Lake Anna: Pit of Poor Judgment

Every summer, our friends Mike and Jess invite everyone they know (like, literally--the Evite is longer than Gene Simmons' "Tapped That" List) to come to Mike's parents' lake house, cause mayhem of Biblical proportions, and pass out in assorted Cubist positions on the basement floor circa 3am. They schedule it around the Fourth of July so that we can pretend that we're getting together to rally round the flag and squeal patriotic hymns, but really, the gathering serves to get us all together in such a way that we can stagger around the house the next morning, mugs of coffee dangling dangerously from our shaky hands, moaning the motto of every twentysomething in America: "I just can't drink like I used to."

This year Lawyer Boy and I pulled out of Richmond right around lunchtime, aiming to be in full frolic on the shores of the lake a mere hour later. We should have known better, as I-95 on a sweltering summer Satuday was jammed full of my arch-nemesis, Every Other Driver Ever. We slogged along for an hour, me shrieking impotently behind the wheel and LB trying to cover the dog's ears from my violent profanity, the highlights of which would have made Howard Stern blush. Finally we escaped the interstate's wrath and flew down the country roads towards barbecue, booze, and those foam noodle things that make unseemly attempts to drown me every summer.

When we docked ourselves at the house, Mike was just pulling up the boat from taking his friend Kevin waterskiing, and offered to drag me around the lake. I grew up boating, and I know how to waterski, which is astounding, since some days it is questionable as to whether or not I actually know how to walk. I had to debate whether I really wanted to try out my sea legs for two reasons. First off, there was a dock full of people waiting to watch me skip my face across the water like an unlucky, wailing pebble. A lot of Mike and Jess' friends know me from college, so they know me for my more charming traits, like nosediving into a puddle in the middle of a bar, and making tender yet passionate love to a toilet bowl at 2am.

The second reason I was concerned about skiing behind this boat is because it involved skiing behind this boat, which is not meant to pull skiers. A good boat to ski behind has enough power to speed up quickly, yanking the skier up out of the water so she can try to find her balance immediately. A bad boat to ski behind, while it might be great for trolling around looking for bass or whatever, pulls you up so slowly that you might as well be trying to hoist yourself up behind a three-year-old on a tricycle. If you're not out of the water, you can't balance. If you can't balance, you teeter along for a few seconds, screaming like a hooker and watching your thighs billow in the wind before your head smacks into the water, where you open your eyes in time to see your bikini bottom drifting toward a watery grave at the bottom of the lake, free as a bird. Just like your ass.

I mean, that's purely hypothetical.*

On my second try at public humiliation, I managed to get up and stay up, and had a nice ride around the lake, except for the part where El Capitan kept steering the boat through the wakes of other boats. When you're being dragged behind a boat, skittering along precariously on two glorified two-by-fours, and you see said boat start to bounce like a yo-yo, it is likely that you will start to wonder if the same people who brought us the Spanish Inquisition were also responsible for the birth of water sports.

Once we returned to dry land and everyone stopped laughing at me**, it was time to kick back with a cold one. Everyone had brought a contribution for dinner, ranging from a delicious cucumber salad down to my totally obscene "tropical" cake. I had originally planned to use my completely marginal cake-decorating skills to smear frosting into a patriotic pattern in honor of the Fourth, but the day before the party, Jess mentioned that they had decided on a tropical theme for the party instead. It was my feeling that Betsy Ross couldn't come to a party hosted by Hawaii Five-Oh, so I decided to whip up some pink, yellow, and green frosting, and festoon the cake with tropical flowers. What resulted was a cake covered in what appeared to be, by all accounts, pink and yellow octopi trying to have filthy squid-sex all over it. The pink ones were the girls, obvi, and let me tell you something. Thank God we had all been drinking by the time we laid into the cake, or watching nature take its course all over our dessert would have been too much to stomach.

After dinner we did all those great summer things that you do at the lake, like making a bonfire, lighting fireworks, and getting ticks all over us. When we had eventually had enough of playing buffet to the local insect population, we made our way into the basement, which is fully tricked out with a wet bar, poker table, and pool table. LB, Jess, and a few others commandeered the poker table for a game that I assume I do not know the rules to, since no one invited me, and I am positive that this had nothing to do with the fact that I am a totally useless sack of whiny during card games of any sort. Mike, Kevin, and I set up shop at the bar, where we mixed drinks while Kevin made fun of the music on my ipod for a solid five hours. All I have to say is, Kevin must have been genuinely and thoroughly wasted, because that is the only circumstance under which someone could not appreciate the musical genius of Tiffany, Britney, and Flo-Rida.***

Without my knowledge and likely against my will, someone took this picture of Kevin and I sitting at the bar, and now I understand how celebrities feel when the paparazzi snap shots of them staggering out of clubs in the wee hours of the morning. Can't you see the headline on the cover of Life & Style now?

WHERE'S LAWYER BOY????

A dazed Grace gets wasted at the bar with a mystery man, while Lawyer Boy plays it up with sexxxy ladies!

We were all of three feet apart, but everyone would be saying that we were leaving Richmond and packing our bags for Splitsville.**** Do you think this is what happened to Jon & Kate?

Me neither.

The card game wound down around 2:30, at which point those of us in the group with more common sense than unhousebroken puppies went to bed--which is to say, I stayed up. Mike, Kevin, and I decided to play pool, Mike actually playing for himself and Kevin coaching me, whereby "coaching" meant "flicking balls into pockets when Mike wasn't looking." Even on a good (sober) day, I'm terrible at pool. I have been told that there is a theory that, up to a certain level of drunkity, alcohol actually makes you a better pool player, resulting in an optimal level of drunken athletic prowess. That may be true, but when you have to be reminded before each shot whether you are the plain balls or the stripey balls, you are no longer at the optimal point of anything. Mike later claimed that I eventually stopped taking aim at the cue ball, and instead fired directly at the ball I was trying to sink.

Sidebar, Your Honor: I would like to know why pool is not played that way in the first place. Maybe if it were, pool could take its place among other respectable sports like baseball, tennis, and polo, where in order to hit the ball you are aiming for, you actually hit the ball you are aiming for.

Sometime around 4:30, one of us realized that we were within an hour of dawn and suggested we go to bed, an idea I brutally rebuffed. Going to bed once you realize it's already almost dawn is a bit like ordering a Diet Coke with a Big Mac and fries and giving yourself a pat on the back for maintaining your rigorous nutritional standards. We played a few more rounds (sets? matches?) of "pool" before the guys, wimps to the core, begged off. I contemplated staying up to watch the sun rise by myself, eventually deciding against an idea that would put me awake, by myself, in full daylight. What would I do then? Make muffins and coffee and wait for everyone else to wake up?

Fine, I did think of that. But I couldn't find baking powder.

*Except for the part where that happened to me when I was 14.
**Which was three hours after we returned to dry land.
***Flo Rida? Flow-Ridah? Florida?
****We're not, BTW. LB is the best thing since peanut butter M&Ms.*****
*****Which are beyond outstanding, if that is any indication of how much I love him.

Bienvenidos To Me!

Welcome back to my universe, amigos! It probably would have been more useful if I had told you that I was going on vacation before I went on vacation, as opposed to letting you know now, when I'm back, when you undoubtedly spent the last week in mourning, convinced I had died of avian Ebola flu, never to throw words and vulgarities at you again.

I mean, I know you got over it, but you thought it.

That said, I am back, and with many delightful things to tell you all about. There was a lake party, a visit from Mil and Dil, a visit from our friends who hosted the lake party*, and a whole week of sun-drenched drinking at the beach. I will tell you all about it...but not right now.

There are many exciting things to come this week, but they will come after I have taken a nap or two, checked myself for ticks, and checked myself into rehab.

And, oh yeah, after I've gone back to my regular day job, which involves neither waterskiing, sunbathing, nor dancing like a completely hopeless sorority case to Right Round.

*Summer goal: Make them as sick of us as humanly possible.

Do The Charleston, Chapter B: The TP Penitentiary

At 11:45 Thursday night, Lawyer Boy and I finally arrived in Monck's Corner, Scarolina, a suburb of Charleston characterized by its extreme suburban sprawl, the neighborhoods, shopping centers, and gas stations strewn so far apart that it's best to pack a lunch to get you through the trip, should you decide to go out to dinner. And if you venture out after dark, a travel toothbrush is a necessity.

I would give you my in-laws' names, but it's much more fun for me to call them Mil and Dil, which is my juvenile yet functional abbreviation for Mom-in-law and Dad-in-law. Or, their names could in fact be Millard and Dillene. Don't act like I made that one up. You know that somewhere, way down deep in the sphincter of the South, with a sister named Lurlene and a brother named Bass, is a little girl named Dillene, dreaming of the days when she can let her light shine, get out of the family double-wide that smells perpetually of Cheez Whiz and Raid, and make it big, singin' June Carter Cash at the traveling carnival for free funnel cakes and rides on the Tilt-A-Whirl. You go, little Dillene. YOU GO!

And for my next act, I plan to put down the crack pipe.

Aaaaaanyway, Mil and Dil just moved into their new house a week before our arrival, and they had been hard at work trying to erase all decorative evidence of the prior owners, whose taste I would be gracious to describe as 1980s Duckblind Chic. In contrast, Mil and Dil have fabulously excellent taste in home decor; their prior house, a rambling farmhouse they had built in Virginia, looked like a model home out of Southern Living, with acres of shiny wood floors and gleaming granite countertops. Upon arrival at the new pad, Mil told me the first thing she and Dil had done was to tear the forest-green shag carpet out of the master bathroom, before the color gave them seizures or the underlying mildew crept out and murdered them while they slept.

Thus I present to you a collage of the TP Penitentiary, before it goes extinct. Seriously, where's a good meteor when you need one? The pictures are of my traditional poor quality, in part because I took them, and in part because I took them quickly, on my cell phone, while I was pretending to drain the swamp before the trip home.

First off, the reason behind my naming the bathroom the TP Penitentiary: the actual toilet paper jail cell.

This is a maximum-security toilet paper incarceration facility, locking up dangerous, criminal toilet paper for your protection. I am aware that there is no actual toilet paper in there at this moment. It's all out workin' on the chain gang.

Next, the prison guard at the TP Penitentiary:
Guarding over his prisoners, the covert war-mallard pulls double duty, serving as a dirty, creepy eyeball to watch you while you drain the swamp. Adding an extra level of skank, he does not blink. He only stares.

Up next, should you be interested in washing the terror off your hands, a shelf holds all the hygienic necessities:Literally, up next--up next to the ceiling, above the shower, is where the prior owners stowed the hand soap. The thing that looks exactly like a lantern (and how clever!) is actually a hand soap dispenser. Squeaky clean hands were just a fantasy for these folks, apparently. And should you feel the need to cast a line into the toilet, a handy tackle basket awaits, full of whatever you might need to go fishing. Like I know what that is. The one thing I do know you need, though...

...is hooks.
Can I...just...for a minute? THERE ARE FISH HOOKS ALL UP IN THE TOILET SEAT!!! Phoooo. Phooooooooo. Nothing welcomes your tender bits like a seat full of multi-purpose metal shards.

I'd like to remind you that the previous owners of this bathroom paid real live money for a seat full of jumblies specifically placed to be right next to their...jumblies.

I can't imagine why Mil and Dil want to redecorate.

Dammit, Horizon Wireless

Last night I promised you a post about the TP Penitentiary, complete with pictures. True to my word, because I am an honorable little being, like a knight of the Round Table but with personal hygiene habits that do not involve dry-clean-only metal panties, I have already written that post. Howevz, I have been fumbled by my wireless company, which is refusing to spirit the pictures from my phone onto the intarwebz. I am not naming names, but if you wanted to become a knock-off service provider for less, you'd do well to trade under the name Horizon Wireless.

Actually, I like replacing the first part of their name with "Ho." It's just so appropriate, since I give them my money, and they in turn perform acts that are illegal in many states.

Anyway, hopefully I can smack the phone around enough and threaten to take away its dessert privileges for a week, so that by tomorrow, I'll be able to share the photos with you. Normally I am not particularly wedded to posting photos, but you need to see these photos to appreciate the story, just like when I gave you all those nice shots of my new driver's license photos. Can you imagine if I tried to do that one with words? "And next, I'm making a beaver face. My teeth look like giant slices of Wonderbread and I'm showing a bit too much of the whites of my eyes..." Just not as good.

I thought that, until I can fulfill my solemn oath to you, I'd leave you with a bit of a challenge. Last night, after having giggled to myself repeatedly and hysterically over this all day, I told LB that my new favorite word is bitchopotamus. Albeit it was out of nowhere and apropos of absolutely nothing, but he still looked at me like I'd just said I wanted to farm salamanders instead of having children.

Seriously. Bitchopotamus. Can you think of a word funnier than that?

That, amigos, is my challenge to you. Give me a word that's funnier than bitchopotamus, and I'll mail you cookies. I'll even raise that to a full two dozen cookies, because I just don't think there's a word out there that's funnier than that.

But I want you to try. Ready, set, bitchopotamus!

Do The Charleston, Chapter 1: Graceful Road Rage

This past weekend's patriotic sojourn southward began with my least favorite activity in the world, ever, so help me Gawd, amen. Now, I have never given birth, eaten chitlins, or sat through an entire N*Sync concert, but I do not believe that I could loathe any of these activities any more than I mega-loathe being in the car. I can handle up to about three hours of four-wheeled confinement -just long enough to get to Blacksburg, Home of the Hokies, and ooze into the nearest bar- but after that I start to come apart at the seams, bits and pieces of my sanity littering the car like the cheap, greasy gas station popcorn that I insist on buying for car trips. Road trips. Bad for my sanity, bad for my cholesterol.

Before we even got on the road, I could hear the orchestra warming up for the opening act of "Motor Doom" in the back of my mind: Holiday weekend traffic would clog up I-95 faster than I could scream "Get out of my lane, you scraggly slut!!!" turning a seven-hour trip into a sixteen-hour slog through the darker recesses of my vocabulary. I don't think I'm known for a sparkling, clean vocabulary safe for preschoolers and the dainty, but new guests to my Jeep are often shocked and horrified by the demons that screech out of my mouth in heavy traffic. Well, not even in heavy traffic. All you really have to do is hesitate at a traffic stop long enough to make me think that I might miss out on the beacon of hope that is the green light, and in decibels rivaling a sonic boom, I will proceed to insult your hair color, religion, mother, clothing choices, pets, and unborn children. In that order, and in furious, red-faced profanity.

Lawyer Boy and I managed to schlep our shizz out the front door of our house only forty-five minutes behind schedule, which is pretty decent for a household that may as well not own a clock. We could be more punctual if we only timed ourselves using a sundial, and that is saying a lot, since as far as sundials go, I do not even know which way is up. We loaded the Labradozer into her seat in the back, perched my perfect chocolate cake precariously on top of our luggage, and set the tripometer to zero, so we could watch every one of the 419.9 miles of our odyssey roll by. I am a glutton for punishment.

The tripometer had not even registered 5.5 miles before we came to an infuriating standstill, parked on the ramp from the Downtown Expressway onto I-95 South. As far as we could see, cars attempting to flee the city for a carefree holiday weekend were stalled, their pilots simmering from the stress of moving .02 miles in half an hour.

I started to get a little twitchy. I perhaps suggested not less than sixteen times, as casually as I could, that maybe we could turn around, cancel the trip, and get ourselves a nice baby pool from Target for a grand staycation in the comfort of our backyard. Maybe I banged the steering wheel a bit. Maybe there were tears.

This is just a thought, but if you are twelve minutes into a seven hour road trip and you find yourself on the roof of your car, naked, throwing your cute pointy shoes at the car in front of you and shrieking, "BITCH I WILL CUT YOU!!!" as a result of a perceived traffic slight, you should perhaps consider changing your travel plans. Either you change your travel plans, or the state troopers and their Tazers will, is all I'm saying.

Traffic crawled for an hour. I eventually stopped crying, put my clothes back on, and resumed my duties as diligent driver. The nice lady in the car in front of us even graciously returned my shoes. (I so would not have.) I smoldered in an angry little pile of hate, cursing Henry Ford, GM, Honda, and anyone else I could blame for the proliferation of the automobile in America. I went so far as to flip the bird at the Richmond Raceway sign as we trolled past it.

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, as we passed through the cesspool of disease that is Petersburg (motto: "Clap If You're Clappy!"), traffic lifted. All the other cars disappeared! Dumbledore must have heard my prayers, and swooped in to save me. The road opened up and we were free to fly through the next 400 miles of the trip. Of course, after that point, LB offered to drive. My sciatic nerve -medical Latin for "whiny thigh"- was bugging me, and I think the dark curses I was muttering under my breath were bothering him. He took over at the helm, and I spent the next six hours trying to get comfortable in the mixing bowl-sized passenger seat.

I never succeeded, but we did eventually make it to Charleston.

***
Tomorrow, I promise The Tale of the T.P. Penitentiary, complete with pictures!

Party Poop't

This has been a long week, amigos. Yes, I am aware that it is only Wednesday, and that it is technically a "short week" because everyone except the mall is closed on Friday, but I have felt every excruciating hour at the office drip by like drops in an IV bag. I still do not think I have recovered from my Eight Hour Birthday Festival. Even though I celebrated my own glorious presence until three o'clock Sunday morning, I didn't sleep in that day because my elderly body thinks that dawn is already noon, and that if we are not already up by then, WE HAVE LOST THE DAY, PEOPLE.*

Lawyer Boy and I had to clean up the house from what looked like a visit from Courtney Love & Co., resulting in the accumulation of 16 wine bottles and one bajillion beer bottles in the recycling bin out front. (The recycling people are never going to let their kids play with our kids.) After that, I found the energy to curl up with my shiny new porno, "The Art and Soul of Baking," and fantasized about croissants and baguettes for the rest of the day.

Coming back to work without the birthday princess card to play was, of course, a letdown, but really, is Monday morning ever not a total wart of a time period? This week at work I've been slap-happy slammed. For example, today I spent an unfortunately ginormous amount of time engaged in Celebrity Death Match: Grace Thoreau v. The Department of Labor. Experience has taught me that the DOL will likely claim victory in this battle, due to sheer size and strength. Also they pull hair.

In my copious free time, when I haven't been passed out from exhaustion or fishing for the rogue beer caps rattling in the dishwasher, I've been trying to get LB and I ready to haul it to Charleston, South Cackalacky this weekend for America's high holy day. Don't get me wrong; I'm super-stoked for the Fourth. I am rabidly, almost embarrassingly patriotic, but in order to get to the point where I get to cry while watching fireworks Saturday night, we have to get us, the Labradozer, and all the food I made across two state lines. Of course I made a ton of food for the trip. What else could I be doing to get ready? Laundry? LB's boxers could be walking themselves around our house, stealing food from the fridge, before it would occur to me to break from decorating a cake to wash them.

It has taken me this many words to wind around to the point that I came here to make, which is that you won't hear from me for the next few days. I'll be back next week to regale you with tales of my raucous patriotism and massive patriotic picnic, complete with Betsy Ross cap and corset.

And, if I may?

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!

*Have you noticed I always refer to myself in the plural? I think that says a lot about what's going on upstairs.

Cupcakes and Donkey Balls

Saturday night was my birthday party, to celebrate the epic (not) milestone (not) that turning 26 years old is (not). Mostly I just wanted to have an excuse to cook a lot of food and have people over, and none of my friends have ever argued with an invitation to come eat my food. An invitation to come over to help me decide between "Creme Brulee" or "Endless Wheat" as a wall color, perhaps, but never an invitation to come over to actually ingest creme brulee or endless wheat, whatever endless wheat is. Aside from a recipe for gastric disaster, of course.

I had started cooking early last week so as to ensure that there would be enough food for everyone to consider nibbling between drinks, should they feel compelled to put their drinks down long enough to assemble a plate. I made Greek chicken skewers, enormous chocolate cupcakes, a giant lemon tart, and a slew of other things that no one would be able to taste once they had drunk enough to render their tongues plastic and numb. Additionally, I had made the party as eco-friendly as possible: The cocktail plates were all reusable, recycled glass, the beverage bottles were recyclable, and the wine was all sourced from criminal grapes who deserved to die. Eco-justice for all!

The first win for the evening was that I did not suffer a wardrobe malfunction, which I considered a real and frightening possibility as I slipped an apron that tied around my neck over my sundress, which also tied around my neck. Right before the first guests arrived, I was whipping a batch of chocolate frosting, and the chocolate frosting whispered to me that it wanted nothing more in life than to make sticky love to my Lily Pulitzer sundress. I couldn't have any such fraternizing on my personal person at the start of the party, so I threw on the apron to finish putting the food together. Amazingly, in a frenzy to later whip the apron off so as to appear party-ready, I managed to not untie the sundress AND the apron in a humiliating act that would have put my later plans to pop out of my own cake to shame. Not flaunting your birthday suit at your birthday party: WIN.

The second win was that approximately 647.2 people showed up, ebbing and flowing in and out of the front door constantly from 7 to 11 pm. It was all I could do to keep up with squealing at new guests, checking the drinks of the guests who were already cruising down the freeway to Bourbontown, and reminding LB to make sure he had on his tiara and birthday sash to jump out of my cake on cue. I started at least 877 conversations over the course of the evening, and by the time the last reveler wandered out the front door, I think I had only finished four of them. House full of friends: WIN.

At one point I happened to glance out the front window in time to see LB shepherding a tall couple through our front yard, thoughtfully showing them the progress we had made in the yard. (It should be noted that this was the only *thoughtful* occurrence of the evening.) I had no idea who these people were! Did we invite them? Do I even know them? I darted from window to window, trying to peek stealthily between the blinds without them noticing--which was probably a lost cause, since my sundress was louder than I could ever hope to be. After a few minutes of scrambling around the front of my house, I finally thought to open the door, to discover that the mystery party-crashers were, in fact, my godparents. Who, by the way, I had invited. And whom I was really excited to see, once I realized they weren't covert serial killers out to wreck my party. Because, you know, that happens.

The third win for the evening was the presence of Donkey Balls, the Super Bowl of yard games. Apparently in classy circles and/or Wal-Mart, this game is known as Ladder Golf, but when we met, it was introduced to me as Donkey Balls, and I think it might hurt the Balls' feelings if I were to rename it at this point in our relationship. We played with the Donk all throughout the night, including after dark, which was an accomplishment of Olympic proportions, since there is no light in our backyard. What is really the accomplishment is that no one got whacked in the face with a drunken Donk. At least, not in my backyard, and not on my watch. Excessive use of the word "Donk" in public: WIN.

Throughout the night, I gave house tours to a huge number of our guests. I had forgotten how many of our friends hadn't seen the new house, and by the end of the evening, I was a regular Debbie Docent, swinging my wine glass perilously through my prepared spiel about plaster walls and wrought iron. I really had the routine down, hitting the high points with booze-fueled fervor, until I took one of my friends on the tour late in the evening. As we walked into the first stop on the upstairs circuit, I hit my cue. "And this is our master bedroom," I said, strolling in to check my hair in the mirror. My bangs were striking out to form their own independent nation.

"Ohhh, I see," he said. "So this is where the magic happens!" Quicker than you can say three-legged giraffe, I shot back without even thinking about it, "Nope, that's the kitchen!"

What? I'm a good cook. Oh, and my friend to whom I fired that gem? My former boss, Michael Scott. He couldn't be but so surprised; I'm not much more of a normal human being at the office. I just drink less. Kinda.

All of our friends whose babysitters would turn into pumpkins at midnight had to punch out around 11:15, and those of us that stayed through the halftime show burned it down until THREE AM. The best part? I have absolutely no idea what we did until then. I know we played with the Balls, and I think I ate 45 cheese wafers, but the overarching theme here is that I am still not too old to think it was a little ridiculous. Eight-hour birthday festival: WIN.

We are so doing that again next year. Or next weekend. Once my liver has recovered, whichever comes first.

Kitty Poppins

As the owners/parents/slaves of one completely ridiculous cat, Lawyer Boy and I are well acquainted with the mania that is the feline mind. Mango chases dust particles around like they're criminals on the run from his fur-striped Miami Vice. He attacks our feet under the covers suddenly and without warning, when those same feet had served as pillows for the six hours immediately prior. He does whatever the hell he wants, whenever the hell he wants, and there is absolutely nothing we can do about it.

Strangely, we're down with that.

I have seen Mango do some bizarre things in the two years that I've been his bitch, but ten minutes ago, he really topped himself. Allow me to set the scene for you: I'm sitting on the sofa in our living room that faces the fireplace and the TV. LB is lying on the couch next to me, and we're pretty dazed out.

All the sudden, we notice that Mango is standing on the logs in the fireplace, which by the way, is a total black hole of haunted soot. John Gotti could be up there for all we know. I have never looked our eighty-year-old chimney in the eye, and I do not intend to start.

So Mango is now standing on his back legs, lengthy orange body stretched out to his front paws placed on the filthy brick wall. All I'm thinking at this point is, snatch his orange ass as soon as he comes down, as I envision sooty black pawprints on my bedsheets and face. LB and I watched him, amused, as he meowed into the foul depths of the chimney and tried to get traction on the wall. Spider-Cat he is not.

And suddenly, in the midst of our snickering, Mango vanished up the chimney! He just disappeared, tiny orange feet flying up the chimney like a pad-foot Mary Poppins! It took LB and me a second to process what we had just seen, and then the panic set in. HOLY CRAP THE CAT JUST DISAPPEARED UP THE CHIMNEY!!!

Once we regained the ability to move, we both ran over to the fireplace, staring up into the black abyss. This may come as a shock, but looking up a dirty chimney at night does not afford one a great deal of visibility. However, there was ZERO CAT in the chimney! THE CHIMNEY ATE THE CAT! So now we know the chimney is, like me, a meatatarian.

After a minute of staring, our eyes adjusted to the dark, and we saw a twitching tail on the wall. Who knew there was a shelf in the chimney? Is there a shelf in your chimney? Who is seriously acquainted with chimney anatomy? Aside from Dick Van Dyke and those nice chimney sweeps, that is. But they are on vacay right now, so we have to rescue Mango on our own. After a few sweet words and a little begging, Mango was still unwilling to come down from his perch. However, as soon as we pulled out the camera to take a picture of his catfoolery to share with all of you, he leapt down quick as a...cat. And quick as a cat, I grabbed him to hose him off before he dappled my sheets with little foot kisses.

I would like to have no more surprises tonight. I would also really, really like to watch "Mary Poppins" now.

Bed Bath and Birthday

I had promised in my last post to share with you what my parents had bestowed upon me for my birthday at a later date, and I am here tonight to fulfill my promise to you. I know, right? Now, your heart can go on.

For my birthday, I had asked my family for gift cards to Bed Bath and Bedazzled, so I could buy the one essential appliance my kitchen still lacked: a food processor powerful enough to puree the entire Garden of Eden in one pulse. I will henceforth refer to the food processor as "procsy," since that is what I call it as a loving term of endearment. I spend a huge amount of time in my kitchen -I have lost valuable hours of sleep during the workweek to the creation of perfect cheese wafers- and had noticed that many recipes for pie crust and other flaky necessities require a procsy. It's apparently the only way to get a perfect pastry, as we all know that when Ma Ingalls was loading up the covered wagon for the great trek out of the Big Woods, she made sure to nestle the procsy next to the heirloom china and handmade quilts. And those back-issues of Us Weekly about Britney Spears' mental collapse. Man, Ma Ingalls did love her some Brit-Brit.

Mom and Dad started off my proscy piggy bank with a Bed Bath and Bediculous gift card Monday night, and Tuesday night the whole family assembled like a well-dressed religious cult at my grandmother's for dinner. After roast turkey and enough fresh vegetables to regulate the Dallas Cowboys (and possibly their entire fan base), I was allowed to ravage the pile of presents. I received not only enough Bed Bath and Bespeckled gift cards to claim my procsy, but also a cake pan that produces a giant cupcake, and a fabulous striped silk Coach purse, which my cousin Wayne picked out for me. I do love my tiny purses. Wayne feeds my addiction for smaller and smaller handbags, and if this progression continues, I will eventually be carrying a thimble by a shiny leather handle. In a fashionable color, natch.

After I had moved all of my necessities (keys, wallet, phone, and 26 lipsticks) into my new Coach Chicklet, I dragged Lawyer Boy straight to Bed Bath and Bewitched, where I followed the siren song of the small appliance section. I located and immediately pounced upon the procsy I had preselected online, only to discover that it cost a full hundred dollars less than what I had remembered! Remember the part where I said I had enough gift cards to cover the full cost of the procscy? Remember how freakdiculous I am about kitchen gizmos?

At the realization that I had a hundred extra dollars to marry with small appliances, I about near fell over, right after I stopped running around and shrieking with glee, which caused LB to head for the shower curtain section, where he wrapped himself in as many curtains as possible to hide from anyone who knew he was with me.

Once I picked myself and my handbag up off the floor, I settled on the pasta machine attachment for my stand mixer. I love my stand mixer so much I practically cuddle it to sleep every night, and because I have no social life and a minimal grasp on normalcy, I had recently decided I wanted to make my own pasta. My insanity knows no bounds. What, like you're surprised?

New appliances in hand and pie-eating grin stretched from ear to ear, LB and I proceeded to checkout, and to take our new baby home for the first time. We had previously installed the carseat per the manufacturer's instructions, so the procsy had a safe and snuggly ride home.

I promise to be a good mom, as long as it doesn't wake me up crying in the middle of the night.

Happy Birthday To Meeeeeee

Well, today I turned the big 2-6, which is only slightly less underwhelming than discovering on my 21st that the bathrooms in bars I was newly permitted into were just as horrific as those found in bars that had previously admitted my underage ass. I would like to beseech bar-going ladies worldwide to stop decorating the stalls in Early Modern Gastric Violence, and to ask if anyone has ever gotten a call-back on a number scrawled in lipstick across the soap-splattered mirrors.*

I would like to thank everyone who made my birthday so lovely, for ignoring my variety of attempts to downplay my day. It usually surprises people that I don't make a big deal out of my birthday, since I talk a lot (perhaps you noticed) and I like to tell everyone everything that's going on (perhaps you noticed). I just don't like to throw out my princess day to everyone, everywhere,** because I don't want anyone to feel like they have to make a big deal out of me, just because I said so. However, it is perfectly acceptable for me to rub the tiara of my Annual Princess Day all over Lawyer Boy, because he signed up for a lifetime of my ridiculous antics when he said I do. And no, I did not make him. I just told him what to wear and where to wear it and what to say and when to say it, is all.

LB had gotten me my big birthday present, a pink vintage bicycle, a few months ago. I wanted a bike so I could show the whole Greater Richmond Metropolitan Area what an unrepentant dork I am by riding my bike to the grocery store, shiny purple helmet complementing the shiny pink paint on my trusty steed. However, the bike didn't come with a basket, so until this morning, when I unwrapped my present, I looked like this gentleman, trying to cart all my necessities back from Kroger:
Clearly my hair has more volume than his, but the idea is the same. Now I have a basket, which magically compresses my 14 refrigerator boxes full of strawberries and organic milk into a compact load. I feel so much safer traveling now!

Thanks to the firm-wide birthday list, my coworkers knew it was my birthday, and they came out in full force. Particular thanks are in order to Ghost Baker's mom, for the cupcake-art birthday card, Sharon for the alarmingly abundant amount of fresh-baked doughnuts, and Melissa for the pan of gooey, underbaked brownies. (Please note that Melissa is apparently my only friend who is not a hyperlink.) I would also like to thank my boss for walking into my office at 9am and groaning his way through "Happy Birthday," in its entirety, by way of celebration. That is far and away a much better present than letting me leave an hour (or seven) early on my princess day. Totes.

Mom and Dad came over to hug me in celebration of the fact that they spawned me, and to give me my present, which I will tell you about tomorrow, when it will make much more sense. Suffice to say that it is a further extension of my personal rampant dorkery. While they were here we drank wine, stood in my backyard, and freely donated our blood to the local mosquito population. We're so kind.

My birthday dinner was crunchy beef tacos, which LB was more than happy to produce as a surprise for me. I've eaten at some of the best restaurants in the world, I make up my own recipes, and I've even single-handedly catered several events, but few things make me happier than the results of an Old El Paso Taco Dinner Kit. I can't explain it; it's just happiness in a crispy browned shell. Add to that a glass of wine, a cup of ice cream, and the man I love, and that's a recipe for birthday bliss.

I will fill you in on more birthday festivities tomorrow, after the big family celebration at my grandmother's. For now I am too sleepy and happily relaxed to do much more than curl up with the cat, the man, and a glass of Zinfandel. Thank you, thank you, thank you, to everyone who made my birthday so wonderful.

And for those of you who haven't yet found a way to celebrate me--now is an excellent time to start. You still have a few hours till midnight.

*Sidebar to 540-956-2345: You never returned my voicemail.
**Apparently I had forgotten that Facebook reminds everyone, including the unborn and the socially dysfunctional, of the anniversary of my debut.