Something blue

Okay...help me out here. I have been seeing this every day on my way to and from work.
A while back, someone spray painted three blue balled penises (peni?) on this building. They were there for several weeks. Then, apparently, someone else (the owner?) decided that they needed to do something about the obscene graffiti and set out to un-vulgarize it. So they got some badly-matching paint and spray painted over the penis heads. JUST the heads.
I have driven past this building dozens of times. Each time I do, I wonder anew at what exactly they were thinking. Not whoever originally defaced the building...but whoever thought they were making it better by trying to erase just the heads.
Thoughts, anyone?

Passionate Goddess

Despite the title, this is a pretty mundane post...but something I wanted to share.  I just had my afternoon snack, and I am, well, perplexed is the best word I can come up with to describe myself right now.  I have long been a fan of the Chobani brand yogurt.  To me, it's the best Greek yogurt out there.  And I could have SWORN I had tried all of the flavors at least once.  And you know, you gravitate to the ones you really like (the blood orange is fantastic), but then sometimes you mix 'em up with ones that aren't your favorite, but you like them well enough & they're good for a change (peach or pineapple).

I thought for sure I'd tried the Passion Fruit before and just relegated it to the back of my preferences...so the last time I bought yogurt, I decided to get it again (I thought, but apparently it was for the first time) for a change of pace from the blueberry/orange/vanilla-rut I had sort of fallen into the last few weeks.  However, once I had ripped off the foil seal & started to stir the fruit up from the bottom, I realized that I had never, ever, ever had this yogurt before in my life.

The color of the Passion Fruit puree was one of the most unappealing things I have ever seen in my life.  (You guys may remember from the time I ate goat that yellow/Chartreuse food stuffs aren't really my thing.)  And it had big ole black (bug-looking) seeds in it as well.  I kept stirring, hoping the color would mellow out somewhat and it did, but the black seeds were still a little concerning to me.  I was half tempted to go back to the work 'fridge and see if I had stashed any other flavors in there...but I hate wasting what I'd already opened.  I cautiously sniffed at it and it smelled delightful...so I took a tentative taste...and it was really, really good.  I wasn't a huge fan of the seeds (they don't appear to have a taste of their own and their texture and the way they crunched were just weird) but I ate the whole container even though I'd sometimes come to a pulpy bit where the color was once again pretty evident.  And I just can't say whether I enjoyed my snack or not...thus the whole perplexed thing I mentioned.  Also, I know I have to buy at least one more container of the stuff because I ate this one before I realized I wanted to write about it, and now you're all probably wondering what it looked like.

This whole thing reminds me of something my sister used to do when we were kids.  Do you guys remember Green Goddess salad dressing?  It was made by Seven Seas and it was all my mother used to buy.  I had no problem eating it on salads...but my sister used to get it and stir it up into her mashed potatoes.  Below is a picture I found of WishBone's Green Goddess.  Like I said, we always bought Seven Seas, but the WishBone ad gives you an adequate idea of the color:

And folks...mashed potatoes should NOT look like they'd glow in the dark.  It was a constant source of meal-time disharmony (Mom was a big fan of whipping out the Hungry Jack potato flakes for a quick side dish to any meal).  Since the dressing has sour cream, chives and black pepper in its ingredients, it probably does go okay with potatoes palate-wise.  I just never could stomach the color.  It was just WRONG and half the time, my sister was doing it just to annoy me (she was 22 months my junior...PERFECT age for annoying). I finally had to admit it was my own hangup after my mother insisted we perform a little experiment...she made up some mashed potatoes and put some green food coloring in one batch of them.  Blind folded, I couldn't tell the difference between them, but when I could see...I swore the green ones tasted funny.
Now, I don't have a problem with green things that are supposed to be green (broccoli, bell peppers, granny smith apples).  It's the things that are green that shouldn't be.  Green Eggs and Ham used to make me gag if I actually started thinking about it...once when the daughter was in elementary school, they had a Dr. Seuss Day and served them eggs and ham that had been treated with green food coloring.  Child wouldn't touch it...which told me that this was probably just one more neurosis I'd passed on down to her.  Ah, well...I'll get back to you guys on a picture of the yogurt!

Mea Culpa

I hate being wrong.  That being said, as much as I hate being wrong, and as much as I really, really, really hate admitting that I'm wrong, the integrity my parents raised me with insists that I set things straight.

Almost four years ago, in August of 2009, we bought a brand new, surprisingly powerful, electric hedge trimmer.  The hubby was delighted.  On a bright, sunny Saturday afternoon, I left him to his own devices and went off to do the weekly grocery shopping.  As I pulled around the front of the house, he was attacking our unruly boxwoods along the front.  His new hedge trimmer was buzzing merrily and was slicing through our (admittidly out-of-control) shrubbery like butter.  I heard a little voice in the back of my mind, "Mayyyyyybe leaving him alone with a power tool is a bad idea." But I drove on anyway...because truth be told, I have always hated those boxwoods and thought, "Let him do his worst."

When I returned home a few hours later, I could see this:

This is the side of the house, not the front.  I didn't know he had intended to trim things on the side of the house!  There aren't any ugly boxwoods on the side of the house!  I moved closer:

and started chanting, "No. Nonononononono..." and moved closer still....

 "Wha???? But, but, but...that's my camellia bush!"
"Jeff!!!" I said (or maybe shrieked is a better word) "What have you done to my beautiful camellia bush???" I turned slightly and looked at the carnage:

and this:

I was nearly in tears as he rounded the corner of the back yard.
"Did you say something?" he asked.
"You killed my camellia bush."
"Naw...it'll be fine."
"Jeff, LOOK AT IT!!! It's NAKED...and what's with the one weird thingie you've left sticking out of the top?"

"Oh, that? I thought I should leave it with some green for when it grows back."

"It's not growing back!  You've murdered it! MURDERED! You're nothing but a big ole BUSH MURDERER!!! God, I hope you can sleep at night."

Then I stomped away, all pissed off.

I kept waiting on that little weird bunch of green leaves at the top of the one branch he had left unmolested to start to wilt and drop.  Then I could be all "A-HA!!! I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU, I TOLD YOU! CAMELLIA KILLER!!" but that never happened.  Now mind you, the next spring, that bush was still pretty butt-ugly, but it wasn't dead.  The following spring, it wasn't quite as hideous and had even more growth to it.  Here is what it looks like today:

Yeah, it's fine.  It actually produced some really nice blossoms this past winter, as it's a winter-blooming bush.

So honey, I'm sorry I called you a Bush Killer (and other things) back in 2009.  You were right and I was wrong.  I even think it could use a LITTLE trimming back...just not quite as much as last time, please.





Wimp

I don't mean to keep harping on about my boobs and the bras that contain them (http://psb1969.blogspot.com/2013/04/my-monday.html), but I have been having some recent issues that were causing me concern.  I don't know how to really describe what was going on...except to say that my left breast started to not feel "right." So I did what any mature 40-something woman would do...I whined about it, mashed around on my own boob 37 times a day and constantly Googled my symptoms.  I don't know when I will ever learn that I can seriously scare the shit out of myself by looking up ANYTHING, even the possible causes of a sore toe, and that WebMD is just going to give me nightmares.  I tried to enlist the help of the hubby... Well, anyone who knows him probably knows how THAT went...

Me: Jeff, feel my boobs and tell me if they feel all right
Jeff: You got it!
Me: NO!!! This is purely for medicinal purposes...does one feel different than the other??
Jeff: Grope
Me: Seriously, do they feel the same as they always have?
Jeff: (Something inappropriate that I can't even repeat here.)
Me: Look, no...stop that.  I am trying to determine if...
Jeff: Mhmmmm....boobies.
Me: God, NEVERMIND, Beavis.

After three week of this...I couldn't really tell if I was REALLY having soreness and tenderness or if I'd caused it myself by obsessively trying to see if there was something wrong.  Finally, flipping through my calendar, I realized that my yearly "lady" exam was coming up in May...and I was gonna have to go to a real live medical professional soon anyway, so I called the office...

"But Marianne!" you say..."Why didn't you just talk to your VERYOWN best friend, Jacquie,  who ALSO happens to be a Gynecologist?  Who even has her own blog : http://anappleadayjq.com. FILLED with "questions you'd ask your best friend if she was a gynecologist"?"
 
Well, I didn't because she's in New Zealand at the moment, I'd have had to email her because I can't call her and I miss her terribly anyway and I was too busy feeling sorry for myself, plus she will tell me to go into the office and get my boobs squished in the mammogram machine and also will probably lecture me about quitting smoking completly even though I only do it a little bit and also that it's probably all connected to the fact that I'm over 40 and these things happen when your boobs get old...but she'd only be telling me these things because she loves me and...Yeah, I have no real good excuse for not contacting her...

But I did finally put my big girl panties on and did the next best thing...I called Jacquie's nurse, who worked me in with my Gyno (they are part of the same practice...J's just on a leave of absence right now) so that she could examine me and see if my left boob was trying to rot off.  My doctor, Dr. C, is a very awesome...she's every bit as blunt as Jacquie and even though I can resent that sometimes, it's truly what I need.  My only complaint (and this is TOTALLY my issue, not hers) is that she is so nice and friendly that she talks to me during exams.  Despite my willingness to talk about my breastular area all over the internets and all...I'm actually quite a modest person.  I would really rather lie on my back and think of England during my exam while some nice soothing Muzak plays in the background and NO ONE talks until everyone is equally clothed.  But Dr. C, in what I am sure is an attempt to make me unclench every muscle in my body, tries to help me forget what's going on by chatting with me...

"What a lovely anklet you have!  I have been looking for one with multicolored beads forEVER..."

"Oh? Anklet?  Oh, the one right there by your right ear??? Gah!"

(That really happened, by the way)

Finally, after I have been poked and prodded, and properly felt up, Dr. C tells me that she didn't feel anything wrong and helps me sit up and asks me again what my concern was exactly as I turn seventeen shades of red because I am sitting there wearing basically a couple of paper towels...

"My left one feels heavier than my right..."

Which is when she lifts one in each hand like she's gauging the weight of a couple of canteloupes (they're melons...get it?) and says, "Meh...not that I can tell." Then she lets me get dressed and sends me over to the lab for a mammogram (I KNEW IT!) and a sonogram. The sonogram wasn't so bad, it was the mammogram I had been dreading...and I was right too...they have a new booby-mashing machine that has a readout WHERE I CAN SEE IT of how much force they were mashing my boobies with...(around 25 lbs)...Seriously, people, this is information I do not need access to...it just freaks my analytical brain out and stresses me more. Twenty-five pounds is a lot of weight for my girls to get mashed by, ya'll.  It's like setting the box of cat litter down on one.

Preliminary reactions from everyone (I got felt up by three different people in one day...yet no one even bought me a drink) are that nothing is wrong except that I have 40+ year old boobs...but I still need to wait for the official results.  In the meantime, I need to quit smoking (Gah!), I have to give up caffeine (gasp! this is even worse than I thought) and I need to go get myself properly fitted for a bra (because I haven't been violated enough, apparently). Looks like my cigarette and Starbucks money is going to be going towards some new bras.  At least Jeff will be pleased.

My Monday

Have you ever had one of those days when one of your under wires decides to make a bid for freedom, and you have to run to the bathroom 17 times while you're trying to work to try to push it down where it belongs because it keeps poking you in your side boob but then it works its way back out 3 minutes later and jabs you again?  Then, when you get in your car at the end of the day to go home you realize that you cannot take it ONE. MORE. SECOND? So you drive with your knees so that you can unfasten your bra and can finally work it out one of your arm holes of your shirt...then you fling the damn thing into the passenger seat and let out a sigh of relief...as you start praying that you won't have a flat tire or anything on the way home because...hey, gravity stopped being your friend about ten years ago, but so-help-you-God there was no way you could have stood having that thing on for the drive home? No???  Must just be me then.

Southern Stuff: Part 2

A couple of posts ago, I discussed deviled egg plates.  I mentioned that the only female in my office that didn't own one was Susan from Wisconsin.  Susan is one of my favorite people in the world, even if she is a Yankee.  Sadly, she is leaving the company we work for (after 20+ years!)  She's taking a new job in Mobile, AL where she will have 10 minute access to the Gulf Coast beaches, so I can't blame her at all.  But I am going to miss the fire out of her.  While we were organizing her going-away luncheon, I decided to put together a list of all of the Southern things that we (me & my office-mates) have taught her.  I'm editing the list to take out some of the inside jokes...but I'm sharing the rest with y'all:

 

Things Susan has learned about being Southern:

• When it’s raining while the sun is shining, it means the devil is beating his wife with a wet dishtowel.
• How to open up a can of whoop-ass. (Note: We suspect that she always knew how to do this...just not what to call it.)
• How to properly pronounce the word for a small stream of water (creek)
• How to make cheese toast. (Seriously...how do you get through childhood without learning how to make cheese toast...WHICH IS NOT AN OPEN-FACED GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH...cheese toast is made in the oven, not on the stove-top)
• What it means when you’re “fixin to” do something.
• What pan-fried chicken is.
• When to bless somebody’s heart (and that it may not be meant as a compliment)
• What “swingers” really means…and that it is not something to talk about in polite company. (Note: this may have been a blonde moment and not a yankee moment...but I'm still including it on the list)
• How much something cost and where you got it. (She really, really hated whenever someone did that..."What a nice pair of earrings." "Why thank you so much.  I got them at Target on sale for $4.40")
• That a “hoe-down” is a fun party. (I mean, even the BEATLES knew that (Rocky Racoon) and they were from England.)
• That when you have a hoe-down, people are going to bring a covered dish, so get over it already. (This really drove her nuts.  She'd throw a party...people would ask her "What can I bring?" and she'd always say "Nothing...I've got it covered." and then we'd show up with something anyway.)
• Whether or not it is proper to put sugar or cheese in grits. (It is not.)
• That “the cat stealing a baby’s breath” is an old-wives’ tale.
• The difference between a hose pipe and a water pipe.
• How to make a tomato sammich (White Bread. sliced tomatoes. Mayo (Preferrably Blue Plate, it's the only time I don't prefer Kraft Mayo). salt and pepper) And a true-blue, honest-to-God-real tomato sammich is made on WonderBread...which you can't even buy anymore.
• What a thing-a-ma-jig is
• The true meaning of “winner-winner, chicken-dinner.”
• What “some count” is…(i.e. that those ribs are some count)
• That GRITS are girls raised in the south…and that she has two of them.
• How to correctly pronounce P-C-Bs. Polychlorinated Biphenyls.  We are a bunch of engineering/lab nerds with Southern accents.  PCB is Pay-Cee-Bays.
• What a freaking tornado warning means! (And not to try to drive yourself through one)! (She drove through the storm that produced the tornados that deccimated Tuscaloosa on April 27, 2011...against stringent advice.)
• The right way to eat pumpkin seeds and scuppernongs. (You don't eat the outer parts of either)
• What it means to “bow up.” (We struggled forever to articulate for her what this meant...this action happens when someone says something that offends someone else: John bowed up at Paul when Paul made fun of his shirt.  The best explanation we could come up with was that of a hissing cat...whose back "bows up" when it hisses.)
• That when you’re sore from too much exercise the next morning you are “Stove up”
• When you twist your ankle, it gets “Swole up”

 

Unfortunately, we never taught her how to appreciate gravy.

After reveiwing the list during her luncheon, we then presented Susan with her very own egg plate to take with her and declared her no-longer a Yankee, but a properly raised Southern Lady.  Bless her heart.

Long time, no blog

Hellllooooo, everyone!

Yes, I know it's been about forever since I had a new blog post.  Sadly, I was shipped off for 2 1/2 weeks to do some proposal writing...so I've been out-of-pocket and snowed under for awhile.  The first two weeks of my sojourn were away in Maryland, with a quickie weekend back home.  AND when I flew in to the B'ham airport for my quick trip home, my car wouldn't start.  It acted like it wanted to start, it was trying to turn over and everything...then...nada.  Note: try not to get mugged or raped in the Birmingham Airport parking garage because those emergency call boxes are bullshit. Bull. Shit. I had to try THREE different ones to find one that worked.  Once I got someone, they took their merry little time getting to me.  I had them try to jump the car off, hoping it was the battery, but it still wouldn't start.

Me: Okay, so I guess I'll have to call someone to tow me.  Do you have any recommendations?

Surly Security Person: Ain't none of 'em 'round here got a tow-truck that can get in the parking garage.

Me: So...

SSP: You'll prolly have to find someone willin' to push your car outta the garage.  And none of the local companies is willin' to do that, lemme tell you.

Me: I can't be the first person to have a car that won't start in this parking garage.

SSP: Probably not.

Me: So what have other people done?

SSP: Hmmm...that's a good question.

Me: Yes, I thought so too.

SSP: I don't rightly know.

Very helpful, asshole.

Luckily, I've been back and forth on the phone with Jeff during most of this, and we have a friend who owns a body shop and a wrecking service.  (insert plug for Skinner's Body Shop here). Jeff called Greg & he got someone to come from Oxford to Birmingham to get me.  It took an hour for them to get there...and sure enough, the flat-bed wrecker wouldn't fit inside the parking garage.  The guy tried himself for another 15-20 minutes to start the car (BTW, did you know Volvos have their batteries in the trunk? True story) but didn't get any better results.  So he pushed my car out of the garage.  Down two and a half levels and out into the open.  Right about then, security showed up (they had totally abandoned the scene while we were getting the car out) & the wrecker guy (I think his name was Bill) asked him where he needed to go to get his truck around.  Turns out you can't do that.  Bill had to bring the wrecker around to the area just outside the tollgate thingy where you give them your ticket & pay for your parking.  Then he came back and pushed my car up an incline and through the toll gate...THEN he was able to load it onto the wrecker. Yay, Bill! (or Bob...his name might have been Bob.  Or maybe Jim.  I should remember this because the guy was my freaking HERO at the time but I had taken a Xanax back when security was "helping" me earlier in order to control my urge to slap someone)  ANYWAY...we rode the hour + drive back to Oxford and dropped the car off at the only auto-repair guy in town that works on Volvos.
God, I hate cars.  I mean, usually, I love my little red zippy-zoom Volvo.  I just hate cars when they won't act right.  It is NEVER convenient to get stranded.  And we rely on the damn things so much.  But like my Granny used to say, "If it has tires or testicles, it will eventually give you trouble." (my Granny actually never said that...my Granny was a saint who would have fainted dead away before she ever said anything like "testicles" outside of medical context.  I think it was Annette who I'm really quoting...but sage advice always sounds more sage-y when you quote your grandmother.  Plus, that shit is TOTALLY true).

I spent the rest of the weekend and following week trying to forget about my broken car (which was actually pretty easy since it stayed at the Volvo-fix-it place the entire time.)  Turns out, there's a switch in the steering column that recognizes the chip in the key fob.  I think it's called an "immobilization thingy."  It's there to keep your car from being stolen in case someone copies your key.  And hey, good job, because that car was going NO WHERE.  Unfortunately, because it was a security whats-it, it took the repair shop several days to get a new one & install it.  While he was at it, the repair guy checked the Volvo's computer log for any other messages and recommended I replace the spark plugs (yeah, I don't know what the flash-to-bang sequence was there either...but whatever).  A mere $417 later, and all is well (and supposedly reliable) again.