oh blogger, my blogger

Oh, how I've missed my blog. Just got back from a very busy but very productive trip to MLA. I kinda wish tonight was a day other than New Year's Eve so I could sit around on my butt and eat bon bons. But no, I must go out and socialize. *sigh* It's not easy being me.

I've missed my blog. I've missed my dog. I've missed my [insert another word that rhymes with blog and dog].

Best wishes to all for a happy beginning to a happy new year.

Merry Christmas

happiness, peace, joy, and all that good stuff are my wishes for you this year.

May Santa fill your stocking with fun goodies.

today we're 2 years old

Belly with Santa 2006
Originally uploaded by aerobil.

Happy birthday to my blog. Hard to believe two years have gone by since I began this thang.

Merry Christmas from the girl and me. She gave me permission to upload her Santa picture--primarily so she could get sympathy for a) the stunned look on her face, which is the result of crazy people trying to get her to look at the camera; and b) the stitches on her front right leg. Poor baby girl.

Also note the decorations on the Christmas tree next to Santa: all decked out for the doggies.

oh. my.

From January's Harper's Index:

Amount a Rhode Island man recieved in a settlement last year over his faulty penile implant: $400,000

Number of years he has had an erection: 10

resolved

I am never again going to purchase picture frames that have ANY kind of sticker on them--I will splurge for the next higher-priced frame. Getting the gummy stuff off the glass is taking every last nerve I have.

Sigh.

Bah freakin' humbug.

12 beers of Christmas

IMG_0678
Originally uploaded by aerobil.

I can't claim to have tried all 12 beers, but the five or six that I did try were yummers. They had names like Rudolph's Revenge and Bah Humbug.

The event was sponsored by the Humane Society, so half of the ticket price went to them. This makes me happy. Drinking for the doggies, as it were.

In the pic are Nan, me, Kelly, and Sarah. Have I mentioned that the coolest thing about the dog park crew is that we represent five decades and we all get along famously? 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s. But my doggie is the oldest and most wisdomous.

I'm pretty sure Louisa May Alcott never saw this coming

I'm currently reading Little Children, a novel by Tom Perrotta, and I'm absolutely loving it. I did what I considered a very grown-up thing last week as I was grudgingly sitting down each night to read a book that I wasn't enjoying at all. In fact, it was bugging me. I never dread reading. And I'd begun to dread reading the new book by Jane Hamilton, When Madeline was Young. And I've loved her other books. Forced, this one was. Simply forced. So I just stopped reading about a third of the way through. I NEVER stop reading a book once I've begun it. I still feel that childish sense of obligation to finish whatever books I begin. But I did it. And I've no regrets.

But my point is that I'm LOVING Little Children. On the phone this afternoon with S., I told him as much.

Me: Remember that book I'm reading? I'm LOVING it.

He: What's it called again?

Me: Little Children.

He: Ah yes, the prequel to Little Women.

the handyman can cuz he mixes it with love

Oh, dear readers. The following story will reveal gobs about the exciting weekend entertainment of yours truly and her beau, and it will have you shaking your heads in wonderment at my callous underestimation of my honey's handyman skills. Mayhaps he should be joining the Handyman Club of America after all.

If there's one thing he ain't, S. is not very perceptive when it comes to recognizing when the floors need to be vacuumed. He lives with three dogs, remember. And in his defense, he has been sick with a nasty cold most of the week, so he gets a little bit of leeway there. But last night I couldn't take it anymore. I had to vacuum his place if I was going to be able to relax (Hi, I have issues). He's got one of those ultra-cool vacuum cleaners that doesn't take bags, but instead has a big clear tube so you can see all the shit you're sucking up. I like that. S.'s job is to empty that tube once I've filled it up. Division of labor, as it were.

I'm vacuuming the living room, the dining room, the hallway. I switch outlets and move into the bedroom. And as I'm vacuuming the bedroom, the vacuum just stops on me. The plug hasn't come out of the wall. It's just stopped.

"Honey! The vacuum died!"

Here comes the handyman to the rescue.

Oh. My. God. Watching him "fix" this vacuum was painful, my friends. Painful. He takes out his little 14-part tool/knife from his pocket and proceeds to unscrew a phillips head screw with a flat-edged part of that tool. When I can no longer take the excruciatingly slow progress he's making, I offer to get him a phillips head. He succeeds in unscrewing this screw THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY PART THAT MIGHT BE BROKEN. Huh, he says, and screws it back in. He then turns to the back of the vacuum and unscrews--are you ready for this--the piece that holds the attachments on.

Me: That holds the attachments on. What's that got to do with it not working?

He: Doesn't matter. Real handymen just take things apart.

He continues to unscrew non-mechanical parts until he's down to just the bottom part, you know, the part that actually picks shit up. He flips that part over, pushes some things around, and says, with an air of dignified certainty, "My diagnosis is.....it's broken."

I leave the room while he works on putting the thing back together, certain that there's no way on god's green earth that he's actually done anything. In fact, that's what I keep saying, "You didn't even DO anything."

A few minutes later I'm in the living room and he calls to me to say it's back together.

Me: But you didn't even DO anything.

He: But if it works, you can never make fun of me again.

Friends, it turned on. He removed the attachments and the damn thing turned on. He is a handyman.

He: You have to blog about this! And you have to say how much you were making fun of me.

Indeed, I was making fun. I was having fun making fun. This is what we do on a Friday night, and we're not even that old. We take the vacuum cleaner apart, put it back together, and we're suddenly so much closer for it. Ah, love.

SOUP-erheroes!

Lately S. and I have been brainstorming who we and all the characters in our lives would be if we were superheroes. This originated, I think, from a game we played on a recent game night with friends. At the time, the question was for Chris, who we all decided would be PERSNICKETY MAN!

S. is suffering from a nasty cold, so the mucous, it is aplenty. Last night on the way into Target, he suggested that perhaps his superhero name should be MUCOUS MAN!, but I revised that to be MUCOUS MEMBRANE MAN! because I love the words mucous and membrane together. Triple M, as it were. When he's not sick, I think we came up with KLUTZO MAN!

Scully the sausage dog who can clear a room in two seconds flat would be, of course, FLATULENT DOG! Annabelle, the sweet sweet stinkbomb, would be PATHETIC-FACE DOG! Mulder the beagle would be HUNGRY DOG! Kylie the sweet but dumb border collie mix would be KLUTZO DOG! I would like to think I could be SUPER SCRABBLE GIRL!, but I think S. had me pegged more as BELCHING GIRL! This, I believe, is for my three readers to decide.

Imagine the influence all six of us would have if we put our superpowers together. Astounding.

huh?

setting: the dog park

time: today, 3:30ish

Sahara: I read your blog. Are you still sad?

Me: Nah, I'm okay. It comes and goes with this gloomy weather. And the end of the semester.

Pause.

Me: But what the hell, I haven't had anything to blog about. Why don't I have anything to write about?

Nan: Well, maybe it's cuz you're finally happy.

Me: Yeah, I've got nothing to bitch about.

Fat, boring, and happy. Here I am.

a newly recurring dream

I keep dreaming lately that I've accepted a job at my undergrad institution, Clark University, and I'm in search of some of the professors I had who affected me most. I can't find them, but I keep looking, and meanwhile I've got to go teach my first class, which is in a building so far away that I have to take my car and then a bus. I get there a half hour late, but the students are generous enough to have stayed and waited for me--probably because they heard I was new and they felt bad about how far away I had to traipse to get to class.

I always wake up exhausted from this dream. Last night I slept like a dead person with fourteen thousand blankets on top of me, so heavy I couldn't move.

Been feeling sad lately. Probably why I haven't been blogging as much. Nothing really to say. One bright spot was holding a newborn baby on Saturday. My friends Bill and Cherlyn had a baby girl, Brooklyn, on Dec. 7. Beautiful, beautiful girl. It's moments like those that make me want one. Just for a little while.

I'm thinking of charging admission to this show

Belly's wall of pathos
Originally uploaded by aerobil.

Here's the girl in all her pathos. The wall of shame, as it were. I decided recently that there are just too many photos of her with that PA-THE-TIC look on her face that I had to put a collage together.

She had her stitches removed today and was fine until the last one, during which she would've bitten Linda's hand off were it not for the beauty of the muzzle (there's a photo I don't yet have).

As I was leaving the vet today, I was wondering if I should be giving the vet a Christmas gift--a card, some cookies, SOMEthing.

When I asked Sarah about this tonight, she said, and I quote, "your vet?"

I'm thinking that's a yes.

here's one I've never heard before

The guy at the video store last night told me that I look like Toni Collette.

coworker: Oh, I love her. She's such a great actress.

me, to the original guy: I, on the other hand, am not.

coworker, looking at me: Yeah, I can totally see it.

Flattered, indeed. Not convinced, but flattered nonetheless.

so, you're an English teacher...

At my doctor's appointment on Thursday, the following conversation took place:

he: What do you teach at ISU?

me: English

he: So you're one of the cool people.

me: That's the first time I've ever gotten that response.

he: English professors are always the cool ones.

me: Usually, it's "oh, I'd better watch my grammar."

he: What's your specialty?

me: Rhetoric and composition.

he: Okay, so... does that mean you study prose? Or poetry?

I can't remember what exactly I said, but I said something about teaching writing and about creative nonfiction and the personal essay....

he: So you work for the Bush administration?

me: Why would I work for the...

he: Creative nonfiction...

me: My doctor just made a funny. I'll have to share this one.

he: I just made a funny with an English teacher. You can get dressed now.

for Nels

here she looks kinda like one of Santa's elves
Originally uploaded by aerobil.

Here she is in all her black doggie glory, complete with her camoflauge boots (bet you can't see them, cuz well, they're camoflauged).

answer: nothing

question: what's cuter than a black puppy dawg running in fresh snow?

ISU is closed today for the first time in I-don't-know-how-many-years. State Farm, the city's biggest employer, is closed today. All the schools are closed, and Annabelle's been playing like a kid on a snow day in the back yard. The snow brings out the puppy in her.

Happy.