I Guess, If You Insist, I COULD Use A New Candle Holder...

Oooh boy am I tired, but I'm pretty damn sure we're, like, 95% ready for the (hopefully!) onslaught of friends and family who will (fingers crossed!) descend upon the house for our HOUSEWARMING BBQ! at 7:00 tomorrow night.

I've had to explain several times that we are renting, we didn't exactly buy this place, so technically it's a little strange to be "warming" someone else's house, and please don't buy us presents because technically we didn't really accomplish anything other than lifting all our possessions and transporting them to another zip code, so if you buy me a toaster, it's going to make me uncomfortable, but we've been cooped up in an apartment for so long, cramped in a space with no outdoor access, no means of barbecuing for crowds, no feasible way to host a large number of people...so we said FUCK IT!

We don't own this place, but we sure as hell are rockin' it at the moment, and we have worked hard the last month ripping out the overgrowth in the yard and scrubbing the house down and polishing it up and making it our own. It's party time, if you ask me.

I'm a little bit worried because I suffer from a lingering, sophomoric "nobody likes me" syndrome, so I've got this anxiety about having purchased way too much money's worth of food and incoming hangover from hell's worth of booze; about having spent so many hours planning this party that should have been spent recovering from my cold. If nobody shows up tomorrow night and forces Gray and I to beat the holy hell out of our little pinata by our sad, lonely selves...well I just might die.

Last summer, I planned a girls' night at the apartment - a Sex & the City party, if you will - complete with cosmopolitans and fancy little appetizers that must be purchased and consumed in bulk if there is any hope of staving off hunger. I bought an official SATC "I'm With Mr. Big" t-shirt. I bought the SATC dvd. I invited every friend that I have in the world that is dickless. I was SO PUMPED.

And then everyone cancelled at the last minute. And my "last minute", I mean all the food was ready to roll and the dvd was in the damn player, all queued up and practically begging to be watched. And Gray was headed out the door to do his pre-arranged manly things.

My Jill showed up for a half an hour, but she had been busting her ass doing yard work all weekend and was sore and tired and headache-y, so she left. And I spent the rest of the night pouting and re-living my 7th grade birthday party FAIL, and Gray spent the rest of the night fuming. I believe he even posted a largely passive-aggressive Facebook status, something about when people say they'll be attending a function, then he damn well expects them to show up.

So this time I'm hoping to spare everyone the shame of thinking possibly he's talking directly to THEM when he puts an angry face on his profile. I'm hoping we have an enormous turnout and that we nearly run out of beer and that the bonfire burns so long and hot that Gray ends up having to cut down a neighbor's tree simply to keep the party going.

I've always kind of wanted to see him in handcuffs.

Greedy Little Pig

Last night, we attended our very first Saint Paul Saints game, thanks to our employer, and we were able to invite NeeNee and J-Dizzle, two friends with whom we haven't chilled in FOR.EV.ER, and it was awesome because my boss was like, "You should pool your money and bet on the trains, I think 8 trains will be the ticket tonight!" and I was all, "Awesome, thanks for the tip!" except I was thinking, "Wait, what the hell trains is he talking about? Isn't this a baseball game?" and then somewhere around the fourth inning, I realized that the stadium is sandwiched between two working railroad lines and those trains I keep seeing go by? Yeah, I'm pretty sure those are the trains my boss was talking about.

It was kind of hard to pay attention to the game because NeeNee and I were gabbing away like old friends are apt to do, and at one point we both looked up and went, "Oh my god, it's only the third inning? BASEBALL IS LONG", and then Gray made out with Madonna, except is wasn't really Madonna, it was Mudonna, and actually, thinking back on how many pigs we saw, I'm starting to understand the weird dream I had last night, which - DON'T WORRY - I'll get to that in a moment, but first I must tell you that I ate potato salad, chips, a chicken sandwich, several cheese curds, half a bag of peanuts and most of a bag of mini-donuts, and then in a stunningly brilliant finish, I washed all that down with four keg beers.

J-Dizzle, who recently dropped a shitload of weight - we're talking a me-sized amount of weight - commented that the ONE cheese curd he ate nearly put him "over the edge" into gastro-intestinal distress, which maybe should have been my queue not to continue ingesting deep-fried ballpark food, and which certainly proved to be a glimpse into what was coming for me overnight. That, my friends, is what we English majors like to call "foreshadowing".

I spent the hours between 1:40 am and 3:24 am moaning in the bathroom, ruing the day I'd decided to put onions on my sandwich and sending angry vibes to Gray in the next room who was obliviously and painlessly sleeping through my ordeal. When, at last, I returned to sleep, I dreamt that I'd been house-sitting for some guy who owned two big pigs and two full-grown kangaroos, and that one of the kangaroos had begun vomiting so I locked him in the bathroom to minimize the fallout, and when the guy came home he was like, "Oh my god WHY did you lock him in the bathroom? Hear that pounding? That's him punching holes in my bathroom walls!" and then he lectured me on responsible kangaroo care, and all the while I was thinking, "DUDE. You left me alone with your animals. Forget about the drywall, you should be thanking me for not eating your pigs."

You Should See How I Organize With Twist Ties

I don't think there's enough coffee in the world to steel myself for the barrage of post-BlogHer anecdotes on the Interwebnet today, so instead, I'm using heroin. Godspeed to you all, may you be subjected only to the best and brightest blogger recaps, and may you stumble upon countless incriminating photos of BlogHer panelists cartwheeling topless through Millennium Park.

So this cold. This cold has kicked my ass in a very big way, so much so that I've burned through a bottle of Mucinex and a bottle of Robitussin (both expectorants only, not even any of the good pseudoephedrine stuff) and my lungs are still full of sludge, as are Gray's. The coughing in our household has reached the Atomic Level, and luggies are being spit and swallowed left and right. Yesterday morning, Gray drove us to get coffee at Dunn Brother's, and I noticed an abandoned Chipotle cup sitting in his console, so of course my reaction was, "When did you go to Chipotle without me!?" and he replied, "No, this cup is still from last week when you were really sick and I brought home dinner. I've been using it as a 'spitter' since then." Which means there is a cup full of creamy white excretions just hanging out in Gray's truck right now. Good luck with that cream cheese bagel now, suckas!

My Jill came down with the same cold last Monday, only she has asthma, so instead of the cold kicking her ass as it did ours, her version put her at urgent care where she was given a prescription for steroids which should have cleared her right up, but against this Hell Cold, they had no effect. She's going back to the doctor today, and I'm going to ask that she go ahead and update her will while she's in town on the off-chance that she doesn't make it through another night of drowning in her own fluids. Michelle? I want your camera.

So what I really should have done this weekend is rest and drink lots of fluids. What I actually did this weekend was rip out entire portions of the overgrown yard at Deeds, plant some herbs and ornamental grasses, disassemble and clean the gas grill, laundry, cleaning, unpacking, hang artwork, plan a menu...basically everything EXCEPT rest and drink lots of fluids...We're hosting a big BBQ on Friday in honor of our new digs, and this was our last weekend to GET STUFF DONE! before everyone shows up expecting food and beer and a weed-free backyard. I had no choice but to push past the sickness and work from sunup to sundown. I'm like a farmer, except with fewer forehead wrinkles and more complaining.

I cannot walk today. Yard work is great for your buns, ya'll.

We bought and assembled our new fireplace thingy for the backyard, hosed off spidery-dusty lawn furniture, cut down several small-yet-well-established elm trees, installed a ceiling fan without electrocuting ourselves, and hauled 4 bins of yard debris over to the sinkhole across the street. I saw two neon-orange spiders, one neon-green spider, and had one ginormous beetle get stuck in my hair. I will never sleep again.

The ceiling fan was quite an adventure. Gray took the reigns, and I promptly tried to yank them out of his capable hands because, we determined, I? Am a control freak. (Don't all object at once! I hear you nodding your heads and I don't appreciate it. Sit down, Michelle, this isn't Oprah.)

I don't want to be this way, really. It's just that I know how to do everything. Like, KNOW-know how to do everything. FASTER! BETTER! Move over because I am BORED when you do stuff while I watch! Gray mentioned that perhaps the reason people think he's not all that terribly "handy" around the house is that I don't let him do anything around the house. I say he can do things like lead the ceiling fan installation, and then I sucker-punch him in the stomach so he'll drop the wrench, but not until after my instruction-highlighting system is fully deployed and my tool are lined up with surgical precision on a special towel-lined worktable (so nothing rolls around!) and my screws are all neatly labeled so I don't confuse part ZZ with part XX because that might mean the fan will come crashing down upon us as we sleep.

I'm looking for a psychiatrist as we speak.

So now our pre-BBQ list is whittled down to: buy food for an undetermined number of people, buy beer for the same unknown number of people, make sure we have sufficient propane, figure out how the hell to tell how much propane is in the tank so we can make sure we have sufficient propane, borrow and set up a shade tent, jimmy-rig enough table/chair scenarios for an undetermined number of people, mow the yard again, oh and STOP BEING DOG ASS SICK.

Oh, and scrub the toilets. Again. Any chance I could work this last one into the BBQ festivities? Toilet scrubbing contest? I'll totally flash the fastest wand-wielder...

The Trouble With "Creamy White" Lung Excretions...

So I'll be posting about our (fucking freezing cold)((did I mention BRRR?)) Rock the Dock IV excursion at some point this week, but at the moment I'm busy trying to make my coughing productive, which according to About.com means that I should be "producing excretions" and that I should also be noting the color of said secretions, which will range from "dark red" to "creamy white", and REALLY? Is "white" not a good enough description of the color? Because I didn't realize Behr was consulted in the naming of the various colors of productive cough excretions, and while they're at it, they might as well go all O.P.I. on our asses and name phlegm colors like "Funny Bunny" or "Just Tea-sing". Or "Mucus Plug".

If you haven't guessed, I'm sick again. Gray got sick on Friday and then I got sick on Sunday, and together we are one gigantic ball of pathetic sick pussies, and now I'm picturing mangy cats fighting over a scrap of cantaloupe rind in a dumpster. We're even more pathetic than that, I assure you.

I've been trying to figure out why the hell we've both had upper respiratory infections several times this year because normally I get sick once a year, in the fall, and it's always brought on by allergies to some kind of devil pollen spore in the air in Minnesota, perhaps due all the gays, because isn't everything their fault? I normally don't deal with the allergy attack, so it turns turn into a sinus infection and then into walking pneumonia and then I lay on the couch in a feverish haze of Oprah and Saltines until my coughing becomes productive and I stop seeing Richard Simmons doing the tango on the ceiling.

This time, I have no allergies. I have no fucking reason to be a walking, whining, phlegmy excuse of a human being.

I mentioned this to a co-worker who said nonchalantly, "Oh, didn't you know? Everyone around here gets sick. It's because there's no fresh air."

And I was like, "EUREKA! That's probably exactly what the hell is going on!" because we work in a really big building full of people - public people, germy people - a building through which stale air is circulated through the germy, public people and then recirculated down to my office all.day.long. My office is underground. No windows. No fresh air. PUBLIC GERMS EVERYWHERE.

Not only does Gray breathe the germy air, but he deals directly with the germy public all day long, touching them and touching things they've touched and then touching things like his STEERING WHEEL and his LUNCH BOX. And now I realized it sounds like he works in a brothel.

We're both OCD hand-washers. In fact, I am perpetually skinless on my hands from washing them all the time (a habit I picked up when I was a waitress), and Gray washes his hands every 45 minutes to an hour, but there's nothing we can do about washing the AIR, and ohthankgod now it's finally all making sense, because I was starting to google "lung cancer" and "cystic fibrosis", and if you think search results for "productive cough" are gross, don't even get me started on "lung mites", people.

So now I can feel free to keep smoking, right?

I Warn You, This One's Sappy

Here's to our first 2

And here's to our next 2(0)!

Happy Anniversary Gray!

XOXOXO

Cannot Be Bothered To Name This Post

Hoo boy, am I ever antsy this week.

I cannot concentrate on ANYTHING, which means my daily commute is both a) dangerous to other drivers and b) exhilarating as hell. So many things going ON! How could I possibly think about ONE AT A TIME!? I'm like a dog in that if you place a piece of bacon on the floor by the chair, and then you place a piece of bacon on the floor by the couch, and then you balance a piece of bacon on the tip of my snout, I will spend the next hour trembling with anticipation, eyes darting between bacon A, B and C, until someone makes a sudden movement and loses a finger.

This week, Bacon A is the two year anniversary for Gray & I. It's not our wedding anniversary, mind you, it's just the anniversary of the day we decided to stop sleeping around. We're walking to our favorite local bar & grill for their summer block party: live music, $2 tacos, cheap beer, patio seating, stumbling home for drunken chutes & ladders - you know, the usual anniversary stuff. It will be magical.

Bacon B is that I'm taking Thursday and Friday off from work. Don't panic, NOBODY DIED. I simply decided that I wanted a little mental health day, and then on Thursday night, Gray & I, my Jill & her hubby are driving to Wisconsin for ROCK THE DOCK IV (insert spring break screaming and boobie flashing: here)!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Rock the Dock, it's our annual couples weekend on the lake. For those of you who ARE familiar with Rock the Dock, we're still really sorry about the mess and/or promise not to smoke your ferns and/or shave your dog again this year.

Last year, on our first morning of Rock the Dock, I took a pregnancy test. It was the happiest day of my life, and Gray's. Needless to say, things didn't work out so well with that, but while it lasted, I had the glow of all pregnancy glows. Also needless to say, I was the only sober person that weekend. I am looking forward to making up for lost time this year, so if I come back with a tattoo of big bird on my foot? Don't be alarmed. It just means someone brought tequila.

Bacon C? DIDN'T YOU HEAR ME EXPLAIN ROCK THE DOCK?! It's a whole damn slab of pork, all wrapped up into one lake-y ball of contentedness and embarrassment.

Party Central

Gray fishin' with my Jill

Pretend that's better beer I'm holding

Bonfire on the day we found out we were going to be parents

(Notice he's drinking for the both of us)

RTD II, 2007, my victorious Birchwood Idol win, thanks to Shaina Twain and Bonnie Rait

Aww. Wwww.

Me & Chelle, taking it easy on the tube

I cannot WAIT to go again.

Or MAYBE...She Just Had Shingles

Don't ever accuse me of not learning my lesson. I wasn't going to even risk the possibility of forgetting to share this gem with you freaks. See? I'm GROWING!

So I was waiting in the lobby at the dermatologist yesterday (don't ask, you don't want to know)((ok, fine - I was there so they could violently rip a part of my leg off))(((yes, a wart does TOO count as part of my leg))) for, like, an ETERNITY because they were running almost an hour behind schedule and hadn't bothered to let anyone know. The room was packed with mostly women, each impatiently paging through her tattered copy of Better Homes & Gardens, as if by finishing her magazine first she would somehow speed up the process of sitting with her thumb up her ass waiting her turn to be lanced or squeezed or drained or, in my case, numbed then sliced then soldered then flash-frozen.

A blond woman with the gigantic banana clip who sat in the chair next to me used the one free seat beside her as a personal book and smoothie holder since, rather than hold these items, she preferred to semi-force an old lady to hobble off in search of alternate ass-planting arrangements. But the smoothie? It was comfortable.

Meanwhile, a TV was broadcasting The Price Is Right (When the hell did Drew Carey get so fat!? And, Did they have to reinforce the stage??) until the top of the hour, at which time the local news station began their daily, late-morning broadcast with a 60 second blurb on the Michael Jackson memorial. They flashed images of Paris Jackson's eulogy, a tiny, sobbing white girl surrounded by the black cloud of the Jackson siblings, and then went on to other news.

That's when I noticed the blond beside me rise and go in search of tissues. When she turned to walk back to her seat, I saw that she. was. bawling. Pink-faced, snuffly nosed BAWLING HER EYES OUT AT THE DERMATOLOGIST'S OFFICE. The woman who wouldn't give up the seat she'd saved FOR HER BOOK was all broken up about the little people on the magic screen.

I glanced around and saw other women do double-takes as they took in blondie's uncomfortable reaction to the newscast, and then I saw them all quickly go back to reading about how to firm their bellies in 14 seconds without changing their diets or socks. It was, perhaps, the oddest thing I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of odd things before, things like midget wrestling and the underside of a chip-n-dale dancer's be-thonged package. This woman was publicly grieving for a dead celebrity, and it was a snotty sight to behold.

And now I have become a more compassionate, empathetic person because I realized that is how I must have looked a few years ago when, as I was shopping for bulk chicken breasts at Costco, I got the devastating phone call that my gynecologist could NOT call in a prescription for Ativan, or even Tylenol with codine, and that I would be forced to make the plane ride from Minnesota to California with nothing more than a handful of Benadryl, which everyone knows is like the white trash Valium, so in essence, my gynecologist was killing my pride, which explains why I was compelled to blow my nose into that butcher's apron and sprawl in aisle 12 with a case of Oreos.

Which, now that I think about it, may explain the source of my wart problem.

Which Is How I Came To Be Wearing Socks On My Hands

How in the name of god did it turn into July 8th? I must have missed that memo because I'm still back on June 17th, scratching my head and looking around, going, "Where'd everybody go?" Then I remembered that June was so cold and crappy that all of my ghost tan lines are really from May, and I don't even remember what I did in May, probably because it was May and I was thinking I didn't need to pay attention until at least June, because that's when it starts to get good.

I do not even know where to begin with what's been going on around here. At least a dozen times a day, I shout (inside my own head), "I HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THIS" and then I don't write it down because I cannot imagine any circumstances under which I could possibly forget to tell you such a MARVELOUS THING, and then our backyard bunny friend makes and appearance and a chipmunk almost crawls on my arm and I thin, "I HAVE TO BLOG ABOUT THIS" and then Gray runs all over the house calling my name because he found a video that I must see. IMMEDIATELY must see. And he's actually right about this video, it might be the best thing I've ever seen, and we watch it together with a warm tingle surging through our bodies, which is either the feeling of hope for humanity or lust, they're really very similar, those two surges. And then pretty soon it's time for bed, and then WHOOPS it's Wednesday again and I still haven't blogged about that awesome thing that happened, let me sit down and do that now.

Wait...what happened again? I have really got to start writing shit down. I literally cannot remember any of the things I was going to tell you. Christ on a crust.

OH! Apparently that little epithet dislodged ONE little thing, which is that I think I ::might:: be losing my mind a little bit.

Earlier this week, I ran to the bank to make a withdrawal from the ATM before going grocery shopping. I made sure to take out the exact amount of my allotted grocery budget for this trip. I went to the store, purchased (nearly) only items that were on my shopping list, and proceeded to pay with my debit card instead of with cash because I NEVER have cash.

When I got home, I realized that I'd forgotten to use the cash and lamented to Gray that I am becoming senile. He objected surprisingly little.

The next morning, I was running a few minutes early to work and decided to swing by the bank and re-deposit the cash I'd taken out (but not used) for groceries. One freeway exit and ten minutes out of my way, I inserted my debit card in the ATM and realized, "SHIT. That's right! I remember that I decided NOT to withdraw cash for groceries because I ASSUMED I would forget to use it. Which is exactly what happened, except I forgot SO MUCH that I still thought I'd taken out cash, and am now trying to deposit invisible money."

Never have I felt so Short Bus.

And there have been 3 to 5 incidents of similar insane-ed-ness in the past two weeks. I'm afraid for you all, that much is certain. I never should have cut back on the booze.

Miss Yvonne: Bnaughty By Nature

Congratulations to the winner of a Bnaughty by BSwish, courtesy of Drew and Eden Fantasys: Miss Yvonne of Yo Mama's Blog from DFW, Texas!!

I used this random generator to pick a winner from the 16 unique entries to my Sex Toy Giveaway, and Miss Yvonne was lucky #14! I stopped over by her place today and see that she's got a little giveaway of her own going on at her blog, one which is vastly less erotic but also much funnier. I mean...who doesn't want to chew a mullet, truly?

At first, I was somewhat disheartened by the lack of participation in my vibrator fest here at Zipbagofbones. Don't you people like yourselves? Or were you all taught to be ashamed of your body like I was? Did you mother also tell you that touching yourself was naughty? Because I'll tell ya, if she's anything like my mother, she talked out the one side of her mouth and she had Playboys and pot hidden in her bedroom.

I was sad for you people and your mummified, cob-webby lady bits. That is...until I check my Googly Analytics report and saw that 111 people stopped here JUST to read my review of the Bnaughty, and the average time spent on that particular page was over 2 minutes, so basically long enough to fiddle yourselves, so clearly there are more dirty sluts out there than you would have us believe.

Also, I've got news for you people who read but do not play: Jesus knows you read my blog, so I don't think you'll get any points for not entering my giveaway.

Congrats, Miss Yvonne - be sure to email me for details about collecting your considerabl(y pleasurable) prize!

Proud To Be An (Drunken) American

Have a Happy 4th and be safe, ya'll.

Or, if you'd prefer, be inebriated and careless with explosives. What the fuck do I care?