Month: April 2010

You’ll get a rise out of this one

Last night I had a dream that Bethenny from The Real Housewives of New York named her baby Yeast.

Yeast.

Remember the other day when I said no one should have to be inside my brain? See, now you're inside my subconscious, and isn't it terrible?

Yeast. Do you think there's anyone in real life who named their child Yeast? You know there is.

Andy Gibb named his child Pita. Or maybe it was Peta. Close enough. Did you even know Andy Gibb had a child? Note I am talking about ANDY Gibb, now, not Barry. Pay attention. Anyway, Andy Gibb got married young and had a child, but then he got famous and oh, what do you know? the marriage didn't work out.

Of course, that was 30 years ago, so now somewhere in Australia is this Pita, and the only info I was able to glean on her is that she has been dating the Earl of Sandwich.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Oh, let me wipe my eyes. How do you stand the hilarity, over here?

Okay, that part isn't true. But she is trying to break out as a comedian, because rumor has it she's a real wheat.

WHOO! Stitching up my sides! I am on fire today.

Okay, I'm done.

You know, she was out with some people, and she said, "My father was Andy Gibb. You know, Shadow Dancing? I Just Want to be Your Everything?"

And the people she was with said, "We don't know those songs. Why don't you HUMMUS a few bars?"

Honestly. Why doesn't somebody take my act on the road? With my fine jokes about Pita? Whose name is probably Peta anyway?

In other news, and I am certain you are sad that I am moving off the topic of Andy Gibb and his pocket-sandwich daughter, I keep MEANING to say this and I forget.

If you somehow find out my real name? And you want to be Facebook friends with me? And I can certainly see why, because obviously I am cool. See above. When you friend request me, just put a note saying you know me from my blog. Otherwise I see the request and I don't know the person and I think you're a virus. I apologize for thinking you are a virus. I am certain you are a very nice person.

Now here is the part where someone has just started reading me and they say, "You mean you guys aren't really June and Marvin Gardens?" Someone always asks that. Does no one play Monopoly anymore?

Speaking of Marvin, he is claiming that he is going to cut off all of his hair. Like, buzz cut his hair. His students are taking some huge test and he told them if a certain percent pass, he will do it, but between you and me, he wanted to do it anyway.

Okay, what is happening? We move my liberal, Jewish husband to the South and within one year he is shooting Cheerwine cans and within three years he has a buzz cut. Soon he will get a "The South was right" bumper sticker like our neighbor.

What could that bumper sticker mean, other than that guy wants a bunch of slaves? I mean, I have always wanted to ask him, hoping against hope that he could give me some sort of reasonable answer that made me able to like him, but I have been afraid. If anyone honestly knows what he is saying, and it means ANYTHING else, please tell me. I would like to love they neighbor. Or at least not abhor they neighbor.

Oh, I gotta go. Yeast is crying.

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One pill makes you larger

I thought I'd better hurry up and post, in case you were worried sick that I didn't live through the night. I barely made it.

And you know I hate to complain. Or malinger.

But who stuck the plastic cocktail swords through my throat? And why?

It has probably been a decade since I have had an official cocktail with a plastic sword, but do they still give you those? With the orange and the cherry all folded up? Because that was delicious.

Not that I could eat it now, what with the SEARING PAIN inside my throat parts. And no, I don't have strep. Have you met me? Of course I checked my throat. I have already been down my throat with a mirror and Marvin's giant flashlight that he keeps next to the bed to beat burglars.

Last night I took some Robitussin, and what happened to Robitussin? It used to be so delicious. And cherry-y. They changed the flavor or something. It tasted kind of like watermelon, which is not a flavor I want to taste, ever, not even when I am eating watermelon. Am not really a fan of the watermelon.

Although one time my friend Karina and I went to an all-day yoga retreat and at the end they gave us watermelon chunks and somehow it was just the thing. But I think it had more to do with the part where I had sweated out my entire body weight and I looked like one of those California raisins at that juncture.

Anyway, I bought alcohol-free Robitussin, and perhaps that was my problem. Maybe they messed with the flavor. But what does taking the alcohol out have to do with taking the cherry flavor out?

Also, the box says it's a cough suppressant and a cough expectorant. How can it be both? Was my body duking it out all night? Bring it up! Keep it down!

I have to be careful about what I take, because you know how the rest of you can pop a, say, Benadryl or NyQuil, or God forbid a Contac (do they even make Contac anymore?) and go on with your day?

Yeah.

I take one of those, and in 10 minutes I have ripped off my clothes, painted florescent 7s all over my body, and begun slithering on my stomach through the neighborhood. And speaking Russian.

Oh, I used to like that commercial for Contac. Remember, they'd open up the capsule and all those pretty colors inside the pill would come out? Pink, orange, and white? Even thinking of it I start to feel like I'm at Woodstock, gyrating with my eyes closed. Where's my unsanitary pink blanket to wrap up in?

And my college housemates used to wonder why I didn't want to take mushrooms with them. I mean, just give me one shot of NyQuil and I would have wandered off for six months.

I am not good with the drugs, is what I am saying to you.

I did manage to proofread a lot yesterday, and my pets were content to stay on the couch with me.

Kitties

I like how cats kind of always act like they have the flu. Sleeping and lying on the couch for 16 hours? We are down with that.

Tallulah literally laid on top of me for most of the day. I did not take photos of that, because that would have been impossible. But she is a good and faithful cur.

Bug

Every once in awhile there was the mild fisticuff, but mostly everyone let me work and doze.

It looks like more of the same today: work, Robitussin, ache, sleep. I have a big day ahead of me. I hope the animals are prepared.

A weakened June writes from her sickbed

I appear to have some kind of cold, or flu, or hantavirus. I know what I am about to say is shocking information, and I hope you are sitting down, but I am not what you'd call a trouper in the face of illness. I know!

Last night I was cooking–

Again, I hope you are sitting down.

Ever since I started keeping this migraine diary (Dear Diary, Migraine called! He's so dreamy!), I have noticed that every time I eat some processed crap, which is, you know, every day, I seem to get a migraine. Particularly when I eat a sulfite or anything with MSG. Hmph! So I have been attempting to eat things from, you know, the actual earth. Which for me is overwhelming, because so far for the last 26 years of living on my own, everything I have eaten has come from a box.

Anyway, last night I was cooking a potato. Which I don't know about you, but I just pictured me at the stove with an entire potato in a pan. But really it was little cut-up pieces of potato frying on the stove, which okay, is not that good for you but shut up. Anyway, it was smoking, and I do not mean it was physically attractive, rather I had the heat up too high because hello, everything I ate for the last 26 years came from a box.

This is all new to me.

So I started coughing, but then I could not stop coughing. I kept coughing even as I ate and at first I thought, geez, that smoke is really bothering me, but maybe 10 minutes into the coughing, here is what happened.

Now you are going to be invited into the brain of June, a place no one should ever have to go.

I had coughed for 10 minutes, right? And I thought, "Geez, I hope I don't have lung cancer like Dana Reeve."

Remember Dana Reeve? She was Christopher Reeve's wife. She was really cool. I know she was really cool because she was on Howard Stern a lot for some reason, and she was very real and funny, and I know I am being my grandmother right now, who acted like she was personal friends with Luke Spencer and Elizabeth Taylor based on the news she garnered from her National Enquirer.

Still. I really liked Dana Reeve, and maybe 18 months after Christopher Reeve died, after she had spent all those years taking care of him, after she was probably finally starting to feel okay again and everything, she got lung cancer. She had never smoked. And then she died. It was so unfair.

And I cough for 10 minutes and diagnose myself with the same thing. And that, folks, is why I am nuts.

Anyway I coughed all night. I went to bed and Tallulah decided she had a crucial engagement with pee world at 1 a.m., so naturally I was the person she had to alert and not Marvin (she never alerts Marvin), and after I let her out–

(incidentally, did anyone see the moon last night? While I was waiting for Talu's pee appointment I saw it. It was like that moon in Moonstruck. It lit up our whole back yard. And when I came back into the bedroom it was streaming into the windows there, too. Oh, it was beautiful. I kept waiting for Nicholas Cage to tell me to get into his bed with his wooden hand.)

–I came back to bed and cough coughed coughed.

"Stop COUGHING. You're waking me UP," Marvin said. I wonder if he should make another career change, to maybe nurse or even as a hospice volunteer. The level of compassion in that man.

Today I feel as if Nicholas Cage and his wooden hand and his pizza oven are standing on my chest, and I ache everywhere. It is not good. How did I get a cold? I use hand sanitizer 50,000 times a day. I am Howard Hughes. Would you like a cup of my urine?

Fortunately you can proofread and be sick at the same time. It is not like having a job where you, say, lay bricks. Oh, and speaking of my job, I found TWO math errors yesterday in the statistics book I am proofreading!

Again, I hope you did not, you know, stand up since you began reading this. This post is chock-full of the stunning information. Maybe that's how I caught this cold. Maybe me finding math errors was just such a shock to my system that I stirred up cold germs or something.

I'm not even supposed to be checking the math in those books. They have an actual statistician do that part. The errors just JUMPED OUT at me.

Can you imagine being a statistician? That is right up there with cook, for me, of jobs I could never do. Or emergency room physician. That would be my number one worst job. I know this may come as another surprise, but I am poor under pressure. And a tad squeamish.

You know how every once in awhile you are in public and some kind of emergency happens, and some people rush to the scene to calmly help out? I would not be one of those people. I would be the person quietly vomiting in the background.

Anyway, that's what's new over here. This morning before Marvin left for work, I asked him to feel my forehead, because I like to have my forehead felt when I am ill. "Oh my GOD, you're burning UP!" Marvin yelled. He knows I like that, too, even though in fact I am not burning up. I almost never get a fever, which is totally unfair. If you feel like crap you should at least be rewarded with a fever, I say.

If I am still with you tomorrow, on this side of the dirt, I will write then. If I have the strength. Goodbye……

Ruby in the sky with glasses

We're having an exciting day over here at House of June.

Newcollar
Tallulah got a new collar, thanks to Faithful Reader Lindy. You may recall a few weeks ago that Tallulah broke out of her collar on a walk. She broke those chains,  like she was in an '80s (not 80's) heavy metal song.

Not that I literally had the dog on a chain. I can see the comments now.

Tallulah was busy lunging at an innocent puppy named Snowflake, who lives a couple blocks away, which I just typed "clocks away" and I am SICK AND TIRED OF TOPAMAX, is what I am. A couple clocks away. God help me. Anyway, in her terrible lunging and snarling and foaming at the mouth and cursing and mewling and swearing and grabbing her switchblade and throwing a tea party, her collar broke. Clean off.

Then once she was free, she couldn't have cared less about that puppy and was content to run about the neighborhood like the goof that she is. And that is when Faithful Reader Lindy wrote me and said she buys fancy collars for her big-necked dogs that will not break, and could she send one to Talu.

Isn't it pretty? It's so feminine. You'd never know it is for dogs who are jerks. If you look carefully, it has a little four-leaf clover charm on it. Like, good luck getting out of this one, assy.

I told my father about my new collar, and how Tallulah's neck is bigger than her head and how strong she is, etc. My father said, "Her neck is bigger than her head? Is she a dog, or a bouncer?"

Perhaps Lu could get some evening employment.

Oh, and speaking of my family members, yesterday I wrote about music, and my Aunt Mary wrote in and said she liked "Ruby in the Sky with Diamonds."

Naturally I called her last night to make fun of her.

"That's what you said when you were little!" my Aunt Mary told me. "You used to sing 'Ruby in the sky with glasses' instead of 'Lucy in the sky with diamonds.'"

I did? I have no recollection of this, but it sounds like something I would have done. I can see that I would have preferred rubies to diamonds, because they had a color. I have always been into color. Plus, rubies are my birthstone.

So I will let Aunt Mary have a pass on this.

Also, look:

 

Byebye pie 047
Mom grew out yesterday's perm and put on a Bye Bye, Pie t-shirt.

I told her I would put her picture in my blog if she took a photo of herself in a BBP shirt, and this weekend my cousin took her picture and emailed it to me. I got the picture Sunday night.

Yesterday, my mother called me.

"You promised my picture would be in your blog if I wore the shirt," she said.

"Well, yeah," I said. "Not instantly. Poor Faithful Reader Fawn Amber had to wait like two months to get HER picture in. Plus, your picture IS in my blog today. I mean, it's from 1975, but it's in there."

So in order to not get another terse call from my mother today, behold the shot above.

In the meantime, I must go and work. I am rootin' out, over here, and cannot afford to fix my roots. I am expecting a big check any day now, and once that gets here I can call my straight hairdresser and make an appointment. I am not being sarcastic; he really is straight. I call him the straight hairdresser because it's just such an anomaly.

Anyway, last night I was discussing with my Aunt Mary ways to disguise my roots, because the Pepe LePew look is still not in. Remember for awhile how Sarah Jessica Parker made the brown-root look cool? Why can't the gray-root look be cool?

Anyway, I really can't rock the jaunty fedora like I'm Pink, and I told my aunt that if I wear a bandanna, everyone will think I am in a gang and I will be shot. You know how many 44-year-old white women you see in dangerous gangs. Well. You know how many 44-year-old any color women you see in gangs.

Maybe I could bring back the beret. Or the Chef Boy-Ar-Dee hat. There's a look. I can see the New York Times covering it now. Fresh from Greensboro, women are welcoming summer in crisp chef's hats. Puffy!

And no one tell me to give up and go gray. Could you all please remember what Marvin looks like? He looks 17. He still gets carded. I know he has gray hair, too, but he looks 17 with gray hair. I cannot grow it out. I wish he'd hurry up and jump the shark so I COULD grow it out. Trust me.

What about some kind of goth hooded cloak? I could look really faraway and sad. Can I pull that off? Maybe I should just have gray roots and go with it. Just go with the haggard look, like that poor woman in the quintessential picture from the Depression:

Great_depression_photograph

Okay, look. Even HER roots were done. Sure, she couldn't afford Botox, but she managed to get her a box of Nice 'n' Easy or something.

Crap.

The one where June suddenly says bank

When we still lived in Los Angeles and Marvin was going to school to become a teacher, he said, "Have you considered going back to work and getting a real job instead of freelancing? Because once I become a teacher, I will be making a lot less money."

I really hadn't considered getting a real job. Because I am a partner in life that way. But once he brought it up, I started looking. That was back when you could actually look for jobs and get them, and doesn't THAT seem like 50 years ago. I found a fabulous job at an in-house ad agency at a company that makes things you have heard of, including some pretentious water that if I named it, you'd say, "Oh, yeah! I know that water!"

It's really good water.

I know you think all water is the same, but this water tastes better than other water. For a while we did not get it for free at work, but then we did right before I left. Yeah, thanks.

Anyway, the point of my story is, I did make a lot more bank, and how much do you like me for saying bank, and before I forget a lot of people asked about Marvin's garage sale and he made SIXTY-FIVE DOLLARS this weekend. But back to my riveting story about my job in LA.

I loved that job so bad. We had free yoga at noon, an on-staff curator, free flowers we could take home, coworkers I am still friends with who read this blog (hi, Anthony!) (hi, Stephanie!) (hi, Virgo!), but the thing is, it was 16 miles away from my front door. Which translated to LA means it was an hour drive each way.

So I told Marvin I needed a satellite radio. Because otherwise I was going to be like Michael Douglas in that one movie where he gets a machine gun and blows everyone's head off on the LA freeway.

Then Marvin could not find a teaching job in LA because it is really competitive so I had to quit that job anyway and move here, and I insisted that I get to keep the satellite radio. Because now I am hooked.

Which leads me to the point of this post. My satellite radio has a '70s station, and also an '80s and a '90s station. It does not have a 70's station, because the '70s do not own anything, nor are we saying "70 is." Thank you. You want to send shivers down my bottle? Be sure to write 70's.

Because I spend an inordinate amount of time listening to my '70s, '80s, and '90s stations, I have been reminded of all sorts of times from my past, which I am sharing with you. Isn't it funny how a song will put you right back in a certain time? Here are some songs and here are their attached memories:

  • Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order. In the late '80s, my friends and I followed this cover band around every night from bar to bar. When I say every night, I mean we were there on Thanksgiving. I do not know if they played on Christmas, but if they did, we were there. We were obsessed with this band. One of the songs they played was Bizarre Love Triangle, a song I loved. Sometimes they'd play it as soon as we walked in, because they knew we'd dance to it. When I linked this song just now? I danced to it in my robe, with Henry looking at me.
  • Jealous Guy by John Lennon. Really, any song by any Beatle and there I am, back in my childhood.
Childhood When my white-'fro parents were not listening to the Beatles, I was at my grandmother's house, and my aunt and uncle were blaring out the Beatles over there. I'm sure my grandma was thrilled. She was hanging her goat high.

I really like the song Jealous Guy, and I also like the song Junk by Paul McCartney, but apparently Paul McCartney has, like, Fort Knox on all his songs and you cannot put them up on any blog. Lighten up, Paul. Don't you think you probably have enough bank?

  • Tempted, by Squeeze. There is NO SONG, no song, that transports me to college more than this song. I am in my boyfriend's dorm room, watching his put Spritz Forte in his pompadour. I am sitting on the floor with my housemate Edie, screaming the lyrics drunkenly. I am bartending at Small Planet, dancing to this song and pouring beer. I mean, Tempted. So college. Love this song.
Smallhair

Yes, I DID decide a perm was a good idea when I was in college. A PERM. Maybe I wanted the 'fro to be like my parents.

  • Black, by Pearl Jam. One of my favorite songs, anyway. But I moved to Seattle right when the whole grunge thing was happening, which I did not do on purpose. This song reminds me of getting to Seattle, and falling in love with it, and going to clubs, and wearing black and trying to seem deep and depressed and not naive and Midwestern which is what I really was.
  • Let Love Rule, by Lenny Kravitz. In the summer of 1990, I studied in London. I had a stupid boyfriend who was an archeology student, and he was going to Mexico all summer to dig something up. He never called or wrote the entire summer. Not once! It was hard to get ahold of him because he was in the middle of nowhere, so I spent all summer worrying he didn't like me anymore.

        One of the guys in my study group knew I liked the song Let Love Rule, and one afternoon he stood under my balcony and played guitar and sang it. It was so cool and it cheered me right up. Every time I hear that song I remember that beautiful sunny afternoon in London, in the middle of the park where I lived, that goofy guy singing Lenny Kravitz to cheer my ridiculous self up. I was in LONDON! I was YOUNG! I was CUTE! Why didn't I just lighten the eff up?

Stone

Okay, obviously I am at Stonehenge here and not London. Same summer, though. Nice front butt. Maybe I wasn't as cute as memory serves.

What songs remind you of stuff? Do any songs remind you of making bank?

Smart. Or, you know, not.

Yesterday I talked about how I took a proofreading test and apparently failed it. This morning when I woke up, I remembered something.

Well, this morning when I woke up, I heard poor Henry, who somehow got outside, and HOW did he get outside? These animals get outside through osmosis overnight. Everyone was in when I went to bed last night. Then this morning I wake up to thunder and lightning and I hear "MOW! MOW! MOW!" and poor Henry is out there panicked. HOW did he get out there?

HenrygoodAnyway, he's home. He's good. It wouldn't be a day if he didn't sit on Marvin's clean laundry. Maybe if someone put away his clean laundry, someone wouldn't always be wearing Henry cashmere all the time.

Is what I'm saying.

What I REMEMBERED when I woke up was that back in January, I wrote this stupid company that I used to proofread for. For whom I used to proofread. Whatever. I said hey, y'all, remember me? Do you still need freelancers? And they said yeah. Just retake this test you passed before and I was all oh for the love of God. So I took it, and I remember I had just started Topamax, and it was a huge 12-page test, and I sent it to them and didn't hear back and forgot all about them because frankly I hated working for them but I was desperate but then I got busy.

I remembered about them this morning, so I looked at that test?

It was riddled with errors. Riddled. Like, two periods next to each other riddled.

Riddled.

Okay.

So Topamax has clearly made me stupid. I mean, either that or I have a tumor or something. And Marvin said, "But your current clients aren't complaining." Yeah, you know why? Because they already know and trust me, and because normal stuff doesn't have errors like a proofreading test, so I'm sure my NORMAL work is probably fine. And no one is checking my normal work that closely. Plus, even if I AM missing two periods, the seven other proofreaders who are reading the same textbook are catching it.

Oh, Lord.

So here are my choices. I go off Topamax and go back to having nine or ten migraines a month, or I stay on Topamax and stop trying to find more proofreading work. I mean, I just no longer have the brain for it.

I said to Marvin, you know, I do not think about my migraines a lot. I mean, when one comes, I think, Well this sucks. But they really affect my life, don't they?

Marvin said, "Are you kidding? They are so debilitating. I feel horrible for you."

I think I have kind of been in denial about how bad these things are. I mean, they are seriously making a difference in my life.

So today I applied for a part-time job as a receptionist. I remember having to think hard, though, when I receptioned. Yes, I know receptioned is not a word. Topamax.

Anyway, we'll see if I get a call. To tell you the truth, I loved being a receptionist. I was younger and cuter then, and I got to flirt with the

FEDEX

men, and the plant caretaker guys, and the clients, and my coworkers.

Basically I was a giant tramp.

Do I have to learn PowerPoint if I am a receptionist? Because what is that? Is that just pointing really hard? I can do that.

And by the way, I went to the library yesterday to do what I am certain was a stellar job of proofreading the work I DO have, and again EVERYONE WAS TALKING in there. I really thought this was the one oasis of quiet. No.

You know what I did? I sat in my car. In the parking lot of the library. One person pulled up next to me and said, "Oh, your car is so cute. I love VW Bugs! And look!  A vase!" But other than that it was pretty quiet.

For the record? And I don't know why people can't figure this out? All VW Bugs come with a vase. That is why people with VW Bugs always seem to have a flower in their car. You see. Einstein.

Like I'm one to talk, with the two periods in a proofreading test.

Oy.

Sellout

In our continuing quest to be not so broke, Marvin is outside right now having a yard sale. I think he would literally sell the yard if I would allow it. At six o'clock this morning he started stomping around the house, climbing into the attic, and very unappealingly splaying things on a dirty orange tarp on the front lawn.

Marv

Here is a picture Marvin took of himself and put on Facebook. He is updating his status and the status of his yard sale every 15 seconds, and I figure by the end of the day he will be completely unfriended.

I have to proofread 50 pages today, and there is no way I cannot do so, as I am SO BEHIND on my work. Plus also I am demoralized, because I applied for a freelance job with another textbook place, and they sent me a test, which pretty much every place does when you apply for a proofreading job.

I didn't pass it.

You guys. I have been a proofreader for THIRTEEN YEARS. I do not blame Topamax, although I did initially. I have the test here, because I emailed it in, and naturally I went over it again 850 times because I cannot believe I didn't pass it. I have found some things that MAYBE should have been fixed, but they are really nebulous, and certainly subjective.

I always pass those things like a champ. I always do better than anyone else at those stupid tests.

They emailed me and said, "Thanks for taking our stupid-ass test. We will contact you this afternoon if you passed." I was all, pfft. If I passed. You will email me crying this afternoon. You have never seen such poetry as you have this test.

And I mean, I really found some crap in that test. I found names in the bibliography that weren't in the body of the text. I found references IN the text that weren't in the bibliography. I found a "fortunately" that should have been an "unfortunately." I mean, they threw all sorts of tricks in there other than simple spelling and grammar.

Bastards. I couldn't BELIEVE it when I didn't hear from them. I figured the person who was supposed to email me must have gotten food poisoning or something.

But then I didn't hear from them the next day.

I mean, maybe he DIED from food poisoning.

So I'm just saying, not only do I have to proof 50 pages today, but now I am convinced I have lost my mojo and I have to proof 800 times slower than usual, so I cannot help Marvin with this idea that he came up with at six o'clock this morning. And I have to tell you the part where strangers are in our yard?

Tallulah is really enjoying that part.

I was just trying to talk on the phone with my aunt, because go 50 pages of proofing! And she said, "That dog sounds like a German shepherd." Tallulah has the meanest, deepest bark you have ever heard.

So now I think I have to go to the library, or I will never get my 50 pages done. Because between Nazi Talu and the status updates and my self-doubt and the ABSOLUTE NECESSITY and my Topamax, I am in for a stupid day.

So far we have made $3, though, on the yard sale. And Talu has pulled two vocal cords.

Comment of the week goes to Duffylou. Click on This Week's Special to see.

Bond. Aged Bond.

I know it seems like I pick on Pam Anderson all the time, or you know, one other time, but I saw her on Joy Behar last night, and she said it'd be nice to be a Bond Girl.

Okay.

Pam. Honey. You were a Playmate of the Year TWENTY YEARS AGO. TWENTY. You may be using Gold Bond Medicated Powder. You are not going to be a Bond Girl.

A Bond Girl. You could be a Golden Girl if they do a remake. I mean, she is my age. What world is she living in? It irritates me that she has no grip on reality.

And she looks great! You know, for someone who is 82. She really looks wonderful.

I know it seems like I don't like her, and in fact when it comes to celebrities, I kind of do. I really do think she is still pretty, and believe it or not, if you look at photos of her from 20 years ago it would appear that other than breast augmentation, she has not ruined herself with plastic surgery. Honest. Go look. Okay fine, I will show you.

90s

Here she is on Baywatch in the '90s, where she apparently thinks time has stood still.

Now
And now. Yes, she has aged, but she is still a beautiful woman who believe it or not I think has aged without surgery. 

I just think she sees herself as, you know, 22, when GIRL, YOU ARE MIDDLE-AGED. LET ME BE THE FIRST TO TELL YOU.

Because I am certain she checks in with Bye Bye, Pie on a regular basis.

A Bond Girl. I am irritated. Now watch. In six months we'll read that she is the next Bond Girl.

And while we're on this deep topic, I do have one confidential note to my super-intellectual, extra-hoity-toity Real Housewives of New York pals:

If I had legs as good as Kelly, I would wear dresses that short all the time. I know I continue to be the only person in America who likes Kelly. Other than Kelly.

I know many people did not understand the paragraph above. It's okay. You have to be a razor-sharp intellectual to really get The Real Housewives of New York. Don't beat yourself up about it. Go listen to NPR or something.

A Bond Girl. Oh, that chaps my hide.

June tells you a bunch of stupid things using Korean numerals 1-10 instead of bullet points

Ha Na. For about a year, I took a Korean yoga class in Los Angeles. I absolutely loved it. It was called Dahn yoga. If you have Dahn yoga in your town, I highly recommend it. Among other things, you will learn to count to ten in Korean, and you never know when this will come in handy.

On Friday nights at Korean yoga class, they played African drum music. We had to close our eyes and dance any way we wanted to, paying attention to any parts that were stiff or sore. Then afterward we did this really challenging tiger pose that liked to kill you. Sometimes people cried during tiger pose. Oh, I loved Friday nights at Korean yoga.

After each session, we drank tea and sat in a circle and the leader would tell us something deep. My friend Renee told me the whole time I went there, my skin had a glow.

Dul. I read everyone’s recommendations on what colors to paint my living room and dining room. I plan to drag Marvin to look at paint colors soon. But also, remember how I said I was a huge gaudy wallpaper person? It occurred to me, why not wallpaper in the dining room? Why not wallpaper huge retro 1950s wallpaper where the stripes are? I know you all said you like the stripes:

Stripes
Here are the stripes, for anyone who got amnesia since last week, or whatever.

But I am starting to feel like I live inside Farrel’s olde tyme ice cream parlor or something. And I know my next-door neighbor painted those for the last person who lived here, but it turns out SHE doesn’t like them, either.

Anyway, I started going on retro wallpaper sites and I am beside myself.

Floral

Yes, I am a gay man from 1978.

And I have totally roped my Aunt Mary into helping me wallpaper. I asked her to come visit me. Told her we would bond, like we haven’t already bonded in the last 44 years. This will probably be the first time my Aunt Mary has ever bitch slapped me, over a tub of wallpaper paste. What a lovely family memory!

Anyway, the wallpaper above is not my final decision, I am just saying. Something retro. Something Bette Midler. Something like that.

Set. Somebody found my blog the other day by Googling “If your grandma join Eastern Star do that mean she going to hell.”

Net. I turned on the TV–or the tivvy, as my cousin Katie used to say when she was two–in order to amuse myself when I was de-furring the couch the other day. I do not turn on the tivvy at all in the daytime because you know why? I will watch TV all day if I turn it on. That is why. But I turned it on so that I would not think about what an arduous task de-furring the couch is, although I have to tell you that the Scotch Fur Fighter is the best new invention for just such a task. And no, no one is paying me to say that.

You can get them at Target, where you can get anything worthwhile.

Da Seot. The POINT of my story above is that the show I turned on was Bewitched, which I will always watch if given the choice. Remember Nick at Night? What happened to Nick at Night? They would have Bewitched Bewednesdays. I loved that.

Anyway, as I was watching the other day, it occurred to me for the first time, Endora was right. We were supposed to think Endora was ridiculous and that Samantha and Darren were the sane ones, but what was up with Darren? He was so threatened by Samantha’s powers! In this episode, Sam was cooking an elaborate dinner, and Endora put a ball and chain around Sam’s leg. She said, “If you’re going to be a slave, you might as well look the part.”

I was all, no kidding. I mean, why couldn’t she go on being who she was? Stupid Darren.

Ya Soet. The one thing you cannot get at Target that is worthwhile is the Hermes Kelly bag. I think if I ever had money to burn, I would be torn between buying myself a real Chanel suit or a Hermes Kelly bag. And I would probably go with the Kelly, because if I got fat, I could still wear the Kelly.

Hermes-Kelly-bag

Il Goep. Yesterday I got up and made myself TWO POACHED EGGS. All by myself! I knew how because Faithful Reader and Commenter Furry Godmother told me how in the comments the other day. It’s easy. Did you know that? It was so exciting that I called my mother and told her.

I don’t cook a lot.

Yeo Deol. When I woke up THIS morning, Tallulah and I had formed a perfect circle. Her chin was on my hips, and my head was on her dog buttocks. I think it’s because we were freezing to death. It rained overnight, I think. And you know I am not allowed to turn on the heat in April. Oh, yes, Marvin WOULD know if I turned on the heat, somehow. He would be over there at school and he would feel it. And he would call me and yell at me. Marvin is mean.

A Hop. I am rethinking my taste in friends. Recently I was drawn to a person who was really charismatic, and made you feel like you were the only person in the room, and then when I called her she did not call me back. I am forever friends with people who do not call me back.

I used to be friends with this big group of women, and we all still keep in touch, but the one who has remained the truest friend is the one who called the least attention to herself back then. She always returned my calls, she always showed up when she said she would, she was always on time.

I am thinking I should pay less attention to the outside parts and pay more attention to stuff like, are they reliable?

I am 44 and a half. No. I am 44 and three-quarters. I am just learning this.

Yeol. I have NOT.EVEN.STARTED. my statistics textbook yet, as I am still working on the OTHER textbook. And yesterday I took a giant quiz for another academic proofreading company. And yet we are still broke. How is that possible? I guess that Hermes handbag continues to elude me.

And there you have the Korean numbers one through ten, and a lot of crap you really did not need to know. Well. You totally needed to know I made poached eggs all by myself. That is news.

The bush administration

Okay, just one more Uncle Jim story and then I will stop.

For awhile there, my uncle had to have physical therapists come to his house. While my saintly Aunt Sue talked to said therapists, Uncle Jim sat behind her and mouthed, "HELP ME! SHE'S ABUSING ME!"

Who got a big kick out of himself? Was it Uncle Jim?

How they knew he was kidding and did not haul poor Aunt Sue off to jail is beyond me.

Anyway, the following photos were a big hit on Facebook yesterday so I will put them up for you. Whoever planted the azalea bushes in my yard was either color blind or really garish. I currently have an explosion of hot pink and orange going on that is not to be believed.

I kind of like it. In a Miss Piggy drag queen Priscilla Queen of the Desert LSD Excuse Me While I Kiss This Guy kind of a way.

Clashybush

Spring is here. My bushes are duking it out. Snow White and Rose Red, indeed. I mean, who decided, Hey! Why not coral and purple right here? And I know it looks like I have crooked curtains in the back but I really do not. They are not even gathered, they hang straight across. It is some sort of optical illusion or something.

Orange

Orange you glad I didn't show you another purple bush?

Pink

Oh but look! Right near it is a pink one! Of course. And look to the left. The nicely trimmed monkey grass. Thanks for the tip about running it over with the lawn mower. That totally worked.

Hotpink

This is my favorite one. It is pink pink pink. I can see it from my window, here, as I type you. You see the window all the way to the left with the shade halfway down? That's where I am right now. Hi! I'm waving! And this bush is about 10 times more florescent than this picture shows. Oh, it's gaudy. Love it.

Orangeandpink

Here was my artful attempt at juxtaposing the orange and pink bushes. Do you enjoy my juxtaposing? Are you jusxtaposing out? Also, is that a giant weed behind the pink bush? Because now I am going to have to go out in the rain with my shovel and I am highly annoyed.

The across-the-street neighbors are building a GARDEN in the FRONT YARD, hence that teeny crooked fence they have going on. Yes, I am irked by it.

However, they have a cute white bulldog and a nice orange kitty who Winston is friends with.

Henri

Henry not see why you need to look at other orange kitties. Henry fax you rude messages. Henry say 1985 called. Says your fax is here.

I write my everyday post that makes no sense every day

Paula 
You may remember about a month ago, I went to Seattle to visit my friend Paula (that's her on the left) after her breast cancer surgery. We initially thought she wouldn't have to have chemo, but it turns out she does. She starts today.

But before you get all tragic about it, listen to this! She will not lose her hair, nor will she get sick! I like how we're reading this under all of our feet, here. Kind of cracks me up. Anyway, they gave her a choice. She could have four treatments and do the classic losing of the hair and getting sick. Kind of the Chanel of chemo. Or she could go for many weeks and NOT have those side effects. She opted for door number two.

Who even knew they had come up with such a thing? I mean, if you have to have chemo, that is really great. Which is easy for me to say because I am not the one over there having chemo.

So Paula is there right now as I type this. I asked her what she had to do and she said she just sits there and reads magazines and such, and after she can go to work. She doesn't even get to go home and watch The Price is Right. I told her she could get out her iPhone and laugh loudly and say to the room, "When I'm getting my chemo, there's nothing better than reading that Bye Bye, Pie!"

Really, how do I keep any friends?

Paula said maybe I could make a coffee mug that reads "I get my everyday chemo every day."

In other news, another Paula, who comments on my blog every day, the everyday Paula who comments every day, Paula H&B, has sent us a photo.

Paula H&B is in the top 1% of funniest commenters, if you want my opinion. She is hilarious, and I am telling you, I know I say this all the time, but my commenters are redunkulously hilarious. 

Poor Paula H&B has been BANNED from the Internet at work. I mean, not her personally, but her whole workplace has been cut off. So she can see my blog from her phone, but then she has to sit there and think funny thoughts all day long and not WRITE THEM, and sometimes she even emails them to me because she CANNOT STAND IT, and at about 6 p.m. every day (not everyday), my comment section just EXPLODES with Paula H&B fever.

Anyway, Paula H&B is moving, a thing she has mentioned, oh, for the last nine million days in a row. She'll mention it, and then someone else in the comments will say, "Oh, Paula, are you moving?" and someone else will say, "Why haven't you told us?" and anyway, you know it's getting serious because Paula H&B has brought her Bye Bye, Pie mug to the new house.

BBP.TP
Doesn't it look nice, there, with the maple syrup and the bottle of lemoncello or whatever that is, up there?

You, too, can have a Bye Bye, Pie mug if you click on the Buy Buy Pie Stuff button on the right, up there. Yes, it's a button. No, I did not make it myself.

And speaking of book club, which we were not, don't worry, we seemed to get the most votes for A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick, and I just like the name "Goolrick." So let's read that. Since I was an unreliable book club leader, let's push our deadline ahead and say we'll meet May 23 at 7 p.m. Eastern. Be there or be unreliable.

Finally, I have one more Uncle Jim story to tell you, which I learned at his funeral. A policeman spoke, I think he was a police chief or something. I don't know. Many important police people spoke and I could not keep track. Anyway he said he asked around the office and heard many stories about my uncle, a lot of which were inappropriate to tell.

I know what he means. There are a lot of Uncle Jim stories I would like to tell you but I worry about offending everyone.

Anyway, my uncle was at work, and some poor guy came to the police station as a potential vendor, wanting to sell his wares to the policemen. He was nervously giving his spiel, and my Uncle Jim was standing there drinking his coffee, as per usual, listening to the guy.

After a while, Uncle Jim said, "Hey, would you like some coffee?" They guy said he would.

So my uncle hands him his mug. He just hands the guy the mug of coffee he had been drinking from that whole time!

Apparently the poor guy actually drank a few sips before nervously putting the cup on a table.

Oh, my Uncle Jim was evil.

So there you go. There is my Uncle Jim in a nutshell.

I must go proofread everything in the world now. I officially am proofing two books at once. Ack. Which explains why I wrote the world's longest and most disjointed post.

Okay, bye.

YOU’RE GOOD

Yesterday we were getting ready our fun-filled afternoon at Marty Martin's house.

Fun

Because what's more fun than spending the afternoon with this guy?

And Marvin ran out to get a bottle of wine, because from the looks of things above, he desperately needed one. Anyway, I was putting on some mascara, or mascaaaaara, as they say it in that Rimmel London commercial, and I could not get it to look right on my bottom lashes. It wouldn't go on right. Thirty years I've been putting on mascara, mascaaaaara, I've never had this problem.

This was when I noticed I was missing some bottom eyelashes.

I WAS MISSING SOME BOTTOM EYELASHES!

Like, a big CHUNK out the middle was gone. It looked like Alfalfa's part.

Lash

Can you see? In the middle there? Lashes are missing! MISSING!

Lash

Here. I pointed it out for you. I also added some eyeliner, just for yucks. I cannot resist that Paint program. Do you like that one crazy old man eyebrow I got up there?

So, naturally I dashed over to Google to see what was wrong with me, and by the time Marvin came home with an entire grocery bag of stuff, because God forbid he ever just go to the store quickly even though we are supposed to be somewhere, I met him halfway across the lawn.

"Okay, I'm trying not to freak out," I said.

Marvin got that look he gets when I get freaked out.

"What," said Marvin. Have I mentioned he should really work at one of those 24-hour crisis lines?

"I am missing some of my bottom eyelashes. Look!" I leaned in.

"Oh, you are n–Oh, wow, you really are," he said.

"I KNOW!" I said, getting shrill. "I Googled it–"

"Of course you did," said Marvin. I am not supposed to Google symptoms anymore.

"I Googled it," I began again, "and it could be this really rare stroke thing, where your face gets frozen, and parts of your face turn white, and fall off. Is any of my face getting white?"

I turned my face this way and that.

Marvin hoisted his groceries and did the thing he always does when I get this way. "YOU'RE GOOD," he said, and went into the house.

Okay, but here is the thing.

One day I might be 87. I mean I doubt it, because my face is about to fall off in white chunks and how long can you live through that? But if I do survive this (and by the way, now it is starting to hurt. I keep wishing I had a teesy ice pack, for just under my eye. Or maybe a tiny prescription for Vicodin or Oxycontin or something. Just a small one. But you may be surprised to hear that my doctor is kind of sick of me), the thing is, one day when I am 87, and Marvin is 86, (yes, I know, cougar alert!) we will be pushing our walkers with the tennis balls on the bottom through the Denny's parking lot and I will say, "I feel a case of deep vein thrombosis coming on" and Marvin will say:

"YOU'RE GOOD!"

and I WON'T be good, because I'm 87, and something REALLY WILL be wrong and he won't take me seriously and that will be the end. At the Denny's, there.

So I think Marvin should take each.one. of these cases very seriously because you never know when it will be the one. Is what I think.

Oh, and Google said this could also be allergies, and that is why people lose their eyelashes on the bottom. And when we were at Marty Martin's

Doggie

and we were sitting on his deck with his cute girlfriend Kaye and his cute cute cute doggie and all the pollen and such, I did notice that I kept wiping my eyes. And no one said, "Hey, June, parts of your face are falling off." So maybe that is why I am losing my eyelashes at such an alarming rate.

Do you think I should send off for some Latisse? Should I have engaged Marty Martin in a jerky little dance?

I'll write tomorrow. MAYBE.

Over easy

For the 10%, tops, of my reading audience who is male? I am just warning you, I am about to delve into the feminine protection topic, here.

So I know no one is really burning with curiosity over how I am doing on my maxi pad supply or anything, but remember back in October when I went to visit my mother? And she said, "I'm going to Sam's Club, do you need anything?" And I didn't know what Sam's Club was, I thought maybe she was in some kind of cult or a key club or something that I'd be better off not knowing about, but I said, "Well, I do need me some maxi pads if you're up" and she came back with enough maxi pads to keep me supplied till menopause?

Does anyone remember that? Do you remember how I had to literally bring an entire other suitcase home? And how I stupidly unzipped said suitcase back here at this airport to make sure it was mine and the old man standing next to me nearly fainted because he had never seen a suitcase filled with 3938020388593 maxi pads?

I am just saying. It is seven cycles later. I am still going strong on the supply from mom. I still do not really know who Sam and his club are, but can he set me up with this much coffee?

OKAY, MEN! YOU CAN COME BACK!

And I have minis and maxis, for both my needs!

I just said that to freak out the men who came back.

Jackie Kennedy used to make jokes like that at the publishing office all the time. Pad-jokes Jackie. That's what they called her.

I got a lot of work done yesterday, and today I am bound and determined to get 20 pages read before we head off to Marty Martin's. I know that doesn't sound like a lot but when you are proofing textbook pages, it kind of is.

Yesterday I was toiling away at my work and Marvin called. He had been at band practice, furthering his deafness. "ARE YOU HUNGRY?" he screamed through his tinnitus.

"Yes, I sort of am," I said. With Topamax you are never really hungry. It's wonderful. The other day I wore some black linen pants I have inexplicably saved for years. They're lovely summer pants that I haven't been able to get over my calves since God was a boy.

"Well, what do you want to eat?" Marvin asked.

"What are my choices?" I asked him.

"Anything. Anything you want."

"Hmmmm," I said, warming to this possibility. "I'd like fettuccine alfredo."

"Well, you can't have that," Marvin said.

One time in the '90s I brought a boyfriend home with me from Seattle. I could tell he felt kind of uncomfortable. One morning my mother him she would make eggs, any kind he wanted.

"Oh, any kind of eggs are fine," he told her.

"No, I want to make what you like," my mother said. I knew she would be annoyed if he didn't tell her precisely what he liked. I was mentally projecting to him to really tell her what kind of eggs he liked.

"No, no," my clueless ex-boyfriend said. "I like all kinds of eggs. Really, make any kind."

"Seriously," my mother said. "I seriously want you to tell me. How do you want your eggs."

"Over easy," my poor ex-boyfriend spat out.

Pause.

"I don't know how to make those," my mother said.

I reiterated that story for Marvin last night when he told me I could have anything and then he told me I couldn't have what I wanted. "You can have eggs," he said.

I think when Marvin calls like that he has a certain food in mind and he wants me to magically want whatever he wants, but usually what he wants is Indian food or Greek food, and in a million years I am never gonna want either of those things. So his ploy never works. And he is rarely gonna want fettuccine alfredo, which is almost always what I want.

Marvin went to Applebee's, in case anyone is worried sick.

Does Sam's Club sell fettuccine alfredo?

Heard it from a friend who heard it from a friend who

I asked Marvin what I should blog about and he said REO Speedwagon, and how they had one lead singer, and then another one, and how the one singer was a real tool. And also there was a falling out with the guitar player.

See. This is why no one ever read any of Marvin's 14 blogs and why when he told me I should start a blog I said, "Why would I want to do that? No one ever comments or pays any attention to blogs."

REO Speedwagon. I am ridin' the storm out. Is what I'm doing.

In other less mind-numbingly dull news, we have a commenter of the weeker. It is Furry Godmother with her always-amusing words about her pets. Click on This Week's Special if you are flapping your hands because you cannot wait another moment.

I am supposed to be at furniture market today with my next-door neighbor Peg, but on top of the five books I am already proofreading at the moment, I was given a deposition and a statistics textbook this week, so I had to cancel. She is, however, taking my friend the Other June.

Furniture market is this really big deal in North Carolina. Apparently a lot of furniture gets made here, or maybe it used to, kind of like how a lot of cars used to get made in Michigan. I don't know. Anyway, this time of year, all the furniture manufacturers come here and show off their wares, and you can only get into this giant show if you are connected somehow, and my neighbor Peg is an interior designer.

Furniture market is kind of the Academy Awards of North Carolina.

Anyway it sounds fun. And you know I am jonesing for a couch. Maybe Peg and the Other June will pick one up for me, you think?

MmmmmmmPeg invited us over the other night to christen her new front-porch furniture by eating some homemade strawberry shortcake. She said her old wicker furniture had deteriorated so much these past few years, and I know Winston goes over there and naps on said furniture, and am hoping against hope he has not been sharpening his claws on it. Anyway we shamelessly partook of the cake and new furniture anyway.

Badmarvin

This is the worst photo of Marvin, ever, but he never reads my blog anymore so he won't know I put it in. heeeeeeee….

We are going to Marty Martin's house tomorrow to eat fajitas and watch a really bad movie, and that I am not canceling, because who can cancel fajitas, plus also he has the coolest dog ever who I cannot wait to see again. His dog goes to the same dog day care as mine, and one day we left work at the same time (Marty Martin and me, not his dog and me) and got to dog day care together, and they released our hounds simultaneously.

Tallulah RAN out of the dog day care room, TORE through the lobby, ran over and over and over and over again in a circle, until she finally relented and I was able to corral her wriggling self onto her leash.

Marty Martin's dog galumphed into the room, walked over and sat. Right in front of Marty Martin. I don't even think MM had to put a leash on him.

In other words, our dogs are just like us.

We have to talk book club books, by the way. A couple people have suggested titles. I am reading a book for my real-life book club called The Storm, by Margriet de Moor, which sounds interesting. There is a review in the New York Times–oh, why don't I link to it. There we go.

Faithful Reader Gladys also suggested A Prayer for Own Meany, which I have never read, and Faithful Reader Liz said how about A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick.

What say all of you? I have not read that book, either. Let's decide this weekend and we'll say next Mince Words with June will be Sunday, May 16.

Tallulah has a victory

Yesterday Tallulah reached her life's pinnacle. It is kind of sad, really. She is like one of those people who peaked in high school, or a ballerina whose career is over at 25.

Tallulah caught and killed a squirrel. She is two! She reached her life's goal at age two.

I mean, I was kind of surprised that she woke up this morning. What's the point?

I was finally doing my proofreading yesterday. I was reading about the blackworm, which I guess tells you I finished the sex book I was proofing. I mean, thank God I finished the sex book, because who wants to read about the sex life of the blackworm? It can't be that interesting. If any blackworms read my blog, I apologize. I am certain you get down on it.

Tallulah was bark bark bark bark barking, and I assumed she was playing with the dogs in back, as they run up and down the fence line together and then at the end they bark back and forth. I never said they were Rhodes Scholars.

But she was really a-barkin'. I mean, it was like she was speaking German or something. I kind of thought, Man, they've added a new Hitler Youth twist to their game, back there, and by the way, won't you hire me to proofread for you soon? Because aren't you impressed by my stellar concentration and ability to tune out the world?

Finally I got up to see the hullabaloo and it was then that I saw my girl, a pathetic squirrel dangling from her lips.

It was bad enough she had to murder a squirrel. She had to bark it to death first? I mean, how terrifying. Couldn't she just stalk it quietly like my cats do?

"DROP IT!" I yelled, and believe it or not, she did. I am always amazed when she listens to me, and I would have made a really good parent. I went over to the poor thing, and trust me, it had met its maker. What was I gonna do if it had been a little bit alive? Ellie May Clampett it and bring it back to life?

That is totally what I would have done. I would have taken that rabid thing into the house and tried to save it, which would have been delightful in a house of three cats and a Beagle mix. I also would have stood around with my hands in my back pockets a lot and stuck my chest out. Also too, when I descended the stairs? I would have expected sexy hillbilly music to play whenever I had on a dress.

I made Tallulah come inside, which surprisingly she also did, but every five steps or so she'd turn back, "But, Lu's squirrel?" she'd ask. "INSIDE!" I'd say. I really did want to congratulate her. I mean, she'd worked her whole life for this. Every time she went outside I'd watch her tear off for a squirrel, and every time I'd think, Would this be the time she'd get one? And here it was, the moment she'd been waiting for, and I was making her leave it back there. It did seem mean. Now we (and when I say "we" I mean Marvin) were gonna shovel it into the trash.

The dogs in the other back yard were riveted, by the way. It was like a riot in the prison. We should have sold popcorn and tickets. At least they got to see Tallulah's victory.

She seemed smug all night, and today I was thinking, her bucket list is not really complete. There's still the quintessential mailman, the horrid woman with the baby stroller who walks by every day, and of course Tallulah still hasn't learned to Google Acme Bomb, Gun and Fang Sharpener Company for her final showdown with the evil Snowflake.

There are still things to look forward to. But you always remember your first kill.

Help June Paint

No, I have not become Tom Sawyer. Won't you enjoy my knee-length cutoffs?

I know we have no money, but I am hoping we get caught up on our finances soon (today is invoice my clients day! Wooo!) (and I got a check from my blog ads today! Thanks, faithful readers!) so that I can buy cans of paint. Because you know what?

I am sick of the beige paint on my walls.

If there is anything I am not, I am not a beige-wall person. Have you met me? I am a 1950s wallpaper person. Give me huge florals, tropical prints, giant birds or gaudy magentas or something. But you know what else I am? Terrible at the visuals. Please see every photograph ever placed in this blog.

This is where you come in. So many of my faithful readers are good at the visuals. Why do you come here and torture yourselves, is what I want to know. George, why must you torture the children? The first person to name that line gets a special photograph of Francis wearing floral panties.

Attached please find photos of my living room and dining room, which are swathed in beige beige beige and also beige stripes. I included many angles of my rooms so you can see our furniture colors and also my unfinished proofreading that I really should be attending to right now instead of blogging about my walls. It is due a week from today. I have 100 pages left. A HUNDRED PAGES.

Okay, here we go.

Livingroom1

Oh, dear. The pillow on my Gumby chair is sideways. And yes, those are 87 leashes on the doorknob. Tidy. I know The Nester would never have 87 leashes on her doorknob. And you are all going to tell me how that lei is going to catch fire on the lampshade. Blah blah blah. The WALLS. I need help with the WALLS.

Livingrmwlu
Tallulah is so over being featured on this blog. ONE HUNDRED PAGES, folks. Calling out my name. Juuuune. Proofread us, June! You're out of money, June! If you proof us, you could actually paint, Juuuune! I do not know why my pages speak like a ghost.

Diningrom2
Stripy dining room. If you hate the stripes please keep in mind they were painted by my neighbor Peg, who reads this blog. And yes, that is a painting of Mr. Horkheimer. My friend Stacy gave me that as a wedding present. Horkie. I love him so.

Look how depressed Talu looks. "Sick of beige, mom. Even though Talu kind of beige herself."

Diningroom1
Hi. I have 87 different colors of wood in me. I'm the stripy dining room.

Diningroomkitchen
Look carefully to the right. In the very middle you can see a block blob. That would be Francis. Eternally on his pink chair. He does not care what color the walls are.

Okay, so I think I have shown you enough angles. Suggestions, please.

While I am up, you may recall I mentioned  that I went to Target the other day, before I had negative seven dollars to my name, in search of my Shabby Chic bathroom cup. See, I had a lovely Shabby Chic bathroom cup, and I used it to clean my sexy night guard every night. I used equally sexy Polydent in my Shabby Chic cup, which matched my bathroom, and soaked said night guard while I was getting ready: taking my 47 medications, putting on my kabuki night products, etc.

I took said cup with me on the road to my Uncle Jim's funeral, because I do not want to make my mother loan me a cup to soak said disgusting night guard, then return it to her after. I mean, gross. But you know what I did? I LEFT my beautiful Shabby Chic cup in that horrifying motel that we stayed in on the way to my mother's. Oh, I was sad. And then when I went to Target, they did not have any Shabby Chic cups. I was fit to be tied. Not to mention they are apparently hiring toddlers at Target now. The person who waited on me had a sippy cup. She had never even HEARD of Shabby Chic.

As I was leaving, a managerial type had her over at the Shabby Chic sheets, and he was also changing her plastic diaper pants.

At any rate, the mail came today and Faithful Reader Target Steve and his lovely wife Beth sent me a Shabby Chic cup! I no longer have to use the depressing purple Hello Kitty cup I was using to clean my night guard.

Before
Before.

After
After. Isn't that so much nicer?

Okay, technically it was a Choco Kitty cup, who I guess is Hello Kitty's edible cousin or something. You greet Hello Kitty but you eat his cousin. I don't know. And I don't really use Pantene hair gel. It does not begin to tame this hair. I use Mop. Pantene is my backup emergency I-am-out-of-Mop gel.

Okay! Paint ideas!

Five

Winnie 
  
Today is Winston's birthday. He is five. Please ignore the cat fur on the floor in the background. I swept YESTERDAY. You can't imagine how much fur is in this house.

Anyway, I say that April 14 is Winston's birthday because this is also the anniversary of when we got him and they said he was one year old. He was due to be put down that night. THAT NIGHT! Do you like my dramatic all caps? He had been at the shelter, sleeping in a shoe box, and not even a for good shoe, for a month. He still likes sleeping in small things like shoe boxes.

Winston is the nicest cat you could ever ask for. Nothing upsets him, and I have never seen him crabby except for the maybe three hisses he threw Henry's way the first day or so, and then he was all, "Oh, all right" and completely accepted Henry. And he was totally down with the dog from day one. When people come over he rolls on his back and accepts all pets.

Happy birthday, cool Winston. I am glad you are not dead.

Everyone go to the animal shelter and get a shelter kitty or dog in celebration, okay?

In other news, we have ants, because we need more pets. We always get ants this time of year, but they were crawling into the dishwasher, which is disgusting, and Marvin said, "We can't afford to call an exterminator" because did I mention things were slow for me for awhile? And did I mention my oldest client got so emotional over my  uncle dying that she forgot to pay me? It's true. I sent her an invoice and an email saying I'd be out for the week at my uncle's funeral, and she composed a lovely email but forgot to forward my invoice to accounting. So now my check will be here any second, but it is 14 days late and we are hurtin'.

I should add in eight years of working with her this has never happened, but anyway.

So I still have a small amount of savings hidden away at the credit union at my old job, and the only way I can access it is to literally drive to my old job, which is almost an hour away, and I told Marvin I would call the exterminator and drive to work and get the money, which I did.

Yesterday the exterminator came, and he said, "Is that Winston?" Seems he remembered Winston from last year, who apparently rolled over for pets just like I told you. Anyway, the rather broad-shouldered exterminator destroyed the pesky ants, and the entire time he was in our back yard Tallulah kept following him and being obsessed and eventually I had to lure Lula away with treats so she'd leave him alone.

Finally the exterminator sat down on my couch to write up my sizable invoice, and as he did, Lu got behind him, got on her hind legs,

and humped him.

Oh dear God.

This never happened to Grace Kelly. Never.

I mean, how do you even get out of that situation? I told him he shouldn't have worn that outfit. He was asking for it.

Anyway, at about 3:15 Marvin called me from school to tell me that our account was overdrawn, that some checks had cleared that he thought had already been accounted for, so I had to drive all the way BACK to my old work and get MORE money from my meager savings to pay for Tallulah's moment in the sun, there.

All I am saying to you is every single ant had better be beyond dead.

Living your best life. With a cracker.

This morning I woke up thinking I was next to Marvin when in fact I was next to Tallulah.

"Where are you?" I called out.

"I'm on the pot, reading Oprah," said Marvin. "I'm living my best life."

You know, I ask Marvin before I put the things he says on this blog, and believe it or not, sometimes he says no. I know you must be dying to know what he censors, since I have now featured Marvin on the toilet several times, and really, what could be worse?

In other news, I got a migraine from a cracker yesterday.

I have been keeping a migraine diary, something they tell you to do, and which I have refused to do, since it seems depressing. Almost as depressing as that 10th-grade diary I have shared with you time and again. I mean, Dear Diary, I have a migraine. Dear Diary, Guess what! Migraine! There's a stimulating diary.

But I am desperate, Lovey Heart, and so I have been writing down, in an appropriately depressing black diary, every time I get a migraine, and I am happy to say that 12 whole days have passed between headaches, which for me is good. I write down what I ate, how I slept, what time the headache started, and really when I die I am certain my relatives will be riveted to the whole thing. "This goes in the trash pile. Next!"

One thing I have learned for sure–what I know for sure, as Oprah on the pot would say–is that MSG gives me a migraine every time. Totally. For sure.

So there I was yesterday, eatin' me some Cracked Pepper and Olive Oil Triscuits. And I like how they add "cracked" pepper, to make it seem fancier. Isn't all pepper cracked? I mean, how else does it get small?

And man, those crackers are good. And according to the box, good for your heart. If you ignore the part where your head will split open a half hour after you eat them, they're great for you!

When the headache set in, which thanks to my Topamax, was not that bad of a headache, but it was unmistakably there, I stampeded to the ingredients and there was maltodextrin, which is a sneaky kind of MSG.

Crap.

Anyway, I slept for awhile, and I had plans last night and was still able to show up for said plans, so it wasn't all bad, but stupid cracker. Is all I can say.

Well. Apparently I can say quite a bit. But it's ONE of the things I can say.

And since I continue to say things, I leave you with this exciting development:

Bighen

 Does Henry look like he might be (I am afraid to say it) …growing?

Say what?

Last night Marvin and I were sitting on the couch, and the TV wasn't even on, although music was playing from his laptop, so to speak. But you could not even describe said music as loud by any stretch of the imagination. We had the following exchange.

June: Oh, you know what? I'm out of Vitamin D tablets. I should have gotten more when I went to the store today.

Marvin: We have macaroni and cheese.

June: What?

Marvin: There's a lot of macaroni and cheese. Why don't you just have that?

June: What are you TALKING about?

You guys. I'd say a quarter of our conversations deteriorate in this tragic way. We had another one like this yesterday morning in the laundry room and neither one of us can remember the particulars. But trust me. Marvin is as deaf as a post.

I know I have told you this before. It's because of his years of playing in bands and constant listening to music and earphones and I'm certain the 57 screaming kids he works with now do not help.

Why do kids have to scream? When I was a kid I did not scream. I have several relatives and a friend who has known me since I was a kid who read this blog who can back me up on this. I was pretty much the same as I am now. I sat around and drank coffee and blogged.

Anyway, you know he will not go see a doctor about this. I have a friend who when she gets sick says she's gonna take it like a man, "meaning I'm going to complain about it and not see a doctor."

But if he did see a doctor I have this vision in my head that they'd tell Marvin he was a special case, and all the highfalutin' hearing aids wouldn't work on him, and that he'd have to use one of those giant cones like they used in the olden days. He'd say, "Eh?" and have to hold that giant thing up to his ear. You know the thing I'm talking about? It kind of looked like the pointy thing they used to talk on the phone in The Flintstones.

FlinstonesStoneWilmaWD

How did they not puncture their eardrums on that phone? And God forbid they had to cradle it to take a message.

Anyway. If Marvin is this deaf at 43, imagine him at 63.

My grandmother, the one I am turning into,

Grammy

that one,

was married to my grandfather, obviously, and he, too was hard of hearing. He was in World War II, and I don't know about you, but almost everyone I knew who was in WWII got deaf eventually, probably because of the bombs and the guns and so forth. I don't know. I wasn't there. Anyway, my grandmother, the one I am turning into, talked constantly, CONSTANTLY, and my grandfather would just turn off his hearing aid.

He was a really happy person.

So maybe this is God's way of saving Marvin. He can just drift off and inventory our macaroni and cheese, you know?

I would discuss this theory with Marvin but he would never hear me. Perhaps I could take up interpretive dance and discuss it with him that way.