Extremely well said.
Fred linked to this this morning, and I don’t know how many of you read his blog, but I’m linking it as well, because it’s very much worth the read: Here’s What Gets Me.
Two paramedics stranded in New Orleans in the wake of hurricane Katrina give their account of self-organisation and abandonment in the disaster zone.
* * *
I went to the dentist yesterday, I don’t think I mentioned that, for my three-month checkup. Because, you’ll remember, I have the mouth of a meth addict and a crack whore combined (how come no one ever calls anyone a meth whore, what with the epidemic meth problems?) and my gums are rotting away from my teeth.
Or I have a touch of periodontal disease just slightly worse than gingivitis. Whatever.
My god, my god, MY GOD, how I hate going to the dentist. Because I always go in there thinking, “Oh, this won’t be bad. A little poking, a little cleaning, I’ll be out in less than half an hour”, and then I get in the chair and she starts with the fucking scraping fucking shit out from my teeth and DIGGING at my gums FOREVER, and at one point she was taking “measurements” of my “gums”, which consisted of taking an extremely sharp dental instrument and jabbing it into the gums along EVERY GODDAMN SINGLE ONE OF MY TEETH.
Now. I don’t know about you, but when someone is jabbing their extremely sharp dental instrument into my gums, my immediate response is anger. Red-hot anger. Grab that fucking instrument and jab it through your eye into your brain, laughing maniacally as I do so anger. But, of course, you can’t kill the dental hygienist because it would be far too obvious who had done it (“She called her 10:30 appointment back, and we never saw her again… Hmmm. I wonder who could have possibly killed her. You think it was a serial killer?”) and I have no intention of spending any more of my life behind bars.
(I shot a man in Texas, just to watch him die.)
So I grabbed the armrests on either side of the chair, and every time she jabbed me with the fucking thing – and the worst part of my mouth is the back of the middle bottom row of my teeth, because there’s a slight overlap there, and apparently crap hides there, and she spends 63 hours scraping the fuck out of the back of those very sensitive teeth and by hour 5 I want her DEAD – I just grabbed the armrests as hard as I could, and when the pain was especially bad, I wiggled my feet and it made me think of the way Mister Boogers wiggles his tail when he’s feeling nervous, and for a brief moment I was amused at myself. Which the hygienist must have seen, because that was right about the time she started jabbing at the most painful, puffy, sensitive gums I have, which are located by the very back teeth on the bottom of my mouth.
I hate her. I really, really hate her. Is it wrong that I wish her a painful death?
* * *
I talked to my brother for a while yesterday morning (before the painful dentist trip. Oh. Did I mention I had a trip to the dentist and that I HATE THAT FUCKING HYGIENIST WITH MY ENTIRE HEART?) and at one point he said the word “noodledoc”, and it made me laugh like the goon I am.
A funny man, that brother o’ mine.
* * *
I know. I know, I know. I know y’all want us to keep Rambo and Jodie, and my god, the little fuckers have got me wrapped around their little paws, and I’m sorry to disappoint, but we cannot keep them. Which is not to say that I’m going to give them up one moment before I absolutely have to, but they really are going to be put up for adoption, and let me tell you why.
Right now, in our situation, we can totally afford the vet bills. But the thing is that at some point in the future, Fred’s job may possibly disappear – he does contract work for a government agency, and that’s a somewhat iffy position to be in – and at that point, we’ll have at least two cats who are on the elderly side, and we just flat-out won’t be able to afford to pay the thousands we currently pay most years when they need emergency surgery or trips to the emergency vet or whatever pops up.
However, I’ll continue playing the lottery in hopes that we strike it rich and at that point, with millions of dollars in our pockets? The sky is the limit, baby! We’ll not only adopt two hundred cute little squeaking kittens, we’ll also hire someone to clean up after them. Whoo!
* * *
Someone – or multiple someones – did multiple site searches on “Giveaway page” over the last few days. It’s
here, and you can always find it in the sidebar, under the “other” heading.
As an FYI regarding the Giveaway page, I changed the notify list… last week? The week before? I sent out an email to the old notify list letting everyone know and where to join the new list(s), but from the email I’m getting, not everyone got that email. So if you’re interested, you can join the Google Groups notify
here, or the Yahoogroups notify
here.
* * *
Email sent at 10:30 last night:
From: Me
To: Fred (at work)
Subject: YES! YES! YES!
I almost had an orgasm when I saw this:
http://www.arantius.com/article/arantius/gmail+delete+button/
MY DREAMS HAVE COME TRUE!
(Censored dirty talk)
And you think YOUR life is exciting.
I can’t help it, I think the fact that someone wrote code to put a “delete” button in Gmail, when I’ve been bitching about wanting one for as long as I’ve had a Gmail account is just SO FUCKING COOL.
I feel faint from the thrill. And I’m almost not kidding.
(Thanks to
Wil Wheaton for the link in his blog. I never would have stumbled across it on my own.)
* * *
I got tagged by
Jolene for this meme. I’ve never been tagged before, so I guess I’m honor-bound to do it, huh? I’m doing it here instead of at my LiveJournal, ’cause I don’t use my LiveJournal at all.
id·i·o·syn·cra·sy
1. A structural or behavioral characteristic peculiar to an individual or group.
2. A physiological or temperamental peculiarity.
3. An unusual individual reaction to food or a drug.
List five of your own idiosyncrasies and then tag five friends to do the same.
1. My feet are the temperature gauge for the rest of my body. As long as my feet are warm, I’m okay. If my feet are cold, the rest of me is cold. If my feet are hot, the rest of me is hot. At night, if I’m under the covers and hot, I stick a foot out into the cool room, and the rest of me cools down with my foot. If I’m cold, I put my feet under Mister Boogers, and when my feet warm up the rest of me warms up. The first time we went to Gatlinburg and stayed in a hotel room suite, Fred and I slept in the bedroom, which had a balcony overlooking the river. It was (I think) Fall, and the night-time temperature was around 40ºF. We liked to sleep with the door open so we could hear the rushing water I always sleep completely naked, and every night I slept with all of me uncovered except my feet, and I was just fine.
2. I’m a zit-popper. I spend a couple of minutes every morning before I step in the shower, checking my body for zits. If I find one, I pop it. If I don’t, I’m disappointed. I suspect this has something to do with the fact that I didn’t have a zit problem in high school and thus didn’t get my quota of popping done during my youth.
3. I am a copious list-maker, and I never ever cross anything off. A list of who I think should fall off the face of the earth? Yeah, I’ve got that list. A list of what needs to be done, WordPress-wise, to my journal? Yeah, right here. Somewhere. I think I’ve still got a list of sites I want to link to on my “recommended” page around here somewhere. A list I made at least six months ago, and which will continue to float around until such a day comes that I need to clean off my desk and I decide it’s just cluttering up the joint. Need a list made? I’m your gal. Need a list of stuff accomplished? You’d be better off looking elsewhere.
4. If given the chance, I’d communicate with everyone via email and never talk on the phone. Okay, that’s kind of a lie. I have no problem talking on the phone to people I’m related to – I’ve really enjoyed talking to my brother over the past few weeks, and I always enjoy talking to my sister and don’t usually have any problems talking to my parents – but for the most part, I always feel goofy and awkward talking to people I don’t know. I’m getting better, though. Why, yesterday I picked up the phone without even checking Caller ID first! ::gasp!::
5. When I sit and read, I wiggle my feet and move my bottom lip from side to side. That is, I move my feet in unison, pointing them one way and then the other and then the other and back again. At the same time I move my bottom lip to one side and then to the other. Usually in unison with my feet. I imagine that it’s quite strange-looking, but it’s not a conscious thing, and I only ever realize I’m doing it when someone points it out, or a cat attacks my feet.
Let’s see. Who shall I tag to do this? Let me think…
Bonnie,
Jules,
Say,
Rachelle, and
Yvonne. Coming up with people to tag was the hardest part of this whole thing, damnit.
* * *
Nothing new going on with the kittens, though I haven’t let them out of their room yet this morning because I wanted to eat breakfast first without a little kittenhead popping up in the way and scarfing down my scrambled eggs.
You know what Rambo ate the other day? A popcorn kernel. He spotted it and scarfed it up before I could stop him. I was worried it might mess up his digestive system, but I can report that I saw it in the litter box. Ugh.
It’s rough work being a kitten, but someone’s gotta do it.
Mister Boogers’ reaction to giving Rambo a bath.
Jodie, in a high state of dudgeon.
“Brian Harper isn’t quite the highbrow literature I’m accustomed to. Got anything by Sneaky Pie Brown and that woman who’s riding his coattails?”
I love this picture.
Jodie keeps a wary eye on her brudder.
* * *
Previously
2004: No entry.
2003: So basically I paid twice as much for a keyboard as I would have on my own for no good reason, all thanks to that Staples employee, may he rot in hell.
2002: I hope that leaf doesn’t give me a damn yeast infection.
2001: No entry.
2000: I’m not sure what happened next. I believe I blacked out. ]]>