Tip for scouting out psychopaths: watch for facial movement

If you're a regular reader, and I know I have at least one because she tells me so (hi, Mom), you know that I have a distaste for Facebook. Let's just say I hate it. Hate being a really strong word but maybe it's the word that comes closest to how I feel about it. I'll also throw in that I don't trust it, I think it's the devil, and I think it's the devil. In no particular order.

Why? you ask. I don't know. I think Facebook is the devil for a variety of reasons, none of them completely Facebook's fault. Kind of like if you were in a car accident right after a snake happened to slither out of its cage and cross your feet, you might think snakes cause car accidents for the rest of your life but really it was the drunk driver that rear-ended you, right?

I do know that in the last three years or so, almost every wild story that had me shaking my head and saying "why on earth would someone DO something like that" involved Facebook in one way or another.

Then there's the whole friend thing. Don't get me wrong. I'm on Facebook and I even visit it every once in a while (like bi-monthly), and plenty of my friends in real life are Facebook friends. But then there's all those other 'friends.' People I went to school with, people they went to school with, people I can't remember. It's odd.

Now it seems de rigeur for any business to be on Facebook. Need a proctologist? Friend them on Facebook! I'm a fan of Dr. Fanny. What does this get me? I have no idea except that I had to sign some sort of waiver giving someone all access to my entire history and all of my friends and their history and probably my bank account just to be Dr. Fanny's fan. But since I've already had my surgery, I'm not really sure why I need to keep up with Dr. Fanny's information, like what she's eating for lunch.

Then tonight? Tonight my fears were totally realized. The founder of Facebook, the Man Who Will Go Unnamed so that I don't lose my dog in a "freak" antifreeze poisoning incident, was on "60 Minutes" with Leslie Stahl. I've seen him before on the telly. But this time with all the cacophony of my darling children rampaging around me, I didn't so much get to listen to what he was saying as watch him saying whatever it was he was saying.

His face doesn't move. Seriously, people. If there is ever a true measure of a sociopath, it is this. The eyes are the window to your soul. They need to have expression. They need to move! Light up! Squint! Frown! Laugh! Do something, you freak, except sit there and let your lips do all the emoting. I saw no movement from the lips up. I even said to my husband "look, his face doesn't move. It's freaking me out."

He was sitting across from the lovely Leslie Stahl who's emoting the hell out of herself and he's got....nothing. Is there a human in there? Don't you have to be a human to be the CEO of a company with the sole purpose of taking over the world? Wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.

At some point, Leslie (emoting real human emotions or at least faking them properly) asks The Man "Do you want Facebook to take over the internet?" or maybe she said "Do you want Facebook to take over the world?" and he literally did not answer her. I believe there was silence and then I think he eventually said something like "well if life is social and you want to be with your friends then I would think that your friends would be the most important thing in your life oh look a baby wolf" which to me was "yes."

So. I continue on in my distrust of all things Facebook, confident in the fact that
1) I was right. and
2) That Man is up to No Good. You mark my words. You mark them.

*If Blogger's spell-check doesn't recognize Facebook as a word, do you think that's a ray of hope?

- H

I'm giving today the finger

Today gets the big finger. And not a giant foam finger.

First, I would like to pat the genius folks at the St. Louis airport authority on the back for letting all of the major airlines remove any helpful flights from the schedule, forcing me to fly through O'Hare to simply get to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Good job folks. Hey, I have an idea! Why don't you hire talented sales and public relations people and get your stinking name off the WORST AIRPORTS IN HELL list, huh? Just a thought. I love to get up at 4:30, board a plane at 6:30, change planes in HELL (I am now calling O'Hare HELL if that's ok with you) just to get to Cedar Rapids by lunchtime. Love it. Thanks for that, losers.

I'd also like to give the giant finger to the loser at HELL who told my flight attendant that my connecting gate was B22. We landed at F4. Which is like landing in Chicago and needing to walk to Cedar Rapids, really, if you think about it. So I walked there. In my heely shoes. And when I got there, what did I see on the monitor? Why, it wasn't my flight that was departing there, but another lucky flight. Somewhat confused, I checked the nearest monitor (this also involved walking in heely shoes). They had changed my gate to E3. Which was RIGHT NEXT TO F4. So I walked back to Chicago from Cedar Rapids. In my heely shoes. You, Mr. or Mrs. Change the Gates on Unsuspecting Losers in Heely Shoes at O'Hare HELL, you get the finger today.

You know who else gets the finger? The weird lady who was washing her grapes in the basin of the drinking fountain back at E3. Seriously. I know grapes are totally dangerous what with all their nasty pesticides and chemicals and whatnot. But you know what? I think I just might order a large drink of fountain Napalm before I washed produce in the drinking fountain at HELL. Somehow, I think a few pesticides might actually be good for a person, if the other option is the insides of every mouth that's ever leaned down to take a drink out of that fountain since it was installed because you know they never bleach those things! She deserves the finger, plus every virus she just contracted from her dirty grapes.

Hey, you know why St. Louis' airport has no flights? Because they're all at O'Hare, that's why! What's the deal, Chicago? Greedy much? You like teeming masses, all crisscrossing your ill-marked, endless terminals, fruitlessly hoping to get to their gate on time? Many never do. I believe I may have walked by a few families who took up residence in HELL today. It's sad, really.

Never fear, friends. I will not let my blistery toes or my travel fatigue get me down. I am going to stage an all-out war. I know a certain someone, a talented young woman with a PR background who also makes pretty quilts. I'm going to launch a campaign for the St. Louis airport idiots to hire her out of her house at the rate of many many dollars, for services such as Bringing Better Restaurants [hey, how about a Saint Louis Bread Company you idiots!] to the Airport. And Convincing Southwest to Put More Flights Here. And Hey, American, Up Yours! That last campaign is mine, really, so I won't foist it off on her. I blame American's hostile takeover of TWA for all of my most recent problems except for the belly bloating. I'll keep you posted on my progress. After my blisters heal.



I included a cute picture. For levity.

- H

Reverse psychology

What a lovely Saturday. My hubs took my kids to a car show far far away, so they won't return until dinnertime. I have had the entire day to myself!

I'm trying to break out of my sewing hiatusfunkcollapse so I went to the fabric store and started in on a pattern/tutorial for Sewing in No Man's Land, one of the freshest awesome sewing blogs around.

As I was finishing up on the tulip pants downstairs, the doorbell rings. I start sprinting up, catch a fifty-pound whirling ball of brown lab puppy as she barrels into me on her way to the party, and opened the door to a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old, because there is no way that kid was older than eighteen, salesman.

He had on a shirt from a local construction company who will go nameless but their initials are Thomas Construction.

"Hello, we're doing some work in your area and I'm wondering if your next home project is going to be inside the house or outside?"

"Uhhm," (I was bent over with Ruby's collar in my hand) "we aren't planning any projects for now and my husband tends to do the work for us..."

"Because I noticed your gutters [as he looked up at them] and you probably are planning on replacing them--"

"Those gutters are copper. That's what copper gutters look like. We aren't replacing them, we have to worry about people trying to steal them. So no, thanks but no."

I shut the door. Hard.

Here are my sales suggestions for the afore-unmentioned company, since I've spent the last fifteen years in sales (I know, I'm shocked too):

1) Don't insult your customer or their gutters.
B) Don't send a kid to my house to sell home repairs if he isn't old enough to drive a car and have a mortgage.

- H

That's what you think, loser.

Have y'all seen this new trend, so you think you're really something, huh?

Well, that's not really what they call it. They call it So You Think You're Crafty, or So You Think You Can Decorate, or whatever.

Recently, a very crafty (in the best sense of that word, not the kind that stencils apples on their kitchen cabinets) artista named Katie who has this awesome blog called Blue Eyed Freckle was entered into the latest round of So You Think You're Crafty. It was the round where you pick the things you think are coolest and then those crafters are entered as entrants or whatever. I'm getting tired just writing about the process, I can't imagine being a contestant!

Anyhoodle, I looked through all the entries and voted for the one and only thing I had any interest in making or learning to make or paying someone else to make for me - the beautiful bib necklace.

Ironically, one of the editors on Etsy wears a necklace like that one in her picture and when I emailed her to ask her where she got it, she wouldn't tell me! Can you believe that?! She said it came from Portugal or something. Whatever.

Well, the bib necklace belonged to Katie who doesn't live in Portugal (I don't think). And she didn't win. So boo hoo to them.

It just makes me kind of cringe, really, the whole so you think you're some hot shit, huh? phenomenamena. I mean, I get it. So you think you can dance. Great. Let's kill the spirit of some youngsters, nip it in the bud while we can so they'll decide to go to college instead of auditioning for countless off off off Memorial Parkway productions and live on someone's couch until they're forty. Fine. But this internet thing, I don't know.

I'm not feeling it. I like all the crafters. I don't want to stack one up against another. I think there is room for everyone; they're all crafty. They can all decorate. This isn't HGTV people, you know what I'm saying? Not that it can't be big money, I'm sure PW is doing alright with her gig.

Well, anyway, I found V and Co's blog, and she did exactly what I think we should be doing on the nets. She let anyone and everyone who had a tute or link or project or whatever, link it up. Beautiful. I found quite a few new ideas on that one.

Oh, and if you get a chance, check out Blue Eyed Freckle. Really, she's pretty crafty.

- H

I gots the fever

Oh, I can feel it coming on like I'm sure the mentally ill can feel a switch coming. Not that I don't qualify for that, too, but you know. I suddenly have the bloggin fever. So many things to write about, so little ability to focus my ADD and sit down and write it out.

So here's an abbreviated version for you. Things that have been rattling around in my mind these days.

1. Jenny Craig calls me too much. Seriously. I signed up last Friday, and I think they've called me four times since then?! My own mother hasn't called me that often. I mean, I've called her that often because I have to call her every day or my world seems to feel unglued, but you know. The Jenny people? I have to tell them to take me off their speed dial. When I If I fall off the wagon, I'll get back up from my sugar coma and dust the donut frosting off my face and get back on it without them calling me to check and make sure that I'm eating their ridiculously small entrees and not Krispy Kremes. Not that that's happened this week or anything. Twice. I'm just sayin. I go in for my weigh-in today. You may hear sobbing later on.

2. Pearl Jam totally stole a guitar riff from Bob Dylan. Or Shawn Colvin. I am in the midst of researching this blatant theft but haven't actually done any more than think about it while I'm in the car and write about it here. See, their new song (and by the by, I am very glad they're back to making music again) called "Just Breathe" starts with a guitar rhythm or riff that is exactly the same riff that starts Shawn Colvin's version of Bob Dylan's "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." I know this because every time it comes on the radio, I think oh, yay, I'm going to hear some kickass Bob Dylan by way of Shawn Colvin now, and it doesn't happen. So. I'll be doing some further research on this matter, you can be sure of that.

3. NPR's fund drive is going on right now, so I regularly listen to other stations because I can't bring myself to donate money to NPR because I hate Daniel Schorr. Seriously, when I hear someone introducing him I will click the button and listen to something else. I would listen to Yo Gabba Gabba songs before I listen to the vitriol that man spews. I know NPR leans left and I know they attempt to maintain some balance. But there is no balance in this man. He's hate and bitterness and he's not impartial. SO, I refuse to give them any more of my money than has not already been taken out of my paycheck in the form of taxes. Hrmph. I am officially now a grumpy old man.

4. Does anyone else feel like the Census thing is getting a little out of hand? I fear someone may show up at my door with a handgun, threatening me if I haven't already filled out our census forms. I filled it out and mailed it in. You hear me, guvment? I filled it out! So stop with the constant advertising and billboards. How much does that cost, anyway? You could take half of that advertising money, throw it into the public schools pool and keep many thousands of teachers from being laid off this year. I'm just saying.

5. I got to eat lunch with my old friend Jenna a few weeks ago, on a Saturday no less, which is way unheard of, and it was so nice to see her. I can see now that I need to find some time and write more about this visit because it was fun.

Alright. That's it peeps. Thanks for listening.

The one where I cried like a baby. In a work meeting. And there's swearing involved.

This has been a shit week. I try not to swear on this blog out of respect, although I love to do it in my real world. Cause the internets is my fake world. Sometimes you just gotta call a spade a spade.

I brought The Sickness with me to Dallas on Wednesday. Leading up to the meeting was a little like living hell on wheels. My kids were wild and unruly. My house was a disaster. My health was in the shitter. I wasn’t sleeping well because my house’s furnace has a life of its own and really likes to heat the place up to 80ºF despite being set on 68ºF.

I ran away on Wednesday morning shrieking “free at last, free at last!”

My jubilation didn’t last long. I felt like death on a warming plate during the day on Wednesday. Hot, cold, sweaty, clammy, random pains and then more sweating.

My peers and my manager went out to this great Mexican restaurant for dinner Wednesday night (Javier’s in Dallas? You been there?) and I had a margarita but not more than two. Maybe.

Sooooo, I didn’t sleep Wednesday night. Tossed, turned, regretted my Chihuahua cheese stuffed fillet entrée that tasted so good. Tossed more. Moaned out loud. Sweated. Turned down the heat. I finally fell asleep at 4:30. Alarm went off at 6:00 and I texted my manager that I’d be late. She knew I was sick so it was cool.

I proceeded to do just fine the rest of the meeting, thank you very much. More sweating. More hot/cold flashes and random pains in random places in my GI system. But overall, fine.

I stayed in Thursday night and rented Precious and cried like a baby and couldn’t fall sleep again (until eleven which is way past my bedtime) but for different reasons because the story was just grinding through my brain over and over.

And then there was today. Today started with a meeting that became slightly adversarial. You know what never happens in my industry? Adversarial meetings. We’re trained to be nice and friendly to others. We’re in sales. We’re typically attractive, friendly people. So it was a little nerve-wracking to watch said attractive friendly people get into heated arguments with representatives from an outside vendor (who are not trained to be attractive, friendly people), where actual individuals were laid out on the road to be run over by the proverbial bus.

Then I left that meeting and went to my own district meeting.

Somewhere between that district meeting and the time I found myself riding the shuttle bus to the airport I had this totally life-altering revelation where I realized things aren’t going well and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it. Where I realized some people are in the wrong jobs and there isn’t a damn thing anyone else is going to do about it.

This is where I started crying.

Cause yeah, that’s what I did.

Then I got to the airport and watched some jackwad go through security talking super loudly and saying “I am not a terrorist” over and over. I was silently wishing TSA would take him aside and do a body cavity search until all the alcohol in his system wore off. But they didn’t.

And there you are. I sobbed off and on the rest of the day. Including when my mom emailed me that she also misses Grandma Clare a lot, despite the fact that she’s been gone for seven years.

Oh crap, I’m crying again.

Dammit!

Next post is about bandaids. Believe me, this will all make sense.

- H

I resolve to turn my family into nudists

I spent the better part of the last three days trying to clean this godforsaken house so my seventy-one-year-old friend Jean (who is also our cleaning lady) can come on Saturday morning and clean it for reals.

I have seriously done like seventeen loads of laundry and it just keeps coming. What are these people wearing everyday? Two or three different outfits?!

Don't even get me started on the socks. Two feet times four people times seven days equals seven hundred and fourteen socks. Only 32% of which come out with matches. It pisses me off, to be honest.

So since I was working on my New Year's resolutions, I made one for the entire family. You know how some people have the foresight to make their houses shoeless? And when you walk in you have to take your shoes off? Thereby not tracking in any e coli in the form of bird poop or spare motor oil or whatever? Yeah, well, I'm going to implement a nudes only house here . Visitors are excepted, they can keep their clothes on if they want to. I'm going to crank up the heat and celebrate the loss of laundry duties for the rest of this winter. I may change my mind when summer comes and we don't wear socks anymore.

Who are we kidding? I live with three boys and a dog. They'll all love it, letting their wieners flap in the breeze and whatnot. I'll be the one wishing I had my fuzzy socks on.

And while I'm at it, you know what else honks me off? Anyone who says "You just need to give up, girl." Especially if they're my cleaning lady, walking into the middle of a marital argument at 8:00 on a Saturday morning whereby the wife has just been suckerpunched (figuratively) by her husband. Don't you dare tell me I need to roll over. I roll plenty. I'd like to hear someone tell him to roll over for once. For that matter, I'd like to see him roll over for once.

It's possible highly likely I'm suffering from a little bit of hormonal fluctuation this weekend. So what? Bring it on, hormones, I'm not scared.
- H

This is why dress pants should be lined.

A few months ago I happened to find myself in an Ann Taylor store. I usually don't shop at Ann Taylor because her "model" body is much shorter and quite a bit curvier than my own body. But the posters promised a new fit! A new look! New pants!

So I caved, and tried on one of the new style of dress pants they are now offering. They fit! No extra fabric where I don't have hips, and the hems actually touched my heels, a good sign for the tall'ns like me.

The only teensy weensy problem with them is they aren't lined. Original sticker price on these babies was over a hunert bucks and to not have lining at that price?! Insane! But luckily they were being offered at some crazy steal of a deal to get people to try them, so I did. I plunged and bought my first pair of black dress pants sans lining [for winter] since Nam.

I wore them quite faithfully, too, through this fall.

Today I hopped a flight to Omaha in my snazzy not so new pants, where the temp when we landed was 9 and as I stepped off the plane all of the moisture in my skin went ffftttt into the air.

And by noon I knew why I would never buy unlined dress pants again.

Cause the wool? The lightweight, tropical wool [clearly shorn from Hawaiian sheep or something] that was so superior it simply didn't need a lining? That same wool? It hurts like a mother when the seams on the very tender insides of your thighs happen to rub your wintery dry skin.

Now I know what babies with chapped fannies feel like. 'Cept mine is the insides of my thighs, but whatever.

And Ann Taylor?

Line your pants, for Christsakes.

- H

Yay! or Gay?

The Blackberry people really need to revamp their automatic spellchecker dictionary thingie. The last few times I've typed an email or a text and blindly almost sent it, I found they had magically changed some meaningless words to meaningful words that would totally have rocked my recipient's world.

Tonight, I just typed a response to an email about my new serger. {Yes, I did buy the grand daddy of all sergers this afternoon and I'll be sharing glorious pictures when I take said glorious pictures. I digress.} In my response, I said I bought it. Yay! and Blackberry almost changed my message to I bought it. Gay!

Now what in the hell? They don't know the word yay?

A few weeks ago I sent one of my doctor's an email on my Blackberry and while I understand that the dictionarythesauruswordfinderthingie probably didn't know the brand name of the drug I sell, it changed it to the word comic. So instead of writing X speaker training, it almost sent a message to my doctor titled Comic speaker training.

Yes, Dr. So and So, I'm concerned that you need comedic training and I'd like to enroll you in a class to learn how to deliver punchlines.

Crazy.

Stayed tuned this Sunday. I've already started my confessional. It's full of little bits and pieces but they're good ones. I chuckle just thinking about one of them.

- H

This is one time I'm sorry I was right

It sickens me, what some people will do for attention. A while back I read about a whole bruhaha over at CJane's blog where someone else was blogging with her stories? Creating a whole fake life with someone else's true stories and then posting it up on the internet.

Well, recently (ok, a few months ago), I ran across the blog called Little April Rose? Anyone else read it?

Yeah, it was written by a mom (Beccah) who was pregnant with a baby girl (April Rose) who was diagnosed with Trisomy (X) - I can't remember the number. And now, I can't go back and try to find it because the blog is down. Forever.

Because it was all a big fat fake.

So here's where I feel bad. I had a really bad feeling about that blog for a long time.

The first few posts were fine, they seemed kind of wordy but who am I to call anyone else wordy, especially a pregnant mom?

And then, then it just got a little too verbose. All of these prayer requests were being collected, personal information shared, people prayed over (at least that's all legit, hopefully).

The paragraphs that would go on and on about how God was great and God loved her, despite her SIN of having PREMARITAL SEX (GASP!) and that April Rose wasn't a mistake even though her SIN of SEX (GASP!) was a mistake. Good Lord.

Whatever.

I'm sorry, maybe I'm callous but after a few posts that went on and on like that, I started to be suspicious.

And sadly, in this case, I was right.

McMama just posted about it, the Little April Rose blog is gone for good, and we've all been duped.

Who in their right mind would do such a thing? Who would exploit the pain and suffering of others in order to feel important or worthy? Who would pretend to suffer the way far too many people have truly suffered?

I don't know the whole story, the true story. But I know that girl who wrote that blog needs some serious mental help. And I pray that there is no baby at all, no child to suffer.

- H

Don't pretend you don't know me, sucker

I got my hair cut at lunch today and had a great conversation with my guy Steve about religion and God and drugs and rock-n-roll. He's a musician in a rock-n-roll band (I'm really digging saying rock-n-roll over and over) and he's also a super devout Catholic. As he said "I love my job, and I want to give you a great haircut, but there's more to life than a great haircut." Plus he said a bunch of other stuff.

He could have made a great bartender.

Anyway, as I was sitting there shooting the proverbial breeze with Steve-o, in walks a guy I have known for, oh, six years. This is the guy who installed granite countertops in my kitchen. He and his wife are best friends with my sister-in-law. I see them regularly, and by regularly I mean at least once a year. He's met my kids. We've stood in driveways and talked at length about houses and jobs and whatnot.

He knows me. He's kind of dumb so he might not remember my name, but he knows who I am.

So what does he do when he walked by? He said "Hey, Steve, how's it going?" and looked right through me, and kept walking.

You know, the kind of look where you're totally invisible and the person is pretending you don't exist? You know they saw you, they've just instantly decided not to acknowledge your very presence?

And you know what? THAT PISSES ME OFF. I hate it when people try to pretend like they don't know you, or they don't remember something that they clearly remember. Like who you are.

This guy pulls that crap almost every single time I see him. The looking through me part. I don't know if it's because he was embarassed about screwing up my granite even though I never freaked out on him and paid him the many thousands of dollars despite not having a backsplash along a great part of the counter? Yeah, maybe it's because of that. Or maybe he's just a dumbass? That could be it, too.

So let this be a lesson to you. It's obvious when a person tries to pretend like they don't remember meeting someone they've clearly met before. Don't do it. It just makes you look like an ass.

- H

OK, this is just irresponsible reporting

I'm sorry, but one of the Yahoo news headlines today was "Americans are lighting their cars on fire to avoid making payments." This is the video story if you care to watch it, but I'm warning you - it's stupid.

This has got to stop. Not the people lighting their cars on fire, that part's ok, but the media's constant reporting of every weird thing that's happened recently and attributing it all to the bad economy!

What's next?

"Flood waters rise in Iowa as rivers attempt to flee bad economy!"

"Immigration officials in Texas kidnapped by Americans and held for ransom in exchange for free pass into Mexico, due to bad economy."

"Polar bear clubs see dramatic rise in membership as people turn to frigid waters to steel themselves against the pain of this bad economy."

"Local bird populations dramatically down as songbirds stay in South America to avoid disastrous American economy!"

I get it, the economy sucks. It's just like it was in the early eighties, and if you're as old as I am you remember that time. I remember my mom "re-fashioning" shirts for me to wear because my dad took a pay cut (as did all the management with Caterpillar) in order to keep his job and keep the company afloat, and we had no money.

And you know what? The recession receded. Good times were again had by many for many years, until they weren't again. And then they were. And now they're not. And so on and so on.

Good thing I never get to watch the news because our TV is permanently tuned to Noggin. This would really bug me if I had to watch it, too!

Teenagers.

My body, she isn't eighteen anymore. Someone should tell her she can't work like she's eighteen again.

I tag-teamed Saturday's mulch expedition with another truckload on Sunday. By last night, I was sitting on the coach in a fatigue-induced stupor. My husband did more physical labor than I've seen him do in a few years. He decided to do a project involving cutting and laying 200 lb. slabs of stone for steps into our garage. So he was no better off than me by bedtime.

I was sitting there, staring at the TV but not comprehending anything, when a tiny voice next to me said "What are you eating, Daddy?" I looked down, confused. It was Cooper. I looked up at the clock. It was 9:00.

My husband and I both looked at each other and realized we had forgotten to put Cooper to bed. We were that tired.

Earlier in the evening, as the pain from the weekend was setting in, I called our local Jimmy John's. I figured I could have some sandwiches delivered, that way we'd all eat and I wouldn't have to cook. A win-win.

The kid who answered the phone sounded to be about sixteen years old. Here's our conversation, K is for Kid at Jimmy John's:

H: Hi, do you deliver?
K: Uhh... yeah.
H: OK, can I place an order for delivery?
K: What's your address?
H: {Gave him my address}
K: Uhhh...where is that?
H: It's over by X School. You know, if you take X street to Y street, it's right there.
K: Uhhh...hang on a second...{seventeen minutes pass by with me on hold ~ I almost forgot why I was holding}
K: I think that's out of our delivery zone.
H: Oh, ok.
K: That might be in the Brentwood zone.
H: Oh, is there a store in Brentwood?
K: What store?
H: A Jimmy John's? Is there one in Brentwood?
K: I don't know.
H: What?
K: Huh?

I hung up. I mean, I thanked him, and then I hung up.

I think he was a mouthbreather. There's a physiological phase all teenage boys go through where they become mouthbreathers. They stare at you with their mouths gaping open...breathing. When you ask them questions, their faces register shock and confusion, the neurons desperately firing to figure out what it is you're asking of them.

It's sad, really. That period of time in a boy's life. My own sons will go through it, of that I am sure. I just hope it's a short-lived phase.

Who is an Oxy Moron?

I am. Well, maybe just the moron part.

There are a few things that are currently driving me nuts.

First off, I have to tell you I spent the last three weeks as an accidental blonde. I have a lot going on lately, blah blah, and I made the mistake of going to get my hair done the day before leaving on a weeklong business trip. Which was bookended with another business trip, followed by a week in Florida.

The new girl I had color my hair (because my new guy doesn't do color), well, she didn't know me so well. My explanations and insistence on what I wanted fell on deaf ears, and I left the salon with stripey blonde highlighted hair. So many highlights that my hair was blonde.

I went to my meeting the following day, where my colleagues assured me that it didn't look bad. But I know it did.

Monday was the first chance I got to have it fixed. I went back to my old girl and explained my infidelity. The first thing she said when she saw me {while she was fingering my hair, no less} was "oh, my God, it's almost completely blonde! There are so many highlights!"

She took me back to her chair, and she fixed my hair. I am now a brunette/redhead/natural-headed girl again.

While her assistant was giving me a scalp massage she said "remember, try not to wash your hair for 24 hours so the color will last longer."

And then she shampooed my hair.

Does anyone else ever wonder why they bother telling you that? If shampoo is so detrimental to hair color, why do they shampoo your hair before you leave the salon?

And here's my second oxymoronic thing for the day:

Why do children's clothing manufacturers sew in fake drawstrings on pants and shorts? I know how to sew. I know that it takes as much engineering, tooling, and resources to fake a drawstring as to actually put one in. In fact, maybe more!

I have an idea why they do it. I think they don't really want our kids' clothes to fit well, because then they'd last longer and we wouldn't need to buy more so quickly.

Hmmm, I think I might be on to something with that last one there.

I'm totally going straight to retirement, this working thing is a drag

My parents are retired. In the winter, they live in a lovely gated golf community a few miles from the beach in Florida. So every winter, I come down to visit. And every winter, I wonder WHY I am not living this life.

Retirement totally rocks. They have no schedules except for the social events they've planned. They golf every day if they want to, but some days they're all "golfed out" and rest. They go down to the pool occasionally but they have the luxury of sitting in the shade.

They read books. Lots of them.

They eat out whenever they want, for whatever meal they want to. Wait, I do that too. But it's way more fun when you're retired.

They shop aimlessly, because there's no rush. They never miss a birthday or a holiday. Even the lames ones like St. Patrick's Day, my mom sends a card that gets there a few days early. I have nephews whose birthdays were in February and I have yet to send their presents out.

My mom doesn't drive aimlessly, though. She drives like a bat shot out of a rocket leaving Hades. Scares the crap out of me. I call her Mario Gwen-dretti. Her name is Gwen. Get it?

Then they get "tired" of Florida and drive home. Just in time for everything to turn green and bloom.

So yeah, I've decided the working gig stinks. I'm going to retire and hang out with the snowbirds. They know where it's at.

I think The Bachelor needs to stop. Seriously. Just stop.

I'm in Chicago at a meeting, so last night I had the viewing pleasure of retiring to my room after our dinner and watching the finale of The Bachelor, as well as After The Bachelor or whatever the hell is they called that crap where the guy totally self-imploded.

I'm sorry, this is just insane. And it needs to stop.

I haven't watched the Bachelor since Trista and Ryan and even back then I was only remotely intrigued. I lost interest in the premise, it seemed like everyone on the show was vapid or vacuous.

Yeah, so last night's show didn't disprove my theory. Seriously. This guy randomly dates some strangers for a few weeks, gets to know them on a totally surface level along with thirty other people on a surface level, and then chooses between two of them to marry one of them? Do these people actually understand what marriage is about? Or this is just about the fantasy of picking a dress and a ring and getting into the pumpkin carriage after the party.

And the funny thing is, this idiot is talking about "being in love" with both of the final two girls, so much so that he has to bawl like a baby on the glass balcony when he can only choose one of them, but a few months later he thinks "oops, I chose the wrong one because Melissa isn't as hot in bed as Molly was" {come on, you know sex had something to do with this}.

Then, instead of talking to his fiancee about it, he springs it on her on taped television. Cause that's classy. It's great for ratings because apparently the collective intelligence of American tee-vee viewers is extremely low, but is it good for society? For young people who are considering getting married or who are dating someone or who are breathing air?

No, it's not good for us. It's not good to perpetuate these wackadoo theories that you can randomly date a bunch of people, get to know them on a completely surface level, and then marry one of them without knowing shinola about them.

It's not good for women who still think the best part of marriage is the wedding. The dress. The party. The Princess Fallacy.

Marriage is hard. It takes work. And this is coming from someone who isn't even good at it! It's no fairy tale, it is down and dirty a lot of the time, especially when you're blending families or adding stepparents to the mix.

So yeah, I think they need to stop making this crap and putting it on tee-vee. Or if they make it, I think people should rank it in the same class as Flavor Flav's or Vince Neil's (has anyone ever seen Rock of Love?). At least they're honest about how disgusting they are.

And you know what else needs to go? Middle-aged men watching MTV. It's just a bad set-up if you ask me. The more they see perky nineteen year old girls prancing around doing stupid things, the more they expect that in their life. And thus the disappointment when it doesn't happen. Kind of like spending so much time in a strip club you stop knowing how to interact with real women with real curves who aren't fawning all over you so you can stuff dollar bills in their panties.

Ok, end rant.