Friday, November 12, 2010

In infant baby mouse killing news...

This morning (or afternoon. whatever) I decided I would actually walk my dog when she whines at my lifeless body under the covers and places her tiny little doggy paws on my face whist staring at me with her big brown doggie eyes and crying just enough to be audible/heartwrenching/pitiful/guilt producing.

Usually I just roll over. 

But today, I was feeling inspired.

So I got up.

Before Maury Povich.
Before the toddler came out trying to escape capture for her mid-afternoon nap.
Before my sister texted me that she’s going to Costco and do I want a chicken because it’s daytime and that’s what people do in the daytime, they go shopping and bring back chickens for the lazy, lifeless lump that lives in their backyard and shares some of their genomes.

Because that’s what people do.

So there I am proudly (this is where things begin to go wrong) prancing through the backyard (where I live) to the house (where the plumbing and running water is), leash in hand, devoted Shih Tzus following closely  circling themselves because they’re so excited they’ve forgotten which way is forward and can’t think of anything else to do other than follow their own behinds without realizing that this just makes them go in circles with the only forward motion accomplished being when I accidentally kick them (thus propelling them forward several feet) whilst tripping over them.

I saunter through the house and out the garage door.  I’m INSPIRED.  Nothing’s gonna stop me, not even the fact that I’m wearing my pajamas and socks with my flip flops. 

That’s how inspired I was.

I was inspired into fashion nonchalance.

And then it happened.

Remember when we were having an infant baby mouse problem?

I had forgot.  And thus, was caught unaware.  There was no helpful sign-a sign I imagine would look something like this:

PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA STRAIGHT AHEAD

I hear it first.

The struggle. The fruitless, fruitless struggle.

Of a mouse.  Stuck in brown goo.
So tiny.  So cute with his long mouse whiskers wiggling (frantically) as he/she (how do you tell?) strained against the goo.

It’s no use baby infant mouse.  There’s no break in the force.

This is what I deserve for getting up before Maury Povich and the baby-daddy dna-test drama.

This is my punishment.
 

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Why being a toddler is awesome: Volume 1 (because I anticipate thinking of more reasons later)

 1.  People give you candy when you pee

2.  You never forget your pants because people very helpfully remind you to put your pants on before exiting the house so as to avoid the embarassment of accidentally walking out in public pants-less.

3.  Your parents don't call you every three days and ask when you're going to get a job and move out of your sisters backyard

4.  All you have to do to get what you want is be totally and completely obnoxious and, not only does no one accuse you of being "immature", but you also get what you want--usually immediately, although this is directly and propotionately related to the degree of obnoxiousness.  (see diagram below).


I rest my case.

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Frozen babies=Fun for all

Recently I went to a baby shower for my cousin’s wife. 

Normally, I am not a baby shower kind of person.  Frankly, I’m not really even an interact-socially-with-others-whilst-sober-AT-ALL kind of person. 
I’ve only been to four baby showers in my life and they were all for my sister which means that I had the liberty of participating in the food-preparation for these events, which means that I made my “famous” sangria (because I can’t actually “make” anything but mixed drinks) which I then drank entirely by myself which means that I was too drunk to care by the time the party approached the lets-play-ridiculously-silly-games-so-as-to-pass-the-time-and-humiliate-ourselves point.
Ridiculously silly baby shower games decrease your intelligence. 

This is a fact. 
Go ahead.  Google it.  I'll wait.....

See?  Told you so. 

#FACT.
Given the fact that there was no sangria or even just plain wine at my cousin’s wife’s shower AND given the fact that I’ve already come to understand that what little brain cells have not already been damaged by my friend Robert Mondavi need to be preserved and thus protected  from silly baby shower games...

I HID in the car when the baby shower olympics kicked off with the guess-how-fat-the-pregnant-lady’s-belly-is-using-nothing-but-string-and-your-own-unreliable-powers-of-depth-perception game. 
Unfortunately for me, I miscalculated and rejoined the group just in time for the give-birth-to-a-baby-in-ice contest.  Not familiar?  Allow me...
Here’s how it works.
You are presented with an ice-cube into which has been frozen a tiny, naked, plastic baby doll.  Your job is to “birth” the baby by melting the ice around the baby such that the baby is freed from its icy womb by the powers of the physical property changes of water. 
But we’re civilized folk, so there were RULES. 
1) No placing the ice-cube-imprisoned baby in your mouth. 

2) No placing the ice-cube imprisoned baby in the microwave or exposing it to fire, gas, nor electrically powered heat sources.  

AND 

3) The baby has to be completely free of the ice to be considered “born”, so no “hey-most-of-the-important-parts-are-out-who-cares-about-the-left-leg” births. 
Because that, my friends, is CHEATING.
This resulted in an entire room full of frantically rubbing, sucking, fondling, placing-in-strategically-warm-body-crevaces, or otherwise ice-cube molesting women.
Go ahead, close your eyes. 

Picture it.
Did I mention that I did not drive myself to this event?
Did I mention I was smack dab in the middle of the Sierra Nevada mountain chain where there is NO cell phone reception, subway stations, taxi stands, heliports or ALCOHOL?
All avenues of escape were blocked by pine trees, hippies with armpit hair, Volvo’s, and sisters who are enjoying the aforementioned games and don’t want to leave.
And there was no ALCOHOL.
Good times.

Monday, August 30, 2010

Awww...look how cute! There are rat feces in my silverware drawer!

We have rodents in our house.

I don’t mean those adorable little fluffy guinea pig creatures that talked to Eddie Murphy and ruined his career as a serious, credible actor in that movie that no one saw.

No, I mean RATS.  Not the little black and white kind you buy at PetSmart, either. I’m talking about the kind of freakishly large, grey colored, beubonic plague carrying satan-creatures who wait till you’re asleep before crawling all over every conceivable living space you hold dear and generally consider to be relatively sanitary until you find rat feces scattered all over everywhere and your perfect world is shattered into a million pieces and nothing will ever be right with the universe again.

Or at least that’s what I imagine they look like.

I haven’t actually seen them.

I’ve only seen their poo. I saw it in the silverware drawer of my sister’s kitchen.  My sister has launched an all out attack. She’s determined to rid the entire tri-city area of rats.

She’s a very ambitious woman.

Unfortunately, in her quest to exterminate them all she’s uncovered is more poo. (And, possibly, a decomposing body. At least that’s what it smells like. But that’s another post for another day because I’m lazy and all this typing is really quite ambitious of me anyways given my sloth-like tendencies.)

So my sister sent her husband to Home Depot for traps. He came home with these mysterious black disks that you “set” and then wait for the color to change indicating you’ve “caught” something. How it gets “caught” or what the actual manner of death might be is mysterious, as you can’t actually see inside the disk, leaving you free to imagine a peaceful, he-just-went-to-sleep-and-never-woke-up-or felt-so-much-as-even-a-cramp kind of death in which you, as the human angel-of-mercy, can talk yourself into thinking you’ve actually done the enormous satan-rat a favor.

After all, he was so sick anyways. I was just putting him out of his misery.

You’re welcome satan-rat.

It turns out it doesn’t matter anyways because apparently these rats have been around the block a time or two and aren’t falling for the black-disk, I’m-already-sick-so-thank-you-for-killing-me-because-I’m-terminally-ill-and-will-die-a-slow-and-painful-death-otherwise trick.

They must be wizened, inner-city rats.

So my sister called an exterminator

Turns out his method of extermination involved baiting a 3” x 6” strip of sticky tape with some sort of gooey, brown, tasty, rat-tempting treat. Unable to resist, the rat walks onto the sticky tape so as to eat the delicious brown goo, becomes stuck, is unable to free itself, and slowly starves to death...on the sticky tape.

Let me say that again.

Unable to resist, the rat walks onto the sticky tape so as to eat the delicious brown goo, becomes stuck, is unable to free itself and slowly starves to death...on the sticky tape.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t like rats. I’m not suggesting we all try to co-habitate—us and the rats, living peacefully together, sharing the same silverware drawer. I do not want to share my fork with their poo.

I just miss the days when all you had to do was put some cheese on a spring loaded trap and wait until *CRACK* their neck gets snapped in two and instantly they’re off to rat heaven.

I don’t understand why we had to resort to duct tape and brown goo. Seems like that might be a step backwards.  Like to a time before we had an understanding of spring loaded technology...or the tempting nature of cheese.

Some things are best left simple.

Like microwaves. All I really need to do is re-heat pizza and occasionally defrost a burrito. All the other buttons are unnecessary and lead to confusion and despair.

To make matters worse, according to my brother-in-law, (who is responsible for “disposal” of those caught in the sticky tape-brown goo contraption) we’re only catching baby rats. Probably, says Phil the Exterminator, newly weaned infant rats, given their smallness.

Great.

It was one thing when imagining freakishly large, grey colored, beubonic plague carrying satan-creatures eating brown goo and getting stuck to duct tape. Then I could be like, “ha ha! CAUGHT YOU satan-creature!” But now I'm imagining tiny little infant rats.

Stuck.      Scared.      Confused.

Probably trying to figure out why their feet wont move. Wondering, "where is my mommy is and why isn’t she helping me?"

“WHERE IS MY MOMMY AND WHY WONT MY FEET MOVE!!!!???

Now we're just, like, giant, obnoxious, egocentric, murdering humans who think the silverware drawer exists exclusively for our own purposes and not for the toileting purposes of infant rats.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

It's like a hobby

Today my sister suggested I start a blog.

I’m sure this has nothing to do with my current living situation (in her house), income level (nothing) or employment status (employ-what?). I’m also sure this has nothing to do with the fact that all of the above result in my lounging around in her house all day, eating her food while wearing the same clothes from yesterday (okay so they’re from last Tuesday-don’t JUDGE, I’m saving water) and whining incessantly about how I have nothing to do.

I’m sure it’s not that.

This epiphany occurred after she read someone else’s blog. Someone much funnier than me. The conversation went something like this:

Sister: You could do that too.

Me: Do what?

Sister: Write a blog—I mean, you know, you’re funny.

Obviously she is under the impression that I am being purposefully funny when in actuality I am merely existing in a universe wherein embarrassing things happen to me (usually because I’ve done something stupid or otherwise without much forethought) and I seem to have some kind of Tourettes-like tic that renders me incapable of not sharing with anyone who will listen the embarrassing things that happen to me in the course of any given day.  It's like my brain doesn’t work fast enough to realize before it tells my mouth to open and form words that said action will result in public humiliation.

It’s like a hobby.