Tag Archives: liquor

In the bag

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Get Out the Vomitola

Hmm. Lambchop and I still live in blue states, it seems. Elsewhere, the craziest crazies were not elected. America, you shock me! In keeping with the tenet that conservatives think everyone is out to get them, and liberals think everyone is incredibly stupid, I am rightfully nonplussed.

No Sharron Angle, no Christine O’Donnell, no Linda McMahon. No Fiorina, no Whitman. Is that a crushing blow to women? Or only to women unfit to lead? When Anna Wintour runs, I am sure she will be installed as president posthaste, perhaps on a ruby-encrusted fainting couch. Karl Lagerfeld will be Secretary of State, so he’ll be able to fan her.

Uncle Karl

However, Californians are all for shapeshifting for corporations, if I’m reading that right (and I’m not)! But they are not for legalizing Marijuana. Yet in Massawhosits, we will no longer have to pay sales tax on liquor! Woooo! A jaunty pink flute of Kitty Dukakis (official Vomitola cocktail) all around! I raise my glass to you, irresponsible citizens of the world.

I guess I’ll just have to set the dial on the time machine to the day of Palin’s inauguration in 2013 to get satisfaction for my crazy yen. Oh my God, as her first act, there is a federal mandate to wear banana clips! And she signed it with one of those troll doll pens!

Welcome to my chamber of horrors

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It’s no longer makeshift! That’s right, we went outlet shopping. Through some hideous twist of fate, we ended up in the Restoration Hardware outlet. I previously thought I had all the hardware I needed for my chamber of horrors: squeakless hinges, medical grade ganches, you name it. But wait til you see the glorious off-price contents of a Restoration Hardware outlet on a holiday weekend.

I got the most adorable wrought iron letters for spelling out the names of my captives. Then I was over near the lamps, and I saw a positively medieval cage, about the size of TWO breadboxes. It had a hasp and a chain! As I approached the table, some woman in suede driving mocs pursed her thin lips at me. I think my preternatural beauty offended her.

I turned back to Mr. H and called “HONEY! Look, this is just the perfect cage for my monkey skeleton!” He sighed and peered over my shoulder. “I think it’s a wine rack.”

“No, honey, I could totally use this for my monkey skeleton. It’s just what I need.”

The lady was just staring openly by this point, so we continued the banter about where to put the monkey skeleton until she wheeled around and skittered away.

Monkey Skeleton needs a house

Later, it was revealed that Mr. H didn’t know I was joking.

Mr. H and I went to a wedding, and this involved starting to drink margaritas at 10am. All weddings should be like that. I shot second camera, and that was reasonably fun. They had a tres leches cake! That’s THREE kinds of leche. Congratulations, men! Upon review, you were lacking a glitter cannon, but otherwise I give that a solid 5 thumbs up.

Then we went and test drove Audis. Sobered up and after a mint, of course. It’s fall, and we traditionally get the urge to roll our old car into a lake right around Columbus Day. The Saabaru is making a noise, and getting it fixed seems like it will be a trial. I snapped off the piece that seemed to be the problem months ago, but now it has a new noise. Since that one is Mr. H’s car, he is likely to drive it until it falls apart on the highway without noticing. The situation remains unresolved at this time, mainly because we can’t have nice things.

Then I decided to become a justice of the peace, and would you believe Massachusetts has RULES about this? I assumed it was a take a course, pay a fee deal, but no, each town is allotted a certain number of positions, and you have to apply, including a resume and the signatures of 5 prominent state residents. Uh?? Well, one of my neighbors is on the city council, and one is in the US House of Representatives, and a former state senator gives me a donut every year on Halloween, but I just don’t have anything else going for me. Oh. I once threw up near John Kerry’s house.

It’s easier to be a notary public. There’s no position limit (only your imagination), and you only need 4 signatures for that, although one must be from a practicing lawyer. All the attorneys I know pretend not to know me in public for some reason.

In conclusion,
in fourteen-hundred-ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
Despite all the horrors that did accrue, he still never imagined the likes of you.

I Have Forgiven Jesus

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Abba gabba gabba. Eeeba deeedle dabba.

Well, we ranted, we donated, we nagged, we discovered Morrissey song titles apply to any electoral situation, and we even knew the name of the Prime Minister of Canada. I don’t know what’s left, besides setting a trash can on fire and tipping a car. I am in shock. OK, Sarah, keep moving. Do not stop at the microphone. Nope! There we go. And never, ever make fun of community organizers again. Ah, you feel me.

Ankles aloft, mes amis! I need a hanky and a can of champagne! We will see you in the future when all’s well.

I saw the sign

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Recently, cure I was behind a small SUV on the interstate that appeared to be driverless. I was startled for a minute, recipe then nonplussed that I got left out of the rapture. As I passed, the driver popped up triumphant, holding a cellphone rescued from some nook or cranny.

Later in the drive, I passed a digital highway sign that read “TEST 1234,” then flashed to “BLAH BLAH BLAH.”

Then I stopped at the New Hampshire state liquor barn and bought my kid her first scratch ticket.

But the ocean ain’t whiskey and I ain’t a duck

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As I was teetering on a ladder carefully painting the edge of a wall, it struck me how this will be one of those stories where we’ll look back and laaaaaaaugh. “Oh,” I’ll chortle, “One time, long, long ago, before the mutant wars, I had to make a thing called a condominium look like a West Elm catalog in order to convince someone else to buy it!”

“What’s a West Elm, grandma?” the kiddies will say. “I thought trees were illegal now?”

Then I will tell them about arranging vases of dried sticks, and they will laugh at me and ask me to tell them the story of how I lost my eye at IKEA. We will all relax in our hovel until the radiation winds kick up. One of the skins from the mutants I killed over a’ter holler will blow off, and we’ll have to make due with some tattered Pottery Barn catalogs to cover the hole.

The kiddies will drift off to sleep, muttering “And you could get meatballs at this place called IKEA? Made from animals?”

In other news, the secret to trimming a ybab’s nails seems to be singing “Rye Whiskey” over and over again. I was trying to get Mr. H to join in on “Alabama Song,” and then “Mack the Knife,” but he is not familiar with those works. He didn’t even know “Rye Whiskey,” but it’s simple enough to jump in at any time.

Where does one begin?

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One could begin last week, when one spent a fair amount of time sitting on the toilet while barfing in a Halloween pumpkin bucket (don’t you keep one handy to play with in your bath tub?), or one could begin two years ago tonight, when one was flippantly out for a pasta dinner while in labor, unaware of dire twists and impending abdominal surgery, but at any rate, one could say it has been a most intriguing run-up to this year’s ybab birthday celebration.

Martha Stewart be damned! Martha Stewart would have known to pencil in “salmonella,” and she would have hired someone to get sick for her and her entire household. That person would have barfed in a hand-turned ceramic bucket with a pleasing shade not unlike the egg of a young Buff Orpington. Then Martha would have been free to make a monkey cake with a face fully articulated by sixteen colors of buttercream icing. A ybab has an incredibly long memory when promised a monkey cake, so a monkey cake was obtained through back channels. I am ashamed to say what actually took place. It may have contained real monkey.

At least I had the foresight to have cart loads of toys arrive UPS in the days leading up to ybab’s birthday, so once she was feeling better just as I was becoming completely incapacitated, she was able to enjoy learning to use a box cutter and diving into piles of bubble wrap. It was like her birthday all week! And so efficient. I will never wrap again.

My parents are also in town, which is a story in itself for another time. They arrived one morning wearing matching lime green shirts, but not exactly matching: one was more of a kiwi than a lime. “Did you feel I was not already sufficiently nauseated?” I asked. “Oh, we didn’t plan it.” “But surely you looked at each other before you left the hotel room?” This line of questioning was fruitless because my sister had told me about the matching lime green shirts making an appearance weeks ago. They know exactly what they are doing!

And they would be the only ones to know what they are doing, but somehow Mr. H and I rallied and pulled off a birthday party. Mr. Whole Foods may have helped. For my re-entry to solid food, I went with sangria. Vitamin C is good for what ails you. A good time was had by 100% of the ybabs who live in my house, and a cat has barfed a festive coil of pink ribbon, so we will count this as successful, even though the poor monkey is never getting back from space.

Make mine a Listo and OJ

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Only 17 days until Spring, goldendoodles! And it is with great regret that I only just remembered there is an enormous bottle of high-quality gin (oxymoron?) in the liquor bunker in the kitchen. Where were you in November! No on-the-job accidents since…what time is it now?

Next week I am vacationing in style in a location ten degrees warmer than here. Break out the winsome safari shorts! The Simpsons are going to my parents’ house. Oh, come on. It could be worse. I could have a gummy smile or cankles. My parents will feed us for a week, and when ybab gets up at the crack of dawn, I will say “Go find Grandma,” and she will gleefully race down the hall. Whether she actually finds Grandma or just ends up rooting around under the kitchen sink is anyone’s guess. Grandma is the one without the Mr. Yuck sticker, if that helps. No, Grandma routinely gets up at 4 AM, outfoxing even a ybab. It’s what Laura Ingalls Wilder would do. I trust ybab will be intercepted and drilled with flash cards until I awake from my beauty rest.

Unprofessional painting

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If me of now went back in time to warn me of five years ago that future/current me would be covered in flecking blue paint (Martha Stewart Surf 286) and honey-mustard sauce, me would not believe me! But it is all true. Me has no idea how me’s life turned out this way.

A few days ago, I had a few glasses of wine (with dinner, not at 10AM, although heaven knows…) and decided to start painting the bathroom a different shade of blue. I have good ideas all the time! I can’t even tell you how frequently. I have a whole folder on my desktop called “GOOD IDEAS!!!!!” My bathroom is 50% old blue and 50% new blue now, and I may work on it one hour per night for the rest of my life. Because either I get some paint in my hair, or someone wakes up and starts screaming, or a cat wants to come in because the door is closed, or maybe the fumes just become too much and I wake up on the floor the next morning even dumber.

After the bathroom is painted, I will have to tear the “shelving system” out of the linen closet. That means I will have to put better shelves in. I can’t just leave things in a heap in the bottom of the closet, much as I wouldn’t mind. It’s hard to find shelves. At IKEA, they expect you to cut them to the length you desire, like, with a saw or the power of your mind or something, so all their shelves are eighteen feet long. No. The Container Store has a sale on shelving, and that’s great, but everything is sold in systems, and I, a professional internet user, can’t figure out how to find JUST SHELVES. Single shelves of the correct length. In desperation, I typed in “http://ijustwanttobuysomefuckingshelves.com/” and crossed my fingers, but no luck there. Where do you get shelves, good people of the internet? I am hoping my own Google ads will tell me.

***
Local color report:
Lowell High School is back in session. Before we set out on our nightly trek for takeout, the phone rang: a “PRIVATE CALL” according to the display.

“Bee dee booop,” said the caller, voice breaking with hysterical giggling.

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, your penis did not go through!” The caller then died from laughter and somehow managed to slam the phone down in a dying act of valor.

Once downtown, a roving pack of teenagers conspiratorially made the aside “PENIS!” to us as we passed. Then we passed Marty Meehan over by the Masonic Temple. He was going to hassle us about voting when a young voice shrieked “I like penis!” out a screened window from the housing project across the street. We continued on, not stopping to vote in the primary because we had already seen Niki Tsongas having a victory dinner two streets over at the one nice restaurant in town, oblivious to the penis crisis in the streets. If she isn’t in touch with the penis issue, she does not need my support.

“If we were actually insane,” I remarked to Mr. H, “we’d assume people were only saying penis to us!” One never knows.

How I got covered in honey-mustard is another boring story for another time.

Farm Fresh

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On my last smash n’ grab at the grocery store, I ended up with a bag of chips with some sort of winsome farm scene and a proclamation about vegetables on the bag. They were in the organic section, so I didn’t even read the label. I am a trusting consumer. And my version of Supermarket Sweep includes crying if not completed fast enough, so there you go.

Last night, Mr. H read the bag. There is nothing organic in the bag. The chips have never been to a farm. In fact, the brand is a sham brand belonging to Frito-Lay. On second tasting, the chips taste exactly like Doritos.

“These are naturally baked,” said Mr. H.

“Naturally baked?”

“What does that even mean?”

“Left to harden in the sun?”

“I guess Twinkies aren’t naturally baked,” he said thoughtfully. “They just set up, like…ceviche.”

Which brings me to my next point: every time someone on Top Chef makes ceviche, I have to finish the box of wine. You’d think people on a cooking show would be more inclined to apply actual fire to food, but their loss is my liver’s gain.