Broad stature, massive head, short legs and unwavering loyalty.

We have two labradorks that the Big Dude Little Glasses uses for bird hunting although they believe their real purpose is to make sure that no one steals the furniture and they insure this by sprawling their ginormous bodies across it at all possible times. After several years of living with these two and their bald headed friend, I got used to the three of them so it seemed weird when they'd all leave to go hunting and I'd be home alone with nothing slobbering or panting near me. Also, he'd take the dogs.

I decided that what I needed was a house dog. But not some silly little floofy ball of fur...a sturdy dog with the highest levels of dignity and strength. But one that wouldn't hunt or jump on furniture, and preferably one that was too short to ever be fascinated with the crotches of houseguests.

I chose the English bulldog. I shopped for months until the perfect puppy was born, and then I paid for him to be flown here from another state. I named him Tater Tug Don't Hunt. (Tug for short). I took a week off of work to acclimate him. I trained him. I walked him. I made him MY dog. Only problem is - he made the Big Dude his person. He is IN LOVE with the Big Dude. And, the Big Dude loves him back.

They say that people look like their pets, so I really should've known better.

There's really only so much a person can take.

I remember watching a documentary on the Dust Bowl when I was a kid and thinking it must have been the most dismal awful boring time, mostly because you couldn't go outside and play and there didn't seem to be any toys in their houses, and worst of all, I was pretty sure the whole world was still in black in white which meant you couldn't even color.

They said that a lot of the families moved to California, which I figured was a really good idea, because even though they didn't have jobs or houses waiting for them in California, who cares? They could just hang out at the beach or Disneyland, right? Which was totally IN COLOR, so that'd be good. Then, they said that of the families who stayed, some died because THEIR MOMS WENT CRAZY AND KILLED THEM, something an 8 year old really wants to hear. I looked at my mom and said, "How could a mommy kill the whole family?"

Without really looking up from what she was doing, she said something to the effect of, "After months of cleaning and washing and trying to stuff wet rags under the doors to keep the dirt out just to have it come back in? Yeah. I can see how they'd just give up and kill everyone and themselves. Sure."

And today, as I face this, I totally understand too.
Twenty-three socks with no mates. TWENTY-THREE, people.

I'm moving to Disneyland.

Hotmail wants to break up with me but doesn’t know how to tell me because we’ve been together for so long and I’m really a nice person.

I have 445 pages of emails in my inbox. Of those, 2362 are unread. I am not exaggerating for comic effect, I just looked it up. It’s a hotmail account I’ve had since 2002. My work email also dumps into it. I pay extra for it so I can send really big fat graphics-filled emails. And I hate it with every fiber in my being. But I can’t get rid of it, because there’s just so much stuff in there. It’s like a storage unit full of crap that I don’t really want, but I can’t just walk away because hidden in between the out-of-date skis and your ex-boyfriend’s roommates sofa that you somehow got stuck with because he moved back to Michigan, there’s some old pictures and a box of yearbooks you’d kinda like to hang onto.

Every year or so in an effort planned primarily to piss me off, hotmail “upgrades the system.” That is Microsoft talk for totally switching it around, moving all the buttons, screwing with the font size and taking away at least 4 really useful functions that I like. There’s also a lot “CURM00000000000000000000::000000” and I don’t even want to know what that means. New versions are always really cool and interesting to at least one guy in Redmond, WA, but I’m certain no one ever tries them out on a Mac platform except me. By the time I work out all the kinks, I get about 4 peaceful months, and then I wake up to WE’VE UPGRADED!

My ultimate favorite is the message I get when I’m trying to search my massive inbox for a specific message. After a little teaser status bar claims to be “Loading…” for about 60 seconds, it will just give up.

“AHA!” you’re thinking. “Dumb girl. It’s because your inbox is too full.” And that’s what I’d think too, but I get this message:

There was a problem with the Windows Live Hotmail service.
It has nothing to do with your computer.

So it’s essentially saying, “It’s not you. It’s me.” Great. Hotmail loves me, but it’s not IN LOVE with me. Oh well. At least I have its roommates’ sofa.

(Does it frighten anyone besides me that spellchecker is totally good with CURM000000?)

My painful, painful childhood.

Today for your delight...Stuff That Still Really Hurts When I Think About It.

1. Riding my bike really fast down a hill at age 5 and crashing into a moving pickup and horsetrailer. It was the kind of starter bike that you pedaled backwards to brake - and I was having such a zippy, wonderful time going 90 miles an hour that I stuck my legs straight out rather than be bothered with pedaling. By the time I heard the pickup barreling down the road, the very road I needed to cross in a few short feet, it was too late. I tried to regain control of the pedals, but they were going too fast. I suppose a brighter child might have veered off to avoid a direct collision, but I went for it. The front tire of the bike hit the front corner of the horsetrailer and I bounced backwards into a sticker and weed-filled ditch. My handlebar and hip collided and there's still a scar. Many lesser, modern, weenie-type children might not survive such an ordeal. I survived because I was the aggressor. Technically, I hit the truck, not the other way around. And oh - I wasn't wearing a helmet. They weren't invented yet.

2. Reading a letter from a childhood friend on while walking behind Libby Hall on CU campus in Boulder, Colorado. Someone randomly flipped a beer cap (Miller High Life, I believe) from a 3rd story window and it hit me on the wrist. Hard. Everytime I think of the girl who wrote the letter, it stings again. So I'm not friends with her anymore. Sorry, Kathy. It's just too traumatic.

3. Slamming my fingers in the door of a 1968 Plymouth Satellite. I was wearing a fuzzy coat with leaves on it and green denim pants with really cool pockets. I was 9. I put my throbbing hand between my knees and bent over, and teardrops hit my glasses until I couldn't see. I still prefer to kick car doors closed with my foot, a habit that makes me look extra classy.

4. Stepping out of the camper in Galveston, Texas on a July afternoon and landing my cute bare foot in the middle of a hill of angry red ants who proceeded to devour my 10 year-old legs. I was wearing a double knit sundress my mother had made and I slapped at my legs and danced around which only made it worse. I still cannot step out of RVs or campers without first triple checking the ground. Just in case.

5. Hitting my head on the rafters at Snow Mountain Ranch YMCA in Tabernash, Colorado on Spring Break 1984. I cannot even really remember what caused me to think that jumping down off a deck to the ground would require me to first jump UP. But I ran with reckless 16 year old abandon and leaped as high as possible to thoroughly thwack my forehead against the rafter of the roof over the deck. This graceful movement caused my head to go backwards, but the forward thrust of my body continued. Which meant that the back of my head then hit the deck floor on my way down to the ground, where I plopped rather unceremoniously in a pile of unadulterated dorkitude. I spent the rest of spring break with a goose egg on my forehead and the inability to feather my hair without wincing.

And lastly:

6. Having a 90 pound Labradork pull me through the door of a Grand Motel in Julesburg, Colorado at 4:30 in the morning, catching the back of my hand on the little sticky-outty part of the latch which deeply gouged the thin skin on the back of my hand in a 4 inch swath. Should my body ever be discovered and be unrecognizable by dental records, check out the left hand of the cadaver and you'll know if it's me.

You know those "Darwin Awards" they give to people who hurt or kill themselves in really stupid ways so they deserve to die because they're the weak ones of the species and aren't smart enough to survive? I'm thinking I'm pretty danged evolved to live through all this stuff.

Be careful out there. You never know when a zinging beer cap is gonna whack you.

Holy Matrimony, Batman.

Forty-nine years ago today, my parents were married. And today, they are still married. To each other. Which is either an amazing testament to true love or unabashed stubbornness. (I reference a magnet on their refrigerator that says, “Divorce – Never! Murder – Maybe. I have suggested they remove it just in case, you know.)

So it was a spring day in 1960. There would’ve been crabapple trees blooming and violets and pansies bursting out ready for summer. The bride wore a cute white knee-length dress with a lace up bodice and midlength sleeves. She had clear acrylic peep toe slides with white high heels. It was good luck to put a penny in the bride’s shoe but no one had a penny, so they used a dime. The groom wore a slim black suit with pinstripe tie and smelled of Wildroot Crème Oil.

The ceremony and reception were held in a little brick duplex on South Clarkson Street, near Washington Park in Denver. It was her Grandmother’s house, and they were married in the dining room. The best man apparently got lost or otherwise didn’t make it and a female friend stood in for my Dad. (I’ve always considered this a great literary device as he was raised by a single mother and had three daughters and a sister, and in the movie of his life it would be an awesome sort of plot twist/foreshadowing/irony/dénouement something or other that he's always been surrounded by a harem.) The guest list included her parents and younger brother, his mother and younger sister and her Grandmother and maybe a few friends, but it was certainly small. There were no limos or band, no engraved invitations or wedding coordinator. Just two kids getting married and meaning it when they said, “Until death do us part.” They were 19 and 21. And apparently, plenty old enough to take it seriously. They honeymooned for the weekend in a little mountain town and then it was back to work on Monday.

They met a year or so prior. She was still in high school; he was a cool older guy with a leather jacket and a record player. He and a buddy crashed her high school dance because his buddy had a crush on her. But the cool quiet guy with the glasses got the girl.

By 1970, they had three little girls, a house, a business, a dog and a shiny Plymouth.

By 1980, they had three big girls, one a high school graduate, the other two weighed down with massive amounts of eyeliner and homework. There was a basset hound, an old farmhouse and two acres to spread out on. She let him buy cars; he cried when his wedding ring fell into a cement mixer and we all went back to work to help him find it. He did.

By 1990, they trekked across the country to start a new and different life without kids and surrounded by palm trees.

By 2000, they had three grandsons. They started riding bikes and walking together, they rescued doggies and welcomed a daughter to their Sunshine State.

In 2009, there are three grandsons and two granddaughters. They cared for both of their 90-something mothers for years and buried them within a few days of each other. Things have not been easy always, but they’ve not been impossible. Because at the end of the day, neither of them had to worry that they’d be facing life alone. If there’s nothing else to believe in, they really do believe in each other and the commitment they made 49 years ago.

They are still married. They still have the Plymouth, the dime from her shoe and each other. And despite my grandfather’s tears at the wedding and thirty years of insistence that it would never work out because they were way too young to get married, I’m kinda thinking it’s going to last. A lot of love, and a pinch of spite, perhaps.

Happy anniversary, Jim & Palma. You rock.

PS - Geez. Take a look at their bangs. No wonder I have a cowlick.

Big bang theory.

Yesterday I mentioned a few things that traumatized me/pissed me off/grossed me out/ to the point where I couldn’t write for a couple of days. I realized later that I totally skipped a biggie. I GOT BANGS.

I have not had bangs for a loooong time. Mostly because I hate tickly crap touching my face. A combination of every-season seasonal allergies and just plain curmudgen-ness, I find stuff touching my face annoying. Having all one-length of hair makes it easier to stuff it in a baseball hat, ponytail, braid, baling wire, whatever. Recently though, as I sat around a table with Lingerie Barbie, Spanxy and Trustfund Barbie, it seemed to me that I was decidedly older-looking than the rest of the gang, and my only out was the seductive Botox, or her cheap little sister: Bangs.

I am not the type of person who cries over haircuts or broken nails. I figure they’re both renewable resources, so when I went in for my regular appointment to have my gray racing stripe died a youthful golden brown with honey undertones, I told her “Gimme bangs.”

Lisa, the color-wizard who has been single-handedly caring about my hair (because really? I’m not all that interested) for the last 10 years, was thrilled, but skeptical. “Are you serious?" she asked. "Because they’ll totally touch your face. Also, you’ll have to come in more often than every seven weeks to have them trimmed. And, did I mention, they’re going to touch your face?” I waved my hand without looking up from the fascinating story of Valerie Bertinelli’s weight loss and single glass of champagne splurge a week and told her to go for it.

I left with a sleek, multileveled long ‘do and sweeping flat bangs. One word: HAWT. By the time I drove the 2 miles home and walked up the steps, it had increased to two words: Carol Brady. But still sort of cute in a 1970s throwback vintage hair way. By the next day, however, when I’d washed it and dried it all by myself. Um. Kind of like I’d cut it myself. Turns out I have a wicked cowlick where those sleek bangs go. I cannot sleek them regardless of method. I’ve put in “product,” pulled them, duct taped them, everything. They look redorkulous. They curl perfectly into my right eye, which is not as coy and cute as you might immediately imagine. It's more like I have 433 tiny hairs poking the shit out of my eye all day. Another amazing side effect of being this fashionable is that having one eye covered blocks my vision a bit and totally throws off my depth perception causing me to run into no less than three walls in the past two days. No, officer, my husband is actually a really nice man. I just have a black eye and shoulder because of these damned bangs. No, boss. I'm not drunk at work, I just can't frickin' see where I'm going. But check it out - my forehead looks younger, right?

Also, if you hadn't guessed, the little wispy bits are totally touching my face. Spanxy says I need silicone spray and a flattening iron. I say I need a baseball cap for the next four months. At least then I’ll look like an 11 year old boy instead of a 40-something wrinkly person with Carol Brady hair. I'm also considering pasting them straight up with Aquanet and wearing a bandana around my forehead and going out tagging at night with my loco homegirls.

In other news, even though my father claims to be retired, I have a concrete evidence that he’s actually moonlighting as a copywriter for Winchell’s Donuts. Behold.Truth in advertising, baby.

Yo Mama.

Hello little blog. Sorry I’ve been away. I know that you’ve probably not missed me at all, or my liberal use of commas and made-up words. Anyway, I’m back.

Thought you should know that while I was away several things occurred which I PROMISE I’ll write more about this week. Probably. Maybe. I’ll try to. They included:

1. A person who weighs as much as I do vomited on me from above.
2. The delightful overnight attendant at Kinko’s took my “Call me if there’s anything you need” literally and rang me up at 4:15 am to see if it was okay that he processed my order one hour EARLIER than he originally promised.
3. I drove 160 miles for a meeting that had been cancelled. “Oh? Did you not get the email?” Um. Nope. Didn’t get the email.
4. Did I mention that someone my own size (not a cute little baby with tiny little cute throwups) MY OWN SIZE threw up, or rather, DOWN. On Me. From above.

After a long weird week it was Mother’s Day. And for all their faults (like for example, throwing up/down on me) I have some very cool children with a great daddy who always make sure I have really nice Mother’s Days. This year featured a lovely breakfast of cheese omelet, bacon, toast and mimosas. The nine-year old was waiter and server, the 11 y/o the chef, and daddy was bartender and sous. It pretty much rocked, although they were perhaps a bit overzealous in their grocery shopping – I found two gallons of OJ and three…THREE bottles of my very favorite proseco for the mimosas. What were they thinking? I can’t drink three bottles of proseco in one day unless it's Thanksgiving. Sillies.

My gift was a potted calla lily and this here digital picture frame which I loaded up with bulldog photos mixed cleverly with the preloaded photos of people I don’t know getting married and going to Hawaii. I like having strangers' photos popping up in the dining room so when company's over they can say, "Oh -who is that lovely couple?" And I can make up good stories about them and how they done me wrong and that's why you never see them around here no more...and then I can look kind of sideways at them, like Clint Eastwood, and say, "You know what I mean, don't you? I think you do." And then those people will be kind of scared of me but also totally impressed and want to hang out with me more since I'm mysterious.


I also received these lovely handmade notes from the boys:From the nine year old. I like that he uses proper proofreader's marks. It says:

Dear Mom Happy mothers day Thank you for helping out (deleted) doing everything Around the house and I feel Bad for you BECAUSE there is only one mothers day Every 365 days. And I think there should be At least 90 mothers days I (heart) MoM

And he didn't bother to sign it because he knows he doesn't have to since he's the only one around here besides me that uses proper proofreader's marks. Also I've inflicted more guilt on him, and that's obvious by the content.

From the 11 year old:

mosT peoplE would fold thE paper thE otheR waY, anD writeE oN thE “toP”, and only puT capitals aT thE beginning of sentenceS, anD spelL evrithin jusT righT. i brokE awaY from thaT jusT to shoW speciaL and rarE YOU are. You rock! (after reading this message, please begin taking dabs at your eyes. PS I hope you didn’t read this part out loud.)

He obviously gets his weird sense of humor from his father.

I was then treated to a performance by "Velvet Elvis" – a local performer who says he knows he doesn’t look like Elvis…he looks like a PAINTING of Elvis. And we took my mother in law because I try to instill in my children that you should be nice to your mommy even when she’s old and insane and won't get a job even though she's completely capable and has a nursing degree and she's not even all that nice to your wife even though your wife gave her two perfect grandsons. Because that's the right thing to do. Also I'm covering my own ass for the future. Call it insurance.

And that was my day. Around 11 pm Eastern time, I realized I'd not even gotten ahold of my own mother so I sent her an email. Which I am pretty sure is the equivalent of scribbling a note on printer paper. At least I didn't puke on her.