroll/flickr badge/etc. will be added eventually. Maybe.

*ramblurted*