terribleturnip

How's my day going? Well, to give you an idea, I just looked down at the time on my computer monitor and thought "ooh, I only have to hold on for another 37 minutes!" as there's a happy hour for a departing co-worker tonight. And I may work late from time to time, but not when sunshine and alcohol abound.

How sad was I, when I came back from asking a colleague a question, to find that it was still 37 minutes from quitting time? Or, in other words, to find out that I'm such a moron...or SOOOOO looking forward to the end of this day, that I hopefully mistook the date for the time.

More proof that the only reason they haven't taken away my Girl Card is because they just haven't gotten to me yet:

Shopping recently in Chico's, my Garanimals for adult women store, I picked up a couple of pieces in a new material, black of course, and the sales manager said "oh, and we have it in navy as well." I failed to edit, and said "oh, no, then I'd have to start up with navy shoes." He looked at me quizzically, and then with slight horror as I explained that I only buy work clothes that go with black shoes so that I can just always buy black shoes because that's easier. I tried to save with "oh, but I do have like ten pairs of black shoes" but pretty much rolled a 1 on a d20 on that.

(That, children, is a reference to Dungeons and Dragons, where rolling that 1 is a critical fail at whatever you were trying to do. I was legendary at my ability to roll ones. Thus the whole werewolf thing. But that's another story.)

I'm trying harder to do real grown up make-up. I mean, MistressFetch looks at me putting on my make-up and I can see the reflectionin her eyes of a monkey with fingerpaints, and I feel so sad to let her down, but my life just doesn't have room for more than a couple of products and about 2 minutes worth of effort, and my fingers don't have the coordination to do paint by numbers or anything at all artistic. But I'm trying to address the Danish pores and grease slick that is my T-zone (that's your chin, nose and forehead, for those of you still following along with the make up talk, where teenagers and young women, and middle aged Danes, apparently) that cause me to go through packs of blotting paper, dabbing up the oil that accumulates across my nose, chin and forehead. So, I got this stuff that's supposed to "prime" those areas and shrink pores, which is fine and easy. And then, also, a "finishing/setting" spray, which I started using for stage/halloween make up and realized that it really does help with the XL pipeline that is my face. Why now I can wait until 10:30 before I have to pull out the blotting paper, instead of as soon as I get to work!

But it's a spray. I have to put on the make-up and then spritz this stuff over my face.

My, my, I have awesome reflexes! It took two weeks before I settled down and stopped jerking away from the spray. Then another two weeks until I mastered the art of pointing it at me, closing my eyes, and then still have it point at my face. That was four weeks of a lot of finishing spray in my ears, let me tell you.

Finally, I'm all attuned. Although I may have gone too far, because now sometimes I forget to close my eyes, which means the sound of me putting on make-up ends with "spritz, ow, expletive, god damn it, spritz, augh, christ!" with a little bit of staggering around the bathroom. I'm pretty sure it's a great imitation of Ozzy Osbourne.

In other news, I jotted down this phrase from Sirbombalot's tumblr: Fill your heart with bees. If someone breaks your heart, then they have to deal with the bees. Some jackexpletive commented "No, fill it with wasps, because they're meaner and then the bitch will have to deal with angry wasps." And this angry WASP wanted to hunt that guy down and plunge his head into a wasp nest because, well, okay, I was having a bad day, so maybe I was overreacting. But seriously, dude, chill. And you're missing the damn point. Heart filled with bees. Who wouldn't want a heart filled with bees? All working together, industriously, in harmony, all downy and polleny, doing their happy bee work, building wax, making honey...

And if no one breaks your heart, you've spent your whole life with a heart full of happy bees! I aspire to have a heart full of bees. That's a great metaphor! Don't expletive it up just because you're still bitter about being dumped.

(Admittedly, I probably DO have a heart full of wasps, but seriously, they also create crazy things from mundane materials, and are very keen on taking care of their kith and kin. And yeah, okay, if you really provoke them, they will sting the daylights out of you. And unlike a bee that stings and dies, I will keep coming at you until the problem is solved. But really, we'd rather just buzz and scare you off.)

Finally, In honor of Shakespeare's birthday, here's a guy who does Duke of Clarence's speech as spoken by different celebrities. I don't normally like impressions, but this guy's ability to transition is amazing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8PGBnNmPgk

Now I want to spritz makeup finisher in my eyes and see if I can extend my range beyond Ozzy.

Can someone explain to me how Jesus could possibly give a rat’s patoot about a football game? I’ve studied the Bible, my friend, and I’m pretty sure that if Jesus was going to take an active role in our lives, he’d probably save all those starving children before he lifted a finger to get your ball over the goalpost. Plus, also, he’d probably nuke Wall Street. Or at least flip it upside down. Look, in order for Jesus to help your team WIN, he’s choosing to make the other side LOSE. To paraphrase George Carlin “We totally would have won if Jesus hadn’t made me fumble.” Why the hell would he do THAT? Satan, now Satan would do that in a heartbeat. Seriously, if there’s going to be a deity/supernatural being that’s going to get involved in sports game determination, ignoring all the suffering and tragedy in the world, and would then award the game to the team that prayed/worshipped hardest, I’m pretty much certain we’re talking horns and pitchfork here. Seriously.

Yesterday, I pulled up a website and it showed me an ad for a dating website. For people over the age of 50. For SENIORS. A senior dating website. That’s me, apparently. A senior. Noooooooooooo. Pfphsftssst! I immediately logged onto OKCupid, updated my profile and finally sent a reply to that 24 year old that’s been stalking me. You know, because that's how mature I am.

Aha! See, I’ve always thought that a doorway should be called a mind eraser. I’d love to see some research on stairs, because a flight of stairs will do the same thing, sans actual doorways: http://www.salon.com/2014/01/22/why_walking_through_a_doorway_makes_you_forget_partner/

And finally, I see a use for Twitter:
http://www.springwise.com/australia-sharks-tweet-approach-beach/

Dear cats, the point of having those throws and blankets over every single piece of furniture in the house is so that I don't have to spend hours combing fur off of all of the upholstery before company arrives. Instead, voila, run around like a lunatic, snatching them all off, and bundling them into a closet so that for those brief shining hours while company's over, I can appear to have normal person furniture. When you burrow underneath said blankets and throws and sleep there? Yah, ruining the point. Don't think I don't know you're doing it. I mean, sitting down on top of a lump that turned out to be Pushkin was one hint. But also, that circle of cat hair that remains on the furniture after I take the cover off....

And finally, I totally drink across party lines. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2013/12/31/what-your-favorite-drink-says-about-your-politics-in-one-chart/

I’d say that I’m glad to see the ass-end of this year, but as far as I know, the Fates don’t hit a reset button on January 1st. And it’s my personal mantra that every day, every hour, every decision, every action, is a chance to do better than you’ve been doing, to do a more right thing, to behave better. There’s not a lot you can do about misery, except endure it, maybe consider whether you’re enabling it or letting it drive you. But joy, joy you can create. So, try to squeeze a little more joy creation into my life, that’s as far as I’m going in terms of resolutions. And pondering that joy, let’s do more of that. It hurts every bone in my Lutheran-WASP-New England body to consider congratulating myself for doing well, wallowing in it, taking pride in it. Yeah, well, sometimes you have to tell your heritage to go expletive itself.

Material things are the least likely to bring me lasting joy, but sometimes a quick fix is what you need. And then there are other things that just make me happy that I’ve discovered them.

If you live near a Whole Foods or Roots or Dawson’s or Fresh Market, consider treating yourself to Jeni’s Splendid Ice Cream, www.jenis.com. Or really splurge and have it delivered. Go, look at the flavors. Now, even better than the ice cream – and I only know for sure that the Whole Foods in Rockville has these, but they’re worth seeking out, find her ice cream sandwiches. They’re in little brown square boxes with white labels. Oh, I know, you’re thinking “$7.99 for a freaking ice cream sandwich?” But listen. For starters, half of one really IS a serving. If you can eat the whole thing at one sitting, we need to talk about your eating habits and learning to enjoy, and not inhale, your food. Listen again. Two almond and hazelnut macaron cookies sandwiching rich, creamy dark chocolate ice cream. Rolled in salted roasted hazelnuts. How good was it? I finished the second half several days ago, but the box is still sitting on the coffee table because it makes me happy just looking at it and remembering how freaking good it was.

Plus, also, these people:

I want to kidnap these people and make them help me with Scary Perry -- so much creativity, working with household objects and a baby. And the photos are staged beautifully. Plus, their story – hey, we moved, have no social life and all these boxes. I’m so jealous of their creativity, I want to hate them. But the pictures make me so happy, that I forgive them.
http://cardboardboxoffice.com/

If you are a baker of cookies, you should do this now, so that you’re ready for next year’s cookie baking, because these two things have made a huge difference in my cookie baking experience. You need to buy the parchment sheets from King Arthur Flour – they’ll fit your cookie sheets perfectly, and save all that time you used to spend greasing sheets, washing them, or cutting parchment to fit. Now you can spend it chasing that runaway dragee around the kitchen floor. While you’re there, also buy the folding cooling rack. It stores flat, and opens to hold four cookie sheets, safely and securely. Or, you can keep putting random cooling racks all over the counter, knocking one into the other and shooting the one at the end off the counter completely. Plus, less cat sneezing on your cookies.

Okay, I know I sound like a shill for Whole Foods, but sadly, they’re the only place I’ve been able to find the best chicken sausages I’ve ever tasted. If you’d asked me a month ago, I’d say there is, really, NO chicken sausage worth eating unless there’s no possibility of finding a pork sausage or you’ve got some kind of bizarre porcine allergy. However, I’m a changed woman, and honestly there are plenty of pork sausages I’d pass up in a hot minute to lay my hands on a Brat Hans chicken sausage. Especially the DogfishHead special sausages. I can’t seem to find any more of the DogfishHead varieties, which I hope is just temporary, but stocked up on the regular varieties. Who would have thought I’d have a freezer full of CHICKEN sausage? Not me.

Also, I’ve managed to keep an orchid alive for over a year and it’s sent up a flower spike. It’s going to bloom again. I’ve never managed to do this before, mostly because I’ve always assumed I couldn’t, and that I’d just waste a year coddling something that would never bloom or do much beyond shoot out gnarly roots and then die. Wah, it's too HARD.

Sometimes it’s worth it to try it again anyway. Think on that, would you? Don’t assume you can’t. Maybe sometimes you can't. But sometimes? You totally can.

So this morning I was running a load of laundry upstairs and managed to run the corner of the laundry basket into the door frame, which shot the opposite corner straight into my gut, which knocked me off balance to such as extent that I slammed the opposite shoulder into the other side of the door frame. Note to self: set up nannycams all over your house, because if expletive like this is going to happen…and hurt so much…you should at least be capturing footage so you can bring joy to the rest of the world.

Yesterday, I went over to my admin’s cube to see if she had a spare binder and while I was talking to her about the relative merits of the various binders…blame my job, things aren’t just THINGS anymore to me; it’s all PRODUCT…she got a quizzical look on her face and said “Umm.” And I was till rattling about binders and she pointed to my arm and said “UMMM.” So, I looked and there’s blood running down my arm, dripping onto the floor. I guess I got a little aggressive with that mosquito bite. Now I’m going to have to write two reviews for her. The real one and one where I “coach” her on the proper way to handle someone who’s bleeding all over your cube…like maybe “hey, stop bleeding on my floor!”

So the shoulder bruise, gut bruise and now bandaid on my arm go nicely with the forehead bruise, which is thankfully right above my hairline. You know, right about where a station wagon rear hatch clocks you when its hydraulics start to go and the door now doesn’t fully open unless you push it all the way up. It happens to all my cars. I’m kryptonite to those damn lift support things. And I can’t seem to remember to push it open all the way until I smack my head into it. Although to be fair, the repeated head injuries are probably not helping with the memory thing.

This afternoon is our community service day – where our department goes someplace to help out a charitable organization. And instead of doing fun outdoor activities like raking, weeding, cleaning out old barns/sheds, minor carpentry, which is what we used to do for a historical site, now we go to a place where we fill bags with an assortment of food/snacks so that underprivileged kids have food on weekends. Which is worthy…and appeals to my colleagues who used to complain about the other work being “too hard, too hot, too dirty.” If you know me at all, you can just imagine what I think about those complaints. Ahem. Although it did help me to sort out which of my colleagues will become jerky right away if the zombies come while I’m at work and we have to be holed up here for a while. Yep, I’ve already sorted out who’s NOT going to be wasting the limited food and water supplies. Although some of the slightly more energetic ones I may hang on to for a while just in case I need chain them to something as bait to distract the zombies while I escape.

Anyway, instead we’ll go to this place and fill plastic sacks with food…and I’ll have to bite my tongue because I’ll immediately spot how it could be made much more efficient. And then get frustrated with colleagues who can’t even handle THIS simple task without whining. And then sit through the prayer at the end where the very nice woman who runs the group thanks God for sending us to help the kids. And I will bite my tongue, because again, it’s a great cause and I’m so glad this woman is devoting her life to making sure these kids have a fighting chance, but seriously, lady, you can thank my company for choosing to value this sort of experience, you can thank me for showing up and working, and you can thank our suppliers who are donating some of the food, but seriously, if God took the time to make us show up or want to do this? Maybe he should use that time to fix these poor kids’ lives in the first place. Fix what’s broken so they don’t wind up hungry in the first place.

Anyway, off that soapbox that I clamber onto. I probably wouldn’t care, but that damn prayer is twenty minutes long, and I’ve heard it three times already. I usually throw in a non-work supported day to help them do food pickups and thankfully I just get a quick hug and a “praise the Lord for sending you to us” which is more manageable.

Work has been less than fun lately, but I did get charged with sourcing some products for a large customer, which led me to watertight, disposable, eco-friendly ice buckets and coolers, many of them made of cardboard. And you know if you can make a quick assembly cardboard waterproof cooler, you know what else you can make that needs to be very, very, securely waterproof?

Yes, disposable coffins! (You know, so that you actually return to the earth if they bury you, as opposed to slowly creepily mummifying and then maybe decay over decades, assuming the seals on the casket give way. Or, if you’re going to be cremated and you’re like hey, let’s not waste a lot of money on a wooden box we’re just going to set on fire. )

And there are all sorts of basic ones, and nice ones…and then I found a company that almost makes me regret my decision to not have any kind of service or viewing. Because I so want all you expletives to show up at a funeral parlor, walk into the somber viewing room and see THIS bad boy:
http://www.creativecoffins.com/coffins/peas/

I know, RIGHT? Be sure to check out the other ones…and yes, you can get them customized…so I dunno, maybe a female Viking…

Although I’m also thinking the popcorn box and have the coffin rigged with sound so that halfway through some damn weepy eulogy, you start hearing popping noises from inside the coffin.

So, it’s not even noon and I’ve damn near lost the will to live. So, I’m taking a mental health break. Well, to narrow it down, today I’m really questioning a bunch of life choices.

Like, next time on the wheel, that’s it, I volunteered enough this time around. Screw it. For the record, I am not talking about the Pyrate camp here – the ratio of fun to work is definitely in balance there, and there’s plenty of appreciation. Which I do get in my other volunteer positions…just sometimes that can’t overcome the paucity of fun to hard work ratio and the feeling that I’ve just got a second job…one that actually costs me money. And I start to feel that somewhere along the line I got on the wrong path…

And then, I took a half day on Friday and I gave five people assignments, relatively small, that they needed to complete so that when I got in on Monday, I could just approve stuff and send it out. What are the odds that not a single person would have done what they needed to do?

Apparently 100%...so now I’ve lost another half day in following up on things that should have been done…and I’ve missed FIVE deadlines.

And I can’t even feel sorry for myself, because there’s a shooter loose in the Navy Yard, and I’m trying not to think about all the friends I have who work there…and then really, what does it matter whether they’re friends of mine or not…they’re friends of someone, and some nutbag with a crazy agenda is after them. Expletive.

Okay, shaking that off. Too.

When I came out of the house this morning, my neighbor was coming out with her adorable three year old son and packing him into the car. She looked at me and said “I’m so envious of you, after having spent the morning trying to wrestle this three year old into clothes and breakfast and then out of the house and you can just walk out and get into the car.” And I laughed and said “oh, well, you missed the part where I had to give a cat liquid antibiotics.” Although it is true, it’s nice being responsible for just getting me out of the house in the morning.

But the more I thought about it, the more it reminded me of all of those hoary old clichés and homilies: the grass is always greener, don’t judge by appearances. Because here’s what she missed – that I’d been up since 5am, while her house was completely dark. I’d done a load of laundry, unpacked from the weekend, emptied and filled the dishwasher, cleaned litterboxes, toilets and the upstairs bathroom counter. I’d actually visited with her husband while he was taking out the trash and I was taking out mine. She was probably getting her son dressed and fed while I was out watering the garden and picking up the trash that had blown into my yard over the weekend. And then yes, breakfast and antibiotics for Jasper the cat. Changing the pantyhose that had run when I failed to avoid the pile of yard debris that I still haven’t taken to the dump. And Neosporin on the scrape. It’s harder than it looks to be me – most of it I chose for myself (not the clumsy part, oh, golly, do I wish THAT away!) but still, yes, you have a lot more freedom living alone…but it’s a lot more work. And someday, someday soon, that son of hers may be taking out the trash, or even driving her to work.

My kids will still be pooping in a box and will probably eat me if I fall down the stairs and don’t regain consciousness fast enough.

Grass is always greener….

Thankfully I found this gem last week and just didn’t have time to post it. Because if I ran across it today, I might just explode.

In case you thought just extremist Christians, Muslims and other hard right of whatever religious fanatics had a corner on the market of subjugating women…especially FOR THEIR OWN GOOD:

http://www.fixthefamily.com/blog/6-reasons-to-not-send-your-daughter-to-college

Trigger Warning: if you haven’t taken your blood pressure medication today, reading this might kill you. Keep reading though, because just when you think it’s batexpletive crazier than possible, the writer pulls out another gem. Okay, that sounds like I’m trying to kill you. Save it for another day, then, as I have few enough readers as it is.

Oh, Matthew Inman, I love you more than cheese and even bacon. I may even love you as much as I love cultured butter with sea salt crystals.

And I love that so much that I pay just as much for shipping as I do for the damn butter. It’s THAT good. Vermont Creamery, you can order from Murray's Cheese. You want the kind with sea salt crystals in the little basket. You’re welcome. It's awesome.

And so is Mr. Inman’s latest…and it perfectly sums up my thank you note to the internet for reminding me on a daily basis that most of humanity is a moron and if it weren’t for opposable thumbs, ThudChinchillaSpawnofSatanCat Pushkin would give most of them a run for their money.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/ohmygosh_link

And yes, I’m tired of people telling me (via the internet, again…and let’s all take an irony-break while we think about what we’re both doing right now, in the separate nows we’ve had on this post) how this THING – Crossfit, giving up dairy, burning sage and spinning widdershins daily, wearing some damn armband that reports not only the number of steps you take everyday but also how many times during the night you woke up, drinking a cup of vinegar a day, daily meditaion, what the hell EVER.

Happy and Healthy is a multidimensional, multidisciplinary endeavor. And if you changed one aspect of your being and everything is different? You’re not paying enough attention to your life. Or maybe you’re a simple idiot. Or maybe your life is so small…no. NO. You’re just wrong. It wasn’t that ONE thing. You just think it is. We’re not discussing this anymore. I’m giving you this link because this woman gets it:

http://iambeggingmymothernottoreadthisblog.com/2013/06/24/twelve-habits-of-happy-healthy-people-who-dont-give-a-shit-about-your-inner-peace/

I did not watch the VMA’s. I have no desire to see Miley Cyrus’s performance. I can’t even BELIEVE I just typed her name. I would have sworn that would never happen. But okay. I’ll own it. It does rather perfectly exemplify what’s been pissing me off about the internet and humanity’s access to being able to opinionate repeatedly about something that someone else did. Holy bedbugs, when did we all become qualified critics?

(Irony break.)

Gah. It’s bad enough that people make the mistake of thinking that just because they have mouths and voices, everyone wants to hear what they have to say. Now every moron with a keyboard and an opinion is spouting off on a daily….nay, hourly basis. But this is nuts. It’s like this chick is the veal on which we get to ladle whatever sauce we think is best.

So, here we go: thanks for aiding/abetting the patriarchal notion that women are just sex objects and the only way they can own a stage is through overt sexuality; you go, girl, men have been doing that sort of thing for decades, you be your own woman and do what you want; thanks for highlighting the awful way that black women are treated as back-up objects and only as sex objects; screw you, racist bitch for continuing to treat black woman as back-up/sexual objects and appropriating our culture.

(That last one, I had to look into a bit, read farther. I’m thinking…foam finger thingy?...ah, no, twerking. Okay. Newsflash. Women have been doing that for centuries. Women of all colors. Not on the dance floor, mind you. In private. Or on a certain kind of stage with other like-minded individuals. But yeah, I’m now officially old enough that I’d like to sort of see people DANCE, instead of mock-expletive each other. No, wait. I think I thought that in high school as well. )

What else? Oh, yeah, there was the mocking because the whatever she was wearing didn’t fit right and may not have been complimentary. The mocking because frankly, it sort of sucked. The mocking because….

Oh, god, I can’t even THINK about it anymore. A whole expletive nation of hand-twisting, judgmental, neighborhood tongue-waggers.

Seriously. Get outside. Read a book. Watch television worth watching. Write a book. Learn to cook something. Go cut the branches that are hanging over that stop sign that the county can’t seem to get to and somebody’s going to get t-boned when someone breezes right through it.

Okay. Well, that’s what *I* was doing. Instead of writing a blog post about….

Whoops.

Even after my last post, some of you may doubt the utter adorability of a sloth in a bowl. I give you this:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/02/sloth-pictures-images_n_3368628.html

Dear Gateway: Did you seriously design a tower with a top that is perfectly cat-sized…and put the on/off button right where the cat’s paws rest? Turnip, why is there concertina wire and broken glass on top of your hard drive thingy? Oh, to keep cats and pigeons from shutting off my computer about A DOZEN TIMES A DAY.

(For the record, I don't actually have pigeons in the house. You're thinking of my grandmother. I only have fifty pigeon EGGS in the house. But that's a story for another time.)

Dear Clydes of Tower Oak: Okay, I get the whole hunting lodge vibe you’re going for. And the dozens of saddles used as décor…the smell of leather and colors/patterns of saddles certainly make me feel right at home, although they don’t lead me to think “oh, let’s eat” but more like ah, I need to get back in shape and get out more, and maybe if I was riding again I wouldn't be so fat. Or maybe if I ate LESS. But that’s probably just me and a small handful of people. And again, hanging saddles on the dividers between booths…makes me sort of feel like my booth is a stall, and maybe I should be ordering a bucket of grain, instead of a ribeye. But, looking around at the clientele, again, it’s probably just me, AGAIN. I do want to thank you, though, for hanging those saddles so that they sit pretty much at temple height for men, and because you don’t have the stirrups run up properly, the stirrups are hanging dangerously at temple height for women. Because I’ve had a blast all night long, watching people duck suddenly, or take a hit right in the head. Seriously, finally I understandsome people’s inability to look away from a television screen in a bar. My date probably thinks I’m incapable of maintaining eye contact. Hopefully he thinks the occasional giggles are because he's so amusing.
( Back in the saddle, writing-wise, at least in terms of length )

Lest you think I'm all sweetness and light, thanks to spring....

I stopped blogging about the weight loss contest, simply because I ran out of time/energy/mojo to blog about anything. But here, I don't want you to think I'm hiding anything from you. Five weeks, four pounds and change lost. And then I think two came back the week after.

Note to self: working on opening a renaissance faire, planning a major familial event, a sinus infection, being covered in hives...and then the allergic reaction to the hives themselves, plus having to make an end of life decision for a pet, and lend support to two other people going through that themselves...not conducive to losing weight. Since my weight-loss plan mostly consists of cutting back on alcohol and girding my mental armor so that I don't eat for stupid reasons like stress or comfort.

When you're whole body itches, you've got a deadline on submitting menu to the caterer, and you're putting off calling the vet to make a euthanasia appointment, "Now, you really shouldn't have a bag of Cheez-It's, you're not even hungry. Why don't you have an apple, instead?" doesn't fly. Expletive you! Now I'm going to have TWO bags.

But okay, every day is another chance to do better. And here I am, having been successful at cutting my Diet Mountain Dew consumption in half, and having had only vegetables today and as long as I don't kill anyone because of it, I might be back on the wagon, sans peer pressure, hives and a lot of the other stuff. Or not. This time of year I'm so busy that there's little room in my head for worrying about it.

Hey, remember when I said I couldn't complain about hot flashes because I was only having relatively minor symptoms? Yeah, apparently my hypothalamus took that for gauntlet-throwing, because, although the frequency is down, the intensitity is up. Yeah, full out dripping with sweat. I can't even begin to tell you how awesome that is. I can't, because it's NOT. I'm just glad that we know the risks of hormone replacement therapy so that I don't have to make the ethical decision about whether I can live with doing that to a horse. I'm spinning it this way: yet another excuse for irascibility. I'm sorry, I can't HEAR you, I'm sweating too loudly.

But hey, I also get to feel small, whiney, and selfish, because there's a species of aphid that when they hit menopause, instead of making eggs, they now secrete a sticky substance and if a predator threatens their family group of aphids...the grandma aphids throw their bodies at the predator, superglueing themselves to it until it leaves or dies. How awesome is that? This article is more about the possible evolutionary reason for menopause to have survived as a trait, but has the neat facts about the Superglue Grandma aphids in it.
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/04/18/why-menopause/

That's what keeps me cheery -- superglue-y grandma aphids. Learning that fruitbats perform oral sex on each other. That when you tickle rats, they make ultrasonic noises that are identical to the sounds young rats make when they're playing with each other. So, you could say, really, that rats laugh when you tickle them. Take THAT, "humans are the only animals that laugh" proponents.

Plus, I thought I was beside myself with joy when I learned that there was actually a fish called the Sarcastic Fringehead. Then I saw what it looked like:

http://io9.com/5911216/meet-the-sarcastic-fringehead-an-oddly-named-fish-who-looks-like-the-predator

Whatever else that's going on in your life that's sad, bad or otherwise sapping, there is a fish that can do THAT. And that's enough awesomeness to carry you for a couple of hours, isn't it?

Dear Matthew Inman, I love you more than CHEESE.

http://theoatmeal.com/pl/state_web_winter_2012/twinkies

I need to send the link below to the people who lived next to us in my hometown. They used to become outraged when my horses would occasionally bust the fence and wander across the yard and had near apoplexy when a herd of donkeys wound up in our backyard on Christmas morning. (Go ahead, make all the nativity jokes you want. We sure did.) Don’t even get me started on the herds of dairy cattle, flocks of geese and sheep that would wander through the neighborhood from time to time. Oh, you called the police because there were a dozen escaped Holsteins in your backyard? 15,000 crocodiles…I suppose that would have merited a call to the national guard….

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/southafrica/9823009/15000-crocodiles-escape-from-South-African-farm.html

So, Disney’s going to RFID (radio frequency ID, you’re probably more familiar with it when a product you’re buying sets off the alarm as you leave the store because it didn’t get deactivated at checkout. The rectangular things used to just set off alarms. These are more like metal-impregnated stickers and can contain more information than OMG, someone’s stealing razor blades!) and you’ll now be tagged like an endangered migratory bird, with all your wanderings about the park being tracked and summated. Although honestly, if it makes the wait for a ride any shorter, I could give a rat’s patoot if, on this one day, Disney knows how many times I have to pee. When I walk into MouseLand, I abandon all fantasies about being a self-determining individual. I have willingly chosen to be the Mouse’s bitch for the day, have at me. But I will thwart you all I can and pay cash for food and souvenirs and not use my Mickey Account or whatever the hell it’s called. Because I may be your bitch, but I’ll be a dick about it. I can’t reproduce the link where I found this news, as it’s subscription based, although it’s no secret, so you can google it if you want. But the newsletter I got it from writes “Moving deeper into personal data collection, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts is introducing a MagicBand tool, rubber bracelets that enable Disney to track guest behavior in minute detail. Will shoppers forsake privacy concerns for a more interactive and personalized shopping experience?”

Seriously, I do not WANT a more interactive and personalized shopping experience. Here’s what I want: fast, easy and to be left alone until I have a question or need, and then I want someone with an IQ higher than my heartbeat to help me, while pretending to care. Gotta give Disney props – they actually deliver the last two. Which also explains, to a certain degree, why going to Disney costs an arm and a leg.
( Sit down, this is going to take a while... )