Rolling. Sort of.

So Babygirl has wanted skates of her own for a long time. I'm no fool; 2.5-year-old + wheels = yeeeouch. So instead I knit her a pair of rollerskate socks. These were originally going to be baby booty gifts for a pregnant rollergirl, but they came out a little bigger than I intended, not to mention the fact that Babygirl, once she saw me working on them, kept yelling, "My wollkeets! My wollkeets!"



This is blurry because she was in motion, skating, obviously.

My Life is a Table

Every now and then, I get the urge to move. Move myself, move my body, move my life.

And since I know that it's not exactly practical to pick up and start a new life in Wisconsin, I respond to that urge in any number of ways. I buy a new outfit I don't need. I get a tattoo. I clean my office. I exercise. Occasionally, I move my apartment around, though there's barely room for the small amount of crap I have to be reconfigured in new and interesting ways.

Last night was one of those nights.

It started with a TV that I am "TV-sitting" more or less indefinitely from work. It's a huge TV and comes with a DVD player. I have at home already a very tiny TV that everyone I know laughs at, but that I think is helping me to develop keener eyesight as I squint to make out what those crazy kids from "Hell's Kitchen" are doing on a screen half the size of a postage stamp.

So I moved the tiny TV to my bedroom and put the massive one in the living room where I could instantly begin worrying about it falling over and crushing Baby Girl to death in a tragically ironic meeting of materialism and mass media and gravity.

But I digress.

The point is that this new monster in my living room made me feel antsy. Unsettled. The way I've felt in most aspects of my life, lately, now that I think about it.

And having no money for a new tattoo or an idea of what to permanently stamp myself with this time, I decided to move furniture. Not even a lot of furniture - just one piece, in fact. This may not seem like that big of a deal, but it symbolizes a lot, I think.

I pushed my dining room table up against my kitchen wall so that there's only room for 3 seats at it. I set it up as a desk. I put my little book-a-day calendar on it. I put my French workbook and flashcards on it. I put my little "pen pot" on it. I put my iPod dock on it to await a new baby iPod that I'm hoping the iPod stork will bring some day. I put a space on it for the new baby laptop I'm hoping the laptop stork will bring some day. I put my work in progress on it: articles I want to write, articles I want to read, books I need to do my research on. I put my bills to be paid on it.

If you're thinking that this maybe leaves no room to eat on, you're absolutely correct.

This slight change in the Space That Is Dirty Girl says these things:
1. Baby Girl and I are just going to eat at the coffee table from now on, since she loves eating there anyway (and I don't turn on the TV - I think she just likes her little chair that is just her size at the low table, and I like sitting on the floor, and who gives a fuck where we eat, anyway? She still gets her veggies).
2. I never have anyone over for dinner. I love to cook and I love to cook for people, but I just don't currently have the kinds of relationships with other adults that allow me to make dinner for them and use my matchy-matchy placemats, as much as I'd like to.
3. I have designated a space for me to exist in outside of my relationship to my child or to the TV or my bed (though I wouldn't mind fucking on my newly-defined desk).

It already works great, by the way - last night, I balanced my checkbook and drank a martini on it.

Might As Well Be Me

I've never been a lottery kind of a person. I'd rather have my dollar than a piece of paper with the chance to win millions printed on it.

However, I work in an office that collects money weekly for lottery tickets. And while I feel certain that me staying out of the pool pretty much guarantees that they'll win at some point, I have a hard time doing so. Every week, they get two dollars out of me and every week, we lose money. I swear, I could be drinking beer with that money!

All of that said, this didn't stop me from buying a raffle ticket in the lottery's newest game where they sell a pre-set number of tickets and the draw for prizes - the odds are actually a lot higher that you'll win something. Of course, you pay $5 instead of one for that privilege.

Can you imagine what my blog would be like if I actually won millions of dollars? Every day, you'd tune in to read about:
1. My new dresses
2. The wine I'm drinking
3. My new house in which I would hopefully be fucking in every room before I every put a stick of furniture in
4. My new furniture on every piece of which I would hopefully be fucking once I'd christened the bare rooms
5. How many bon-bons I'm eating
6. My new rollerskates - maybe a different pair for every day, like days-of-the-week panties
7. The things I do to fill up the long, long days of not having to work
8. The daily massages I would receive from a lanky Eastern European fellow named Sergei
9. All the fancy pens (Pilot Dr. Grip Gel) money could buy
10. The thousands upon thousands of books I would be buy and read and then, because throwing them away would be wasteful and keeping them would be impractical, I would store in the bathroom to tear out a page at a time to use as toilet paper.

Man! That would be one sweet life...

It's Stanky Stuff

Babygirl has a stuffed monkey that used to be mine that I only found in a box a few days ago. Since she is obsessed with "Curious George," her head nearly exploded with the excitement of this stuffed animal. She promptly named him Dorj. Dorj has velcro hands you can use to clasp him around your neck so that you can carry him without using your hands (and you know, when you're a toddler, it's useful to have a monkey doll who hangs onto you, thereby leaving your hands free for important things like clinging to your mother's legs and begging to be picked up and held while she's cooking your dinner on a very hot stove). Dorj's felt eyes are also permanently closed and he has a satisfied grin on his face, making him look oddly postcoital for a stuffed monkey.

Last night, we had to drive around doing errands, and Babygirl brought Dorj along. I was listening to my music - and I'm a bad parent because I don't censor what I listen to when she's within earshot - and the Black-Eyed Peas "Smells Like Funk" came up on iPod shuffle. Now, this song is killer and nasty. It's seriously bumping. I have to give you the lyrics here so you know just how nasty it is:

Yeah, that's Funky (Funky)
Yeah, that's Funky (Funky)
Yeah, that's Funky (Funky)

If it smells like Funk it must be us
The Funk Funk full foul stinky it's stanky stuff
If it smells like Funk it must be us
The Funk Funk full foul stinky it's stanky stuff
If it smells like Funk it must be us
The Funk Funk full foul stinky it's stanky stuff
If it smells like Funk it must be us
Cause nobody's Funky as us, Cause we keep it Stinky (Stinky)
We keep it Stinky, (Stinky)
We keep it Stinky, (Stinky)
We keep it Stinky, (Stinky)
Stinky, Stinky, Stinky,

The Funk phenomenon, we Funk you on n' on
There's no need to hold your nose,
Cause this pong sing like a rouge

Big booty Funk, Toe jam Funk,
Underarm Funk, like you headlocking a Skunk'
Reeking like diseased athletes' feet,
The stench didn't come till after this beat
Smellin' like drawers no weezin no pause
Put your hand up on the speakers get smelly ass paws
You know we was coming before we entered the door
Cause you could smell the rhyme when we was walking down the hall
We bring the Funk worse then a wet dog
Stinkin' like fat ladies shittin' out Logs
We drop enough shit and keep them toilets clogged
Keep the people jumpin' like them Bullfrogs
The first one who smelt it ain't the one who dealt it
Black Eyed Peas keep the scent blind like delta
Funky like onions you fryin' (Sure is Funky) girl you ain't lyin'

Yo' you Funkin' with the Funk family
The non fabricated factual faculty'
We formulatin' up in a factory
Focusin' on the energy' of fluid flow free'
We flawless, everything is for free
We flourish and we flaunt our flavour freshly, huh'
Can you believe we flip the frequencies and
Freak MCs they leave all frantically but
Our intent is ought to be friendly but
They fightin' when we start the freestylin' frenzy
I conk up ya' flat till your girlfriend beef
Fillin all anatomy, bringin' me flattery, huh'
She'll be diggin' these rhymes that ease beats
Like cellulite lyrics so flabby
We bring the funk to your festivities
If you think something stank then it must be the Peas!

If it smells like Funk it must be us
The Funk Funk full foul stinky it's stanky stuff
If it smells like Funk it must be us
The Funk Funk full foul stinky it's stanky stuff
If it smells like Funk it must be us
The Funk Funk full foul stinky it's stanky stuff
If it smells like Funk it must be us
Cause nobody's Funky as us, cause we keep it Stinky
(Funky, Funky, Funky, Funky)

Cellulite overweight stankin' MCs
Stench smells so strong it's unsanitary
Cause you can sense me a mile away so Chanky
With the jungle Funk sound from Serengeti
Meaty, Fat, Nasty like miss Fat booty's tights
Gettin' dirty like mudfights and dirtbikes
Turning these drawers black they used to be white
And we shitin' on these tracks that you gonna' need to wipe
The odor's so contagious that it shows up in your dream
Man you could pick me out like food in between
Your two front teeth cause you be lackin' the streets
We got beefy ass beats that we bumpin' in the streets
We so nice n' sweet like steak box n' feet
Sour underarm Funk you ain't washed in a week
And man we be reekin' every day or weekend
We could all bounce to the Funk and the season

Haha haha
Yeah that's Funky,
Yeah that's Funky

Every smell is of a porker
then you know it got to be nobody other than Apl, Will n' Taboo
Cause if you know that if it smells like Funk then it must be us
If you smellin' Fat Funk then it must be us
If you smellin' something Funky
then you know it got to be nobody other than Apl, Will n' Taboo
Cause you know that if it smells like Funk than it must be us
If you smellin' elephants than it must be us
If you smellin' somethin Funky
then you know it got to be nobody other than Apl, Will n' Taboo
Cause you know that if it smells like Funk then it must be us
If you smellin' elephant shit then it must be us.

Go give it a listen, kids, it's worthwhile. Anyway, the point is, I was playing this in the car, and all of a sudden, I see monkey arms in the rearview mirror. At the next stoplight, I turned around and saw Babygirl flinging Dorj around madly and yelling, "Dorj dancing!" I started laughing and said, "Hey, can Dorj raise the roof?" and showed her how - I'll be damned if she didn't make that monkey dance better than your most painted-up club kid. Then she screamed "DORJ CRAZY!" I had to agree. That monkey has mad dancing skillz.

Killing Time

Well, even I take a day off now and then!

But I am currently sitting in the service department of my Toyota dealership, waiting for them to balance my tires, replace a hubcap, and do the standard 10,000-mile service.

I thought smart to bring my laptop with me, since it seems a lot of places have free wireless these days. Of course, many don't. I can't tell you the level of my disappointment when I discovered about a year ago for the first time that Starbucks doesn't let you get wireless for free. In my opinion, paying $5 for a cup of overroasted coffee + $10 for a day of free wireless that you couldn't possibly get your money's worth of unless you bought eight or nine $5 cups of coffee = getting fucked up the ass, big-time.

But my Toyota dealership seems to know that the way to ease the pain of what might end up turning into some sort of wildly-expensive axle problem (can you all tell from the preceeding paragraphs that I might have hydroplaned the other day and might have slid into a curb and might have done some damage to my brand-new car that causes it to shudder orgasmically when I go over 60 miles an hour?).

There's no point to this post other than to say a)waiting sucks, b)Babygirl is cracking me up because she's wearing a construction paper hat she made at daycare that has tissue paper roses and horseshoes all over it to celebrate the derby, and c)you might get really excited when you see that a business has free wireless until you realize you've already investigated the entire internet.

Every Day I Get a Little Older

In our office this week, we have a huge variety of free food for reasons I won't go into. But every morning, there's everything from every kind of Little Debbie you can imagine to bananas to nacho cheese and Fritos. Of course, I steer clear of anything even remotely resembling healthy.

We do this twice and year, and every time I've said that I have limitations, at least in the morning, as to what I'll eat. In my mind, I just can't eat honey mustard pretzel bits while I drink my Javanilla coffee - it seems wrong, somehow.

Today, though, I broke through that barrier. I have eaten not only my body weight in miniature Reese's cups this morning, I have also enjoyed some barbeque potato chips and more hummus than anyone should really eat before 10 am. And I did it all while chugging my coffee.

I'm worried that this is just one step away from drinking decaf while eating a cheeseburger at 4 pm as part of the early-bird special at Friday's. Next thing you know I'll be lamenting liver spots on my hands and comparison shopping adult undergarments.

I Can't Decide If This Makes Me Old or Smart or Both

In spite of my recent slate of gay-themed Netflix choices, I also recently got "Meet the Fockers."

Two nights ago, I watched about 45 minutes of it and turned it off. Last night,I briefly contemplated finishing it and thought, "Nah, not interested," and opted instead for a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" episode I've probably seen 15 times. I sent "Meet the Fockers" back to Netflixland today without having finished it, which is honestly a rare thing for me. There have only been two other times I've not finished a movie I've started. One was "Rushmore" which I rented in 1999 and was too blitzed out of my mind on shots of Southern Comfort to appreciate the snark. The other was "In the Bedroom" which I sat through the first 30 minutes of in the theater and then left because I was so bored I thought I was going to die and I could anticipate every single thing that was about to go down.

But "Meet the Fockers" makes more sense for me to dislike. In fact, I'm not really sure why I put it on my list in the first place. I hate movies where the humor is all based around situations that go from bad to worse. Train-wreck comedies, I guess I could call them. And I don't find anything funny about train-wrecks, even if the train has a name that sounds remarkably like a profanity.

I appreciate juvenile humor, sex humor, fart jokes, and even a good kick in the nuts now and then in my movies. I just can't find the humor in Ben Stiller looking uncomfortable for two hours solid.

Who Knew I Would Come Clean So Quickly?

A comment on yesterday’s post suggested I bring a “friend” into the shower with me to while away the long minutes as I wait for my purple shampoo to not do its job.

If I put the issue of my general clumsiness aside for just a moment (my lack of coordination is spectacular and honestly, I really should have both an ambulance on speed dial on my phone and the phone itself in the shower with me if I’m going to do a little self-entertaining) (come to think of it, there might be big money to be made with a combination waterproof-cell-phone-or-walkie-talkie-vibrator)(even bigger money to be made if it can be a cute hot pink color), she has a point.

However, my current equipment isn’t suitable to get wet. Not wet from water, anyway. Hey, I had to clarify! And it’s not. I don’t want to die from vaginal electrocution. What a way to go.

Apparently, though, there’s a wide variety of waterproof stuff that’s more than workable.

But then I got caught up on this same site in a whole section full of anthropomorphic yet cartoon-y bath toys. If your standard penis-shaped vibrator isn’t good enough for you, you can get your groove thang on, March of the Penguins style.

I don’t know about you, but if I was turned on by a rubber ducky going to town on me, I might not be the kind of person who has boredom issues in the shower in the first place.