So last night, late, I get a standard oh-so-sorry email from my lovely friends at Amazon going ON and ON and fucking ON about how their shipping and Prime and timing and grouping and delayed books and why all those things collude to keep me from my shit. And that my shit will still be arriving on September 7.

Blink, blink. I go off to bed, but my mind won’t turn off. I go back to the computer. For I? I have a plan! I will cancel the one book that is dragging this thing along, and then the other books will be here, post-haste! Oh, but no. Suddenly my whole order is not changeable, as it was before I wrote my first letter. I give you one giant hairy eyeball and this word: CONSPIRACY? And do you think this stops me? HAHAHAHAHAHA.

no.

I write a letter to NkNk Haroova or whatever in hell their fake-but-pretending-to-be-real name was, and basically say, this is utter bullshit, now I can’t even change my order, three weeks for all my books, on and on I go, and I tell them how they can make me happy. Get me my books by Friday, bitches. That’s the only way to make me happy.

Fast forward to five minutes ago, when I received an email, telling me my Amazon order has shipped – and will be arriving – Friday! But it’s being sent to work, and guess who has Friday afternoon off. Just guess. GUESS WHO. ME. But I have a friend here. I bet she’ll help a homey out.

So, let’s talk about the pendulum swing at lunch, on top of all this High! Seafaring! Bookworm! Drama! We went to a sandwich place, and it took for-fucking-ever. They were a wee bit short-staffed it seemed. And there was a crisis with the iced tea pot. CRISIS. I’m surprised Homeland Security didn’t show up. But the entire accounting department from my former job was there, and it was kind of the same thing. Then, finally, we trundled off to Starbucks to use the free iced coffee coupon (today only) they sent one person at the office, who kindly sent it on to all of us. As I love to do, I checked out the sale bin & found a spiffy orange water bottle. Because I :need: more shit. Need it! Hey, it was way on sale. Why not. I order my coffee, and the cutest gay man in the metro area, the one who barely beat out the feller working next to him, tries to ring up my water bottle. And cannot. Cutey-patootie #2 tells him it’s been on clearance too long, and therefore it’s free, just give it to me. Zero it out. Free coffee, free water bottle. I tipped well.

And when we left Starbucks? I felt that perhaps, just maybe, a brass band would herald my coming and flowers would rain down from the air. I sense my takeover of the world is IMMINENT. And do you know what this means? It means the crazy bitch in front of me on Wornall this morning, the crazy smoking lady who couldn’t find a happy consistent speed, the same one with “I LOVE PARROTS” on her license plate frame?

She will be sent to work in the shipping department of Amazon. And she will like it. (After all, I will allow her helper parrot to join her.) I’m nothing but benevolance in a brandy snifter.

I have a recurring theme in my life, which is brought about by two great personality traits (flaws)reaching a confluence within me: A) a white-hot rage that gets stoked every so often, and B) a tendency towards absent-mindedness, which only seems to increase the older I become.

What happens when these two converge is that I blithely continue doing whatever it was I was doing, but with a vague sense of…uneasy. Irritation. Like a small child with peanut butter all over his hands, tugging at the hem of your skirt. Finally the irritation becomes so persistent, I have to ask myself, “Now, what was I mad about?”
Which always seems to be filled with great irony and amusement, because if it was worth being mad, I would still remember it, and the attempt TO remember it is only prolonging the unpleasant. However, in today’s case (Pissed off at Amazon Prime, how dare those fuckers give me a free trial which is akin to dusting my toes with powdered sugar & licking them, and it gets me thinking just how fan-fucking-tastic Amazon Prime is, getting books in a mere day or two, instead of Free! Super! Saver! Shipping! and waiting for two weeks. Those fuckers. They gave me a free trial and then I ordered some books and now it’s going to be THREE weeks before they get here! It’s enough to make me kick them in the face. Given that they’re already down there and all (the confectioner’s sugar toes, remember?)) Where was I? Yeah. In today’s case. It was NECessary to remember why I was pissed, so I could unleash my Holy HellRage on them and maybe get my damn books here a little sooner. So I tried their “We’ll call you right back” feature, which is awesome! Awed by the technology that allows me to enter my phone number, and immediately have my phone ring – them calling me back! – I wasn’t even troubled the first THREE TIMES the line then went to “Busy”. By the fourth attempt, I could have gotten frownier, but I’d have looked as though I were related to a shar-pei. The only recourse left was a gigantor email, and I even apologized for being such a beyotch, but all the same, WHERE’S MY STUFF.

OH mah god. I’m surprised I don’t have white spittle on my shirt from being in a frothing rage.

I wonder how I’ll feel in ten minutes. Probably wondering why there’s spit on my shirt.

OK, you know you’re supposed to read that title in a Homer-Simpsonesque voice, right?

I’m talking about the movie, Layer Cake, starring the newest 007, Daniel Craig. I must admit, when I saw him gracing the cover of my Ent. Wkly magazine, I wasn’t impressed. After all, there have been numerous machinations and interpretations of Bond, thank you, and I admit, I’ve always been partial to the brunette ones…. specifically Sean Connery & Pierce Brosnan.

But then? JWo wisely DVR’d Layer Cake one evening, thinking I’d like it. Oh what a lovely thing it is, to have someone know you. He was so right! Great music, an intriguing story, and an all-around good indie-feel movie. Made me tumble hard for one Daniel Craig, as well. WHOOOOOO CHILD. He’s smokin’.

Now, do you want a couple movies to avoid? (Hi, who didn’t leave the house or change out of her pajamas on Sunday?) I won’t bother linking “White Noise” with Michael Keaton. Hi, I saw “The Ring” already and this doesn’t even come close. Click, end of story. The other is Crash, and I don’t mean the Oscar-nominated “Crash”. This one’s about freaky people with car-accident sex-fetishes, and no matter how many terrific, Emmy/Oscar-caliber actors you assemble (James Spader, Holly Hunter, Rosanna Arquette), it’s still about freaky car-accident fetish folk. Hey. To each their own, but despite near X-rated scenes, I found myself bored & fast-forwarding to see if any big life-changing message or reveal was going to happen. Nope. The movie left me feeling like I was watching yet another twist on addiction, where people sink lower and lower out of a desperate attempt to actually FEEL something, and really, on a rainy Sunday afternoon, nobody needs to ride along for that.

(But I still adore James Spader.) And watch Layer Cake. Maybe make one, too. Mmmm. Cake……

So, what happens when you are so dog-tired at 8:00 at night, cross-your-eyes falling-asleep-at-the-tv tired? You crawl into bed, and have delicious notions that you will sleep for -oh- 11 hours. Maybe 10. Certainly not just THREE. Hello! Now I’m here on the computer, trying to recapture that eye-crossing tiredness, and it’s just not working. -ohp, there was a huge yawn. there’s still hope. It just sucks when you have all the optimal conditions for a real humdinger of a sleep, you know? The temperature was perfect, the pillows were arranged perfectly (I get a little nutty about having everything stacked just so – please, contain your shock and awe at that one…). It was just dreadful to get up and accept the fact that no, I am not getting 10+ hours of sleep tonight, and so what if tomorrow’s Monday, (oh yeah, I came up to see if I have meetings/appointments….. that drives wardrobe….) oooookey dokey, no meetings, no lunch plans, NUTTIN. Perhaps I am coming down with Le Plague. Well, maybe it is just the infernal BUG BITES, but it could be that the bugs were CARRIERS of …. Le Plague…… Perhaps I will need to stay home and accumulate the 10 hours of sleep randomly, between scratches. Perhaps I am simply dreaming, because even as I spun that little fantasy candyland, about six things I have to do tomorrow came scrambling in, shouting for attention. And that’s productive for getting back to sleep. Hmmmm…..
Arrighty. Time to re-enter the somnosphere. Curtains down….

So I’d just posted about being ready for football, and looky-loo, lucky me got tickets to the pre-season game from a friendly TV station. (Apparently they’re not holding any weather-personality-stalking against me. I think it means they want me to spend some moolah.) If I hadn’t had to walk 14 miles uphill both ways from my parking spot to the stadium, I’d have taken a better camera with me. As it was, I toted some knitting along, but was too intimidated (and distracted by the game) to bust that out. We take football seriously in this town, and some people around us would have interpreted knitting as hating. NObody likes a hatah! It didn’t help that I brought along a 24-row repeat sock pattern I’ve never done before & it would have required me ignoring everything around me. (Not smart.) But it was a win for the Chiefs, and now I’m home & a little keyed-up still from the experience. Even though half the crowd had left by the 4th quarter, it’s still a thundering noisy stadium, full of energy….and drunken folk. Speaking of drunken folk, somebody in the neighborhood is having a party, as I hear the thump-doop-dum-thump of a bass from a stereo cranked up high. It’s rare for around here, and hopefully by the time I crawl into bed the white noise of our fans and my sleepiness will obscure the noise. Makes me glad I don’t live next to an aspiring band….. or Arrowhead Stadium……

I was locked up with several co-workers yesterday in a hotel conference room, having one of those long meetings where you chart and discuss the future of the business, review goals, all that stuff I never saw in the fine print when I took a job that put me “in charge” of things. Don’t get me wrong, the process is necessary & good for getting the process of change in place, and I sat there and remembered my last boss & how I never want to become her. It’s always good to stay motivated! But it still made for a very long day. And I catch myself sometimes thinking, “Huh. Is this me now? Have I become that person/boss I hated/didn’t understand/resented when I was 22, or even 32?” I certainly have seen my perspective change and shift and adjust over the past few years, as life and its priorities and stuff in general become more important, less important, worth fighting over, worth letting go. I think as we get older, we get tired more easily, and that alone makes it simple to look at something and go, “Yeah. I don’t want to mess with that anymore,” or, “It’s not worth putting anymore energy into.” Prioritizing got a whole lot easier this year.

I’ve lost a lot this year, first and foremost being my father. I have lost some friends, lost some innocence, lost some patience, lost a bunch of belongings, lost a lot of time. I barely remember April, May or June, as if I’d been in a twilight coma, simply floating through time and space. I’m sure I could go back and read those blog entries, but I’m not ready to do that. Again, something that would require too much energy, and while I still have my sadness, I’m not trying to actively seek it out. I described the grief to a friend as being a deep slice. I don’t think, in conversations with people who’ve survived loss a lot longer than I, it ever goes away, or even ceases to cut you to the quick at times. In my mind, it’s as though a scalpel-sharp dagger pierces straight down to the bone, a fissure, a break in my emotional weft. But it knits itself shut again, and the amount of time everything is open & laid bare is shorter. The surprising part is the unexpected moments that catch you so unaware. Something so small as seeing the jar of honey in the pantry, that jar we bought from the bee lady two days after dad died, the lady who keeps her bees just north of our farm, and the lovely letter she wrote my dad when she heard of his cancer, of how in years to come she will see the bees returning from South Cedar Creek on the wind and she will think of him, and it’s like my knees buckle under from the elegant, gorgeous, brutally stark beauty of the love that existed in the world and within me, for my father. And then moments later my knees unlock, the ice-pick in my heart pulls out, and I take a deep breath and continue living.

I’m just trying to be the best person I can be, and while I know I don’t always succeed, the older I get, the more experiences I have, the more I understand that every summer the bees will return, they will do their marvelous dance and tell the other bees where the flowers are, and honey will be made and I will never, ever stop loving him.

Here I am with Channel 9 (ABC)’s Brian Busby. Could not have been nicer, could not have been more polite, despite the Clay-Aiken-Stalkeresque-Quality I feel coming out of my pores when I solicit a photo with any of these TV people. For whatever reason, I feel compelled to introduce myself with, “My husband LOVES the weather.” Because I? I am a hatah. Weathah Hatah. Not really, but seriously. If there’s anyone I know who can watch & read & understand weather charts and forecasts like these weather people, it’s JWo. He could give them all a run for their money. And I have many pictures of us together!

Two down, technically two to go. (Fox and NBC). But really. It only matters if I get a pic with NBC’s Gary Lezak, the King of Weather and Giant Arm Gestures and Excited Utterances. I could make this photo opp happen, but I’d prefer it to unfold a little more “naturally.” After all, I do this more for my (and your!) amusement than anything else!

I am currently in two fantasy sports “operations”. One is baseball, and given everything that happened this spring, I didn’t do a damn thing. I was assigned some players, somehow, and through absolutely no skill or action on my part, I am currently in 6th place (out of 10!). Go me!

I’m attempting to put a little more effort (not that moving from “zero” is that much of a challenge!) into the football league I joined, formed by Bekah. Right now, my favorite part is the “Smack Talk” section. (Statistics? Selection? Whatever, Schmatever!) It helps that I’m more of a football fan now, vs. baseball. But I’ll never be one of those statistic-spouting dudes, or even one of those people who can shout out what the next play SHOULD be. That is just too risky. I’m excellent at screaming, cheering, and understanding (for the most part) what is actually happening, and I adore the once- or twice-per-year chance I get to attend a game, when the wind whips over the arch of Arrowhead and slices through the stadium, freezing my nose and fingers. When it’s 4th down and the Chiefs decide to go for it, and the roar of the crowd (the loudest in NFL) thunders through your skin, and your own voice is lost in the enormous chorus, untrained and unrehearsed, and you lose the sense of being alone even in your own mind, because you are now part of the Chiefs Borg, the swaying, howling miasma of drunken fans and everyone stomps their feet to make some noise and hopefully keep their toes from freezing off.

Yeah. I’m ready for some football.

Something about the combination of me, one PlazaJen, and copious amounts of tomatoes turns the kitchen into a veritable bloodbath. It’s not that I set out to make a mess, or that I’m careless, but I ended up with enough tomato spatter on the front of my shirt to make me think twice about walking out the front door of my home, lest the 75+ year-old neighbor across the street think we’re sacrificing goats in the comfort of our air-conditioned home.

Truth be told, JWo and I were making vats of tomato sauce & juice. Our friend Roger is moving, and he had picked his garden clean of tomatoes, only to realize he’d already packed his canning supplies! We already had a couple large bowls filled of our own, so we bit the bullet & started processing. As we were grinding tomatoes through the uni-tasking tomato press, I was reminded of the grisly scene in Fargo, involving Steve Buscemi and a wood chipper. And even though I can do a wicked Minnesota accent (hell, being from Northern Iowa, it’s simply a matter of mileage from where I started myself; Missouri living has draped a drawl on top of my round “o”s and flattened “a”s), I resisted. Might have been the distraction by the fact that every small cut or fissure in the skin on my hands was screaming at the acidic tomato juice burning at my nerves! Anyway, Alton Brown hates uni-taskers, but I love that tomato press. And my panini maker. So now when I hear or even think of the phrase “uni-tasker”, I immediately think, “Fuck off, Alton Brown!” Jen loves her gadgets. Hey. I love Alton Brown, but not when he’s telling me my gadgets are wasteful. (And anything Alton Brown says gets repeated by the Alton Brown SuperFan in the house, and since the dogs haven’t mastered English, you do the deducing on who THAT is.)
Nobody is putting my gadgets in the woodchipper. Or me in a corner. Yeah. I’m really tired. Time for bed. I’ll probably dream I’m Carrie, and Alton Brown will be releasing the vat of juice on my head. With his fucking unitasker prom-queen-dousing-kettle!!!!

Yesterday afternoon, Miss Kristin and I attended the local CBS premiere party. The much-touted, prize-filled, lavish exTRAvaganza. There were drinks! Celebrities! Trips to NYC to watch various tapings – Letterman, Ellen, Regis & Kelly. We heard there were scads of additional prizes, gift certificates, whatever. So it was definitely a must-attend event.

All of the TV people were there as well, and we rode up in the elevator with the 10p news anchors. Cementing my role as a stalker, I later introduced myself to Katie Horner, and told her my husband just loves the weather. During the presentation, we sat with all the news people, me parked right next to Ms. Horner, and true to form, Kristin & I giggled and had our own sort of entertainment through the whole thing. Finally? Prize time. The first prize given away was an “Ellen” t-shirt and sneaker deodorizing balls. Surprised it wasn’t a Rolex, I leaned over and whispered to Kristin, “I hope you win that!” and as we laughed, her name was drawn. Ooops. She pointed out if I won a trip, she was coming with me. Basically, it was t-shirts, some toasters that imprinted “Regis & Kelly” on your toast, and the trips. I won nothing. Except we did get a picture of me with Katie:

So, that covers the “Balls” part of the title, lets move on to the nuts.
We went to Joe’s Crab Shack to have dinner with my MIL and our nieces, who were hilarious chatterboxes the whole evening. We went back to MommaLinda’s house for Pecan Pie Cake (OMG, OMG, best dessert EVER), and apparently our younger niece Danielle doesn’t like nuts. So as she’s picking through her cake, she’s talking: “These are BIG nuts. Big nuts. I can’t believe how big these nuts are. How am I supposed to eat nuts this big? These are some BIG NUTS.” My mother-in-law and I were positively shaking from internal giggling.

OH, and last, but not least, and backtracking a bit, we took Leper Barbie to the CBS party. One of our sales reps from that station gave her to Kristin (that’s a whole separate story); she had been his daughter’s Barbie until the family dog got hold of her and did a serious number on her arms & legs (thus her rather unfortunate name.) She has a couple of outfits, and since she lives most of her life in Kristin’s cubicle, we thought she’d like to get out and go to a party. I apologize for the qualitiy of these photos, I didn’t bring the Canon with me, but as you can see, she had a pretty good time, even though, just like me, she didn’t win ANY fabulous prizes: