Category Archives: Uncategorized

Our house, was our castle and our keep

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So, not an hour after I am assured we can move into the new place on Monday, the human blowdryer at the real estate corral calls MY HUSBAND to say “um, you can’t after all.” I guess Verizon was right, the building is imaginary. It’s a good thing he decided to go over my head, because I would have taken his call, kicked my heels up on my desk, and had a voiceover segment. There would have been some spangly dream sequence music, and a perky voice would ask “What would Anna Wintour do?”

And then I would have REAMED HIM WITHIN AN INCH OF HIS LIFE. His office is a few blocks from mine. I still might. Throw a cellphone at his head and key his Grand Cherokee.

Point of clarification: I am not really a douche bag when I deal with people. This is a fantasy, designed to detract from how totally crushed and helpless I feel. We’ve scheduled a shut off for the utilities, scheduled them for the new place, given our landlord notice that we’ll be out, and hired movers. Even my new haircut, which looks amazing, thanks for asking, isn’t helping. I am so calling Hank Phillipi Ryan. And, as Aaron suggested, I’ll be booking rooms at the Ritz and deducting the bill from our new rent. One for me, one for the cat, one for all my stuff.

Panic in the streets

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Today is all about dread. Fear of the blinky red dot on my mail icon. Fear of the blinky red light on the phone. Fear of the clucking chicken ring on my cellphone, which means messages waiting. I guess it’s my own damn fault for picking that ring, I should switch back to the Bewitched theme.

I am short of breath, and my ears are humming. Now more than ever, I need a personal whitelist of who is actually allowed to address me! I don’t want to field a question from the assorted ding dongs that need to get all up in my existence today. The clueless freelance client who can’t remember where they bought their domain but still needs it pointed somewhere else. The real estate monster, calling to say “We-ell, you can still move in on the first, but you may not have a working elevator…” Verizon, saying “Oh, you would like a phone in your new place? How NOVEL.”

I also don’t want to give advice to people with poor life skills who won’t take it anyway.   Oh, you have baby daddy trouble? That’s too bad. You gained weight? Ha. I am getting a sore throat.

Did this entry stress you out too? I’m sorry. Really, I am. You shouldn’t have to suffer too. Why do we always hurt the ones we love? Let’s talk about a far more soothing topic: my hair. Oh, deep breath. I am soaking in it. I am getting a cut today, which always makes me feel like a squillion bucks. Yes, I know I just got it cut a month ago. But I am like a nappy little Shetland pony. If I don’t go today, when will I go over the next few hellish weeks? The terrorists will have won, and my layers will be shot to shit. Please do not bring up my grown out highlights. I will buy you a gingerbread latte if you just look the other way.

-xxoo

Bullseye

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Sadly, going to Target is not as high-spirited and monochromatic an experience as the TV ads would have one believe. There are no rockettes or dancing christmas trees, and Mark Mothersbaugh is not hovering up in the front office personally DJing over the PA system. I did not see Isaac Mizrahi either. I believe he is in his lair in Trenton, busy laughing, absolutely splitting a side over all the girls who are hoping “you can have high fashion at Target, really.” You can’t. Please do not embarass either one of us further by pretending it’s true. What are you, a communist? I love a bargain as much as the next gal, but crap is crap. It’s Mom Jeans.

But we still managed to make impulse purchases. How do they do it? I came for packing tape and cat litter, I departed with a fleece throw. I didn’t need a giant Toblerone bar, yet I left with one anyway.

It’s just as well, because I ate a few segments of that for dinner: a new level in culinary incompetence even for us. I thought butter noodles a few weeks ago was the absolute nadir, but I was wrong. We’re moving one week from today, and we’ve gone from eating off paper plates to just not bothering with actual food. Well, we did have some apple pie. That’s half a Cider Jack and half a Harpoon Winter Warmer. Spicy. The traces of apple in the cider will prevent scurvy.

Then I capped off the weekend by working on a particularly wretched DHTML-laden freelance project. It seemed like a great idea back in September, but of course the other parties involved assed around until November, and then the client demanded it be live on the 26th. Because the day before Thanksgiving is such a crucial time for web browsing. Why am I not better at saying no? Oh, right, I’m a whore.

-xxoo

30

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Today is the first day of the rest of my life. So glad i began it by waking up in my clothes, laying in a drooling heap atop my presents. And such lovely presents they were! Thank you all for being my friends and coming out and clinking my glass. And giving me stuff.

And thanks, Licketysplit, for being the best pal ever.

Tonight I am going to road test my birthday present to myself- a gym membership. Yikes. In just a few hours I will be having my body fat circled with a felt tip pen by some horribly buff person. I know what you are all thinking: “fitness is not our lambchop, knocking back gin and eating popcorn while watching 20 minute workourt on tv is our lambchop!” Hrmm, I really can’t argue with that. But I did get impossibly adorable Betty Boop themed workout clothes- they even had polka- dotted sweatbands!

-xo

Huzzah, huzzah!

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Unfurl the gossamer banners, and don your t-shirt featuring dogs having a tea party! Pipe lurid pink icing flowers on a solid slab of marzipan, and flood the streets with confetti, for it is Lambchop’s birthday! And not just any birthday, oh no. It is a special number, but I shall leave that for her to reveal in her own good time.

To celebrate, I have quite the surprise. I let us get pregnant a few weeks ago when she was passed out! No, kidding, kidding. But I did pick up a few gaudy do-dads, and when I purchased one of them the sales-slattern said “Oh, your daughter is going to love this!” What is more alarming: our truly infantile taste, or that this shrew thought I looked old enough to have a six-year-old?

Now I give you photographic proof that we are two heads sharing one body. This was taken in Barcelona a few years ago, atop a bus. Luckily we never forget which one of us is on the right in photos (Lambchop!).

Now what more can I say about my splendid pal? Hmm… no matter what I come up with, I am sure that ABBA has said it better at some point.

There was something in the air that night

The stars were bright, Fernando

They were shining there for you and me

For liberty, Fernando

Though I never thought that we could lose

There’s no regret

If I had to do the same again

I would, my friend, Fernando

Yes, if I had to do the same again

I would, my friend, Fernando…

-xxoo

Jackie O.T.

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Dear Diary,

I have been put in charge of filing the orders of a very important customer. So I ask myself: what goes better with a glittery silver top- glittery silver polish or just the plain silver???

Life is six-cups-of-coffee-by-day,-on-the-rocks-yes-please-salt-the-glass-by-night, kind of good. Now that I am a Drudge like the rest of you, I can see it has some merits. The free flavored coffees, the bad moods, the charmingly misspelled articles in the Metro. I can stand around the copier, plucking at my highlights and talking about the South Beach diet in a South Shore Redux. (the South Beach diet is the one where you eat clam rolls and waffle cones, right?)

Since Helen and I opened the Pandora’s Box of Lambchop and Licketysplit memorabilia, I also sifted through my own box of Stuff That Used to Matter. Among the myriad of fascinating items were (1) a Brownie Smock, (2) a collection of orange Honor Roll buttons (they say “Honor Roll” on them in chunky black letters. This way all non-Honor Roll types can make them out and know they are in the presence of Achievement. I wear these to work.), and (3) a report card that says my long division Needs Improvement (NI) but my Spelling is E for Excellent!

I am going to start issuing Needs Improvement cards to my friends and associates. There really ought to be a system of checks and balances for the faux pas’ of our acquaintance, to address horrible sweaters, placing knees on the table, and interrupting ME when I am saying something fascinating.

The last thing I want to rant about, before I go back to punching holes in things, is a startling new development in Boston culture (didn’t know we had any, did you?). Musical amplification devices and Wind Instruments are strictly VERBOTEN! from subway platforms and trains. No more can that batty old geezer plonk out “Alleycat” on his Casio. And the tortured yearnings of the acoustic guitar player will also go unheard as he whispers, ampless. This is all Licketysplit’s doing, for it is she who went around paying these chaps to STOP playing. The frightening result of all this is that it has opened the floodgates to ACAPELLA. My betteylunchbucket morning commute is now punctuated by the few brave soloists who try their hands at Crooning. The resulting bellows and caterwaul make me feel like Day Room at the madhouse again.

-xo

Counterpoint: Bodddyyyy, I am tired of doing our taxes!

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[pictured, from left: Licketysplit, Lambchop]

Why do I always have to be the responsible one?

I always say to Heather “Just once I would like it if you laundered the money!” But does she listen? Oh no. She is usually preoccupied by a shiny pinwheel or some other geegaw, while I gnaw a pencil to a stub and readjust my green visor. She’ll never sweat over off-shore holdings the way I do!

And it pains my soul, because I am fun-loving too, you see. I enjoy gumming jawbreakers, tissue paper flowers on sticks, crackers shaped like animals, and dreamcatchers. But everyone thinks I am the stodgy one because I have the head for figures. Oh, the trials of being 10 minutes older.

Finally, I will say to Heather that just because a kitten follows us home does not mean we get to keep it. Who will end up cleaning the litter box? Me, that’s who, and you will not even let me use our other arm. Oh no, you will be too busy styling your hair with the Twist-a-Braid!

I am not even going to discuss the turtle you allowed to wander away into the heating duct. Also, I’ve made up my mind, from now on I will only remember to apply under-eye cream to MY eyes! Please save your crocodile tears, I am too busy playing with this tinsel garland to listen to you! La la la la. La.

-xxoo

Oh! Bodddyyyyy!

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Bodddyyyy, clinic why do you always get to kiss the boy?

We are a two man outfit in one sleek, supple vessel. Helen is really the brains of this operation. Our sweatshop in Malaysia was entirely her idea. It was she that earned us those splendid S.A.T. scores, pencilling in those little ovals like a Kennedy. Helen picks out the sweater sets and makes sure the juice boxes are packed. The butterfly tattoo and the cough syrup addiction were my idea. Helen is the one who speaks during Oral exams. I am really much better at flirting with policemen.

If I can prove that I have spent ten minutes of the day in a rational manner, she lets me hold the kite string. Sometimes I think I am a liability in her quest for world domination.

We are coming to your town in mismatched socks.

-xo

Go go gadget gay marriage

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Well…it’s a start.

Massachusetts? Are you there? It’s me, Licketysplit. Why did you persist in electing Mitt Romney, who has gone on record saying he would veto pro gay marriage legislation? Also, God? Why are people still wearing open toed shoes in November? The cosmos is a baffling place. YOU SHOULD ALL BE ASHAMED.

In all seriousness, I am strongly in favor of gay marriage. None of that civil union crapola, although that’s a foot in the door. I was allowed to get “married” in Massachusetts outside of the umbrella of religious blessing (a whole ‘nother can of warms). Our actual legal marriage took place at some creepy guy’s house in Allston. We gave him $100 and our marriage license, and after subjecting us to a story about his own divorce and how his cat is his best friend, he said “I now pronounce you wicked married.”

The actual wedding day was another story entirely. It was full of love and joy and burning money and alcohol poisoning, and in attendance were several long term gay couples who didn’t have a shot at doing the legal bit by virtue of the wrong chromosomal arrangement. If the reason to keep marriage between a man and a woman has to do with morality, let me just say that I am weak of character! I enjoy deviant sexual practices*! But I still got a license, no questions asked. May I remind you that there are plenty of het couples who get married and still smush everything in sight. (We’re saving that bit for our five year anniversary cruise to the Mexican riviera. Oy gevalt. Equal opportunity emotional tearing down, please.)

I’ll be watching the development of this situation, and possibly standing outside Tom Finneran’s house in an animal suit. Tom Tomorrow is right, I should have married a goat.

-xxoo

*Er, I mean spooning, mom. Maybe a little closed-mouth kissing.