Blurbs

Hooters.  Ok, you guys know I don’t talk politics here, except in jest.  Which I need to do more of, because the government does HILARIOUS stuff on a regular basis and nobody ever finds out about it.  Which is both a shame and a blessing, I guess.  Occasionally, though, I have to give credit where it’s due and acknowledge something cool that tax dollars paid for.  Usually all I can come up with is the library.  But yesterday– oh, sweet yesterday– the Pennsylvania legislators won my heart by declaring April 30 Hooters Appreciation Day.

No, not that Hooters or those Hooters, although appreciation days for both would be awesome as well, but rather The Hooters, an immensely talented group of rockers from Philadelphia, who you probably know for All You Zombies and And We Danced.  Pennsylvania does a lot of things well, but producing quality musicians is not one of them.  Behind the Hooters our next claims to fame I guess would be Fuel, Train, and Taylor Swift.  BLECH.

Now the exciting thing was that the Hooters themselves played a FREE CONCERT in honor of this.  Did I take my 3.5 month old infant to this?

(I was very disappointed to find this image had not yet been created, so I would like the record to state that I created this myself for the good of the internet, and it’s scary how much pride I have in this fact.)

Guys, it was so awesome.  Frogson rode along in his little wrap (I needed my hands to make rock fingers, duh) and he loved it.  We sang and bounced to the beat and I wasn’t kidding, rock fingers were involved. I loved it.  I love live music so so much.  I mean I know that’s a dumb remark, because duh, we all do, but yea.  I’m afraid to say I am in fact That Girl from your section who is dancing and high pitch wooing and screaming lyrics and generally UNABLE to contain herself.  I cannot help it, I get so freaking excited.  So that was that.

Speaking of Pennsylvania.  I cannot believe we are almost a year into our move up here! Things move a little slower up here, and it’s kind of refreshing.  Today I’d like to tell you about the Dunkin Donuts drive thru. God, I’m sorry, this is absolutely the crappiest boringest most rambling post ever, I’m sorry.  Just save yourself and go do something else and let me just sit here and work through this.

I’ve never really been conditioned to utilize drive thrus.  In DC, they just didn’t really exist.  In DC you get really, really excited if a place just has parking spots.  Then you get REALLY excited if there’s actually enough spots that you can find one without getting into a freaking MMA throw down with another motorist.  Here in PA, you can get what you want and you don’t even have to get out of your car.  SEDENTARY LIFESTYLE YOU’RE DOING IT RIGHT!

I now go to the Dunkin drive thru for most of my mocha needs.  Sorry Starbucks, you require walking (THE HORROR) and a whole extra dollar for the same product.  The one thing I hate about Dunkin is they ask you “Will that be all?” after you order.  I guess this is exactly why business experts require customers to be asked this, because the question DOES leave this big open door for you to ask for what you really want.  Because they did ask.   Yes three dozen munchkins you can meet me at the second window and shove them straight down my gullet  yes that will be all.

Not Speaking of Acronyms But Let’s Go Ahead and Do That.  I’ve had acronyms on the brain lately.  Actually I’ve been investing a lot of mental anguish over acronyms.  Why, as a human species, can we not GET THE HANG OF acronyms already?! I get that you want to come up with a cool acronym for your business or organization or whatever, but sometimes you just have to admit a difficult truth to yourself.  I can’t make this acronym work.  I need to walk away.  WALK AWAY, PEOPLE.

If you’re just mashing nouns and adjectives together in a grammatical hot mess that actually makes no sense at all, YOU NEED TO STOP RIGHT NOW.  Do you know how many DUMB acronyms were shoved down my throat in middle school because some idiot PhD somewhere said they were a helpful tool to help middle schoolers think critically? They aren’t.  There is nothing easy or helpful about all the times I was told to “Kids, it’s easy, just think SOLVE! Strategize Organize Leverage Venn diagram Estimate!” Here, I am going to make my own acronym for this phenomenon.  It’s called your acronym is a STRETCH.  Stop Tacking Random Expressions Together Cause it’s Heinous.

Related: I drove by a place called Inspire Female Athletic Training.  Do the acronym math on that one.

Please Hug Your Pets in Honor of my Stray Cat Friend.  OK, I am like 400 kinds of worked up over this.  Guys, my stray cat got hit by a car.  In our neighborhood, which is ridiculous because there’s no reason to go over 20 in our neighborhood, and in 9 out of 10 cases that is plenty slow enough to hit the brakes for a cat.  I don’t know why I am depressing all of you with this, I think I just need to type through it or whatever.  I was oddly attached to this cat, and Jeff is lucky it didn’t love me back because that thing would have been in our house right now.
And when his little pile of food remained uneaten on our stoop (shattering my heart every time I saw it), I realized that the second stray cat must be gone too.  My heart breaks thinking that these cats lived their lives without ever snuggling on a warm bed or receiving a purr-worthy throat scratch.  I can only hope they have gone to somewhere happy, to the Great Cardboard Box in the Sky, where they will know warmth and love and endless supplies of tuna.  Please give your pets a snuggle in their honor, and forgive me one holier than thou PSA as I encourage everyone to please rescue your next furry friend.

I hate to end on a sad note so here is our own resident rescue beagle, surveying Turnpike vistas like the stately little fur-gentleman he is…

Oh Chooch

I swear to you neither of these are staged…

Tummy time…

And the most perfect Up Dog pose there ever was.  So perfect that I am showing you my living room in a messy moment.

Wait For :49

I already tweeted this; sorry if this is a dupe for you. It cracks me up… I can’t help myself!

Another Fan of the Legless Nightgowns…

Easy beagle access to delectable baby butt scents!

 

Hi

Oh gosh.  Do I need to say something about the election? I’d rather not.  I’ll just tell you that I went above and beyond my civic call of duty and served all morning as a poll watcher, where hilarity of course ensued.  I seriously stood there in complete silence just checking off names of people who came to vote, and was still heckled by one crazy broad who accused me of election fraud, unlawfulness, and altering the outcome of an election.  All her actual words.  And why I am reminded one more time that I just need to stay the heck out of this entire process.  The most chuckle-worthy thing that happened was that one elderly gentleman walked in wearing a Kappa Kappa Gamma baseball hat.

The most important news coming out of yesterday was rather that our area’s new Chipotle is now open.  I cannot tell you how joyful of an event this is.  Cannot tell you.  I want to stick my face in that guac.

Anyway, less politics and burrito bols.  Here is Chooch helping load the dishwasher (his favorite activity ever).  He is an excellent quality control professional in that he likes ensuring that each spoon is very well rinsed/licked prior to its cleaning.

Misc Updates: Storm, Stray Cat(s), Halloween Candy Makes Me Lose All Self Control

Howdy, interwebs… I guess I should pop in with an obligatory storm update, lest people equate my blog silence with my house having floated away or something.  I am happy to report that we were very lucky here in inland Pennsylvania to have been spared much devastation.  A couple nasty days, some debris around the neighborhood, but praise all deities everywhere that our power stayed on and our basement didn’t flood.

If it makes you feel better, I wasn’t so lucky back when that ridiculous “derecho” storm hit back over the summer… remember that? I was stranded powerless and car-less by myself in VA, trying to take care of one hot beagle and one energy-sucking fetus (fetuses are so demanding, aren’t they?), so had to resort to fun activities like huffing it to the half-functional grocery store to buy myself grape juice and sun chips.  On the way stepping over things like this…

Kinda untimely/off topic but realizing I had never put those pictures up and they’re pretty cray-cray not to share.  But as Katy Perry says, that was then and this is now.  And Sandy was pretty merciful to us, just not to anyone else closer to the Atlantic apparently.  Which just shows there is no justice in the world because why would a storm with the same name as a beloved Springsteen song wreak such havoc on New Jersey and New York!? So very uncool.  Hoping everyone out there is snuggled warm in your neck of the woods and on your way to power recovery.

Anyone following my thrilling life updates on Facebook knows that my biggest concern was our neighborhood’s stray cat.  It must be the hormones because I worry myself sick over that mangy beast.  I feed it, I think about it when the weather gets cold or wet, and every time I see it I call out to it like a 3 year old, “Kitty! Kitty! Kiitteeeeeeyyyy!!!!” It always runs away in terror.  I JUST WANT TO HUG YOU AND MAKE YOU FEEL LOVED, CAT.

I called the Humane Society many weeks ago when I first discovered its existence to see if I could borrow a trap and get him in there for adoption.  “Is it friendly?” they ask me.  Umm, (see above), not exactly.  They said this makes it more of a wild/feral cat, which 1) renders him a poor adoption candidate and 2) they are forbidden by township law from accepting.  No help there.  The very nice woman on the phone assured me this meant it was probably a very adaptive animal and would find a way to make it through the winter, as wild cats and dogs have been doing for thousands of years.  This was comforting.

But of course my heart broke thinking of this poor baby during this miserable storm.  So while the hurricane was off the coast of North Carolina and barreling in our direction, I took the time to construct– yes– a cat hurricane shelter.  You can blame my mother, fellow psycho and experienced cat-shelter-builder, for schooling me on how to do this.

I am going to show you this just so you have a guide in case you ever have a need. If you want to save this on Pinterest, DO NOT STOP YOURSELF.  If you work for Williams Sonoma and want to buy the rights from me to manufacture this, also do not stop yourself.  Cause it’s a very attractive home accessory.

As you can see, all one needs is a Rubbermaid tub, duct tape, newspaper, and a towel you are willing to part with.  Then just slice a little kitty door in the tub (there is no graceful way to do this… don’t chop your fingers off) and then construct a Feline Warmth Retaining Door Flap System© with the duct tape.  IMPORTANT NOTE: take special care to ensure there are no exposed areas of the sticky side of the tape.  Can you imagine how much that would hurt to get your fur stuck on duct tape?! I know, right!?

NOW.  Here’s where the fun begins.  Did you think the story was over? PSSHHHH.  I placed this little contraption down outside our basement where stray cat usually collects his meals, except I put it like 10 feet away from his food dish so it could be under the deck and dry.  Except then I worried he wouldn’t find his little home because it wasn’t right next to his food, and let’s face it, stray cats are deprived of the educational opportunities afforded to affluent, house-dwelling cats (feathers on strings, laser pointers, etc), so there is a good chance I was working with a cat of questionable intelligence.  So I sort of made a trail of cat food leading from his dish to the shelter, placing a few chunks inside the shelter as the end point.

Maybe an hour or so after shelter deployment I just happened to walk by the back door to our deck and heard a noise coming from outside.  I opened the door to investigate and there was indeed a horrible noise coming from below– a noise that was unmistakably, unquestionably, the exact noise one would associate with… A CAT FIGHT CONTAINED IN A RUBBERMAID TUB.  Take a moment to conjure up that audio experience.

Remember with the tub being under the deck I couldn’t see anything, I just stood there for a few seconds aghast at what could possibly be going on down there to produce such noises.  A few seconds later, I see TWO cats bolt from under the deck and disappear into the woods behind us.  TWO! IDENTICAL! CATS! What I thought was one gray stray kitty was apparently TWO gray stray kitties appearing individually! I’d been duped just like Lindsey Lohan duped Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson! DEVIOUS SIBLING CREATURES!

Umm, and there you have… the time twin gray stray cats got into a fight over a chunk of food in a Rubbermaid hurricane shelter under my deck.  LE FIN.

OK, off to put on a happy face for the trick-or-treaters.  Sorry kids that we’re “that house” giving away Laffy Taffy and Bottle Caps.  When I was a kid I swore I’d never peddle that crap when I grew up.  (See also: Almond Joy, Mounds, Dumb Dumbs, bags of pretzels.)  Yea that’s right, neighbors two doors down from my childhood home years 1992-1999: I KNOW YOU WERE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PRETZELS IN MY PLASTIC JACK-O-LANTERN AND I’M NOT OVER IT.

Now I get it.  All those houses giving away that filth were probably just owned my women like myself who can’t be trusted in the same geographic location as a 3 pound bag of the Mars/Hershey’s good stuff.  Because make me share a house with 3 pounds of Twix/Kit Kats/Peanut Butter Cups and they WILL be halfway through my small intestine by the time the first Hannah Montana shows up at my doorstep.  LAFFY TAFFY IT IS.

 

Chooch Shame

Except for when he’s eating sanitary products and entire tubs of vaseline, Chooch is actually fairly (fairly) well behaved.  Fairly.  The one thing that turns him into a ravenous demonic crack head dog is window treatments.  At the house we just left, he destroyed 3.5 sets of blinds and 1 window pane– so because of him we’re pretty much prepared to be getting about $7.12 back from our security deposit.

We thought we’d be, I don’t know, turning a new leaf with the new house– but apparently it’s true that you can’t teach an old dog to FREAKING QUIT EATING THE BLINDS CHOOCH.

He is lucky that he is so darn sweet and adorable… and that our first reaction was “Well at least we can submit it to Dog Shaming!”

Enjoy the Chooch love and I’ll be back with more soon– although my fan base (AKA my mom) informs me that they are sick of me making that promise only to disappear for another 7 days.  Pinky swear this time!

We Are Terrible People

I Think It’s Been Too Long Since I’ve Shoved 135 Photos of my Dog in Your Face

Choocheroo had a big day over the weekend… He attended his very first major league baseball game! Yes that is correct… we braved the famed “Pups in the Park” day at the stadium, and even had the chance to catch up with Chooch’s old buddies from the organization that rescued him from abusive West Virginia hillbilly dog fighting monsters.  Who can DIAF, slowly and painfully, by the way.

People… NOTE his little crossed legs above.  Oh my gah.

Little mister was a quite squirmy and wasn’t entirely comprehending the concept of “For the love of God Chooch just sit in your seat and enjoy this nice baseball game.” Which oddly, some pups excelled at.  Like the one in the background here giving us the side eye.  She seriously just sat in her little seat and hung out.  Unbelievable.

Loving/Hating

Loving:

OK, not gonna lie, I’m kind of in love with our beagle-for-the-week Molly.  Even if we did lose a great deal of sleep on Tuesday night due to her anxiety shenanigans.  I was also whining to our Dog Nanny CEO (Yo Des!) about the abject horror that is walking two dogs simultaneously, to which she told me I’d “get used to it and then want 2 babies!!” and I was like “lololololololol NEVER, this is insufferable misery and I was very close to bludgeoning myself unconscious with a full poop baggie if it would have made the walk end sooner” and 30 hours later I’m singing a different tune.  You know what’s more cute than 1 doggie greeting you at the door crying and begging for a tummy rub? Two of the little furry effers! I’m already thinking of excuses to give her parents so I can secretly hoard her forever.  “Welcome back! UMM I suppose you are looking for Molly? That sucks cause we lost her.  SORR.”

Also loving: The Discovery Health show “I’m Pregnant And _____” and Heejun from American Idol.

Hating:

The self check-out at the grocery store.  How have I not whined about that thing yet!? The self check-out machine and I have a long-standing love/hate relationship.  Mostly hate.  Mostly murderous rage.

The thing is so tempting isn’t it? I always remind myself of my long and decorated history of FAIL with the self check-out machine when I’m tempted to use it.  Like the other week when I got in line (traditional human check-out line) behind an older gentleman in a fedora buying 1) cotton balls and 2) a Twix bar.  (True story, not just 2 arbitrary items I was making up, that was apparently his list).  And I’m saying to myself OKAY.  All my instincts are telling me to run, run far away BUT homeslice has 2 items.  This has to be a quick transaction.  Stick it out in the lane run by a human with an actual brain and cognitive abilities.

People, let me save you the fuss.  No judgement here, but fedora+cotton balls+Twix=trouble.  I waited for like 9 minutes while who knows what happened up there.  BUT then you get in the stupid self check-out lane and your odds are no better.

I swear if that thing tells me one more time to remove a non-existent item from the belt, replace a non-existent item on the scanner, present my ID for the 5th time to buy whatever crappy wine is on sale that day, or to  ”Please wait! Help is on the way!”, I WILL cut someone.  Honestly, if the stupid machine is not interested in assisting me that day, I wish it would just let me know.  You know, like instead of “Welcome! Please scan your bonus card!” it could just say “NOPE.  WALK AWAY.  NOT TODAY.” I would at least appreciate the honesty.

Also hating: My stupid computer “updated” itself in the stealth of night while I was powerless to postpone it.  For the record, I will do most things short of sacrificing my life to avoid computer updates.  Like The Oatmeal, I delight in tricking the thing into thinking I’ll maybe someday indulge it with its coveted updates.  Like, I will click “Remind Me Later” every week for 5 years until the effer pulls a fast one on me and updates and restarts itself at 3:00am.  ANYWAY it pulled that devious little maneuver on me and now I am stuck with some new-fangled Internet Explorer and MY PINTEREST MAGIC PIN-IT BUTTON IS GONE.  First world problems of epic proportions, I’m aware.  I spent like 20 minutes trying t0 restore it and it just seems to be bugg-y for me.  Microsoft, y’all better get ON this.  Or, I should maybe get over it and employ some coping skills.  Maybe.