Month: November 2005 (Page 2 of 4)

Yes, I realize that the real Jennifer has been sucked up into the Mother Ship and has been replaced with a high-strung, whirling dervish of a person who is behaving with extreme OCD and productivity. I’ve already made two readers tired….living it wears me out, too – believe me.

I do not think it is a complete coincidence that this happened at the same time we hired a cleaning person. It’s as though that burden, removed from my shoulders, suddenly left me springing up and down like a kangaroo on crack, pausing only long enough to refill my pipe. BOING BOING BOING! Actually, it could also be the gamma rays from my electric blanket, the only other change in the same timeframe…. hmmmm. Tin foil PJ’s are going to be a bitch to find this time of year.

James, of course, has noticed this change. He likes it, because the house is staying clean, and uh, I, like, uprooted half his garden for compost in an unprecedented frenzy of outdoor-related work…while he was GONE. I fear he will not like it as much once I start wearing his whistle and throwing flags when he commits a House Foul Transgression. THERE ARE SHOES OUT OF PLACE, PENALTY IS DECLINED, IT’S A JENNIFER FIRST DOWN.

Now, if only I could get my butt on the treadmill with some regularity, I’d be ready for a marathon before the aliens get back & restore me to my nonproductive lifestyle. HAH! I only run if something’s chasing me and I don’t have my shotgun handy. But I am groovin’ on the bouncing. BOING!

Ha! We’re basically keeping the house pretty cool – and the upstairs is no exception. I noticed the dogs keep sneaking out of the computer room, in an effort to go back downstairs & be a bit warmer – so this weekend, I got Polly’s pillow & the throw out, and hooked her up! Pampered Polly! (I can hear JWo, right now. “Jennifer! SHE’S A DOG!” I know she doesn’t really need the blanket, but it makes me laugh. And it IS all about me, right?!

TEN-HUT!

Recycling, put away! CHECK!
Hat for JWo, knit! CHECK!
Bulbs dug up & put away! CHECK!
Annual pots emptied into compost bin! CHECK!
Tomato and pepper beds, uprooted for compost! CHECK!
Muffler for JWo, knit! ON THE NEEDLES, SIR!
Rosemary dug up for indoor wintering! CAN’T FIND THE SHOVEL, SIR!
Shopping at Target!? Shopping at Costco!? SIR! MUST ADMIT TO NAPPING, SIR!

Who posted guard during nap? GUNNERY SERGEANT POLLY, SIR!

(Gunnery Sergeant Polly can be distracted from duty by treats, I will have you know.)

Holy Toledo. I thought Weekend would never get here. PHEW! Thank goodness for that whole spinning-of-the-earth and the sun and all that jazz that can’t be frozen or halted no matter how hard people try!

I have an Agenda for Weekend. It is not Hidden. Those are dreadful and bad and really, life-shortening, if you ask me. My agenda involves shopping for more Organizational Items That Will Change Our Lives Forever, it involves some Serious-Ass Power Knitting, because now I have two pairs of mittens and a hat and a muffler to make by Wednesday (bring on the knitting cocaine! (chocolate + thai food)) and a whooooole bunch of DVR’d shows, plus I now have all of the first season of Nip/Tuck, and nothing says loving yourself & finding inner peace like watching a show featuring people who cut themselves up to improve their lives & appearances!

I also was going to be purchasing an MP3 player, and have concluded that I am Too Old. My purposes are different than you mobile, jogging sorts. I want to organize everything, including my CD’s, and I thought an iPod was the answer to my prayers. But, after consulting our IT person, my needs are (shockingly) much more complex and unanswerable with a single gadget. JWo, while he is not here this weekend, wherever he is right now, suddenly looked up and is suddenly feeling Not Surprised. So, I figure I just saved myself about $530, because if you give a mouse an iPod, then she’ll want an external hard drive, and if you give a mouse an external hard drive, then she’ll want a docking sound system. Give the mouse a docking sound system and then she’ll demand a wireless transmitter for the car. Instead, the mouse is getting her big-ass television set. Dammit.

For, dear readers, the garage is worthy. Empty. Ready. The deal which was struck months back has closure. And I wanna start watching “My Name Is Earl” and think that Jason Lee is actually SITTING, life-sized, over to my left. Duuuuuuude!

That is my rock-em, sock-em weekend and I love it. There’ll be some cooking, I’ll probably get up at 4 a.m. to go to the grocery store (think of it as “training” for the day after Thanksgiving! – insert theme to Rocky -) because I can’t imagine what Saturday afternoon’s gonna look like at the Price Chopper….. I’d end up committing hari kari in the checkout line using a Twix bar and a soap opera magazine. And that’d be a hell of a way to screw up a perfectly good weekend. Not to mention, a waste of chocolate.

This hat was a request. Opening weekend of duck season is a day of pranks for my husband – he’s thrown out little rubber duckies with the decoys in the past – to joke with his buddies. This year? He put on this hat. It took several consultation conversations, rough drawings, and a search for sew-on googly eyes that eventually I gave up on, and decided instead to epoxy-glue big googly eyes onto threaded buttons. JWo helped pick out the yarn for color accuracy to the mallard duck, and he’s even worn the hat in large groups of people at early hours, when they draw numbers for picking order for their blinds. I love that he does this, because people look at him a little funny….. but they’re most likely dumbstruck with insane jealousy.

There’s no such thing as going too far to get the laughs in our house.

OK, in the new Madonna video, “Hung Up”? In the beginning, she’s gyrating around on the floor wearing a godawful outfit, including these capri-length sheer hose? and as she keeps dancing, they become knee length. Which makes sense, of course, even if you’re skinny & in great shape, those suckers are gonna roll up to your knees if you’re putting your ankles behind your head & dancing with Farrah Fawcett Hair. But? Half the shots spliced together have the hose back at capri-length.

That kind of shit drives me CRAZY.

After spending the past 4 nights alone with my pillow theater arrangement (rolling from one side of the king-sized bed to the other throughout the night, thus guaranteeing cool pillows every time I wanted one), JWo was home! The Peaceful Wo! Mello-Wo! Right there, in bed, sound asleep! I had missed him. So, apparently, all night? I talked to him. In my sleep. I didn’t just talk, I also LAUGHED in my sleep and talked about beaks. I remember him trying to get me to stop, saying something like, “Jennifer! You’re talking in your sleep!” and I just LAUGHED and said, “I KNOW!” Oh, and we used our new electric blankets, and I want to sew a robe out of one & walk around with a big extension cord. Greatest! Things! Ever!

I am wound up and I love it! You just let me know if you wanna talk about beaks! I have lots to say!

So, Mr. JWo got home today from a five-day vacation of hunting, solitude, and meditation. He came home to a spic-n-span house, cleaned by this very industrious woman (not me) we hired, and many, many new forms of organization put into place in his absence, and the garage is nearly cleaned out completely, and a wife who is running around like she has been snorting cocaine all day.

We went to Red Lobster, because why dirty the sparkling-clean kitchen or eat leftovers? And we were seated by a family with a toddler who screamed, ever moment we were there. I maintained my composure, keeping focus on my Endless Shrimp and our Conversation, thinking of the Dooce post of not judging other parents because I’m childless and not accustomed to the shrieking even though I think she might have permanently warped my ear canals. Then, we got home, & my large Buddha JWo tottered off to bed, where I tucked him in with an electric blanket & proceeded to give a 10-minute dissertation on how from now on, I will hang up his ties, and how we are going to Keep Tidy, and how we are starting a new chapter in the War on Clutter. (Perhaps having a Venti Caffe Mocha at 1:30 in the afternoon was …. a little late for a power surge.)

He laughed at me, because I get on these Grand Schemes That Don’t Last But Maybe This Time Is The Time It Does, but seriously, it’s better to humor me than fight it, and he knows it, so he just sleepily pointed out that he was so at peace with the world, he felt like a Tibetan monk. I agreed, for he was extremely Zen and mellow, and countered with the notion that we were kind of like Ghandi and Idi Amin, because I was in a very high-key, monkey-chattering dictator sort of place.

That reminds me. I have this great idea to build a wall out of bones. Be right back.

I don’t know how much of what I do is performance for the amusement & enjoyment of others, and how much of it is purely me, no cameras, no lights, no audience. All I know is that if Kristin weren’t here? I would go crazy, and the people who sit by me would find me bizarre & eccentric, tiresome & foul-mouthed. Instead, I can start shrieking about mullet-wearing hicks who put their photos on their BUSINESS website, and how I don’t want to call said mullet-heads, because it’s like releasing a pack of bichon frise’ dogs, who will ARF ARF ARF ARF ARF at my heels for months to come, even though I am only requesting information for new business, not for anything tangible with a budget.

Then there’s the dipshit who has called me four times today, because he wants to talk before he sends rates. Hey? Guess what? I hate you, and we haven’t even met yet. How will that help the negotiation process now? HOW’S THAT WORKIN’ FOR YA, STUPIDO GIGANTE?????

To answer my first question, I think I’m encouraged to share my natural rantings, because I know Kristin understands me, has equally hilarious rants of her own, and to quote Shrek, “Better out than in, I say.” So it’s a good venting process and I don’t go home crying or watch my hair fall out. But even in my solo car ride to lunch today, I muttered and lipped off at this IDIOT driver who could not stay in her lane, and she even got the Hairy Eyeball as I passed her, but she was too afraid to look at me. As she should be.

And at my lunch today? I actually said, “Pardon my French, but FUCK.”
Just a fragile li’l orchid, I am. PRETTY. but fun!

I think Miss Winter has finally arrived…… the temperatures are dropping, we had snow mixed with rain yesterday, and it’s time to bundle up! Inside AND Outside, as we’re fighting the notion of paying $900 a month for heating expenses. ….but we are drawing the line at letting the dogs sleep in bed with us. (Though labs put out a LOT of heat!)

Here are a couple pictures of a tree on my street that was just phenomenal in its heyday:

Next up: Staying Vertical in an Icy, Icy World!