Idiosycratic Life

Oh, wait! Wait! What’s that smell? It’s- It’s my pants burning!!! I am a liar, liar, pants on fire. Sorry. When I wrote that, I thought I had a press conference and then three hours to kill before the end of the work day, but then they asked me to work a double, and then some stories broke, and....

Such is the tale of the Self-Employed Blogger. Sorry about that. But today is Blog Catch Up Day! Hurrah! I have birthday messages to do, which may get long, so I will just give this quick anecdote about Hysterical White Girl in Miami: I parked what I thought was two blocks from an important press conference (the catholic priests thing, actually), but it turned out I was a fifteen minute walk away, which I didn’t realize until I had already walked for ten minutes, which was going to make me *really* late so I implored these very nice house painters (all in Spanish) to drive me to the archbishop’s pastoral center. They did it, too, bless them.

It is so hot here. Yuck,

Oh, and the 18th was Irony Day, which I decided since I heard that Alanis Morissette song on the radio. I called Gwen at work to tell her, but I never told anyone else, which means no one else celebrated it, even after it was declared a holiday, which is ironic and therefore the perfect way to recognize Irony Day.

Today, however, is my Menses Commencement Day, so hooray for that. I’m gonna bang these messages out, walk the dog and hit the hay.

Oh, and I may be interviewing for a job in Duluth. I know.

Okay, I owe some very amazing people their birthday messages, so here we go, in the order they should have appeared-

September 27th-
Happy Birthday to the Person Who...
•Became my best friend the moment she lowered her sunglasses in amazement when I said something really, really shocking to a certain chemistry teacher/color guard instructor/ McDonaldland Character ten years ago.
•Who, when I have a good angel/devil sitting on each shoulder, is always the “devil.”
•Who, to this day, can get nine rounds of “There’s a skeeter on my peter, whack it off” stuck in my head, just by mentioning the words, “Manheim Farm Parade.”
•Who has dropped me off and/or picked me up at the airport before and/or after every major trip overseas. There is nothing like coming home to your smiling face and loving hugs!
•Who reads “Playboy” for the articles. Really.
•Who used to drive, and in fact, replaced the brakes practically by herself, on a truck named “Ronald Mark Karen”
•Who went on an actual archeological dig and knows about different kinds of “flakes” from tool making people living during the Stone Age
•Who went to the hospital and sat with my mom for hours when my dad was sick, and I couldn’t get home from Syracuse.
• Who made me laugh so hard in a yoga class that I wet myself
• Who keeps her head, even when she is in the same room as an “anthrax letter” was opened in October 2001.
• Who, as the original Crazy Dog Lady, enables and embraces my Crazy Animal Lady-ness
• Who brings Lysol to every hotel room ever
•Who knows the Isaac’s sandwich menu better than I do, which is amazing
• Who bought me a beautiful necklace so I could have something beautiful with no connection to any boyfriends, then told me, rightly, never to wear it in the shower.
•Who talked to me sometimes four times a day for four months when I was so sick
• Who is the originator of “mach schnell” phone calls
•Who hates when people fart on her, which, unfortunately, happens a lot.
• Who became the first “straight” (har dee har) president of Allies
• Who learned to quilt, even though it sometimes meant she had to hang out with old ladies who only believe in showering once a week
• Who gives a whole new flare to the word “dammit”
•Who knows where to get the “good” whoopie pies at Roots
•Who is always up for a spin in the “hammock”
•Who doesn’t believe in selling out (and hasn’t)
• Who earned a full ride to F & M
• Who is courageous enough to pick a path, try it, admit it sucks, back track, pick a new path and throw herself into her new goals and dreams
Happy Birthday, Kelly! :)

October 1st
Happy Birthday to the Person Who:
• Ripped my heart out in 1995 and stomped that f*cker flat
• Who was my first love
• Who swears he only remembers one Billy Joel concert, (in my sophomore year of college)
• Who, after seven years, can still finish my sentences
• Who didn’t body surf in a once-in-a-lifetime mosh pit, because I would have been crushed to death on my own
• Who smelted his own screws in grad school for a robot that he had to build entirely from scratch, and didn’t give up when the legs moved out of sync and it limped around like a partially squashed bug
• Who IS gonna finish that dissertation, dammit
•Married the Right Girl, one of the most intelligent women I have ever met in my life, who is able to teach him about the choices one makes for true love
• Who is one of the most patient, forgiving and devoted friends I’ve ever had
Happy Birthday, Jon.

October 16th
Happy Birthday to the Person Who:
• Is like my older brother
• Who I have always hero worshipped like an older brother
• Who has a treasured “bobble head” Redskins doll
• Who played 50,000 Rummy in the rainiest summer in E. Pete Pool history
• Who loves Halloween as much as I do, for the exact same reasons I do.
• Who taught me about coping with fear with grace when someone you love is in pain, real physical pain that you can’t do anything about
• Who made me take a “Wagon License” test and shoved me down a big hill in a Radio Flyer with a giant box of Tom Watt Boy Scout fund-raiser stuff (total net worth, probably about $19.95) and then came hurrying down the hill after I wiped out to make sure that the swan candle wasn’t broken.
• Who knows when the Pet of the Week “really, really looks like our family’s new dog,” then went the pound and brings her home for his parents to raise.
• Who never tired of watching Goonies or the Bride of Mr. Bogety in the summer of ‘87.
• Who thought it was great fun to toss pennies out of his open window into the neighbor’s pool with me
• Who always dreamed of para-sailing, and then we did it, as Tom Petty’s “Freefallin’” played on the radio.
• Who, as student council president in charge of such things, didn’t realize you would actually need an oven to cook three hundred frozen pizzas at the Homecoming carnival
• Who embodies the old axiom, “When you fall, get right back up” in a way that the person who coined that phrase could never even fathom.
• Who hates olives
• Who passed the Bar last week! RAAH! Makes all those years of playing “court” with our siblings worth it...
Happy Birthday, Brad!

October 17th
Happy Birthday to the Person Who:
• Became a treasured friend, soon to be my best friend, when I caused an elderly lady named Edna to panic at a sing-a-long in a nursing home
•Who, when I have a good angel/devil sitting on each shoulder, is always the “angel.”
• Who can be brought to tears of laughter by a Keebler’s elves’ commercial jingle from 1990- “Cinnamon crispana! (la la la-la) Cheesy Quesadilla! (la la la-la) Fun and crispy Chaaaaaaaaachos!” (It's the word "Chachos" that does it)
• Who fully approved when I lit my final evaluation from @(ss) P on fire and shoved it down the garbage disposal without reading it.
• Who was really, really good at African dance.
• Who is instrumental in creating nicknames that stick with people for the rest of their lives- Wetzel, Craigbert, Unkey Jason, BANG, Megret
• Who hosted me at Seders for like, the last billion years
• Who gave us “yaks” for Christmas last year (Love it! Love the gift! Stop worrying!)
• Who gave me a photo of Everyone’s Ex-Boyfriend at Band Fun Night ‘92 with the words, “Do not obsess!” written on the back of it. Heh.
• Who ran a virtual “bed and breakfast” in DC for 2 years, so many good memories
• Who introduces the best games- Set, Cranium, The Perfect Man Except...”- and well, I don’t know if the Love Game is really a “best game,” but we sure played it a lot.
• Who ran down a street away from a mortally ill (and possibly rabid) possum with me
• Who learned all the words to the Wedding Story theme song when we spent an entire Spring Break watching TV at Wesleyan.
• Who is almost wholly responsible for my taste in music, except for the musicians that Liss introduced me to, and the weird country music thing, which I stumbled onto on my own, which no one, including me, is happy about.
• Who loves gifts you stumble on unexpectedly and make you laugh out loud, like 64 oz mugs from Turkey Hill and hamsters with numchucks(Sp?)
• Who talked to me every day when I was so sick, insisting that “you sound much better than you did a week ago, you honestly do” when I couldn’t have recognized recovery if it bit me in the ass.
• Who wrote me a letter from Israel (containing salt from the Dead Sea) about kosher cheese substitutes at McDonald’s while she was watching Michelle Kwan skate to Tori Amos' sond "Winter" on Israeli TV
• Who hates bugs
• Who taught me how to knit
• Who is an amazing role model for young women, whom she teaches how to play the oboe and why the word “gay” isn’t an insult, while loving them as much as they love her.
• Who didn't mind when Stephen and I coincidentally showed up where she was on a date, even when we started pretending to be mummers.
• Who works at a newspaper, too, and knows just how long a day it’s going to be when the editors start ordering pizza for everybody
• Whose writing is amazing, who will be an author, complete with book signings and book tours and best seller lists!
Happy Birthday, Gwen!

I'll update Gerunds tomorrow (which probably means before 2003, I hope)