They have said this repeatedly on tv tonight with the ICE STORM OF THE CENTURY bearing down on us here. Shouted with drama & irony.

I say, if you have not figured this out by now, then you deserve to pick up a downed power line, put it in your mouth & see what happens.

Seriously. Modern medicine has allowed far too many stupid people to not only continue living, they are combing their mullets & repopulating the world! And we have to REMIND people not to pick up live sparking cables? The decline of common sense continues to amaze & disappoint me.

Also, am I the only one who thinks Ted Textor is an absolutely HILARIOUS weatherman’s name? I think it reminds me too much of Ted Baxter, and I adored Ted Knight SOOOO much on the Mary Tyler Moore show. Ted was going to be my second husband, you know. I even named my teddy bear “Ted Thursday” after him. (why Thursday? I don’t know! I was three! Hell, I named my first doll “Nohni”, which means, “This is MINE and I will Have Difficulty Sharing Things For the Rest of My Life” in Japanese.) Oh, who was my first husband going to be, you ask? Why that would be Kansas City native Walter Cronkite. Apparently my parents got a BIG ol’ kick out of asking their three-year-old child who she was going to marry when she grew up, and I would always walk over to the tv & point at Walter Cronkite, chirping, “Him!” (They only asked this question during the news, for obvious reasons.) So I seemed to carry a very bright torch for white-haired gents at a very early age. I like to think I had an early attraction to intelligence & humor. Walter Cronkite doesn’t need to be told twice to stay away from downed power lines, and neither do I, thank you very much.

Let me give you this lesson. If you can have furniture delivered for $50, do it.

Because when you can’t get a sofa through the door, it’s cold, it’s 10:00 at night, and your husband is ready to kill you, you would gladly pay $100. I was being frugal & not remembering how badly we move furniture together. I did not anticipate the mathematical problems involved, and I still have no idea how the furniture is getting in the house (the sofa is on its end in the garage, and the other pieces are still in the back of his truck.) Oooooh hindsight, you are a cruel & evil bitch.

Man, what is it about the first day back at work? Everyone is glum, and it’s not helped by the dismal weather outside. I swear, if it were snowing instead of raining, people would be more excited, even though the drive home would suck. I know I would be more excited. Snow has such a magical effect on me, still – and maybe even more so, now that I don’t live in Minnesota/NE Iowa anymore, because I do still remember my first winter in Minneapolis, with wind chills at an arctic negative 96 below zero, and really, when you get below, say, negative 20 below zero? You can just stop counting, really. Because all you end up with is mother fucking ICEBERG COLD no matter what device you’re using to measure it, and you instinctively do a hunch thing with your body to try to conserve heat, instead of standing upright. Back to what I was thinking, that snow makes me excited and happy because we don’t get that much snow in KC and so it’s not somethng that lasts and lasts and requires a tolerance and even hatred for it because it NEVER GOES AWAY. But it’s not snowing, so it’s a moot point. And I hate it when people write “mute point”, as if it’s simply silent and making its point with no sound. I am a Citizen Deputy in the Law & Order of Grammar. I seem to be Deputy Digress today.

So it’s this gloomy, mucky, chilly wet day, which means if it keeps up, no furniture pickup tonight at the NE Furniture Mart, boo hoo, and then we won’t get it tomorrow because I volunteer, and that puts us at Wednesday, which has quickly become THE television night, with Lost and Alias and CSI: NY and Law & Order (the original!) ALL airing this week. I’m actually going to shift some of my taping to the downstairs tv, in hopes it will motivate me to stride along on the treadmill while catching up on my reality-departing indulgences.

Back to the weather, and the overall atmosphere, we came back to have a TON more work piled up on our respective doorways and so there’s an ensuing depressing image I get, of juggling flaming baseball bats while trying to walk through molasses. I am not alone with this vision, I sense. It all reminds me of the wonderful painting by Degas, “The Absinthe Drinker”, and how I identified with it so many times when I was seriously depressed, and what it still signifies when I think it up in my head – despair mixed with the acceptance that nothing will ever change, the pain of which can only be dulled by a potentially dangerous poison. Lovely. I’m feeling so Up With People just writing about it. Soo……..

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a duck goes into a bigger duck’s office and gives them the middle webbed toe. Awesome. The rest of us ducks just paddle like hell underneath, trying to maintain a calm & placid demeanor on the surface ….. hoping we don’t get shot.

that would be the coded email message I received from a co-worker, indicating that one of our co-workers has quit. Quacks me up, I must say. And so appropriate for a duck hunting widow!

So, on New Year’s Eve, before going to a friend’s house for snacks & a little red wine, we went to – where else? Wal-Mart. Roger & David wanted pet supplies, and we were REALLY early – so where better to kill some time than at the world’s largest retailer!

Partway through the store I got in a panic that I wouldn’t have anything to “do” at the party. Originally, we were going to bring a game, but it seems that “Scene It” is THE hot game this year and unavailable, anywhere. So, I made my way to the craft department, because I had to have some back up crafting options. Yes. I know how party.

I started with three skeins of some fluffy eyelashy yarn in a vivid green, reminiscent of the medicine I was given when I had bronchitis. It’s not a color I have, so it was a Justified Purchase ™. But then, I’d need some needles. Fortunately, WM is pretty cheap, so some 10.5 circs jumped in the cart, too. You can never have too many needles, right? Then, as I was heading out, this whole section of new stuff caught my eye – purses knit with strips of fabric! I’d heard about these from someone in my knitting guild, but now I could look at them beyond online, and they even had a sample zip tied to the endcap. You can see the kits online here. I ended up buying the Purely Purple Gem Bag, and started it yesterday – don’t worry, dear yarn stores, this will not be my NuPassion for 2005. It’s fairly hard on your hands, for one thing. The fabric is kinda cool, but not enough to make me give up yarn, or even make these in mass production. The kit I bought had a cloth-covered handle, which I didn’t like, so I bought some plastic circle handles, and will have to devise a way to knit those in. Really, the moral of this story is that Wal-Mart is actually expanding beyond the basics of Red Heart & baby yarn, and that’s good news for the knitters out there who don’t have a LYS nearby. The kits were pretty inexpensive – $12.94 – and the fabric strips were pre-cut (that would’ve been a dealbreaker for me!)

Oh, and back to NYE – the party was fun, and I didn’t have to break out my back-up craftin’. But it was there, and I wasn’t afraid to use it.

Every New Year’s Eve, I say, “This year is gonna be the best year ever!” Mostly because I believe that optimism and staying positive are powerful forces in what you draw in, despite all the bad things that happen to good people out there.

I was thankful driving home that no drunk drivers plowed into me, and I kept telling myself the fact I was driving at 11:45 p.m. was reducing my odds, because anybody getting schnockered was going to stick around until midnight before getting behind the wheel. To the residents in the apartments just south of 85th & Holmes: thank you for weakening my bladder muscles just a tiny bit more. The Depends people are waiting for me, someday, and we can attribute your 8,000 firecrackers going off to a tiny reduction in muscle control on my part. Seriously, I thought I was under attack. I’ll admit, I was paranoid about stray bullets with the inevitable midnight volley of celebratory gunfire that seems to happen in every city.

Growing up in Iowa, the only stuff you could buy was sparklers, and those were only around on the 4th of July. Moving to Missouri was an eye-opener to me, where it seems “professional grade” fireworks are abundant, while expensive, and every class and age of person avails themselves of these things. My Iowan upbringing leaves me VERY skittish and content to only hold a sparkler, thank you very much, and so I still react like a war veteran when things are exploding around me.

I made it home a few minutes after midnight, and got my New Year’s Eve kisses from Polly, who was delighted to be out of her kennel and more than happy to oblige. Now, we have a bright, shiny new year spread out in front of us, with so many things that can happen. I’m excited for what the future will bring, I’m happy with what I have right now, and I’m content to put 2004 behind me, for it ended a bit more sorrowfully than I would have liked. I will always remember my friend Becki, and the life she led, and will be comforted that she lives on in so many of our hearts, and that her physical suffering ended. I have a lot of things to work on in my life, but I don’t really do resolutions – they seem fraught with the perfection/failure cycle, and there’s a better chance for success if I simply put one foot in front of the other and not make sweeping life reformations that crumble inside of two weeks.

For all my friends out there, happy new year to you! May it be filled with everything you love, as little sadness as possible, good health & good fortune, and for my knitting friends, excellent yarns to be discovered and knit, and may they all be on sale!

The volume of spam I have been receiving at my office account has dropped dramatically this week. Spammers must take vacations, too! However, the vicodin and zanax and codeine peddlers still keep me on their list, even through the holidays. They know it can take some strong stuff to get through this time of year.

The great thing about Polly the WunderLab, is that she is ebullient. She is excited. She loves EVERYTHING and EVERYBODY, and her biggest drawback is that she thinks she’s a 10# lap dog & should be allowed to lean/climb up onto anyone and everyone who gives her the time of day.

So, needless to say, getting her into her hunting vest from Cabela’s is a walk in the park. You just have to tell her she’s SO PRETTY and she has a blast. She runs around and shows everyone how pretty she is, and is a-ok in it.

Not so much with Suzy.

My husband didn’t exactly fawn and dote all over Suzy in her formative years, so she developed a more reserved personality. She’s a lover, and she’s friendly, but she doesn’t have that second-child clownish persona, and she’s quite content to be a little more reserved, a little more austere, to walk the Grace Kelly route and be a little above the fray. Which means she HATES her hunting vest. She will barely walk when it’s on, and the only word that perfectly captures her expression? BALEFUL. That dog looks like she is trying to squash murderous thoughts, but the homicidal tendencies are winning.

I submit to you, dear readers, the photographic evidence. Our stomachs hurt from laughing, I’m sorry to say, mostly at Suzy’s expense.

Luckily for Suzy, she’s got a very thick winter coat & won’t be needing her vest the way Polly does.

Luckily for us, she didn’t kill us in our sleep.

I FEEL FABULOUS! I am PRETTY, and this vest just makes me feel like hunting or going to Paris, whichever comes first.  

This is the most humiliating moment of my life, next to last night, when you put this blasted thing on me the first time.