Piglet On The Move

Hey! It's a three-fer today! Three posts in one day! Yes, I was awake a lot last night! To be explained below!

When I sign my posts as Piglet, I am thinking more of A. A. Milne's version - a rather timid, smallish animal, with a slight stutter when anxious - not the barnyard version with the curly tail.

Remind me to go on a rant later about how farmers cut their piglets' tails off to cut down on chewed and infected tails caused by cruel overcrowding. Well, I guess that's pretty much the whole rant...

Anyhoo, we are moving this week, and it's a good move, into a wonderful new house. But still, I am reminded not of A. A. Milne's fuzzy Pooh-friend, but of a barnyard piglet squealing for all she's worth because Mr. Farmer needs to move her from Pen A to Pen B. It might be for her own good, but she's gonna squeal her little guts out anyway, cause it frightens and upsets her.

I'm a barnyard piglet this week.

Just a Thought

I loved Gene Wilder's Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

I love, love, love Johnny Depp's (and of course Tim Burton's and Danny Elfman's) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The only suggestion I might have had: consider Bob Newhart in the role(s) of the Oompa-Loompa(s). Just a thought.

A New Experience I Could Have Done Without

I’ve always been headache-prone. Stress, a stuffy nose, an empty stomach, songs sung out of key, you name it and it gives me a headache. But I’ve always felt lucky that I did not have to endure migraines like my mom used to have.

I know I’ve been lucky because when I was growing up, the word Migraine was the Word of Doom. Dad, normally happy to have kids around and tolerant when they acted like the beastly animals that they are, would turn into the most fiercely protective Guardian of the Quiet when Mom’s Migraine struck, and the house would become deathly still. If, for some (now I’m sure totally not) good reason, you had to creep into Mom’s room to ask her a question, her low, raspy whispering Migraine Voice reply would make you feel like the worst kid ever for interrupting her, and vow never to do it again. This is hindsight, of course. You know in reality that guilty feeling lasted all the way until you turned around to tell your sister, “Told you so!” in your shriekiest voice.

I’ve been lucky up until last night. Yesterday, my stomach was inexplicably nauseated. My lunch tasted….tasteless. The sun came out momentarily and blinded me. I skipped dinner. Then I woke up at 2:00 a.m. with an ice cream headache that would not go away. You know the kind that makes you make that screamy ice cream headache noise? I was making that noise, hoping that it might work like some magic incantation that would make the pain go away. Didn’t work. Ibuprofen didn’t touch it. Twice. I finally dug deep into my drawer and found one old Codeine pill that I had squirreled away from the time I hurt my back – thank God. Otherwise, I would have hurled myself, well, I don’t know. Probably, I would have just hurled.

I finally drift off to Codeine land, and this is where it gets weird. Drew gets up and gets ready for work. He comes in to say good bye, and I open my mouth to speak and my mom’s Migraine Voice comes out. Well, it’s come full circle, hasn’t it? It’s my turn. The only thing I can still consider myself lucky about is that I no longer have thoughtless children such as myself at home, trying (kind of) to be quiet.

The Calm Before the Storm, and a Shy Person's Day

We still have a week and a half before we move and I've pretty much packed everything that isn't currently being cooked, written on or worn. Too much time, not enough possessions, I guess. I knew I should have bought more shoes.

I'm afraid I would have to turn in my badge as an American female if anyone knew that (not counting running shoes) I have purchased four pairs of shoes in the last three years. One pair of Dansko professionals (Danish clogs for us former-Birkenstock-wearers-turned-yuppies) per year, and one pair of Dansko sandals. What does that say about me? You could say that it says that I wish I was about an inch and a half taller but don't like to wear heels. You would be right. Or you could say that it means that comfort means more to me now than fashion. You would be right again. I suppose if comfort meant wearing the same vinyl wedgie moccasins that grace the eastside "assisted living estates," I might not feel so above the fashion fray, but luckily for me, it's not that bad. Enough about footwear. (I can hear you snoring.)

Drew has been at work for the last two days. Most non-shy people would never believe what it is like in a shy person's house for two days when she has nothing to do but pack. It's very quiet. The phone doesn't ring because no one owes her a phone call. And I certainly do not call anyone under my own power.

Sometimes I wonder whether this is really a healthy way to live - whether maybe I should seek out more human contact. Maybe. But why should shyness be considered a disorder? If people make me nervous, isn't it better here at home with limited people-contact? Isn't everyone better off, and less medicated? Am I really unhappy here by myself? Not really. I just wonder about it sometimes, and think how most people I know would not be able to handle more than a day of my quiet life...

Now I'm going to blow your mind. I was a cheerleader in high school and considered a huge ham whenever I had an audience. But then again, "off stage," my nickname was "Mouse." Well, actually "Jaundice Iguana Mouse," but that's another story, and I'm not sure I ever knew how it went. I can understand the "Jaundice" part, because it sounds like "Janice," but where did "Iguana" come from? I don't know. I'm not normally green or scaly. Maybe we have similar chins. You would have to ask Marcie Kesey. It was her idea.

What Does It Mean?

What Does It Mean?

For the longest time, I thought John Mayer was singing about "waiting for my fears to dry" in his song Bigger Than My Body when he is actually waiting for his fuse to dry, which makes a little more sense, but is a little less satisfying to me....

What Does It Mean?

Last might I dreamed about falling asleep while my pet owl slept on my chest. I had a pet monkey too, which woke us up by jumping on the owl.

What Does It Mean?

Why does it seem so much more fascinating and urgent to compile a list of one's Top Ten of All Time songs in the evening after a few drinks then it is the next morning? Okay, I threw that one in to give you an easy one...

Don't you hate it when your ludicrous jokes become reality?

Worst case:
I actually said before Hurricane Rita: gosh, wouldn't it be awful if Houston got hit with a hurricane and they had to evacuate the Astrodome? Whooo, that would be bad....

Almost as bad:
Okay, when women started blindly wearing "capri" pants (imagine the finger gesture for quotes - it works better in this case), even though "capri" pants make virtually everyone look fatter and shorter than they already are, just because some "fashion" magazine (again with the finger quotes) told them they were some kind of "must have" (aaaugh, don't get me started! oops, I guess I've started...), I made a joke about how the next thing they'll have women wearing are some of those "gaucho" pants (finger gesture with accompanying gagging gesture) that were roundly criticized the first time around (in the late 70s for you youngsters) as being the most awful, unflattering, intentionally worn garment since the Elizabethan age of pizza pan-sized pleated collars. And what did I see this morning in the newspaper ads for the local department store? Gaucho pants! I would laugh if I weren't crying. First Bush, now gaucho pants. This never would have happened under a Democratic administration.

Sorry about the parentheses, but they were unavoidable.