Fuckers!

If you happen to see a three-man band of buskers with guitar, violin, and churango, be a pal and let me know, I gotta come kick their music-loving asses.

I call dibs

on this place. You know, for when it all goes down and we have to scram.

Answer in the form of a question, champ

My boss just won a bunch of dough on The Price Is Right. And a kayak.

I would like to get on a quiz show. I think I could win something easier than Jeopardy but harder than the show with fifth graders.

Or maybe America's Next Top Candy Eater.

And when they bark they shoot bees at you

I'm worried about the bees.

on the other hand, this is awesome. The perfect gift for those who are hard to buy for and have beef with the Man of Steel.

Murder Pizza Retrial

I see in the news that the murder pizza guy is getting a new trial. This was a big murder case in our neighborhood. I call the pizza place "Murder Pizza" which I think has a delightfully horrifying sound to it. In fact I think the pizza place should just accept fate and change their name. It is such a crummy little hole, with bars on the windows, it should totally just embrace the whole sordid thing. We're Murder Pizza! Free Pizza if you Get Murdered While Picking Up Your Pizza! Cannot be combined with other offers.

Such a weird case though. I have such a vivid mental picture of the whole thing for some reason. Like a re-enactment on America's Most Wanted. There's this kinda stout kid, wearing shorts and a yellow slicker. He's weaving down the sidewalk drunk. Then when the other kid starts talking trash, he carefully unfolds a swiss army knife, maybe first he gets the wrong blade (scissors? I didn't want scissors!).

What the hell, you know? A swiss army knife? It's not even menacing. Like if your getaway car is a VW bug or something.

thanks all for the kind comments about the poor cat. We miss her very much. Sometimes I enter a room expecting her to be there sleeping. Last night I dreamed she came back and was fine. I was like, how? how did she walk all the way home? She was not even an evil zombie cat.

Once I worked with a guy who told a story about the cat coming back. He was living with roommates somewhere in Allston-Brighton. There was some old tomcat that was hanging around. They liked the cat OK but this cat was 'intact' as they say and therefore a nuisance of howling fighting and stinkin. So one night they put the cat in a car and drove him all the way up to the Cambridge common. Folks not living in Boston: it's a few miles, but across a river. A big river.

A few days later of course, the cat was back meowing at the window. He said he felt SO bad about it. I picture a little puss in boots with a bindle, making his way across the bridge. Homeward bound! Man, that guy told great stories. He was awesome. I wish I worked with him again. for one thing he reminded me of my dad, mostly because he had the same mustache. And I find that amusing. Plus the great stories. One time he got in a fight at an all-night diner and bit a guy on the leg! ha! Well. It was funnier when he told it. Man.

here's the part of the post where I bitch about the weather. Why is it below freezing again?

how delightful

it's snowing, or should I say, it's fucking snowing.

My sister was both a model houseguest and drove me insane.

Today's Winner

I recently spent dozens of minutes creating a detailed set of instructions telling editors exactly how to create a tearsheet and submit their corrections to me. I then held a meeting where I went over the instructions WITH visual aids. I demonstrated why the tearsheet was important and what it needs to show.

Moments ago I was handed a stack of crappy photocopies with corrections scrawled on them from an editor who announced he didn't "feel like making a real tearsheet."

he's officially lazier than me! woo!

My sister is coming to visit this weekend. Who knows what we will do. Oh, forget it I know exactly. I will worry for days about how to entertain her, what to feed her, and how to make her comfortable. She will arrive, borrow a set of keys, and take off to party with her young and energetic friends until post-subway-hours, then sleep until noon. rawk!

It'll be fine...we just have very little common interest wise.

cat gone. bummed out.

Deathwatch: Cat

Here's some sad news. The poor cat, the Nighttime Howler, is kind of on her last legs.

When we came home from Shelbyville in December, we realized that she was completely deaf. She couldn't hear the kid howl and made no sign that she could hear us anymore either. Since then we "call" her by stomping on the floor.

The next thing that happened was we took her to the vet for her checkup. She had lost weight and was very thin. The vet took blood, which is a horrible ordeal for both the cat and anyone listening to the cat. Turned out she has some thyroid problem. This is on top of her existing kidney problem that we've known about for years.

So now we give her a little pill every day. At first we wrestled her down and stuffed it in her mouth. Then I found that you could just hide it in a treat and she would scarf it down. The vet said "see you in six months!", which implies of course that the cat will live at least six months.

But her appetite is very low, and she hardly ever eats her food. I wouldn't either, it is gross, but she used to eat it. She is very thin and light.

The other night she tried to walk across the room and her legs wobbled and slipped. She had to lie down and take a rest halfway between water glass and couch.

So we've been feeding her cat junk food, petting her, and letting her in the bedroom at night (previously forbidden after the broken glass incident). She sleeps all the time. I carry her to her food dish so she can eat three little kibbles.

Octuplet Dazzle got that cat when she was just eleven years old. The cat was, by all accounts, a very cute kitten. We inherited her when my mother in law went on one of her long trips to India, and we just never gave her back. That was seven years ago. So, I'm bummed out.

poor puppy

The drug ads on TV with the cartoon puppy make me inexplicably sad. The puppy! and the boy! Drugs came between them! Now they are alone! it's very sad, if you think about it, and if you are insane.

There were a rough few hours this weekend while our computer was dead. But I got a part and fixed it, and we can all relax now, constant stream of internet into the household is restored, now wikipedia can recommence sending stupid information into our brains.

I didn't grow up with any internet but I can't imagine how you do anything without it. A phone number? Instructions for the coffeemaker? Why does the baby do that? Shopping? Oh, series of tubes, how would we ever live without you.

I am done with snow. Snow? You can suck it.

Lousy Smarch

DAMN it is cold outside.

I know everyone thinks it is stupid to have dst early this year but, as someone who doesn't have to be at work until nine, I am excited. sorry, early birds. But you have that whole worm thing going for you, right?

My Secret Identity

There is another person living nearby named Shirky McLazy. (that is, she shares my first and last names). She chooses not to have a home telephone or maybe not to list her number (did you know it costs extra to be unlisted? fuck that, sez me, I'm cheap). This creates a certain amount of annoyance for me, because anyone who looks her up in the phone book gets me and calls me and asks to speak with me and then informs me that I have a dentist appointment or offers condolences for having lost my job or other very alarming things.
Once I got a call from my cousin Amanda McLazy and she said she was in town, wasn't that great, and we chatted for a few minutes before I realized that both us Shirkys apparently had cousins named Amanda and this one was not the accomplished lobsterwoman from Maine that I had supposed. She was embarrassed but I tell the story at every family gathering, it amuses me so.
I have begun getting emails from the other one's mom (you'd think that your mother would know your effing address). Mom is obviously new to email cause she sends the kind of horrible, horrible forwards that I really should only come from your grandmother. I've emailed this woman a few times now gently explaining that I am not her daughter, I am not from Pittsburgh, stop emailing me crap poetry and urban legends, but maybe Bizarro Shirky has a wacky sense of humor cause Bizarro mom keeps coming back with "Ha ha! You're such a kidder! Love Mom!"
I wish I could use this whole situation for hilarious pranking but I can't really think of anything funny.

Someday I will run into the other one, and I can give her a bunch of messages. Until then...hope she doesn't rob any banks.

vast and relentless, is the sea

gaaaah!

Another

Probably the weirdest compulsion I have is scotch tape. I love the smell of scotch tape but I can't just sniff it. I take pieces and play with them until they are gray and unsticky. At the end of the day there is a little pile in front of my keyboard. It is wasteful and I have tried to stop. Here are the ways you can quit your tape habit:
1. lotion on your hands interferes with the sensation of stick and pull that you get from fingers on tape
2. don't have tape at your desk
3. have some other kind of tape, tape that doesn't have the same delicious smell and stickyness. Substandard tape is not satisfying at all. Packing tape, masking tape, and removable tape are all crap. I need regular scotch tape.

I would eat it if it were edible. I am sure.

In other news, I have a persistent eyelid twitch that is uncomfortable. what would stop that? drugs? acupuncture? wishing? I do not think it is caused, as cartoons would have me believe, by stress. Nor do I drink any caffeine. I think it's just one of those things. I am getting old.

nothing to report

At the present time, there's nothing interesting me that I feel like writing down. For one thing, it stresses me out to discuss child-related things. The threat, however imagined, of disapproval from others leaves me tongue-tied. Like, did you know some people don't approve of Pepsi-B for babies? Ridiculous. It has a B right in the name.

I don't even want to say "I'm back at work" because of my fear that people will say "How could you leave that sweet baby?" The answer is, I extracted my heart with a corkscrew. Or so it seemed.

So let's resort to lists. Here's a list of things that make me mildly weird.

1. I can't stand being asked "What are you reading?" when I have a book in my hand. Ever since I was a child this question has filled me with inexplicable and irrational rage. I have no theory about why this is.
2. I do not like shrimp, or cheesecake. I know other people find these luxury food items irresistible. I find them revolting. But that just leaves more for you!
3. Previously-mentioned fear of ocean and its inhabitants (extends to aquariums, which I have to sprint through, in order to not die of fear). I have been in the ocean maybe 2 or 3 times, cautiously, and each time ended with me hallucinating a giant fish brushing my legs and a comically flailing race back to the beach for a delicious dose of skin cancer. Apparently the real threat of melanoma scares me less than the purely imaginary threat of fish cooties. Go figure.

shiver

god this

thing is creepyass

lucky fellow

has a new lid

Photo Recap

The End: The Homecomening

Early the next morning, we packed our bags into the car. We strapped the car seat into the rental car for the first time. We marveled at how much fucking crap we had and mourned the end of traveling light.
I snuck into the living room to put presents under the tree. Just as we were about to leave, the family came downstairs to say goodbye. The other adopting family gave us a tiny sweater for the baby and we wished them good luck with their adoption.
And then we were off. Alone with the kid for the first time ever as we drove toward the airport. He was treated to some new words as I got lost, too.

He was a dream baby the whole time, slept on both legs of the trip and only woke up in between to chug a bottle. Everything was like a dream.

My aunt was going to meet us at Logan, but as we came down the escalator, my sneaky mom was there too, snapping photos. They picked up all our luggage and brought us home and put food in our fridge (and threw out the food that was in there to begin with. Whoops.) They took a bunch of pictures with the baby and then excused themselves.

Hard as it was to believe, we were home for good.