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!

OK, even I, who pushes the boundaries of good taste & public decorum on a regular basis can figure out that placing bets in a dead pool as it relates to the Kansas City homicide rate is a bad idea. For god’s sake, if you’re going to do it? You have to LIVE IN KCMO, people. Maybe even be employed by the city. Maybe the po-lice dept! That would make it almost understandable. These numnuts lived in the sumptuous suburb of Leawood – Kansas – and just like making fun of Iowans, it ain’t quite as funny if you’re not one of us. Does that make it fair? No, but then, there’s that big Life Lesson on How Life Isn’t Fair. It wasn’t until tonight that I realized people were actually paying money ($5) to participate in the pool. Wince, wince. Listen up. I can tell you firsthand when you work in the blood and guts and horror of daily life and see what human beings are capable of doing to one another? You do make jokes. I’ve witnessed rape victims, battered and bruised. Stabbed, left for dead and in intensive care, and yes, back at the victim services center? We crossed lines “in jest” that would horrify an observer. (Note: never did we joke around an observer! Smart monkeys!) You cross those lines of good taste and political correctedness, because there’s nothing left some days, and it’s a way of coping. Because you know you’re all IN the same boat, fighting & trying to make it better, and some days? You just have to get it out in a crass, stupid way. Can’t say I quite see how that template fits over these government employees in Kansas. Ooo! Somebody broke a building code! Curses! The stress! Margaret, let’s start a betting pool on KCMO’s homicide rate!

All of that sniping aside, I think it would have been a smarter punishment to borrow a page from one of my husband’s 5th grade teaching techniques. Require each death-pool participant write a letter, to each of the 112 families, apologizing for what they did. Take their salaries that were suspended, and put them in a crime victims fund. Having their boss apologize for them takes their personal responsibility away, and shoots it up into the blue-sky-yonder realm of government. And you know nothin’ comes out of government except a lot of spin & tape.

So, we know that’s not going to happen. How ’bout instead of dedicating all this time & energy to lambasting the employees, and Mayor of Leawood, and Demanding Apologies and suspending people right & left, we get some more time, money & energy poured into the poor parts of our city, break into the silence that locks the murderers safe behind sealed lips, get some of the thugs out of the streets and into county. Figure out why people are shooting each other so much. Drugs? Money? Turf lines? What the hell? Make as many jokes as you need to, if it helps you find something to fix it. There’s blood on the streets, and that’s the real pool we’ve got to stop.

Tammy had a post about her betrothed, and how he went to the hospital & had to drink barium. BARIUM! Apparently it tasted like unfancy chalk milkshake, but in my romanticized, Curious-George-influenced mind, barium would be found on the shelf right between “Ambrosia” and “Elixir”. (Which is filed next to “Ether”, apparently Curious George got into that at one point, too, as I have a mousepad which proves it.) My parents got me the Curious George Goes to the Hospital book waaaay back in the day when it was looking like my tonsils & I would need to be parted, and quick. For the less-read set, Mr. George swallowed a piece of a puzzle, and he was a HIT on the children’s ward. I, on the other hand, didn’t see a single other patient when my tonsils came out, and let me tell you, despite the promises of Ice Cream All Day Long, having one’s tonsils taken out is not exactly Fun Times and Party Pants. The surgical staff learned a little lesson that day, though – they didn’t clean me up before they wheeled me out, and I apparently had blood on my face, and all down the sheet. My parents thought I was dead & reacted, you know, how a worried parent might. MUCH OF THE FREAKING OUT. My money says they started mopping up the blood & changing the sheet before wheeling you out after that. Me? I slept through the whole thing. Sort of sums up college, too.

Miss Kristin was the brains & dexterity behind the success in standing Curious George upright, with both puppets on his hands & as you can see, he is King of the Jelly Bellys. Kristin is Queen of the Sweaters, as you can see, she is wearing her finished Te Rosada in a loverly hand-dyed blend of greens & yellows.

I took these pictures while I was on the phone. My title is Queen of the Multi-Tasking!

Karen tagged me for a li’l meme, which are perfect for Sundays! Here we go. I’m going to lay it out there that if you’d like to do this, too, consider yourself tagged, and if not, just kick back & watch some football. I might have even done this one before? But I don’t remember, and I’m up for seeing if I have new answers!

7 Celebrity Crushes

1. Michael Chiklis
2. Viggo Mortenson
3. Vin Diesel
4. Henry Rollins
5. Dave Grohl
6 & 7. Those two brothers on Prison Break, Hottie & HottieMcHottier

7 Things I’m Good At

1. Talking
2. Entertaining
3. Knitting
4. Cooking
5. Puzzles
6. Sleeping
7. Backrubs

7 things I plan to do before I die:

1. Own a station wagon
2. Travel overseas
3. Knit a really complicated sweater
4. Stay married to the awesome JWo
5. Write a book
6. Never settle
7. Keep learning

7 things I say often:

1. What the fuck?
2. Dammit!
3. You gotta admit…
4. Let me ask you this….
5. Fucker (I swear a LOT.)
6. This is Jennifer. (how I answer the phone at work)
7. POLLY, PILLOW!

7 things I cannot do:

1. Move furniture with my husband
2. Make items crafted from small pieces of felt and maintain my sanity
3. Stay organized
4. Keep my mouth shut
5. Enjoy mustard
6. Play an instrument
7. Eat “Thai Hot”

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex:

1. Humor
2. Eyes
3. Forearms
4. Kisses
5. Stability
6. Honesty
7. Flexible

Yeah, JWo, that last one? It’s alll for yoouuuuuuuu…… see number 1!

…if you consider the Mississippi River one of the coasts. (name that movie!)

Standing outside tonight, I was reminded of a time a therapist asked me what I believed in. What :could: I believe in. The answer I gave her was, “The wind.” For me, the wind is symbolic of a force you can’t see, you can’t take a picture of it, you can’t follow it, per se, and it changes the landscape wherever it goes.

I know what it’s like to stand on the edge of a beach, the roar of the water, the horizon and sky disappearing and merging together, and certainly those places make one feel small in relationship to the world around you.

That same feeling is right in my driveway on evenings like this, all the trees around me bare, waving their branches and gyrating against the deepening blue of the night sky. The rushing noise of the wind surrounding me, dry crunchy leaves swirling and leaping while the next gust built force and then poured in around me, as big as a wave. I turned my face to the wind, coming from the south and the west, and saw the first star of the night. I thought about how we humans consider ourselves at the top of the heap, but in that moment I was as inconsequential and small to the wind as one of the oak leaves at my feet.

There’s something beautiful about living near the plains; we know it’s not fancy or glamorous, and the only ships we have are oversized SUVs and semis hauling ass on the interstate. I’ve even seen a tumbleweed or two zip across the road out on the highway. But we got wind, baby, we got biiiig wind. And there are three things that get me wistful, philosophical & filled with the world around me: a landscape blanketed in snow at twilight, the smell of an Iowa corn field in the heat of summer, and big wind through the night sky.