Move Over, Shirtless Running Guy!

I've been trying to get some new shots of Shirtless Running Guy for the spring season.  I think he's got new shorts and running shoes to show off.  Unfortunately, he's being elusive.  Nothing surprising, and I will prevail.

In the meantime, somebody new has emerged, piquing my interest.  It is Purple-Hooded-Cape Dude.  I have seen him walking down my street a total of three times now.  I have to say, for small-town Massachusetts, donning what appears to be a velvet purple hooded cape is making a pretty bold fashion statement.  Good for him (I'm pretty sure this person's male--if not, sorry lady, I thought I saw a beard).

Today he walked past my house and drove the dogs into a manic, foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy. Immediately I jumped into action.  With camera (well, actually phone, as my camera battery is deader than dead) in hand, I furtively moved through my back yard, pretending to search for dog bits to scoop.  He had stopped and was crouched, his back to me, searching through a bag in front of my neighbor's house.  I stood behind the cover our shed, peeking around the corner, waiting for him to be on his way so I could get a full shot of him in all his purple glory.  As he got up and headed off, I ran to the other side of the shed, rushing toward our fence and the mass of sharp brambles ensconcing it.  I got as close as possible, shoving my camera through the thicket while simultaneously shredding my arms (because shirt makers don't make sleeves long enough or I have freakishly long arms).  And all I got was this:

Curses!  A big, fat nothing.  Makes him all the more intriguing, no?  So now I have a new subject for my covert photography.  If you're from my town and know this mystery person, let me know.  I'll say hi and introduce myself.  Maybe he'll let me take a proper picture to post.  Otherwise, the pursuit
continues.

Nasty Stuff!

I have to warn all gentle readers that my post today is going to be gross.  Some may label the following as TMI, and with good reason,  but some things are too nasty to keep to one's self.  Best to get that out of the way right now rather than have folks ticked off at the stuff I am about to write.   

Onward.

You know that side of us we all have, the one where we are secretly (for me not so secret after writing today) intrigued by super-gross stuff?  Like how I couldn't stop scrutinizing the humongous hunk of earwax that unexpectedly fell from the depths of my ear canal the other night.  It was like nothing I had ever seen before.  Freak show stature.  And I have no idea where it came from (besides the vicinity of my inner ear).  Remember, I warned you.  Anyway, even if it is the remotest bit of our personalities, there is a bit of us that is attracted to the grotesque like moths to a porch light. 

So...now on to the true subject of today's musings.  We have had a big mystery going on in our house.  Our ski gear basket has had a funky odor emanating from it.  Looks pretty innocent, doesn't it?

The smell, which kept getting worse daily, was heinous.  I try to keep up on things, and believed the odor couldn't possibly be due to something slipping by me.  And so, every time Jay reached for a hat,  gloves, or anything else looming deep down in there, he would make a face like he was going to lose his lunch and exclaim with increasing vehemence, "SOMETHING DIED IN THERE!"  To which I would reply with equal gusto, "NO, THE SMELL IS BECAUSE YOU KEEP PUTTING WET STUFF IN THERE!"  Which even he could not dispute, because he is totally guilty of said act, as are our kids.  I thought I had found the culprit, a hat which reeked of the telltale odor: 
 

Alas, even after removing the hat, the smell remained.  

Finally, last night, our daughter, Janie, was getting ready for a soccer game and pulled from the basket her very well-hidden string bag: 

(I need to mention that this basket is deeeeep.)  Lo and behold, joy of joys, the gut-wrenching mystery odor bloomed to its full, head-on, knock-your-socks-off, beastly stench-of-all-stenches!    BUT!  The mystery was not completely solved, for, what was inside the string bag that caused it to erupt such a foul stink?  Aha!!  It was THIS:

Pretty.  Neoprene lunch bags may hold in liquids quite well, but grandly let polluted air escape.  The end of the mystery?  No, for the best was still to come.  Janie, with much repugnance thrust the lunch bag at me.  Gingerly, I unzipped the wretched thing, to discover THIS (hold on to your hats, and other things):

Ah, the culprit.  A liquefied one-time solid, festering in the dark, warm innards of many layers of synthetic fabrics.  I do believe it was once a sandwich.  And I know for a fact that it had been thriving in there since she brought the bag home from a day-long soccer reffing class which she attended back on February 16th.  That's a over a full month of break-down time.  Scrumptious. 

Mystery finally solved.  And it is not Jay's fault for dumping wet ski accessories, nor a dead something-or-other.  Simply the fact that our daughter refuses (like any teen kid) to empty her gear bags out at the end of the day.   

As for the gross factor, the liquid-filled baggie is up there on the "It's Like Watching a Train Wreck" list of stuff I have to take pictures of and marvel at (be happy I didn't take a pic of my ear wax clump).  And kudos to the makers of zip-lock bags.  If it weren't for them, this could have been a lot worse.


In memory of Dana Fields.  You touched our lives in so many lovely ways, you wonderful woman, you.

 

 

A Canine Take on the Family Bed Theory

I am running on nothing more than fumes and lots of caffeine today.  And in this compromised state, I am officially admitting defeat to my husband, Jay.  Yes, Jay, I now agree that it was not a good idea to allow our puppy of seven months full access to our bed at night.  There you have it.  You win, I give.  And that's in writing.

Backtrack to the beginning of last week and the beginning of this whole debacle.  Jay left for a week long business trip on Tuesday.  Now, until that very day he left, our über-cuddly and therefore irresistible puppy, Willa, slept downstairs with Pippet, our other less-than-cuddly dog who normally wants nothing to do with us at night.  The night Jay left, Willa was unusually, shall I say, "spirited" (read:  spazzy) at her normal bedtime.  She refused to stay downstairs, repeatedly climbing past the gate we had blocking off the bottom of the staircase.  And of course, Pippet was close behind, not wanting to miss out on anything.  The end result was both dogs on our bed, which I allowed because Jay was gone, and because I'm spineless when it comes to dogs being cute (which of course they were).  Pippet eventually realized that nothing interesting was going on, that being upstairs was a waste of her precious canine time, and she removed herself to back downstairs.  Willa remained sleeping near me the entire night, being all cute and cuddly, even when she had pushed me to within inches of falling straight to the floor.  Repeat this scenario for the next five nights.  And thus, a monster (albeit an outrageously charming one) was born. 

Enter Jay back into the story.  Oy.  The first night he was back home was full of grumbling and exasperated sighs, due to the fact that his side of our bed was shanghaied by a warm ball of white and brown fur, snoring and snorting away happily within inches of his pillow.  I made out his under-the-breath grousings such as, "This is not going to work," and "This is ri-dic-u-lous."  I moved Willa to her bed that I had supplied on the floor near my side of our bed, and after a couple of attempts by her to get back onto our bed without success, she fell asleep on her new digs and remained there for the night.

The new sleeping plan worked for a couple of nights, and then Jay left for another trip last night.  Back up on our bed came Willa, ready for sleep, this time sans Pippet.  She went right to sleep, so I thought things would be copacetic if she slept there just for the night.  I would get her back to her floor bed when Jay got back the next night.  Well....Willa had different plans.  At 3:00 AM she decided it was the perfect time to start pacing the bed and chewing one of her bones.  She then jumped off the bed and went downstairs.  Shortly thereafter I heard the sleigh bells ring on the back door, which she uses to inform us of her desire to go outside.  Fine.  I went downstairs and let her out.  At this point, Pippet thought it was time to wake up for the day, and was found standing bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the closet door where her food is kept, waiting for breakfast.  Letting her know aloud that no such thing was happening at that hour, I headed back upstairs, leaving both dogs staring at me expectantly from the kitchen.  They were on my heels by the time I got to my bedroom, (only after trying to wake both of our sleeping kids by crashing open their bedroom doors) and were both on the bed before I was even close to getting back in.  What ensued was like a circus in a two-person tent; elephants, trapeze artists, you name it.  Around four o'clock, after a WWF-worthy wrestling match, they finally fell back to sleep, Willa lying on my back, one of her toys in my face.  I don't think I ever fully got back to sleep.  Which is why I feel as I do, and why this is what my two dogs look like at this hour:
 

I will not post a picture of what I look like after our rough night, as I don't want to induce nausea on any kind readers hearty enough to have gotten this far in this long, drawn-out story.

And there you have it:  my tale that would make any dog trainer cringe, and will make Jay just about as smug as he can get.   My wrist is slapped, I know I did not make good choices (wow...I feel like I'm in kindergarten).  I am now accepting my sentence of biting the bullet and making sure both pooches sleep where they are supposed to sleep, and everyone is happy.  I'm thinking I may need some dumb luck.

Peace.

Peace on Earth, everyone.  Spread some love to one another.

Spray Paint. The Be All, End All.

I bought, what I thought at the time, were beautiful mixed greens Christmas wreaths back at the beginning of December.  I swear, not 5 minutes after I hung them, one began to dry out, so by the time this week rolled around it was brown and crispy.  I am not about to go out and buy a brand-new wreath just for another week of showiness.  The old brain cogs began spinning....what better way to fix that problem, or for that matter a myriad of problems, than to pull out the best fixer-upper ever, spray paint?

Yeah, I know it's pretty much one-dimensional in color, but at least it has the appearance of something still fairly thriving.

And I'm not exaggerating.  This is how brown it was.  See that little patch under the bow?  That was the entire wreath not an hour ago.

 

I've seen wreaths this brown hanging on peoples' houses in April.  December 18th is pushing it.  Added bonus:  the wreath is so lacquered-up with paint now, those needles are going nowhere.

So...dried-out wreath?  Hit the hardware store! Nobody will ever know the difference.  At least from a distance.  In their car.  In the dark.

Damn...the mailman just delivered a package to the door where the sad sucker is drying.  Now he knows, too.  I'm sure there was a lot of WTF-ing and "That lady is WHACK" going on in his mind.
 

A Word of Warning: Don't Let Those Labels Fool You!

I was on one of my tri-daily trips to the grocery store (no lie--that happens way too often for me) this morning when I saw something I had to buy, simply for the label attached.  The product was a bottle of dish washing liquid.  It must be considered ultra-fancy dish washing liquid because this was the label that was on it:

Now.  Don't get me wrong.  I'm sure this can be a great gift in the right context.  And by no means am I one to look a gift horse in the mouth.  But I can totally see Jay wrapping a bottle of cleaning product, putting it under the tree and calling it a day.

And so, Jay, this post is written especially for you.  Products with names such as Palmolive, Pledge, Clorox, Comet, etc. are not gifts you want to buy.  The hedge trimmers for my birthday years ago were plenty to satisfy the "HUH?" category of gifting.  Just in case you were wondering.  And while I know you are always stymied when it comes to holiday shopping, your smile is the only gift I truly need.  Yup--I went there.  Got all mushy-like.  I must be listening to too much holiday Muzak while traversing the grocery aisles.  

This Cold Heart is Filled With Sap

I should be cleaning my house in preparation for this weekend when my sister will be here for her yearly pre-Christmas visit.  Sorry, Sharon, the house has to wait.  And while I'm at it, sorry in advance for the smelly-dog-couch (not that any amount of cleaning will take away its peculiar odor).  It's just that my brain sparked a musing and I need to get down pronto.

While on a quick trip to the grocery store to pick up some cleaning supplies (namely furniture polish--why is it that I only dust my furniture with polish on the average of once a month [if that], but when I go to look for the polish it is gone?  Are Jay and the kids doing on-the-side cleaning that I am not privy to?  If they are, they're doing a good job of hiding it.  Snort.  Sometimes I crack me up.).

Anyway, at the grocery store there were those holiday fixtures, the Salvation Army volunteers, ringing their bells and playing Christmas music.  I put a dollar in their bucket (plug for a Jay Vocab Word:  The Imperfectionist: Of Buckets and Sauce, Poopies and Sweet Peas: A Language All Our Own ) on my way past and suddenly got so choked up and emotional that I couldn't even wish them a Merry Christmas back without my voice cracking and me feeling the need to inhale sharply.  I got into the store and realized I had actual tears in my eyes.  Good god.  I'm turning into a sap.

They get me every time.

Now, as Jay would tell it, I am a cold-hearted robot that has no feelings.  This is because I don't cry at the usual things.  The kind of stuff that makes him sob.  Sappy movies.  Doctor Who.  Our wedding.  I can't help it that his empathy gene is stronger than mine (though maybe I could have at least faked a couple of tears by screwing up my face a bit when we got married).  One exception:  we both cried during the ceremony at our friends' daughter's bat mitzvah this past spring, much to the surprise of many people who only know Jay and me to be the merry pranksters we normally are.  So sometimes I am able to match him in the getting-all-emotional department.

And today furthered that fact.  I do believe I am becoming a softie.  A chump.  I also cry at parades.  I can't watch the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade without a box of tissues beside me.  And that's not even being at it live.  Small impromptu parade-like things do it, too.  I remember the year our high school girls' soccer team won some kind of state thing, the fire trucks and police cruisers drove through town with their lights and sirens on, escorting the bus to the school.  I was sitting in a parking lot waiting for our son to finish basketball practice and saw the whole thing.  Yup, I got all messy-sobbing, simply because it was so overwhelming.  Happily, I was alone in the parking lot, having shown up too early.  That could have easily put the "UNSTABLE" stamp on my forehead with the other basketball parents for good, but c'mon, isn't that stirring?   And no matter how many times it is played from November 30th to December 25th, hearing the Boston Pops' version of Sleigh Ride makes me catch my breath and well up. 

So.....
No matter how much we think we are all tough-skinned and aloof and what-not, there is always at least one thing (and maybe eventually more!) that can hit us right smack in the heart!  

And now that I've aired those thoughts, I'm going to clean.  Here's my advice:  find that thing that makes you go all mushy and embrace it!