It's Confirmed: I'm Awesome

I really shouldn't tell you people this. I know it's a bad idea. It's WAY more than you can handle.

But this is the only way to get the praise and congratulations I deserve, so click here for my FIRST! EVER! GUEST POST!!

Now, listen. We gotta lay down some ground rules here. The host blog belongs to an intellectual - my PROFESSOR, no less - and it is a blog for English majors at my university.

I tell you this because the type of nonsense that goes on here at Zipbag of Bones will not be appreciated at this smarter, fancier blog:

• Use of the word "fuck" (or any derivation therewith) shall not be tolerated!
• No references to genitalia will be allowed, and yes - this includes sexual innuendos and questions about why it burns when you pee.
• Please refrain from making fun of dwarfs, retards, unicorns or Twilight fans. (As per usual, jokes about Obama and Jesus are fair game.)
• Only intelligent comments will be tolerated. The rest of you will be hunted down and Sawzalled into tiny little pieces of goo. BRUTALLY.

Not only does my grade depend on you idiots not fucking this up, but also my reputation as a high-minded scholar, devoted solely to the mastery of knowledge and the contemplation of metaphysics as it concern the indigenous people of Peru in the 13th century.

DON'T RUIN IT FOR ME.

You know what, it's probably better that none of you even go to my guest post. Forget I ever said anything.

Here, have some candy.

In Which My Crazy Shows A Little

I just got an email from the Uza Nunua.com, which apparently is the premium online auction and classified website in KENYA. It's like Ebay, but with more flowing fabrics, apparently, where I can, "can buy and sell any item in Kenya," and they tell me, "It is the most cost effective way of advertising local goods and services." Fantastic, now I can get rid of all those sheep bladders I've got lying around. I'm wondering exactly where Team Uza Nunua got my email and exactly what they thought I'd be selling or buying in Kenya, Africa. Perhaps they need more vibrators over there? I hear the AIDS is a problem, so that theory kind of makes sense - the more the Kenyans "love the one they're with", so to speak, the fewer times I'll have to watch Philadelphia to remind myself I'm required to care about the Aids.

Wow. That was incredibly inappropriate.

Onto another topic of equal or lesser appropriate levels.

We just read the first four books of Milton's Paradise Lost about the angels' fall from heaven to Hell (which, according to Milton, is exactly like ancient Greece but with less nudity), and I found one aspect of this story particularly interesting.

And by interesting, I mean it made me want to shove the highlighter through my nasal cavity and into my brain just a little less than all the other parts.

So Lucifer is up in heaven when he has the VERY FIRST thought against God, which results in him birthing a smokin' hot babe out of his forehead (I shit you not), who turns out to be his daughter, Sin. Sin is so fucking hot that Lucifer does the unthinkable (unless you're south of the Mason Dixon) and he screws her, like, all the time.

Unfortunately for Sin, Lucifer gets a little busy with the whole trying to overthrow god thing, and basically ditches her there in heaven after he is cast into hell. Meanwhile, Sin is appointed to the task of watching the gates of hell and making sure they're locked and shit. You know, to keep all the demons down there where they belong.

Because apparently SIN is the responsible one.

It's around this time that Sin realized she's carrying good ole dad's incest spawn, and when she delivers the monster child (which nearly kills her, by the way), he's so enormous and misshapen than her entire body from the waist down basically explodes and she's left with streamers of entrails and whatnot.

Well, like a good chip off the ole' block, this new baby monster who happens to be named Death (convenient, huh?) runs after mommy and her entrails and he rapes her. Logistically, Im not sure where he decided to...stick everything, but he manages to figure it out, and now Sin is pregnant with Death's monster babies.

THESE babies turn out to be little yappy things like Yorkies or little Soleil Moon Fryes, and their eternal job is to spend an hour nipping at Sin's wasted feet and making all sorts of racket, and then after the hour is up they all run up her intestines and spend an hour chewing on her internal organs. Then they run back out and do it all over again.

I don't really remember the rest of the story because right about this time I had to stop and projectile vomit into the fern, but it's probably safe to say that somehow, some way, those puppies end up raping Jesus. That's the next logical step.

Oh, and also? Happy Halloween Eve-Eve.

Wow, that was both inappropriate AND a terrible ending to this post. Let's see if I can tie this all up neatly with a bow:

So then Sin goes to Dunn Brothers and uses their free Wi-Fi (while the cashiers debate frantically over whether her trailing intestines is a violation of their "No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service" policy), and she logs onto Uza Nunua.com, where she searches the vast (and apparently convenient) selection of online Kenyan auctions and classified ads until she scores a sweet deal on a case of small dog muzzles, then she heads to the Kenya to pick up her merchandise and end her eternity of suffering via stupid little dogs.

Unfortunately the pilots on her flight overshoot the Kenyan airport and end up in Switzerland where Sin is then raped by Roman Polanski, the offspring of which turns out to be her 20th child, and she therefore usurps the Duggars and is offered a reality show on TLC, but filming stops immediately upon the revelation that Sin is now afflicted with the AIDS, which oddly enough she contracted from a contaminated needle while donating blood.

Eat THAT tragedIE, Shakespeare! BOO YAH!!

Total First World Problem, But Still...

Holy fucking Christ, ya'll. My refrigerator STINKS.

It smells like dirty boy Brad Pitt crawled in there but died and his mane kept growing 'cause that's what hair does when you die and it ended up sort of creeping around the fridge when the light was off and it discovered a whole, raw chicken (which happened to have a raging yeast infection) and held it close to his rotting face as he smeared it with horseradish and moldy pineapples and they all had a latex orgy and then exploded. And then the fridge was unplugged for 3 years and left to moulder in the hot, desert sun.

That's what it stinks like in there right now.

This all started about a week ago when I noticed that ripe smell that you normally associate with, "Get your lazy ass off the PS3 and take out the motherfucking garbage already!", but when the garbage was removed, the smell not only persisted...it grew legs.

After an inspection of the interior workings of the garbage can, I was able to determine that it was not, in fact, the source of the stench (which was augmenting at an alarmingly fast rate, I might add), and I moved my search to other areas of the kitchen.

When I opened the refrigerator door, it was like the hand of god pressing down upon my face, and my eyes shone with the glory of the lord, and then I realized I was crying because my nose was just that offended. The stench was in the fridge, no question about it.

Thus began the process of systematically picking shit up off the shelves, recalling how old that shit actually was, checking for science experiments in the Tupperware, and generally searching for the offending food stuff. I did the same in the freezer, just for good measure. Goodbye goose balogna ring (don't ask).

Let me just be clear about one thing: I run a tight...er...fridge. You will not find 4-year-old yogurt in there, nor old cheese, nor slimy lunch meat, nor wilted carrots. I clear the damn thing out once a week on Trash Day Eve and throw away any leftovers from 3 or more days ago, as well as any questionable items or unknowns. There is no spilling in my refrigerator. There are no unidentified sticky puddles or bugs or hairs. Basically, I already knew exactly what was in there and I knew that none of it smelled like Brad Pitt.

Nevertheless, I sprayed down each shelf and wiped it clean, hoping that would solve the problem. By about Sunday, when I could smell the stench FROM THE LIVING ROOM, I got pissed off.

I pulled that big fucker out from the cabinetry (which was built around the unit as snug as a condom on a bratwurst, I might add). I jimmied and jammied that thing until I could see behind it to check for dead mice. Because that was the only explanation left.

And then I grabbed a flashlight from my handy Flashlight and Screwdriver drawer, and I checked underneath the fridge, at which point I also realized I could have seen behind the fridge via the flashlight (without all the yanking and swearing and sweating)((now that I type that out, it sounds sexier than it actually was)).

NOTHING. No rotting animals. No wayward grapes. Not even any centipedes, which is a whole other issue, but one I'm willing to work with because THEY DON'T SMELL LIKE BRAD PITT.

Thus began the pouting phase of my refrigerator caper. I stomped around the kitchen, grabbing bleach solution and paper towels, pulling each item from its chilly, ripe respite and scrubbing the hell out of each shelf and drawer until nothing remained but the scent of bleach any a glimmer of hope.

Then I returned each item to its respective shelf (pausing to reconsider my egg carton placement in the grand scheme of things and opting to switch up the location of the beer), and then I poured a generous amount of Arm & Hammer baking soda into an open dish and placed that square in the middle of the fridge to help soak of the aroma of death, and called it a day.

And when I got home last night, the first thing Gray said to me was, "Fridge stinks again." And it did. IT DID. God help me, this thing is stronger than BLEACH. THERE IS NO HOPE.

I'm basically gibbering mad at this point, the muscle below my left eye has been twitching like a severed hand for three days now.

And that thing you smell? The one like Brad Pitt with a pineapple yeast infection?

That's dinner.

Making Sense: Not Included

Ugh, you guys. I am totally beat.

It sorta feels like some hoochie mama in spandex with perky nipples and acrylic nails gave me a good pop square in the nose, presumably because I looked at her cross-wise or because she was hammered enough on ecstasy and cosmos to mistake me for her boyfriend Hernando, and she took offense to my making out with Gray, thinking I was cheating on her with a man (and a hairy one, at that), and I was lucky to escape with both eyes and only several chunks of hair missing. But no worries, 15 minutes later she was sitting on my lap and feeding me cocktail onions and trying (quite unsuccessfully, I might add) to give me a hand job under the table.

What I'm saying is that my nasal cavities are so dry and bloody and full of cracks that the outside portion is literally aching and sore to the touch.

I guess I'm worried I might get sick again. Again. Again.

What with all the people at work who have been out with strep throat and mysterious strains of illness bearing flu-like symptoms, and bronchitis and leprosy, I have an inkling I may have been exposed to the plague, and I'm feeling ragged and exhausted and ripe for the viral-picking. And Dr. Google totally agrees.

Dude named Dan, who happens to be in both of my classes, showed up on Tuesday night looking like Reagan from the Exorcist and declared (in a whisper) that he thinks he might have the swine flu. And then he sat in the chair beside me.

!!!!!??????!!!!!!??????!!!!!

What the FUCK, Dan? Infect me much?

I get that this class is dick-sucking-difficult and that missing one of the soul-leaching lectures is the literary equivalent of slitting your wrists and using the blood to scrawl bad limericks on the shower wall THAT DON'T EVEN RHYME, but for Christ's sake: THINK OF THE CHILDREN!

And, of course by "children", I mean "my ability to party like an 80s rock star on Halloween". It is vital that I Get Physical like Olivia Newton John. I cannot be ill.

So Dan proceeded to drip and moan and sleep through the first half of class before bailing during the break at 7:40. Good riddance, I thought. Get thee to a nunnery, motherfucker, and keep those germs away from me!

And then. THEN. Dan showed up for class last night. Again. He said he's feeling a little better, and I commented after the break that he lasted longer than the night before, but he informed me he was, "fading fast" which of course I took to mean that he was INFECTING US ALL WITH HIS DEATH RAYS.

I am buying a mask tomorrow. And probably some latex gloves. At least I know I can use those for other, practical duties in the bedroom.

ACHOO! and I NEED A NAP! and ANYONE HAVE A TAMPON? (totally unrelated, but equally urgent medical emergency).

PS- for my roomie Veronica: YES I HAVE TAKEN EMERGEN-C.
PPS - the upside to my impending demise is that I will finally have time to catch up on my Google Reader whilst I convalesce, which right now is so full with unread blogs that it's threatening to explode and break the internet, so I know some of you are rooting for me to get cancer so I'll be out longer. You assholes!

::This:: Is As Excitng As It Gets

I went to a ginormous book sale on Saturday. That's the most exciting thing I've done this week. That, and I discovered gin and tonics are tasty.

Seriously, I'm not even kidding. I should have warned you to get out the tissues before you started reading this. IT'S THAT SAD.

I've been studying for a quiz over Renaissance prosody (unrhymed pentameter vs. iambic tetrameter, rhyme scheme, meter, etc).

I've been reading Marlowe's The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus (Zzzzzzzz)((seriously, it's a story about a guy who sells his soul to the devil - not exactly going to have a surprise ending now, will it?!)).

I've been studying I King Henry IV so that I can perform act 5, scene 4 in class tomorrow night. I have two lines. One of them is, "This is the strangest tale that ere I heard." I don't remember the other line, something about breathing too long or some shit. I get to hold a shield while other people have sword fights.

I've been researching a paper over the Renaissance madrigal form of poetry and music (it's polyphonic, aren't you glad you know that now?). I'm going to try to compare Orlando Gibbons' The Silver Swan (one of the first "pop" songs in England) to a more contemporary British pop song like Kylie Minogue's remake of Locomotion.

Netflix is sending me Othello, King Lear, Macbeth, Hamlet and The Tempest.

The library is saving Paradise Lost and Gulliver's Travels on audiocassette. These are for when I'm feeling REALLY zaney. Probably on a Saturday afternoon.

I started reading D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, you know, just for fun.

Gray is torturing me with the Horror Movie Spectacular (I think I mentioned it last year, too). So far this month, I've watched: Paranormal Activity (SO GOOD), Susperia, Halloween II, Dawn of the Dead (original), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (remake), The Re-Animator, The Beyond, Saw I, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and The Exorcist (fell asleep to that one, but I've seen it before). I probably forgot a few others, or my eyes rolled back into my head and I had a grand mal seizure during the last few flicks of the weekend because OH DEAR GOD ENOUGH WITH THE HORROR MOVIES ALREADY.

I also made a fucking KILLER orange chicken recipe in the crock pot and now I have big plans to try apple glazed pork chops using the same basic recipe. If you're a pot-head like me, go check out Stephanie's blog. It's AWESOME. I love the index feature, my co-workers and I are bananas for this website right now. Go buy her cook book and send it to me. Seriously. GO NOW.

And if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pay some bills now.

Clearly, My Makeup Is Too Light. But...METALLICA!

I'm sorry, did you say something? I can't hear, so you'll have to use hand gestures.

Eeew!! Oh my god, what the fuck?! You're a sick bastard, you know that? Clearly, that is NOT what I meant by "use hand gestures". I'm going to go take a shower now.

Ok, I'm back. But I can't say hello because I'm also mute. Well, not exactly mute. It's more like I'm...an 85 year old Russian whore with a life-long Winston Salem habit. Rode hard and put away wet. A little syphilis and a little gout. You know how it is.

Apparently I'm retarded now, too. But DUDES: Metallica made me this way!!! I feel like the dude in the One video. Armless, legless, eyeless, presumably dickless, earless, tongueless. Just a pile of aching meat.

Except that bombs made him that way (or was it landmines?)((probably landmines, since they're specifically blamed in the song))(((but bombs could do it, too, let's not rule those fuckers out))) and a Metallica concert about that guy made me this way.

I AM actually pretty sore. From sleeping with everyone in both bands plus bassist from Gojira. Might explain the syphillus.

JUST KIDDING! I think Lars is into guys. But I totally did everyone else.

I just realized that none of this is making any sense, which is kind of how the whole night went. We showed up (after I tried to direct our vehicle to the WRONG venue) and parked in the least convenient parking ramp downtown, which wasn't really inconvenient except we had to walk past lots of white collar folks in the sky way system, and I think we freaked them out a little bit. One of them even poked me with a stick to see if I'd move. It was awkward.

We had to pick up our tickets at the will call window, and I swear to god it was like we were trying to buy methadone or Clairitin D or something. Two forms of ID, the credit card I used to buy the tickets in March, the blood of a virgin...that one was tricky, but I found a sweet little old lady taking tickets, and she was kind enough to point me in the direction of the giant pretzel kid. Said she'd never had any luck with that one. And then she winked.

Then we had to go through the security check and the pat-down line where they search for weapons and drugs and cameras and, presumably, Bibles. The last thing they need is someone bursting into flame during the encore, so they must take those away. Which, by the way, Metallica's encore featured BRIGHT! HOUSE! LIGHTS! and giant beach balls which fell from the ceiling. It was pretty rad.

Well...I didn't actually get to hit a beach ball, but it looked fun. I'm super empathetic that way.

And then I brained myself on the stall door in the ladies room because I went bursting into the stall all willy-nilly-three-drinks-in and the door didn't actually open any further. Or close, for that matter. Or swing in any direction whatsoever. It just stayed put and made a perfect target for the side of my skull.

(MICHELLE: YOU DO NOT WANT TO READ THIS PART. I know you will anyway, but I thought I'd warn you. Don't say I didn't warn you. THIS IS ME WARNING YOU.)

Then I set my lip gloss on top of the toilet paper dispenser. Then my lip gloss rolled onto the floor. Of the public restrooms at the Target Center. Then I picked it up AND USED IT. But the good news is that there are no bathroom doors, just big openings in the wall, so I didn't touch any door handles. So I'm safe from disease, right?

Then we met some girls that Gray knew when he was young and mullet-ed and kind of a drunken buffoon.

Hi Jenny! Hi Tracy*! You were darling! Especially you, Jenny, for reading my blog! I'm pretty sure I've hit it big time now that I've met an actual person that I don't even know who reads my blog! (translation: that I don't force at gunpoint to read my blog). It was very exciting, and I was all, "Metallica who? I'm Cat, and I just got recognized. Kinda."

And then I got punched in the face by all the Metallica fans.

So then Lamb of God started their (regrettably short) set before the main event, and I kept screaming, "RANDY I WANNA HAVE YOUR BABY!" and he never actually looked at me, but I know that deep down inside, he could feel me there. Probably because of the love musk I was squirting at him from behind my ears. Raw animal musk, baby. And once when he was doing those awesome circular head-bangy maneuvers, I think we had a moment. Or possibly I just got dizzy and had to sit down.

Of course, I was nearly close enough to be poked in the eye by his hair. And since that wasn't close enough, Gray and his brother decided I needed to BE UP HIGH, so they hoisted me up on their shoulders (did I mention the mini-skirt? little advice: those are not designed for heights.) and paraded me through the crowds of people up to the stage, and all I could think was, "OH MY GOD TROUBLE. WE ARE GOING TO GET IN TROUBLE," and all I could say was, "I am so sorry. Sorry guys. Please excuse us. I'm so sorry for blocking your view. No really, so sorry."

And then I spent the rest of the concert collecting discarded cups off the floor and placing them in the proper refuse receptacles.

I'm just THAT much fun to party with.

*PS - Tracy, it's C-A-T, not Kate. I forgive you this time. Don't let it happen again, or I might leave your cup on the floor. I'd hate to have to do that.

PPS - No really, it was THE MOST FUN show ever, and I literally still cannot speak and my ears are still ringing and I have bruises all up and down my torso from being hoisted. But dude: I WAS 5 FEET FROM JAMES AND KIRK AND THAT ONE BOUNCY BASS PLAYER. I was about 20 feet from Lars, but only because the drums are so much further back, and also I'm afraid of foreigners. It was totally surreal seeing such famous musicians that close up. This must be how people feel when they die and meet Jesus. And also, if I didn't have H1N1 before, I probably do now.

Concerts are germy.

As Opposed to a Wrestler

I'm pretty sure that the toilet paper in the bathrooms on my school's campus is made out of shards of glass. I kid you not, that shit is like sandpaper, and I'm reasonably certain that my labia is half an inch shorter now than it was in July.

My Brit Lit class is studying book I of Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene at the moment, and there's this chick named Una who rides behind the knight named Red Crosse on a "lowly ass". She's got this lamb on a leash and she's kind of dragging it along with her (apparently NOT for dinner, which was my guess), and the whole ridiculous band of travelling beatitudes is rounded out with a dwarf who walks behind Una's ass. Her donkey, not her ass. But I guess also her ass if he's behind her, since we're getting technical here.

So there are all these one-to-one parallels between Una and Christ: she's riding a donkey, Christ rode a donkey. She's leading a lamb, Christ is a "shepherd of men". Her name (more or less) implies "truth" or "singularity". Christ was "the way, the truth, and the light," or something like that. Forgive my botched Biblical references, I've spent the last 10 years trying to scrub that shit out of my brain folds.

But then there's this dwarf.

What the fuck is the dwarf doing there? If the lamb wasn't dinner, I hope to god that poor misshapen dude wasn't scheduled for braising, although that might have made the story a little more appetizing...(see what I did there? appetizing? god I'm good) Was he busting into Mini-Me sketches every 20 miles to keep up morale? Was Redcrosse into some kinky shit when the sun went down?

That poor, shrunken man seems to be some kind of hand servant to Una, and scholars conjecture perhaps he represents Una's bodily needs - the pooping, the eating, the sleeping - all of those things that aren't spiritual, but are necessary when one is trapped inside a human body. I'm not sure who decided that the dwarf represents the shittiest things about humanity, but whatever. This was the 16th century and nobody ever accused those pigs of being politically correct.

Spenser describes the dwarf as lazy because he's always pulling up the rear, and I'm thinking to myself, "Ok, so Redcrosse is on a horse, Una's on a donkey, and the dwarf is using his tiny little stumps of legs, endlessly running to keep up with them. He's hustling as fast as he can go, all over the fucking kingdom, chasing this crackpot knight who appears to be accomplishing nothing other than LOOKING FOR TROUBLE, nobody listens to his advice, nobody asks his opinion, for for the love of god why can't he just ride the damned sheep already?!

And he's the lazy one. Um, sure that makes perfect medieval sense.

Anyhow, the class was debating the dwarf's possible symbolic meaning when one guy piped up and said, "Sometimes a dwarf is just a dwarf."

I'm pretty sure I heard the angels in heaven at that moment because truer words have never been spoken, and now I have a new personal mission statement because DAMMIT! Sometimes a dwarf IS JUST A FUCKING DWARF.

The Trouble With Philanthropy...

So.

Yeah.

I spoke with Five Head last night. He was disenchanted with his school's walk-a-thon fundraiser. Every year, the kids of Ambassadors for Christ ambush their unsuspecting friends and family with requests for sponsorship: $1 (or more, if Jesus moves you) per lap on the school track. Every year, I find myself forking over cash to a school which provides superior education, if not substandard reality, because of Five Head's goddamn endurance.

This kid brother of mine, he was disenfranchised with the walk-a-thon because apparently they use "walking" as both a punishment for the kids when they are unruly AND as a fundraiser for the school.

Five Head calls this a "mixed signal". True enough, kid. True enough.

So I asked him for a solution. What does he think is a more appropriate punishment?

"I don't know, doing our normal thing? It's what we do anyway."

Yeah, that won't fly. Okay, try this: what's a more appropriate fundraiser?

"Um, how about a read-a-thon?"

Yes, I say. How about a read-a-thon? It encourages reading. Duh. Also, the kids would have to practice the "honor system" (JESUS APPROVED!) for keeping track of the books that they read honestly and accurately.

BRILLIANT! My kid brother was born to be an effectual administrator. I told him to pitch the idea to his school.

It made perfect sense to me. "Just THINK!" I said. "If you pitched them the idea and handed them a check from a generous contributor who supports your read-a-thon concept?! You could change your school!"

"Maybe..." he said. "I might be able to convince some of my fast-reading friends...AND, I could talk to my teacher and see if the principal will agree to it! I could get a plaque on the wall with my name on it!!"**

And now he's all pumped up about change, which is kind of ironic given the red state in which he lives.

Then I made a grave error: I promised to pay him 25 cents for every chapter he reads between now and Thanksgiving.

My kid brother, who mocks the picture books and praises 500 page chapter books. Do you have any idea how many days are left between now and Thanksgiving? Millions of dollars in quarters worth of days, that's how many.

And then I compounded stupidity by saying I'd also pay 25 cents for every chapter read by every friend he convinces to join him in his campaign for a read-a-thon.

And then my budget called the cops and I was arrested for domestic assault. Because I beat up my bank account. With my TONGUE.

Oh my god, please let all my brother's friends be retarded.

**Apparently he got this idea from a plaque on the wall outside his classroom donated by the family of a kid who got ran over in the street by a car. I reminded him to look both ways and then we talked about how "accidents happen".

It Appears I've Become the Kind of Girl Who Asks the Internet for Decorating Advice

I'm totally obsessed with weddings right now, thanks to the bouquet incident, a fact which is both pathetic and inappropriate, and therefore perfectly in keeping with my character.

Apparently I'm making my co-workers uncomfortable by assigning them personal attendant duties (someone has to wipe my ass, I won't be able to reach it through the layers of taffeta) and detailed instructions for the bridal showers they are responsible for planning (of course I want 10,000 white doves to perform on a tiny stage made of clouds. This IS my ((second)) BRIDAL SHOWER, dammit, and I ((probably)) won't ever be getting married again ((again)).

My girlfriends are begging me to find a project that does not involve researching the different variations of butter cream frosting. Gray is begging me to stop looking at tuxedos (apparently he is opposed to wearing a lavender bowtie, but if there's one with SKULLS on it, hook the brotha up!) and come back to bed, it's 3:00 a.m. for the love of god, who am I planning to marry, the goddamn Man in the Moon?

For some reason, everyone feels I should actually get engaged before they spend any time or money planning my wedding. Selfish, huh?

Because I'm so selfless and giving, I've decided to carry on wedding plans in secret (plans which must involve embezzlement in some form, because CHRIST have you seen how much fucking CAKES cost these days?!), and concentrate my visible energies into choosing new paint colors for the living and dining rooms at Longfellow Deeds.

The color of the walls isn't bad. The problem now is that there are many spots that need to be touched up, and I don't have any of the matching paint to use. Plus, I kind of want a new color scheme that ties the living room, dining room and "eggplant" kitchen together, and that makes the GORGEOUS new tile around the fireplace sizzle. I installed that myself. God, I'm awesome.

See the pretty blues and grays?

The tile is EXTREMELY blue in person, especially in dim lighting.

My idea is to use one of the paler, grayish blues from the tile to paint the living room walls and a darker, slate-y blue from the tile to paint the fireplace surround and the dining room. The trim and mouldings will remain white throughout the house.

The couch is beige.

Clearly, since my midterms, papers, class presentations, job, car trouble, baking, cooking, cleaning and fall yard work aren't enough to keep me busy, I NEED A PROJECT. Painting seems the saftest, although I've also considered making some formal drapes like these.

But...but.....BUT!!! What colors should I choose? Should I tape off the barrel vault and paint the ceiling, or leave the huge mass of OH SO WHITE up there? The rug is about as maroon as a rug can get, as is the front door (kinda), so what to do with those?!

Keep in mind, this house belongs to Veronica, not us. We are forbidden from doing what Gray wants to do, which is to paint every square inch black and then have a muralist recreate a biblical hades scene on the ceiling. If we could somehow work real brimstone into the design, he'd be down with that, but he'll settle for a CD of screams set to "repeat".

Please help me think of options! Or you might wake up tomorrow with a really bad hangover and a brand new, crazy Minnesotan wife.

Yes, I DO realize that's redundant.

Chewin' On That T-Bone In the Sky

R.I.P. Bailey

We miss you already, Stinkpot.

365

It's been a whole year today.

Wow. Hard to believe.

But it's been a good year, mostly. And Gray and I are going strong, which is more than enough to keep me happy. So even though I still wonder what might have been, I'm also finally okay with what is. And that's really all I could ask for.

But I haven't forgotten.