Where's the fun in that?

Video games are REALLY good at distracting children. Parents' best friend.

Just sayin'.

Did you know that there are some parents out there who don't dare have sex when their children are in the house? Ever???? So they have to arrange for an off-site babysitter so they can fuck. Where's the fun in that?

Damn. I feel very sorry for those people. In several ways.

I mean, there's late at night, when the kids are asleep. I mean, they're ASLEEP. And parents know how well their children sleep, and even if they don't sleep well, there's a damn lock on their bedroom door, right? Well, I would hope.

That gives the opportunity for the regular old missionary.

And the kids play outside, right? Even in today's paranoid world, they do that sometimes. They've got things to do outside, and they do them.

And we've got each other to do inside.

Then there's that lock on the door. Ya know, doors have locks for a reason.

Like that lock on the door of the half bath, which, while being small-- also by being small presents good opportunities for bracing one's hands and feet and whatever.

We've broken most of the towel racks in our house.

Anyway:

XBox 360: $299.99

Wireless Racing Wheel: $129.99

NACSAR 08 game: $59.99

15 minutes with the Jesus of Cheese behind a locked door: Priceless.

Transformers: Quick review

The Jesus of Cheese and I saw this movie on Saturday. Yeah, I know it's been out a month. So what. If you've already seen it, you're a geek.

However, I liked it. Really.

I was too old for the toys and the cartoon. I knew what they were, but didn't care, didn't know the names of any of the doohickeys and since it had no effect on whether or not my fake ID worked in bars, it didn't matter.

However, I married a younger man. Stamina/recovery and all that. Hey, it's true!

Wait, I got distracted for a second. The movie. Um, yeah.

I enjoyed the story. It was funny, engaging, not too deep. The action was great. It's Michael Bay, so that's what it's always going to be. The FX was spectacular.

The acting.

Well, for a second, I thought that Shia LaBeouf looked exactly like Russell Crowe in a scene from "Brides of Christ" (an Australian miniseries from 1991) so...

Well, I liked Shia.

Overall, the movie was funny, entertaining, had action, and enough menace for dramatic effect, but not enough to make me feel like it was jerking my fear chain.

In retrospect, The Jesus of Cheese concurred that I must have missed half of the story, not knowing jack shit about the Transformaconemonsmurfjoeturtles. But it didn't seem to matter.

Go see it, or rent it, or whatever. It's worth a couple of hours of your time.

Pulp Fiction; not to be confused with the movie

I am bereft.

Or at least that's how it feels. I just finished the book I was reading, and I don't have anything "new" lined up to read this weekend.

That's not entirely true. I have plenty of books on my shelf that I haven't read yet, but none of them are what I'm in the mood for right now.

I don't want anything serious. I don't want anything literary. I don't want anything that describes in great detail how a computer encryption program works even though it's supposed to be fiction. I don't want anyone to die unless it's 1) The bad guy, 2) The asshole husband, 3) A beloved relative who was old and whose "time had come."

I DO want humor. I want gratuitous sex. I want people to suddenly become wealthy in a totally fictitious obvious plot-point way. I want the characters to get drunk and inappropriate in public. I want a character who's a smoker and never once mentions quitting, nor anyone lecturing the smoker about quitting. I want the ditzy blonde to turn out to be a genius and save the day. Oh and that same ditzy blonde? She turns out to be lesbian and she really didn't realize all those guys were hitting on her. I would also like a giant old house with old furniture and at least one hidden room.

Oh, enough rambling. I love pulp fiction. I'll quote my skanky ex-boyfriend Pete: "It's better for your brain to read trashy fiction than to watch trashy fiction on TV."

Pulp fiction: It contains pretty darn good descriptions of food you want to eat, adventures you want to live, sex you want to have, and an ending you'll never get.

So I just walked over to my shelf and grabbed at random. I'm sure to get at least one of the things I want.

Day 7, Continued (and you thought I'd forgotten!):

We put on our family shirts. They're nothing more than red Haynes beefy-t's from Wal-Mart. They come in handy at Twins games and such, to keep track of everyone.

My last name used to be Horter. So my sis jokes that the family needs a Horter collie, to keep us all together, and that's what the red shirts are for.

And off to the reunion we went.

I can only do this in little bits. I can't remember it all at once. Well, here's a little bit.

Mostly, I remember my cousin Shawna (sorry, can't think of a nickname for her) and her new tattoo. It was some graphic, I don't remember that, but under it was, "Love, Dad," in her dad's handwriting. I don't know why I instantly recognized his handwriting, but I did.

Shawna said that her sister had gotten one with some lyrics to one of the songs he used to sing all the time, and her brother had gotten one that said, "Mr. Asshole."

A family thing for them...'You're an asshole'...'That's MR ASSHOLE to you!'

Their dad died almost two years ago just after Thanksgiving.

I don't remember if I wrote about their dad when I wrote over on Nick's page. Probably. I know I wrote a lot about him, but I don't know if I could finish anything I wrote about him. He was one of those people who couldn't ever be contained, even in a brief, stupid story in a blog. He was destined for an abrupt end.

In five words: veteran, tortured, loving, hilarious, felon. And for the bonus, let's add Asshole to the list.

He died at age 59, in his new motor shop that he'd just finished, with a cigarette in his mouth. Probably drunk. Heart attack.

I love you, Uncle Jim. You shoulda been there.

For mom

My mom once had a notepad that had the following phrase printed at the top: "I'm depressed because I lost my favorite bra and my spirits are sagging."

Therefore, in my family, "Tighten your bra straps!" is equivalent to, "Buck up, little camper!"

Right now, my Mom needs some strap tightening. More "issues" about my dad. I won't go into it except to say: Don't marry an older man.

So, that picture up there is for my mom.

Happy Birthday, Daniel Radcliffe!

Hey, he turned 18. It's legal to look at this picture now!

I Built This!

I've been working on this sweater a long time. I messed up on part of it and abandoned it, but recently was inspired to correct my mistakes.

I may be an alcoholic, but I'm an alcoholic who can knit while drunk. Go me!

Random Photos

Don't say I didn't warn you. Here's some nekkiditity. And some other stuff.

Like Russell Crowe's ass:



And Ewan McGregor's penis:



And that damn UFO car:



I had sex in this tower once:



Bloomie and I as the B52s (I'm on the right, and yes, that's our own hair):



DoorKee and Bert Blyleven (Bert's on the left):



And this one speaks a thousand words:

Let's All Hate My Father

This happened a few days ago. I've calmed down now, to the point of passive resentment.

Last week, Daddums called me up and told me he thinks I drink too much, and it's been bothering him a long time, and he just "had to say something."

I sat quietly and listened to his lecture. I resisted the urge to hang up the phone, to yell at him, or make any kind of justification-type argument against his accusations.

All I told him was that he's wrong. And I followed that up with assurance that I'd talk to the Jesus of Cheese about it and if HE felt it was a problem, and that I wasn't facing reality, that the Jesus of Cheese had my permission to call Daddums.

I only did that last part to give my father a false sense of control.

Now I'll back up a bit. My father has, in his lifetime, written me ONE letter (he was sending me money in college, and my mom told him not to just send the check but include a note with it.)

And he has called me ONE other time.

That time, he called me at work at the public library while I was working the reference desk, and made me cry. That lecture was about how I wasn't earning enough money and that I had to figure out how to manage my debts better because HE certainly didn't intend to help me. (I was working 60 hours a week at 3 different jobs at the time.)

Both times, both phone calls, happened when he was trying to quit smoking. Last time, he was on nicotine patches, but that was before they figured out that Wellbutrin should be taken at the same time, so that the person quitting doesn't experience "illogical negative emotions and thoughts."

This time, he was taking that new type of prescription, but he finished the standard 3 months of it and didn't renew it.

Whatever.

So I talked to the Jesus of Cheese, who laughed at the accusation. And this is the [non-drinking] guy who lives with me and deals with my insanity and beer obsession and neglect of housekeeping, on a daily basis. He has a clue. My dad, who only sees me maybe 10 days a year, doesn't. He spends most of those 10 days counting how many beers I consume.

"So how do you feel about this, BeerPup?"

How do I feel? I don't know. I wonder, though, what other things I do that are unacceptable to my father. I didn't know I was such a horrible person. Good thing he's around to tell me.

Asshole.

My Guy

Y'all should slap me, next time I dis The Jesus of Cheese.

He's a great guy. And I'm not just talkin' about the sex. Or how he makes me laugh. Or the *ahem* quality of life he provides...

Today's example: I was making the bed this morning and actually changing the sheets and such, and started thinking that we needed new queen-size pillows, being that the ones we have might be a decade old. Then I started thinking that we needed a new comfy blanket.

We've got a comfy blanket, but it's rather worn. It started out as a quilt my mom made for us, but mom doesn't always pay much attention to quality control, so it disintegrated within months.

I took it apart and used the quilt top (that's the patterned top that's designed and stitched together) with a new batting (the warm stuff in the middle), and as the bottom, I used one of my top sheets. One of my 400 count Egyptian cotton top sheets.

So it was WAY comfy.

Then a dog chewed apart one of the corners. That's another story.

Anyway, we've used this blanket for several years. It gets washed quite often. It's barely hanging on, this blanket.

And today, for the first time, I really realized we needed to replace the damn thing. And (stupid me) I started thinking I was going to MAKE one.

It's a family habit. You don't buy blankets. You make them.

Once the sheet changing task was over, I forgot about it.

Until The Jesus of Cheese walked in this evening and presented me with a comfy blanket that he just bought (why didn't I think of that?) at Target.

"I was going to buy some Henry Wadsworth Longpillows , but they didn't have any, so I got you this," he said.

HOW? How the fuck did he know??? Okay, maybe since we share a bed (and blanket and pillows) he knows what's old and needs replacing, but how did he know on the day that I finally decided to take care of it, that he would? Take care of it, I mean?

He was at the office by the time I was doin' the domestic crap. That's not how he knew.

He just read my brain.

How cool.

Day Seven: North Dakota

My trip day numbers are off. Whatever.

We took off bright and early, headed for Bismarck. We stopped for gas. And then...

Remind me again NEVER to follow my mother's driving directions. The woman thinks she can read a map, but she can't. She thinks she's being clear, but she isn't. And she thinks she knows where she's going, but she doesn't.

F'rinstance, she once gave me directions to my brother's house: "Well, go through downtown, and you know how you had to go around the parking lot for the East Side mall? Well you don't have to do that any more [you hadn't had to do that for years when she was telling me this] so go straight through, and cross the bridge, and then when you get to that overpass, you know the one just past downtown, by the Best Western? The Townhouse, well, at the overpass, you take the Cherry Street exit, and you can't get to the street you need directly, you have to take a right and a left to get there, well, Dad doesn't go the same way as me..."

She confirmed with him the way he usually goes, which is not the way she was telling me to go anyway, so I said, "So, the Cherry Street exit?"

"And then there's Cherry Street. So you go...." and she tells me to go X number of blocks, take a right and then a left, and I should be there.

I got lost. Her directions were completely fucked up. Luckily, I had written down the address, so I used my brain and found the house on my own.

Later, I asked her, "Mom, did you realize you never told me to TAKE Cherry Street?"

"Yes I did, I said..."

"You said, 'And then there's Cherry Street' and then this right, left thing, which didn't lead to Cherry Street."

"Oh. Sorry."

BTW, she could have just said, "Go behind La Campana, go past the park, and take a left," and it would have been clear as a bell to me.

So, back to the trip. Mother managed to get us lost between Grand Forks and Fargo. Look on a map and you'll realize how nearly impossible it is to do such a thing. I'm still mad at myself for listening to mom, because I knew better than to listen to her.

At about 12:15, I got a phone call. It was my sister.

"We're going 75 miles an hour. LEGALLY!"

"So you're in South Dakota, then?"

"Yeah, where are you?"

"Well, I'm not going 75, that's for sure. I'm going about 15 MPH down a muddy gravel road because MOM TOLD ME TO! I'd stop and ask for directions, but there's nothing out here, except for a car coming toward us. Bet that's mom and dad. Yep! Call you back when I don't have to use two hands to drive...or kill mother."

Dad pulled up next to us and rolled down the window. Mom grinned sheepishly and said, "And then there's Cherry Street!"

--TBC--