Not Inflated, but a Solid Lifelike Depiction of a Real Girl!

The housesitting finished this morning, thank goodness. I was starting to develop a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, I think, where I was beginning to really like the neurotic dog who occupied the home. (Dog was terrified of noise to the extent that any pee break involved a slow creeeep out the door, looking around, alert for anything unusual. Any noise at all - car door slamming, loud laughter, windchimes - would cause her to scoot back inside and resolutely pee on the carpet.) So this morning as I tidied the place back to the condition it was in when I arrived, I realized I had forgotten something.
The lawn.
As I gazed at the rapidly yellowing expanse, I thought maybe I should water it. This was accomplished the old-fashioned way, with a hand-sprayer, since they lacked built-in sprinklers, the barbarians. Everything was going well until I switched from "jet" to "mist" (seemed like a more whimsical way to do the job, somehow) and the resulting side spray soaked my keyring.
Which had my car alarm clicker on it.
I have to say, I am actually pretty pleased with the way I handle these little disasters these days. Losing my job and gotten divorced and all of that trauma shit has made me realize that if immediate flaming death isn't involved, it's really no big deal. I placed some (okay, I admit it) slightly hysterical phone calls, took the thing apart to let it dry, paced a bit, refrained from kicking dog as she yipped and puddled all around me, watched Good Morning America, tried it again, and hallelujah, it worked.
Oh, and I also got an iBook for free, but I'll save that for next time.

Moist and Ready

I've been housesitting like mad for the past week, trying to earn some extra cash to fill in the gap that will be created when I take off for a week in Texas this month. And what is the main thing I do when housesitting? I watch a lot of TV. I can’t help it; if there’s a TV around I drift inexorably towards it, unable to resist. I’ll watch anything - COPS, Chaotic, (am I the only one who thinks Britney looks like she has fetal alcohol syndrome?) and even the commercials. One commercial that I see quite a bit is one for PetMeds.com. Ever noticed how the Golden Retriever in that spot is just staring blankly off into space as the woman extols the virtues of getting her drugs from the site? It seems that she’s been shopping for more than just Frontline.

Panties! Panties! Panties! (I'll explain later)

Feeling oddly nostalgic; and I don't mean it's odd to feel nostalgia, I mean I'm feeling nostalgia for odd things. Like:

That Crazy Mean Cat I Used to Have

His name was Owen, and he just turned up on our back porch one day. He was pretty friendly to the people, but he could not stop picking on my poor cat Mouse. It got to the point where every day it went like this:

~Mouse sidles out of my room and glances about warily~

~Owen appears from out of nowhere and ATTACKS!~

FITZFITZROWR

~Mouse disappears for another week~

Clearly, something had to change. My roommates and I sat around and talked about it, and came up with a plan that was so genius, only a bunch of stoners could have come up with it. We decided that Owen would only respect Mouse if she defended herself, and there was no way she would ever do that. Solution? We started throwing Mouse at him whenever he passed by.

Mouse would hurtle through the air, claws flailing, and inadvertently sneak-attack Owen. Of course she would take off and hide afterwards, all O SHI HE'S A-GONNA KILL ME NOW, but after just a few tosses, he got the hint, and left her alone.

The next thing I am feeling a weird nostalgia for is:

Lies My Ex-Boyfriend Told Me

I'm going to have to number these suckers.

1. Told me he had been drunk for a year, staying up every night (in his parent's suburban McMansion, oh ) writing poetry, and drinking a bottle of Irish whiskey each time. Now, where he got the money for the whiskey, or the whiskey itself for that matter at the age of 16, I don't know. But this one actually seemed kind of plausible when compared to the others.

2. Like the one where he told me that he had been in a band that headlined the Roxy and opened for Guns N Roses etc. At the age of 13. They were called "Kids in the Dark" and they had a gold record, uh, among his stuff somewhere, he'll find it soon I bet, but don't say anything to mom cause she doesn't know he was in a band! At the age of 13! That headlined the Roxy and sold 100,000 copies! He had complete stories about each of the band members, including the little detail that the bassist, Mike (who lived in Marin and washed his dreadlocks in a bucket) sometimes "called" him on the phone. But we couldn't visit him, because "he" didn't "like" to "meet" "people."

3. At the same time as he was living this rockstar life, he was hugely addicted to heroin. He got it all for free, cause that's how it is when you roll the rockstar life. But it all caught up to him when he OD'd and was dead for three days. Amazingly, he recovered.

He referred back to this a lot, as a source of authority; "I know and you don't, because I've BEEN DEAD." *

4. Claimed that he could not masturbate (and therefore NEEDED blowjobs, more than the average guy, I mean) because he had been picked up and molested by a bunch of guys in a white van when he was small. The details changed a bit over the years, and it was pretty chilling when I realized that this was a lie, too - I had always assumed it was one of the few nuggets of truth.

Why did I buy all of these obvious lies? Well, partly because I was very very naive. And I figured that the stories were so outrageoous, they HAD to be true. But mostly, I think I had a tendency to overlook that which was clearly not kosher, all lalalalala I can't hear yooooouuuu when it didn't fit into my perceptions of how things should be.

That'll do for now. I need to shower and ruminate on the poor choices of my youth.

*Footnote: My Hero has actually been documentably dead. He has yet to utter this phrase about anything, much less when we are trying to decide what movie to see or whatever.

So does Blogger suck, or what?

We'll see. My opinion will depend on whether or not this works this time.