A small taste of what it's like to be me

If I had to describe my life, I would personify it as a pasty, red-haired older brother who's constantly dangling awesome stuff just within my reach then jerking it back again just as my fingertips start to get a grip. Then it laughs maniacally through crooked, braces-lined teeth.

A case in point:

Yesterday I found a piece to one of my aquarium filters that I thought was long gone and lost for good. I mean, this thing had been M.I.A. since I moved more than two years ago. So imagine my surprise when I was cleaning the aquarium I was about to sell and found this little filter part just hanging out in the aquarium stand, wedged between the middle and bottom shelves. With an enthusiastic "All right!" I put the filter piece in my pocket and carried on with my cleaning.

But life would not let me have my filter piece and use it too.

This morning I remembered yesterday's find and eagerly rushed to fit the filter piece in its proper place--no longer would my filter be held into position by a wad of Saran Wrap! I found the tiny hole where the piece should be mounted and inserted it. Then I turned it to get it positioned correctly, which is when I heard a small snap, and found the now-broken filter piece lying useless in my hand.

"OF COURSE!" I spat.

After which, I may or may not have childishly thrown the broken filter piece across the kitchen floor.

I wonder what life is going to tease me with next?

ldfjdskjfown! Morrissey! sdkfjlajoioih

I make no secret of the fact that I am a huge Morrissey fan. Huge. Like, colossal. I love that man. My uterus is permanently reserved for the child(ren) that I'm ready to bear him, should he find himself in need of an incubator. I LOVE HIM. Ok, *deep breath* collecting myself and toning down the creepiness.

A few months ago a friend and I went to France (among other France-like countries) on vacation, and our trip fortuitously coincided with his France dates. I had tickets to see him in Lille, but he wound up having to cancel that show due to illness, and I wound up having my heart shattered into a kagillion tiny pieces. Dis. A. Pointed. But we managed to resume our vacation and still have a good time, even though it was Moz-concert-free. Bbbbooo.

But today I got capital news! Morrissey has started adding more U.S. dates to his tour! Hallelujah! I'd like to think that eventually he'll be adding the SLC to his schedule, but for now I'm stoked that he'll be playing Las Vegas on December 5. I've started keeping my eye out for the on-sale date and trying to find a travel/concert partner. I'm crossing my stubby little fingers that he doesn't wind up canceling that date, too. I so badly want to see him in concert again; the two times I saw him (in 2007) were dreamy. So, chances are really good that I'll be driving to Vegas in a few months. And here's hoping that the Moz, in his infinite wisdom, sees fit to add a Salt Lake date as well.

Oh please, oh please, oh please, oh please!

"That's what she said" Thursday

Mom squeezes a lemon wedge into her Diet Coke. It slips out of her fingers and into her drink.

Mom [visibly disappointed]: "Ohhh, I wasn't done squeezing it yet!"
Me: "That's what she said!"

One step closer to a less messy bird

Birds like to get into trouble and make messes, especially my green cheek conure, Jiles (see sidebar for photo). He's only about four or five inches tall, but he leaves a swath of destruction behind him a mile wide. He loves shredding Kleenexes, tearing up his cage liner, and detaching toys from his cage and throwing them on the floor, often breaking pieces off in the process. He recently figured out that he's strong enough to pick up his entire food or water dish and throw it on the cage floor. It wouldn't be such a big deal if his bird food weren't so expensive and the water didn't make such a mess, but it is and it does, ergo problem. I've explained to him time and again that food and water dishes are a privilege, not a right, but he just keeps on picking them up and throwing them down with renewed gusto.

I got sick of cleaning up his spilled dishes, so I tried tying them down with those little twisty things that come with garbage and bread bags. They just piqued his curiosity. He actually started getting excited when he would see me coming with a new twist tie and set to work on it like a puzzle to solve, a birdie Rubik's cube. Pretty soon he learned how to untwist them, as evidenced by the mangled twisties left on the floor beneath his cage and the spilled food and water on the cage floor. I was just about to surrender when I read a blog post by another bird nerd whose Senegal parrot kept escaping through her food doors (thankfully Jiles hadn't figure out how to do that yet, but I swear it was coming). He solved the problem by buying a couple of those spring-loaded clip key chains and locking the food door from the outside. Freaking brilliant! There was my solution!

I hit up the local Lowe's, but all theirs were too big for what I needed, so I opted for a couple of small luggage locks. Jiles instantly climbed down and started trying to chew through the locks when he saw me clipping them on. Sucker. Those babies worked like a charm. No more wasted food or sopping, gooey cage liners to clean up. I'm going to be whizzed if I have to remove the keys because Jiles learned how to work them. And I wouldn't put it past him. He's a pretty smart little bird.

Now, if you're lucky, I might share my solution for cleaning algae out of aquariums.

How sick am I?

• I turned down M&Ms and Dairy Queen ice cream, opting instead to slump in the back seat
  
• Showering and getting ready to take my sister to lunch wore me clean out
• Lunch at Olive Garden wore me out further
• I had to sit down and rest while walking through Pier 1
• I was ready to go to bed at 5:30

Being sick is getting so old. But I think I'm on the mend--feeling better every day.

Plants vs. Zombies

I first heard about Plants vs. Zombies while reading Jorge Garcia's (you know, he plays Hurley on "LOST") blog. I'm not usually one for computer games, but this one just kind of stuck in my head until I finally checked it out. I got the free trial download from PopCap here, then spent about three hours straight protecting my virtual house from the zombies that were crossing my yard to eat my juicy, delicious brains. That was enough to get me hooked, and I soon found myself at my local Target (love you, Target!!!) buying the full version. No matter where you go Plants vs Zombies costs $20. That doesn't seem like a big price to pay for the amount of entertainment I've gotten out of this game.

Thank heaven I picked it up before my cold hit me full-force. I've spent the bulk of my weekend watching NCIS marathons and devising strategies to keep scary, moaning zombies off my virtual front lawn. The awesome thing is that PvZ helped keep my mind off of how crappy I felt. The bad thing is that sometimes I got so anxious I would have to put it away for a bit. Sure it's funny, but I think there's something deeply disturbing about hearing crunching noises and seeing a giant THE ZOMBIES ATE YOUR BRAIN! flash across your screen when you lose. Thankfully, I win way more than I lose.

Siiiiiiick

It's official. I'm sick. And it's officially sucktacular. Sure, it's a good excuse to leave my house a huge mess, but I feel terrible! I have a nagging headache, a sore neck (from lying down so much), a runny nose, a congested chest, and so on and so forth. What super sucks is I was supposed to go to Olive Garden tonight with some of the girls from church (I'm trying to make new friends and be more sociable). I had to text in sick, which is tragic because I triple love Olive Garden and we were supposed to go to the new one that just opened up the street. Figures. The good/bad news is I also called and canceled my appointment with the bishop's counselor because there's no way I'm going to try to get dressed in my Sunday finest when I feel like a big lump of rotting meat. So now I won't know what my calling is until who knows when. But at least I have another blissful week without a calling! I guess every cloud has a silver, snotty lining.

So, how have I spent the past twenty-four hours? Lying in bed and lying on the couch staring at the TV. I slept like total crap last night because my nose would drip every twenty to thirty minutes and wake me up. I finally just started keeping the Kleenex box next to my pillow. As soon as I'd feel a tickle I'd wake up, blow, and then throw the Kleenex on the tissue pile next to the bed. It's all very sanitary and classy. I'm going to take a Lunesta or Ambien tonight and see if that doesn't help me stay asleep better. Bleeeeeeh!

This morning while I was zoning on the couch I decided I really needed some orange juice and saltines. I called my dad at 11:50 and asked him if he wouldn't be so kind as to run to the store and grab me some. He said my mom had the car (they have one main car and one crappy, unregistered car that they keep for emergencies) but he would tell her to pick me up that stuff as soon as she got home. So I waited...

And I waited.

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Waited some more...

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Finally at 5:00 I called my parents again. This time my mom picked up. "Did Dad gib you by bessage?"

"What message?"

I got her up to speed, and she was horrified to hear that I'd been waiting all day for orange juice and saltines. She got in the crappy emergency car (Dad had obviously forgotten about me and gone to run some errand in the good car) and came over, bringing a spicy chicken sandwich from Wendy's and enough food to feed a sick person for a week:

Four big cans of soup
Two Cups o' Noodles
One box of saltine crackers
One box of Twinkies
One box toaster strudel
One box Keebler fudge stripe cookies
Two Hostess cherry pies (Gee, I'm starting to get why I have a bit of a weight problem...)
Two bottles of orange juice without pulp

My. Mom. Is. AWESOME!!! I won't lie, I told her a Hostess cherry pie sounded really good, but I didn't tell her to get me the other stuff. When I asked my dad to bring me orange juice I thought about specifying no pulp, but I didn't want to be demanding; I would just be grateful that somebody would bring me delicious juice. But my mom is so awesome she somehow knows I prefer pulpless orange juice, and it's not like we grew up drinking it every day or anything... She's just endowed with that special mom-awesomeness.

Lest you think my dad is some selfish, lazy jerk who won't bring his daughter juice and saltines when she's sick, you should know that he called me when my mom was on the way and apologized profusely. You should also know that he once left a New Year's Eve party when I was seventeen and had a nasty, nasty, nasty flu* to go to the store and buy me chocolate cake from the bakery. I hadn't eaten in days because I had no appetite, and I finally thought that chocolate cake sounded good (can you tell I crave junk when I'm sick?), so I called and asked if he would go buy me a chocolate cake mix. He left the party immediately (it's very rare that my dad actually leaves on errands the second you ask him to go--it's not his fault, it's genetic) and bought me, not a cake mix, but an actual chocolate bundt cake from the bakery. It was delicious because it was delivered with love. And because it was frosted. Too bad I could only get two bites of it down before I passed out again and slept through midnight. But the point is, my dad is as awesome as my mom. Unless he just wasn't having fun at that New Year's Eve party...

Monday is my sister's birthday and my mom and I are supposed to take her to lunch to celebrate. I hope I'm feeling much better by then. Even if I'm not I might just have to suck it up. I don't want to skip out on Olive Garden twice because of this stupid devil cold.



*I only get sick about once every two years because I have an awesome immune system of steel and because I have very limited interactions with the giant germ factories that are children. Sadly, when illnesses do get through, they're the really nasty ones. That's why I remember sicknesses--rarity and severity. Kind of a back-handed blessing.

Insult + Injury = Me

I haven't been feeling 100% lately. Kinda sore, scratchy throat, kinda congested chest ("conchested"), tired a lot... Well, tired a lot is really par for the course. But the throat and chest, that's not. I've been treating my sore throat with copious amounts of ice cream, and I've prescribed a wait-and-see policy for the chest. I haven't died yet so my home remedies must be working. But my point is, I'm not feeling real gangbusters right now. So of course it would be now that I would get a phone call from...

DUN DUN DUUUUUUN!

The bishop's secretary.

[Groan!]

For those not familiar with how we Mormons roll, we have no paid clergy; everything is carried out on a volunteer (well, not really volunteer) basis. The bishop heads up his local church group (called a ward), and other people fill in other duties (called callings)--anything from accounting to teaching to writing up the weekly church program. Every job is a calling, every calling is issued from the bishop and his counselors. If the bishop were the head of a major crime syndicate (he's not... probably), the counselors would be his henchmen. The bishop is a very busy man so the counselors do a lot of his dirty work, like scheduling appointments and issuing callings.

That's where the insult comes in. I got that call from the bishop's secretary asking me to come in Sunday and meet with one of the counselors. There's really only one thing it could be for.

A calling.

A calling... A calling... I've gone two blissful years without a calling. It's not so much that I mind having a calling, it's the fear of what the calling could possibly be. The finalists for scariest, most undesired callings are primary teacher or primary presidency (primary is the children's [ages 3-12] organization) or nursery leader (nursery is for children ages 18 months to three years--the diaper and potty training years). Children. Terrify. Me. The bodily fluids! The bodily fluids!!! I've also found children to be quite touchy and unaware of societal restrictions on personal space. I didn't want to say it before, but I suspect my current ailment traces back to my three-year-old niece. She's cute as a button, which is her sickness germs' greatest weapon in their offensive arsenal. She's so adorable my sister kisses and hugs her. The germs stick to my sister who breathes them on to me. I'm sure you see where I'm going with this. Now, imagine being in a small church room with THIRTY sick three-year-olds! It would be a miracle if I came out alive, or even with a functioning kidney. Fingers crossed I don't get called to the primary or nursery! Eep!

You know what calling I'd really like? I want to type up the weekly church bulletin. I can't think of a better calling. I'd know all the latest poop going on in the ward, and I'd make sure those bulletins were 100% typo-free. It would be awesome. Kid-free and not a lot of time involved. That's the calling for me.

But I think that's probably too much to hope for. Now, everybody cross your fingers and/or pray that I get single adult rep again. It's a cop-out calling they give to single people they don't know what to do with, but at least I wouldn't have to do much.

Until Sunday, I'll assume the worst.

Kickin' depression in the crotch

A couple of weeks ago I was engulfed in the sticky, smelly mire that is unmedicated depression, and oh boy, was it fun! Sleeping late and still not wanting to get up, cramming a lot of fast food down my already over-stuffed gullet (that's probably not really a symptom of the depression so much as what I'd like to think is the cure), and my motivation-o-meter needle dipping way past zero. But I was eventually able to ride the depression wave to safety (without cutting or suicidal thoughts, even!) and the ambition-fest that was yesterday, September 8, 2009.

When I'm in one of my depression slumps, the smallest chore might as well be climbing Mount... well some really high mountain (it's late and I don't want to think of a high mountain--oo! Everest!). But last week I eventually mustered the courage and motivation to vacuum my living room. That got me rolling and set the stage for yesterday when I:

• Did all my laundry and changed my sheets
• Power cleaned my aquarium including an 80% water change, cleaning the filters, and scrubbing and razoring the algae off the sides
• Moving the cable box from my bedroom TV to the living room TV (If you'd ever seen how impossible it is to set up crap on my living room TV, you would be appropriately impressed right now and murmuring to each other in tones of awe and admiration)
• Rearranging the bird cages so Percy no longer has to sit next to the dark hallway

That doesn't sound like a whole lot, but it's a lot for me, dang it, so shut your noise hole. My days are composed of sitting in front of the TV either working or watching TV or both. Mine is a very exciting life full of very important things.

The bird cage switcheroo might cause a bit of a problem. I pushed Percy's ginormo cage over to where Chauncy and Olive were living, and pushed Chauncy and Olive next to Jiles's cage. I leave everybody's cage doors open so they can come and go as they please during the day, but Jiles has started making himself at home in the cockatiels' cage (much to their horror, I assure you). The already portly Jiles has started helping himself to their seed dish (much tastier than his extruded pellets) and drinking from their water. That might be forgivable if he hadn't started playing on their play gym and taking naps on their cage top. But other than Jiles's bad manners and wearing out his welcome, there hasn't been any biting or fighting, although if they were in a bird version of West Side Story, there were a couple of times that would have been the equivalent of slouching and snapping, pre-fight style. As for Percy, he just seems glad to be out in the light again and in a place where he can keep his beady little stink eye on me at all times. I'll be honest, though. If I can't get a human male to be a jealous boyfriend, at least I have a bird who, when he looks at me, makes me think of The Police's "Every Breath You Take" and fidget uncomfortably a little.

The fish couldn't give a toss.

Guess who I'm not voting for now?

Tonight I found this stuck in my front flower bed:





Here's what I did with it:




Get permission first, Chad.

Apocalypse

A few weeks ago I started watching Jericho over my Roku box. It's a TV show that takes place in a small town in Kansas after a nuclear attack on the United States. I started watching it on a Saturday night (shut up!), and by the time the third episode started, I vowed that first thing Monday morning I was going to head to WalMart and stock up on food and water. I did. I also stocked up on a few other necessities (see image), courtesy of Smith's five cases for $13 sale.

What you see there is thirty-three cases of Diet Coke lining my basement wall. Three hundred and ninety-six cans of delicious, joy-filled Diet Coke for me to drink up to and during the apocalypse, should it occur within the next six months, which is approximately how long my supplies should last. (I figure there will be another sale I can stock my reserves back up with by then.) Is Diet Coke a necessity? Well, not technically, no. But would it help to make an unbearable situation a little more bearable? Definitely. (Also good for bartering!)

So, what would you stock up on for the apocalypse?

An Introduction

Well, hello! Let's get to know each other, shall we? I should warn you up front that I live in a black hole of dorkishness. I don't have an actual job so I don't really have that to complain or be sarcastic about. I do, however, have three fish, four birds, and two dogs that supply me with lots of great stories about the funny thing Mr. Fluffypants did yesterday or the time Admiral von Snuggywumpums got into a fight with Sweeties McCuddlesalot and I had to put them both in time out until they apologized to each other. I figured it could make good blog fodder, so here I am! I bet I'm looking forward to writing my posts almost as much as you're looking forward to reading them. To the future! *clink!*