Scary Pictures

I think these pictures speak for themselves. There is no rehabilitation for this.

There's a Perfectly Good Reason Why This Jack-O-Lantern Is In My Bathroom.

It's the only room in the house without a window, that's why. You know, to provide the proper contrast for the photo. And I needed to update you on my pumpin carving choice without delay. It's all perfectly logical.

Although logic would dictate that I then remove the pirate pumpkin from the bathroom, and I haven't actually done that yet.

I kind of like it there now.

You Need This.

You need a picture of Annie in her new butterfly Halloween costume, don't you? Just to get you through the day. I dig you.
I haven't convinced Scotty to model his "Lil Devil" costume yet. He will need more convincing. But when he does, you will be needing that, too, I'm pretty sure.

In Case You Were Worried

You'll be happy to know that I got Drew out of his sick bed today and drove him to the nearest gas station to fill my tank.

A good call, because my gas tank was dry. Too dry to make it to Oregon. I would have been one of those losers on the side of the 5, hoofing it to the nearest gas station. Of course, filling my tank would be less scary after a fiasco like that. Or more scary.

Hard to say.

Anyway, you can continue with your regularly scheduled anxieties in progress.

Drew will not be accompanying you on the Tilt-A-Whirl today.

Drew has come down with a rather serious and inconvenient inner ear disturbance that has left him flat on his back with his eyes screwed shut.

He started barfing in earnest yesterday evening while at work. More specifically, at a car fire.

I got to drive him, dizzy, nauseous, barfy, and moaning, (he was moaning, not me), to the ER. He was so dizzy he couldn't walk straight, so I got to push him around in a wheelchair, while trying not to make it, you know, move, because motion made him vomit.

In the ER, he got a 12-lead, an IV, valium, and anti-nausea pills. A whole bag of IV fluid. Drip, drip, drip. I read a six-month-old copy of Glamour. If you could see me, you would know how much I might thoroughly enjoy reading something entitled "Glamour." But now I know how to keep my nails looking nice longer between manicures. There was a TV in the room, but it was behind me, and showing some true-crime show about how bad it is to kill somebody.

This morning I used my last eyedropper full of gas to fill Drew's new prescriptions for Valium and two anti-nausea pills. One of the anti-nausea pills is some high-powered super-pill they give to chemo patients that cost $295.00 to the uninsured. $295.00! Good God! What do the uninsured do?

It's frightening. Gosh, wouldn't have fixing the national health care insurance crisis have been a super way to spend hundreds of billions of dollars, instead of invading a country with a lame-ass dictator with no credible ties to terrorism and no WMDs?

Ah, well. Live and learn. Or invade and learn. Or invade and dissemble. Whatevs.

Now I have no gas and my gas putter-inner is out of commission. This is serious because my gas-putting-in-phobia is worse than my telephone-o-phobia.

If I'm in luck, I have enough to get to the border so that I can get it filled by professionals in Oregon (thank you, Oregon, and your archaic gas-filling-by-professionals-only laws!).

More phobias later.

Elephants Are People Too.

We are producing psycho elephants.

Just thought you would want to know. You might have to sign in or create an account to read this but it won't hurt and it will be free.

In Which I Visit My Good Friend, Craig Ferguson

While we were in LA recently, we popped in on a buddy of mine, Craig Ferguson. You know Craig, he's got that cute, silly-but-thinky late night show on CBS.

Craig and I, we're like this (finger thing). Whenever I'm in town, I stop by his show. I've got a VIP card I could show you if you think I'm fibbing.

Of course, just to keep it real, we line up with all the other audience members on the benches outside the CBS "Television City" studios, and you know, go through the metal detector and everything. They wave me through even though I set it off like I'm smuggling Emmys under my blouse.

Then the littlest producer comes out and begs us to pretend that we are actually several more people because they are shy a few audience members tonight. He says that his job is on the line, and we are the only ones who can keep him from ending up as an extra on The Price Is Right.

Did I tell you that for several blocks around the CBS studios, tourists walk around with their The Price Is Right name tags on their shirts? They don't take them off after the show. They just keep them on like suburban middle schoolers with ski lift tickets hanging from their coats. I find it endearing.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Saving Craig Ferguson's littlest producer from failure.

After we assure him that we will take up the slack, the audience warmer-upper, a fellow by the name of, oh, I forget. Something about Pudgy. Or Tubby. Let's call him Derwent.

So Derwent comes out and tells us some rather elderly jokes, but he seems like a nice enough fellow, and we don't want to make him feel bad, so we laugh heartily. When Derwent is satisfied that we indeed have the mechanics of laughter down pat, we allow ourselves to be herded into the studio. This is where I always baaa quietly to myself. This is also where another producer eyes each audience unit and seats them according to beauty. That's why we were in the third row. Hmmmm.... They probably just figured that in the front row, we would be too distracting.

Derwent comes back to remind us to be loud and laugh heartily. We agree.

Guests that night were: Tim Daly, hoping we would watch his show The Nine. Not likely. David Cross, hoping we would watch his Comedy Central show Freakshow. More likely. And Billy Bragg, who sung a song about stupid people with smart bombs. My kind of rabble rouser.

Craig Ferguson was as funny and Scottish as always, bless his heart. We waved. He nodded. In our general direction. Wouldn't want to be too ostentatious. Lovely. Quite lovely.

We filed out with the riff-raff. I baaaed once more. I was given a VIP card. I plan on having it laminated.

We ended the evening by walking around a Disneyesque shopping center nearby that had its own trolley even though it was no bigger than four square blocks, speakers in the bushes playing Sinatra, and male models posing at the entrance to Abercrombie and Fitch. Apparently abdominal muscles attract shoppers like chocolate attracts, well, fatter shoppers.

Wretched excess makes me wretch. We booked it for the track in South Central, where we felt more at home.

We'll be back, Craig Ferguson! As soon as we can figure out how to do it without having to drive through LA.

I Know I Said No More Boosterism, But Isn't This Pretty?

If I had something more entertaining to say, I would say that instead, but I have tried to stay as quiet as possible today and not move, so that the cold will think I am dead and move on to a new host. Coco the cat has assisted me in this by holding me down.

I fell asleep during the game once, but Dean helpfully called and woke me up so that I could watch the Ducks finish off the Bruins.

Not sorry I missed last week's game against Cal. Heard it was ugly.

No more ugly. More happy! Jump and bump against a yellow O, rampant in a field of green!

Now back to playing dead. The cat is beginning to meow.

Happy Friday the 13th, Scaredy-Cats

I'm not scared. I live with a black cat and she's cross all the time.

Then again, maybe I could have been really lucky if it hadn't been for her.

Damn you, cat!

No wonder I haven't won the lottery!

Are You Happy Now, Fatties? Scoot Over.

Fat loves company. At least that was what I surmised during my younger, thinner years. (Remember those?) Every (female) one I knew who was overweight would look at me with that "oh, she thinks she's so superior" look, eat another cookie, and say something like, "I hate you. You can eat anything and stay so skinny." Then they would smile and their unspoken wish that I would balloon up like a walrus would be so intense it would leak out of their ears.

These days I can only convince myself I am thin by sidling up to an actual walrus. And walruses are hard to come by this far upstream.

Two instances back-to-back have nearly ruined my appetite.

Yesterday, I downloaded the pictures from our LA trip onto the computer, and noticed one of me, which looks like a small head perched on top of a large, shapeless pile of laundry.

Then, this morning, in my cold-drug-addled bleariness, I did not shield myself properly from the sight of my own backside. Oh, the horror.

Something must be done.

Something besides cutting down on food.

Where's a good witch's potion when you need one?

When You Have a Cold, There is No Such Thing as Overmedication

I am conscious on borrowed time, having taken enough Benadryl to end my pain, at least for the next six hours. I made the mistake today of assuming that I could breathe on my own and stopped the near-constant ingestion of elephant-size doses of cold medication.

Then I picked several bushels (if bushels are the size of Home Depot buckets) of grapes from the back yard, washed and de-stemmed them, and began making them into grape jelly until I collapsed in a quivering mass of phlegm, requiring me to put the rest in the fridge for when I am safely tucked back into my cloud of Benadryl, Sudafed, Claritin and Pinot Grigio.

Here's Dean last week in LA at the moment he realized he no longer had The Cold, and had passed it safely on to me. I would post some action photos of the races, but it turns out I'm a lousy action photographer, especially when my son is involved, and people have been landing face down on other people's handle bars all night.

More wisdom later.

Escape from LA

Nothing will make you appreciate your own town and house and hang-outs then spending a week in LA.

More wisdom later.

Whew.

We drove. We rode (some of us). We caught colds (all of us). We kicked ass anyway (I'm taking partial responsibility in successfully fulfilling my job as Dead Weight).

More later after sleep and a few kleenex massacres.

Let's Get Some Shoes

I only wear shoes that rule. In case you were wondering.