That's just what happened on St. Patrick's Day!

Seriously, I have only one more day of freedom before becoming re-entrenched in the world of paid employment. What will happen? Will I become re-acclimated peacefully and quietly? Will I become overcome with anxiety and self-doubt and run out the door, sobbing? Will I break off a pen nib in someone's ass after he annoys me? Time will tell.

Those who've switched between worlds know what I mean. Make no mistake -- there are parallel worlds existing side by side every day: the working world, and the non-working world. I'm going to have to adjust to a schedule, to putting on clothes with non-elastic waistbands, and re-joining a herd -- especially since I'll be taking public transportation. I'll be loaded onto a cattle car, move down the sidewalk in a herd, cross at the corner when my herd receives an electronic prompt from a flashing light, then sit in a pen for 7 hours.

I don't know about this.

Of course, the one good point is I'll still have Fridays to be a free-range human. Weekends don't count as freedom, because the herds are still herds, only they're herding into grocery stores and movie theaters. No, only when you're free during a weekday are you truly free.

Take the grocery store, for example. During the weekday, you don't get amateurs or exhausted, brain-dead workers or pathetic divorced 40-year-old men loading cases of beer and frozen pizza and Oreos into their carts. No, you get the professionals. The people who know how to choose a cut of meat and a carton of eggs and fresh produce. They don't waste time aimlessly walking the aisles, at a loss as to what to make and forgetting exactly how to make chili and leaving their carts in inconvenient locations. They have their money ready and their groceries loaded onto the conveyor belt in the order in which they'd like them loaded into the bags and aren't confused or distracted by the celebrity magazines at the checkout aisle. These are my people. And I'm being exiled from them. Except for Fridays!

I'm secretly in love with the grocery store. I love commercials that include shots of grocery stores, like the ones with the M&M's trying to run backwards on the conveyor belt to avoid being put in the shopping bag, or the Dunkin Donut's coffee one where the housewives get magically pulled to the grocery store by their coffee cups. I tried to find that commercial on YouTube, but I couldn't find it. I did find THIS Dunkin Donuts advertisement, however, and while it has nothing to do with grocery stores, it amused me nonetheless:



What happened to mini donuts? I want some!

May those who love us love us,
and those who do not love us,
may God turn their hearts,
and if He cannot turn their hearts
may He turn their ankles
that we may know them by their limping.
~Irish Prayer

From here, starter sentence in blue:

A kiss as sweet as syrup and as light as whipped cream landed on my cheek as they pranced past me on their way out the door.

"Thanks, mom!" "Bye, Mom!" they called out before the door slammed shut behind them.

And then there was silence.

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That's all I can come up with. My feelings are just blunted today, for whatever reason. Not in a bad way, not in a good way... I'm just at cruising altitude.

Speaking of cruising altitude, Dilf flew out to Seattle yesterday and had a screaming baby/loud bloviating blowhard/puking fellow passenger trifecta on board. The puker had to strip off his shirt and take a half-naked walk of shame down the aisle to the lavatory in vomit-covered pants. If exciting things like that happened to me, I might have something to blog about.

As it is, I'm just sitting in my living room chair, the faint musky odor of skunk spray slowly dissipating into the near-spring air, a snoring dog at my feet, staring at the left behind boxes of Gorilla Munch and Maple Pecan Clusters on the breakfast table. That's if I turn to my right.

If I turn to my left, I look out onto my front yard, with the maple tree's red buds contrasting against a robins egg sky, the grass just starting to turn a mossy green, and a bright yellow fire hydrant saluting me from across the street. A lady in a striped sweater is walking a small fluffy white dog of indeterminate breed. There's always someone walking down my street on the way to the park.

I hardly ever saw anyone when we lived in Texas. First of all, the main living areas were at the back of the house rather than the front. Is it telling that a house like mine, built somewhere mid-20th-century, faces out into the world, while the Texas house built in 2006 or 2007 or whatever, was turned away? Is that meaningful?

Second, people here bike and walk and take public transportation to places. There's often a purpose beyond their own exercise involved. They're not just jamming themselves into lycra this-or-that and making a loop around and back to their own homes. Of course, sometimes they are just going for a stroll around the park. But there are buses to catch at the park entrance and stores to walk to and things like that, too. Why does that matter to me? I think it's that my neighborhood is connected to the larger world, where that other place I lived was more like a compound.

I'm not sure there's a third. Well, there's likely a third and perhaps a fourth, but they escape me at the moment.

On a more (possibly) alarming note, I have not seen twelve pack since we moved back. Did he get his license back? Did he get a different job? Is he carpooling? Did someone steal his bicycle? Did he move? I wish I knew... I wish I knew. Oh, twelve pack, will you ever cease to be a mystery to me?

That is all for today.

Since I seem to be writing primarily for Randal these days, I might as well address this to him.

Hey, Randal. Know how I twittered about the annoying girl across the street and you said, "You can here her from your house?" Well, the answer to that is "sometimes," but yesterday it was because she was in MY yard, poisoning my children with her bad habits and attitudes, and driving me to insanity with her whiny, self-absorbed patter and selfish behavior.

First, let me describe her vocal patterns. She has two: complaining, or baby-talk. She's 11 years old, so the baby-talk thing makes me want to bash her head in with either my potato masher (inside) or my gardening trowel (outside.) But I don't hear the baby talk thing often because she's ALWAYS COMPLAINING. And when she's complaining in her whiny, nasal voice, she ends every few words in UH. As in, "Meghan-UH, I wanted to use the scooter-UH." I have actually heard her use/create the word, "Ewwww-uh!" when she was drawing with wet sidewalk chalk on my driveway.

This situation is my own fault, by the way. It was my pathetic soft heart getting in the way of my cold, hard reason again. I felt bad for her dad, because he's a single guy whose wife left him for another woman and who has nothing but bad luck with... anything. Cars. Jobs. His lawnmower. You name it. I have become de facto after school care for her while he "works from home," even though it was never discussed and I never agreed to it. It just sort of... happened. (Side note: when my husband isn't traveling, he also works from home. Somehow her shrill harangues shouldn't bother him? Again, my fault. I shepherd and correct and otherwise keep order.)

I also fed her. Another mistake. What began as an act of hospitality has become expected by Queen Nuisance. I often hear her whisper in my daughters' ears, "Go ask your mom if you have ice cream (or some other treat)." I used to feed her dinner as well, but I had to draw the line somewhere. Especially because she eats exactly and only these things: chicken nuggets, mashed potatoes, french fries, grilled cheese, raw baby carrots, bananas. Oh, and peanut butter and jelly. If you try to give her anything else, she complains. "It's slimy-UH." "It feels weird-UH." "Can't I just have a cupcake-UH?"

I have many more complaints and stories about Queen Nuisance, which I often thought of capturing in a blog called, "(Girl's Name) Go Home!" -- a phrase I use on a daily basis. Instead, I will leave you with a story that came from the back seat on the way to see "Alice in Wonderland" last night. ÜberGirls were in the backs seat doing... something, I forget, when their dad and I said, "Could you please stop that? It's annoying." ÜberYounger piped up, "We're annoying you on purpose; Queen Nuisance does it all the time. She says it's fun."

My husband replied that the consequences for that are NOT fun, and I replied, my eyes slitted and my lips pursed, that Queen Nuisance wouldn't do that if she was MY kid.

"Would you whip her?" asked Elder, who, like her sister, has never been hit by her parents in her life, but who has been reading Laura Ingalls Wilder.

"No," said Younger. "She'd throw her out the window!"

Yep.

I feel bad about making fun of a non-professional band. Again. I've made fun of them before -- here. But they came to my attention again as I was looking at coming musical attractions at some local bars, and I couldn't believe my eyes. They're still AROUND? Well, maybe they became a little more human, a little more humble in the intervening years?

Or not. Please read how he complains about having to load his own equipment on stage. I forget what entry it is; I understand if you can't get past the powerfully moving poetry in the first post.

Through the miracles of modern technology, you don't need to frequent the greater Chicago area bar scene to hear them; you can just go here.

Or just turn on a classic rock station and wait until this comes on.

On second thought, I don't feel bad about making fun of them. Or him. Is it mostly the one guy who's an ass? I can't tell.

I accepted a job offer yesterday, which means my blog's tagline is quickly becoming obsolete and I must just as quickly learn what people wear "to work" these days.

For help, I turned to Google, the repository of all knowledge. It told me I shouldn't wear this:



Or these:



Or any of these:


to work.

Dammit. Now I have to go shopping for clothes; they just excluded my entire wardrobe.

My Friday Flash Fiction, starter sentence in blue:

She had to kick out the back window to escape. It took her longer than she preferred, but still, she'd have 8 hours before the scent trail turned cold. That was far less than she'd need to find and disembowel the kidnappers.

Nobody messes with Moxie's human puppies. Nobody. Those bastards were going to taste doggie justice, and they weren't going to like the flavor.

Moxie saw her two human puppies get pulled off the sidewalk and shoved into a car as she watched at the window for them walking home from school. She had done this every day for the past three years, when her family had brought her home from the shelter. Little did they know she had been a CIA-trained assassin dog, before she was found wandering and disoriented in the southern Illinois forest preserve. The blast from the bomb she had had safely disposed of in the remote woods had affected her more than she had planned.

Nevertheless, it had worked out. She loved her new family with a ferocity and intensity these pieces of human slime were about to feel as she rended their flesh from their bones. She hadn't realized how much she missed the delicious snap of sinew and tendon.

She went swiftly to work, sniffing the ground. She found Meghan's dropped mitten and growled. The Mother said mittens must be worn in the cold snowy times! They will pay dearly for letting the little one's hand grow cold! The scent of her beloveds ended and the smell of car tire and exhaust picked up. It was distinct enough to follow. And follow, she did.

She found the car parked outside a neglected, ill-kept human dwelling. She heard voices coming from the lower level of the home. She peered in the window and saw two evil-smelling adult human males setting up a video camera. However, she had no sight of her own cherished human girls. She ran around the back of the house to see them bound and gagged in a cold, gray room with a cement floor. Moxie could smell their fear and see their tears. Rage caused her lips to curl up over her fangs. She was going to enjoy this. She ran back around to the front of the house. She readied herself, her muscles recalling their training as she burst threw her second window of the day.

The adult males were frozen in terror and confusion, but even if they had been prepared for her attack, she would've made short work of them. Amateurs. She butchered them quickly and effectively. She rubbed her muzzle against their shabby couch to get their blood and bits of connective tissue off her before rescuing her girls.

She broke down the door to the utility room, then bit through the ropes that held her precious puppies. They ripped off their gags and borrowed their faces in her warm, golden fur. A door led to the back yard from this room; it was good they didn't have to see the carnage in the next room. It was time to take her puppies home.

She led them through the neighborhood, stopping only to pick up the mitten and their backpacks, which had fallen to the ground when they were snatched. As they rounded the corner to their home, Moxie ran ahead, jumped the fence and re-entered her home through the downstairs window she had busted for her earlier escape.

The hastily climbed the stairs to their home, where the anxious Mother stood at the door.

"Where have you been?" she exclaimed, taking their jackets and backpacks. "You're more than 15 minutes late!" Moxie crept up from behind Mother and sat on her haunches. As the girls spilled their tale of near disaster while enjoying a cup of hot chocolate and cookies, Mother smiled and shook her head. "Where do you girls get your imagination?" she asked.

Later that night, when the girls were in bed reading, Mother went downstairs to get a nearly-forgotten bundle of laundry out of the dryer for folding. She should've seen broken glass and a busted-out window, but she didn't.

King Muffin the cat had taken care of it. His paws were small and agile enough to dial the phone, and he had connections.

I feel bad about ripping this guy, because he passed away a couple years ago. I don't like picking on dead people. On the other hand, this guy has somehow escaped the curled lips of contempt or mocking laughter evoked by the mere mention of certain artists, like Air Supply or Barry Manilow. His songs are not not synonyms for cheese, like "The Piña Colada Song" or "Wildfire." But I assure you, his stink bombs of musical aggression are no less potent or ubiquitous.

I will mention his name, and (unless you are Sysm, who remembers all things music-related), you will scratch your head, quizzically turn your head to one side, squint your eyes and mutter, "Who?"

Paul Davis.

Who?

Paul Davis:



Who?

THIS Paul Davis:



Sorry, who?

FUCKING PAUL DAVIS:



Oh, THAT Paul Davis.

Yeah, him.

I don't know why sappy love songs bother me so much. Is it my musical sensibilities that are offended, or do I just have difficulty giving and receiving love?

I used to write "Don't Wear Wednesday" post every week, and then include a picture of someone looking ridiculous. Something like that "Look at this (bad word) Hipster" blog, only more far-reaching and including dog sweaters. I abandoned that daily blogging regimen, with its assigned days, and haven't really been thinking about clothing lately.