Leggings, amirite?

When putting on leggings:

Uh…which side is the butt?

 

A serious case of the flew

J: I just got back from Wisconsin and I think I got the flu.

C: Oh nos! Not the flu! And just after you flew, too. 😦

J: But my superior immune system will kill any flu!

C: Here’s a picture of you with the flew:

 

J: Peter Pan is dead. Long live J-Pan! I guess that’s the silver lining of getting the flu. I become the new Peter Pan.

C: Ru-fi-o, Ru-fi-o, Ruuu-fi-O!

Sleep tight!

C: So last night I had a dream where I was doing something and then it was really hot. I laid down on the floor and started to evaporate. I have to say, the feeling of evaporating is very weird—it’s like floating and flying and also having your whole body come apart at once. It kind of freaked me out and then I woke up ’cause I had to pee.

I told Argon about it and he suggested I had that dream because I sleep with close to 2,000 blankies on me.

J: You do sleep with too many blankets.

C: Well, I need them in order to maintain a temperature just below that of liquid hot magma while I sleep. If I don’t maintain that, I’ll start to solidify.

J: I always suspected that you were secretly a boiling pit of lava.

C: Um, lava and magma are totally different things thankyouverymuch.

J: You sleep with too many blankets.

C: You can pry my blankets from my cold, dead….uh…hmmm… Actually, my hands are really cold right now.

Finally, a comfortable sleeping temperature.

Reverse reviewed:

In which my recent media choices of a movie and two books review mine and my husband’s decision to relocate to California.

The day after we got married, my husband flew to the Bay Area to interview with different companies for a new job. Three weeks he had an offer, and we celebrated by going out to dinner and toasting to his successful job hunt. The next day, we had to put my cat down, who I’d had for 18 years. The next week, we were in San Francisco scouring Craigslist ads for a suitable place to live. We ruled out the Tenderloin; too many needles. We found a place in South of Market, (SoMa) a block from my husband’s new job. We returned to Colorado to pack; husband would be there for one more week before he had to return to Cali to begin his job, leaving me in Colorado to finish packing and moving.

During that week, while in a Henry Fonda kind of mood, we decided to watch Grapes of Wrath. I hadn’t seen it since high school, and it’s questionable as to whether or not I actually saw it or just slept through the movie, figuring that having read the book was enough.

The Hungry Hungry Hippo Games

C: I might even rewatch The Big Lebowski

J: Oh good. Keep at it and you you’ll only be a decade behind pop culture.

C: Thanks. Your endless support is invaluable. And I’m going to see the Hungry Hungry Hippo Games tomorrow.

J: Hunger Games is lame.

C: You’re lame!

J: I watched it online; it’s lame.

C: That’s even lamer. I’m still going to watch it.

J: I didn’t say you shouldn’t, I’m just trying to save you money and a couple hours of your life.

C: I want to see it.

J: Correction: You think you want to see it. You are only going to be disappointed.

C: I don’t have high expectations. Also, I know how it ends. I only wish there were spoilers for NFL games.

J: You know the ending?

C: Yes. Her sister dies. She kills Coin.

J: There are spoilers for every sporting event. It’s called not watching it live.

C: Then I guess I’m glad we beat the Patriots?!

On Wednesdays, we burrito

C: On Wednesdays, we burrito. Did you burrito ?

J: I did not burrito yesterday. You cannot make me be a veggie! Take your soylent green somewhere else, sister! I have character and sand. My values and morals do not change with the wind. I cannot be bought off with a burrito.
rabble rabble rabble

C: You could have at least tried it. Sheesh.

You have character and sand? What does that even mean? I have sand too, but it’s in my sand jar and some in a ziplock baggie, and it’s not anything I brag about. Maybe you need to get that sand out of your vag, then you wouldn’t be such a cranky-pants.
Maybe you can’t be bought off with a burrito, but I know you can be bought off with two or more burritos.
Besides, it if was soylent green, I wouldn’t be making you a veggie. You’d still be eating meat–granted, it’d be people, but it’s still meat.
I secretly want to actually make you a cannibal. Or at least a little bit of a nibbling cannibal…

J: Two or more burritos is a different story. Every man has a weakness and ALL soy is people! It’s PEOPLE, Claudia, PEOPLE!!!

On Tuesdays, we llama

C: Since it’s Tuesday, are you llama-ing? Because on Tuesdays, we llama.

J: Glad you didn’t get me a shirt with pink words on it. Also, are they stealing OUR use of llama? …and they treating it like it’s “smurf“?! Or is there a group of people out there, now with tee shirts, who have created an activity called llama, or llama-ing?

C: Why no pink? Are you discriminating against pink? What do you have against pink? Husband would wear pink…
I don’t think they’re stealing our use of llama. I think it has to do with drama llamas. So maybe more like “smurf” than TeamLllama©

J: WTF is a drama llama?!

And it’s not JUST the color pink, but words in the color of pink. I mean, who does that? That’s like saying “Would you like to read something that’s going to hurt your eyes and be difficult to read? Great! Here’s a tee-shirt.”

C: On a black background, pink is perfectly legible.
According to urban Dictionary, a drama llama is: A person who randomly throws their drama on others, in the same way a llama randomly spits.
“Oh no, here comes the drama llama! I haven’t finished cleaning up from the last time she spit drama on me!”

J: I don’t appreciate how the urban dictionary is disparaging llamas

Star Trek

J: I just don’t understand why you suddenly like Star Trek. Why now? What changed?

C: I don’t “like” it. I’ll watch if the group is watching. But some of the writing is absurd, and you don’t get to hear my commentary during the eps: “Who is that? Where did that person come from? How does that even work? What the hell kind of -onium are they talking about now? This is so sexist. That outfit is stupid. That make up and mask are terrible; you can’t even see the lips moving.” You’d hate it. I don’t take it seriously.

J: I mean, I can take things not so seriously sometimes.

C: I will say some of the concepts are intriguing. Also, I watch for Wil Wheaton’s sweaters.
Are we fighting about this?

J: I’m not trying to fight with you. I’m just not sure how much consideration you’ve given to telling the person you’ve yelled at before about not wanting to watch Star Trek that you’re now watching Star Trek, you know?

C: I’ll watch it if it’s on when I visit [boyfriend’s]. I’m not gonna walk into a situation where two people are watching a show they like and say that either they change the show or I’m leaving. The situation is completely different than with you. Besides, we never had yelling fights about not watching Star Trek, you know.

J: BUT NOW WE ARE!

C: YOU DIDN’T EVEN RESPOND TO MY JOKE ABOUT WIL WHEATON’S SWEATERS!

J: I DON’T KNOW WHAT A WIL WHEATON SWEATER IS!

C: THEN YOU DIDN’T REALLY WATCH STAR TREK!

J: HOW MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF SWEATERS ARE THERE?!

C: WIL WHEATON WAS KNOWN FOR WEARING UGLY SWEATERS ON THAT SHOW! DO YOU EVEN STAR TREK BRO? Come at me.

J: …see, stuff like this, like the person who just started watching one Star Trek show, telling someone who has watch them all, that they didn’t even watch Star Trek…

The right to bare arms

J: Did you hear about the most recent gun-related tragedy? The gun enthusiasts got confused and accidentally armed bears.

C: I support MY RIGHT to arm bears!

J: I want to show up at a gun rally with a stuffed bear arm.

C: What if you showed up with bare arms? Which reminds me, I heard an ad recently from Trojan for their “bear skin condoms.” I was like, ‘What the hell is a bear skin condom?’ Then I looked it up. Bare skin condoms…

J: Bear Skin Condom: Strong enough for a man, pH balanced for a bear.
Bare skin condoms: aka, not wearing a condom at all.

C: Bear Skin Condoms: Endorsed by ManBearPig! For real men who are half man, half bear, half pig.

J: I just saw two squirrels having sex.

C: Were they using a condom?

J: A bare skin condom.

C: So that’s why we have so many squirrels.

Worst Roommate Ever: The Sequels

I wrote an article for xojane.com for their Worst Roommate Ever column. It was published. The gist was: I had a roommate who could see auras. She talked to the cat. In a past life, the cat was a warrior. She kicked my boyfriend out in the middle of the night, then after some back and forth and changed stories, she kicked me out. We’d lived together 6 weeks.

I sent a draft of it to J for him to review. This is the feedback I received:

J: I emailed you a rewrite of the story. Spiffed it up a bit. Your roommate was actually an alien bounty hunter and your boyfriend was a quadriplegic who you beat when he talked back to you. Sheba is no longer a cat, but the ghost of a great warrior who, spoiler alert, reveals your roommate to be an alien, possesses your boyfriend’s wheelchair and crashes into bounty hunter alien roommate, knocking her out the window where she crashes, loses her memory, and you convince a doctor to keep her medicated and isolated in a correctional facility for the criminally insane. You’re welcome.

C: That’s fine. Except I’m not sold on the bounty hunter thing. I think alien antique seeker? Snake oil saleswoman?

J: The sequel is about the “ghost chair” where Sheba goes riding around fighting aliens with unwitting quadriplegics.

C: Yes, that’s totally the sequel! Can you flesh it out more?

J: Since you’re a feminist, I was thinking the aliens could be trying to collect vagina lips as trophies. And the ghost chair is stuck in impound. So you, the protagonist, must bribe or manipulate the security guard but then you end up falling in love with him because he’s sensitive and respects your authoritah as a woman.

Most of the story can be lame conversations about how you feel about each other, instead of explosions. Then the relationship doesn’t work because you have goals and he lets you go, reluctantly. The story closes with you eating chocolate ice cream and saying something like “I’ve earned this,” or “Who would have known those alien bastards were sitting on decade’s worth of weight-reducing ice cream?!”

C: They were? Bastards!

How aliens get dates: Ice cream.

J: The third movie is about evil ice cream makers trying to silence everyone who knows about the alien ice cream so they can continue their evil plot of making ladies feel bad about themselves do they’d say yes to the dates with evil ice cream owners.

C: Making all of us fat!

J: …only, they forgot one thing: A wheelchair possessed by a warrior ghost. “Wheel you marry me?” “Oh yes, a thousand times yes! During the downhills and the uphills!”

C: Does ’til death do we part apply?

J: No.

C: Figures.

J: It’s a ghost chair.

C: I know. How’d it die?

J: That’s the prequel!

C: Oh man. Are we Star Wars-ing this?

J: Star Wars wasn’t a prequel. They skipped the first trilogy initially.

Ghost chair.

C: You’re still not saying how the chair died.

J: The chair didn’t die. It’s possessed by a ghost warrior. A ghost warrior who died while protecting the throne. Part of the story will explain the secret origins of Musical Chairs. It’s actually how we chose kings and is far bloodier than our childhoods would have us believe.

If Hollywood gets a hold of this story, they’ll ruin it, calling it “Ghosts vs. Aliens,” but it will break box office records, to my great angst, as crowds will remember someone screaming during the movie “The book was better!” And then I can write a piece “It Happened to Me.” (full circle)

C: Um…wow.

Nebraskan Christian Radio

C: Llama llama. How’s the drive with your mom going?

J: Pretty hilarious. Left at 2 am. Nebraska is not for me. Too many Christian radio stations talking nonsense.

C: Yes, Nebraska has that going on. There’s also country music. My dad listened to Shakespeare on tape the whole time I drove with him through Nebraska. All I remember is Caesar: “Read the will!”

J: We listened to talk radio for hours. It took a lot for me to not call in.

C: Did you tell your mom why talkers were wrong? I could send you funny memes.

J: A little bit. She was laughing at me listening to it. It was pretty ridiculous. It went like: “God is called excellent; therefore, God is excellent.” That logic alone is evidently enough for some people.

C: Evidently. The circular logic is astounding.

S.H.A.R.K.S.

J: More shark attacks in North Carolina. The coward news media refuses to call it terrorism.

C: Who’s the terrorist organization claiming credit?

J: S.h.a.r.k.s. Sharks Hate All Races, Kindergartens, and Species.

C: Oh no! Not the kindergarteners? They’re only bite-sized!

J: Why did the shark cross the road? …to eat you.

C: The people the sharks attacked didn’t even die.

J: WTF?! Are you a shark apologist? If not for the actions of the civilians on the beach, they’d be dead. The sharks bit off their arms. That’s like Sharia law, only without the stealing! And humans are primarily on land. Once we move to the waters, there’ll be way more shark attacks!
I mean, squirrels run and hop fences and we kill them. We kill bears and wolves if they get too close. Sharks are no different! But much worse. We just don’t realize it because they’re out of sight and out of mind. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do something about it.

C:  

Needs more pizzazz. No, more pizzas.

C: Am I pretentious?

J: About what? Your medical opinions on gerbils MAY be a touch pretentious.

C: Like, in general. About grammar.

J: Oh, for sure. But you’re a linguistics masters person and worked at a newspaper. Most grammar people ARE pretentious and people find them insufferable—like almost every copy across the board. I think it has something to do with the job, correcting mistakes in basic writing.

C: I also have a soapbox rant about “rules” being a product of upper classes oppressing the lower classes in response to increasing literacy throughout England (you know, since we speak English).

More pizzas or more pizzazz?
Why can’t we have both.

J: Copy editor: You’re not using that word correctly.
Writer: Step off, or I’ll use the word incorrectly on you!

Writer: I need something with a little more pizzas.
Copy editor: You mean pizzazz.
Writer: No. I mean pizzas.

C: Too many adjectives! Show, don’t tell.

J: Show, don’t TELL?! ARE YOU INTO POETRY NOW?

C: My feelings on poetry haven’t changed.

J: Says the person whose default disagrees with the Stini.

C: What does that have to do with anything?

J: You probably do like poetry but are too stubborn.

C: I’m not stubborn!

Heeeere fishy fish…

J: I have the foo chu fou shoo. 😦

C: What’s the foo chu? Are you going to survive?

J: The foo chu fou shoo is kinda like that feeling a zombie gets when it realizes it’s full and needs to take a nap. The foo chu fou shoo is kinda like what a dragon feels right before it breathes fire.

C: Hm, interesting… Is food related?

J: No, it’s not food related. Though it is kinda like that feeling Gargamel gets when he eats a Smurf.
Foo chu fou shoo is kinda like that feeling the Queen of Hearts has when she yells “Off with their heads!”
Foo chu fou shoo is also kinda how the White Rabbit feels when he shows up somewhere early.

Learning Not to Cry Over Spilled (Sippy Cups of) Milk

Just as I got home, my mom called to tell me our sink was leaking again. She wanted me to ask our neighbor, who is also our plumber, if he could come over and fix it. I crossed the street to find him with his head poked inside the back of his truck while his kids, Hank and Oliver, ran around the yard.

“Hey, Matt… so, our sink is leaking. Could you come over and fix it?”

“Again?! Goddammit! They’ve been breaking throughout the valley!” he yelled, not at me specifically, as he pulled his head out of the back of the truck.

“Oh. Bummer. Like, the piece itself?” I asked.

“Yeah. The damn manufacturer used cheap shit and they’re breaking after 6 months!” By his tone, it was clear now was a bad time.

“Oh dear,” I said,  unsure of what the right response was. “Well…whenever you have the time, we’d appreciate it if you could swing by.”

“I’ll be over in a minute. I just have to find my damn wrench…”

“Okay. Thanks!”

“In the meantime, you should go into the crawlspace and turn off the water!” he called out from halfway back inside the truck.

“Will do!” I said.

As I walked back to my house, Oliver followed after me. He wanted to find my cat, Sheba, who hated him and who’d scratched him earlier in the year. He wasn’t phased by that, and in fact talked about it like a badge of honor. “Where Sheba?” he asked as he toddled in the door.

Ger-billamalama

C: Llama llama. Missing you…

J: Gerbil llama llama. Pronounced: ger-bilamallama. Bilamallama is three syllables, technically, but you should try saying it in just one. Or maybe bilamallama is five syllables. …either way, try to say it in one syllable.

C: Blaallaaama!

Beware the puddles: Part 2

“GOTCHA!” ~the puddle

J: The damn puddles!

C: Oh no! The damn puddles again! You’re getting puddled! Normally in our family, we do the puddling.

J: Like five puddles jumped me on my way from class to my car.

C: Oh nos! What did they take? Your dryness? Your sense of dignity? Your socks?

J: Got my shoes and socks pretty good.

C: What did you do to the puddles?

J: I couldn’t DO anything! I was out numbered and they were calling for their friends in the clouds to help.

C: What do puddles sound like anyway?I would have thought they sounded all splooty, or splashy… And what did you do to them to piss them off that they ganged up on you?

J: They go plop and splish. I didn’t do anything to them! They’re bastards, like sharks and spiders.

C: The half-frozen ones go froooosh and splooobt.

J: It’s all part of the conspiracy. I think the lesson here is never trust a puddle.

Beware the puddles: Part 1

Sharks in our puddles! Beware!

After receiving a voicemail that Stini had successfully not stepped in a puddle this time on his way to class.

C: So proud of the Stini for beating the puddle! You’re a good Stini.

J: Duck you puddle! Puddles are on the list, joining sharks and spiders.

C: Ducking puddles! Being all wet and shit. Sharks probably live in puddles 😦

J: They make mosquitoes and freeze the tires and swamp our footwear. That’s so something a shark would do! Classic shark.

C: They’re trying to hurt hardworking Americans with their wetty wetness!

J: They just sit around all day doing nothing, the lazy puddles! Most people drown in 2 inches of water! Ducking puddles.

C: Two inches?! OMG! All those water glasses you used to leave around the apartment with 2 inches of water in them—are you saying I could have drowned in any one of them!? You put my life in danger!

J: …

All the nuance of Meh.

J: Mehnal = someone who is in a state of “Meh.”
Phenomehnal = an event where someone’s mehness makes other people suffer.
Used in a sentence: Are you mehnal?! First you wanted to go out for dinner, and not you want to leave? That’s just phenomehnal.
Phenomehna = the event which triggered a bout of mehs.
Also, I just saw a cat on a leash.

C: Meh.

Too sexy?

Sexy toothbrush time.

J: Oh no! My animal magnetism and tragic story line, coupled with my good looks and irresistible charm, may be getting me in trouble.

C: Oh no! Are you being trailed by a herd of rabid llamas? I’m sorry I set this in motion for you so many years ago…

J: Wait, what? …should I be worried about rabid llamas? …and them trailing me? WTF did you set in motion so many years ago, Claudia?

C: Your animalistic attraction! You attract rabid animals, like llamas, to you. I’m so sorry Stini 😦

J: Oh no. 😦 Maybe we can…reverse my polarity? That sounds like a thing, right?

C: I think so. Seems legit.