Grrrr

They didn't need a full bladder.

I'll say it again. THEY DIDN'T NEED A FULL BLADDER! I sat in the waiting room for 45 minutes in agony, until I couldn't take it anymore. I asked the nurse behind the counter approximately how long the ultrasound list (I was 6th) was going to take. "She's really behind today."

Hmm.

"Where's the bathroom?"

So I unloaded - and it took forever. I literally peed like a racehorse. And then I drank like one (do horses drink a lot? Maybe after a race...). I had my bottle of Fiji. I drained the bottle of Fiji.
An aside: Though I don't like water, I do adore me a Fiji bottle. The squareness is so chic.

So started the cycle again. Why is it that the second filling of the bladder happens so much faster than the first? It's the whole "breaking the seal" theory when you're drinking beer. Not twenty minutes later I was in the same position. Damn these low-waisted capris! The were pushing right where I didn't need them to when I was sitting.

Mercifully, Crystal, the ultrasound lady, called my name. I cautiously got up, so as not to pee my pants, and followed her, knees kept close together, to what I thought was the exam room.

Wrong.

She guided me to the bathroom on the other side of the hall and said, "I need you to empty your bladder." She must have seen the surprise on my face because she added, "Oh - you don't need to give me a sample...you can just let it all go."

WHAT!??!

I later learned that the water was not for the magnifying water balloon effect that I though was needed for the sonic waves to do their magic. She simply wanted my organs to be well hydrated.

Next time they should clarify that to drink and pee, drink and pee, drink and pee is okay.

ps - I'm skipping the wine with dinner tonight. I've had enough liquid for the week. I'll maybe start with a Coke on Sunday afternoon.

pps - I'm having residual voiding issues. I have to pee - again! This is tiring. Honestly, how do you water-drinking people do it?

Already Drowning

Okay, so I'm off to do the first of many babydom tests. Today is progesterone blood sample and ultrasound day. I have to drink about a gallon of water for "optimal sonic viewing." For those of you who know me (aka Camelgirl) you know what an ordeal this is for me For those who don't, I don't like water. I don't drink it. It is a waste of time. My liquid consumption during an average day is a swag of juice in the morning - from the carton - and two coffees at my desk. Okay maybe three. Then I'll have a coke or glass of wine with dinner. And that's considered a good day.

It's 9:20 and I've already had two large beer glasses of lemon-flavoured water because I just can't stomach it plain. This is going to be agony. I can't wait to pee and stop drinking this swill.

A Quick Cut and Paste Email String...

Me:

How would you feel about going to Baltimore for the conference in June? I'm ovulating that week. Guh.
cK:
I could go to Baltimore.
Me:

Did I forget to tell you that the cat is out of the preggie-bag? I had to tell E and the Rents since I will be missing scads of work for tests and such - thanks for looking out though - you're a peach.
cK:
Wait a minute. You're not going to go to one of those labs at which they put seven or eight pregnant eggs in you, are you? I can handle two, but if you wind up on the Today show....
Me:

Hold on there Sailor. We're just going to go with an order of blood tests with a side of Ultrasound tomorrow. We'll go from there.
cK:
Blood and sonic guts! Sounds like a good time.
Me:
Wow - sonic guts - that's blog worthy.

For Hulles

Less bitching, more Saturday morning happiness, because it makes you happy Hulles.

Things that made me smile:

• When shopping at 8:45 am for curtain tension rods, Walmart greeted me this morning with a Frito-Lay Arc de Triomphe. Stacked boxes and bags of Doritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, and Lay's potato chips welcomed me to the wonders of Walmart.
• 80's theme on the radio - sang along to Human League (Fascination), J.Geils Band (Angel is a Centerfold) and The Go-Gos (Head Over Heels). A cop saw me boppin' in my car and he smiled at me. Even the Popo was happy this morning!
• The best thing of all was when I was walking into Publix to pick up cat food for the Mank. A man, he was 65 if he was a day, was dressed in board shorts, a short-sleeved tropical button down and a Panama Jack hat. He was running out of the grocery store at full speed with his cart and as soon as he hit the pavement, he hopped on the back of his cart and stuck his tongue out in delight. He looked like a 4-year-old coasting all the way to his car. It was awesome.

I Am Such a Reality Show Whore

It is on like Ray Dawn Chong.

So You Think You Can Dance has immediately warmed up my world where American Idol left me cold and barren. Shoobeedoobeedoobeedance!

Thursday night has officially become couch potato night. My entertaining hour of crazy dancers is to be followed by On The Lot - from one viewing, not a bad show...we shall see. I also hear Hell's Kitchen is making a return (Monday, June 4th, be there or be square).

Performing For You Tonight Ladies and Gentlemen, The Laugh Factory Is Proud To Present ...Carrot Bottom!!!

My younger brother Lexi sent this to me today:

Found this in my lunch bag today but just couldn't bring myself to eat it....had to share. Think GoldenPalace.com would buy this off me on e-bay?



The palour offends me the most I think. They look like once badly sunburned and now peeling Barbie legs (complete with anatomically not correct crotch).

Okay, So Not Really

I'm getting used to living under my hair. It's not quite so shocking when I wake up in the morning now. I'm still uneasy about standing under fluorescent lights.

Not really platinum - but a hell of a lot blonder than I've been in a long time. I'm going back tonight to have a section of it redone - I have a brown patch on my right temple (hence the camera angle) that was neglected in the highlighting process. It kind of makes that side of my head look like I have the mange.



Wow - my desk is a shambles...

Now I Have an Excuse to be Stupid

I'm blonde again...I just spent two hours getting my hair separated, painted and foiled, and I'm not quite sure if I'm loving it. I think she mistook my request to be less yellow and more ashy to mean, "make me platinum!!"

Ray said it looks like I have wig hair. Not a good thing to tell a woman who is on the fence about her $120 purchase (and can't go back to the store for a return). He said he meant that I went away brown and came back completely different - like I had put on a wig. I'm really touchy about the whole hair thing because, well...I'm all about my hair. My hair and my ass - but tonight mostly about my hair. Saying that I look like I have a wig on is bad. But I forgive him. He knows not what he says.

He goes to a barber.

Thaisday

Okay, so Thaiday Friday came a day early. I have nothing to say except that it was yummy and not nearly as spicy as expected. Maybe I'm losing my touch.

As promised, here is my riff off H's Meme:

1) My nails are as hard as, well, nails. I got them from my dad - his nails are as hard as Desperate Dan's. I can't even bend my nails. I have to trim them often because I can't type with them - I keep hitting the key above the intended one. My mom has crap nails, they flake and bend regularly. Except when she was on chemo...strangely, they became Desperate Dan-like during those months. It was really the only good thing about shooting poison into her body every two weeks. That, and it killed the cancer cells.
2) I played Sitting Bull's young daughter in the Pinawa Players production of Annie Get Your Gun. I was about 6 or 7 and I sat on an enormous drum, had no lines and did a little dancing. I loved my costume, it was fake suede and I helped my mom paint it a few nights before dress rehearsal. I wore a feather in my headband. Simplicity. It was beautiful.
3) I have broken my left thumb joint and my left big toe joint (well, chipped really). The thumb came from a too large catcher's mitt in my softball days. The inside loop caught my thumb while I was tagging a girl coming in from third base. She ended up being out, as was my thumb joint when I removed it (sideways) from my glove. It was determined that the doctor broke it when he tried to jam it back into place. I had a cast for 6 weeks. It was itchy and I scratched it by shoving a knitting needle between the cast and my poor, poor skin. The toe was another ordeal. I got my first official job in a ballet company. My (stupid) (then) boyfriend was spotting my handstand roll-downs we had to perform for May O'Donnell's modern ballet. He decided I was doing so well that he stopped spotting me...and I went ass over tea kettle and landed square on the top of my left big toe. A piece of bone chipped off in there somewhere and they couldn't find it for weeks. It took forever to heal and I missed half of the fall season. He left for NY in the middle of October that year, I stayed for 12 more years.
4) I have owned two cars n my lifetime. Both I paid for in cash. Agnes was my first. I named her after the lady who sold her to me. She looked exactly like Agnes DiPesto from Moonlighting. She was a Toyota Corolla - the car, not the lady. She had a cat who had lost the use of its back legs and she dragged herself around in a kitty carriage. The cat, not the lady. My second car was and still is a Honda Accord. Ray calls it my ghetto car (just because he has a zippy little Mini Cooper - which I covet!). I love my car - it corners like a dream.
5) Not a finicky eater at all. I'll pretty much eat anything. There are a few things I don't care for, however. Hot cooked fruit is one of them and I am too lazy to prepare fresh fruit. All that peeling and washing and cutting. Plus, fruit has to be kept in the fridge here in Florida, and my sensitive teeth are just not down with that.
6) I sink in the water. I can swim, but with no stamina. If I fell off a boat, I'd be literally Dead in the Water. I've almost drowned three times, but apparently, I was born with "the cap" - I guess that basically means I came out with a placenta hat, and have been told that the old wives tale says I'll never die from drowning.
7) I've lived on two oceans, and I invite H to come visit and see Florida's portion of ocean for her first time.
8) My brain is ambidextrous. I have equal parts creative right brain and logical left brain. It's my Mom/Dad Creative/Logical Yin/Yang. I'm also a Libra. I like balance.

The Flaming Lips

Around the World in 80 Days and tonight we are in Italy.
Hot, spicy, burn your lips off Italy.
Make your lips look a bit like you went Florida-crazy-lady-with-the-coral-lipstick-outside-of-your-lip-line Italy.
Greazzzzy, puffy lips, hot spicy oily Italy.
My mouth is on fire kinda Italy.



Pasta is the order of the day, but we punted it into next week with HOT sausage and red pepper flakes. Cibo Caldo!

Seriously, I'm going to have to either blow out the whole week and go Indian Curry Thursday, and Thai-day Friday
or
save my o-ring and eat mayo on Wonderbread for the next two days.

Taco, Burrito, Hey What's Comin' Outta Your Speedo?

It's Taco Tuesday (hey Hulles and H - I'm dancing! That's right...doing a taco dance)!!!

So here's what we ended up with tonight. Mr. Anything But Beef got everything plus chicken. Are chicken tacos a cop out? I don't know, it tasted good though. Could have been a little spicier. The taco sauce that came with the "taco kit" was labeled mild. It wasn't hot enough for Ray, so he went for the big guns.



I didn't, however, indulge in Ray's Black Widow sauce.



Why? Because I didn't want to look like Taco Faye Baker.

Sushi Faye Baker

This was me about an hour ago.

No, I wasn't crying about the state of the world, nor was I whimpering because some jackhole cut me off on the freeway. This, friends, is my wasabi face.

WASABI!!!

Though emulating a former televangelist's heavily Maybellined wife, I was quite proud and happy when I self portraited [myself?]. I decided to dive headlong into my sushi-making debut this afternoon. I already had the nori from a previous shopping trip. The sushi rice was ready and waiting to be used - and has been for the better part of 4 months. I had some veggies that were sushi appropriate and all I needed was the fish. Hello Marcello! Our West Palm fish market closed abruptly, so I fell back to the Lantana fish monger, Marcello. Hit or miss with the charm, I got him on a good day - though he relished telling me that he would not sell me anything that wasn't suitable for sushi... "No Mahi-Mahi. I won'ta sella you da Mahi-Mahi. Itsa too lean." All the while he was yelling intermittently at his co-worker (or maybe just some random guy behind the counter?) in rapid-fire Italian. I couldn't tell if he was berating him, or recounting a pleasant day at the beach.



In any case, this is what I produced in my non-Japanese kitchen, and it wasn't half bad. Though I might have been a little too liberal with the wasabi.

Bigger Picture

As told to me by E:

So there I was with a really poopy diaper and Kief and Sash were wrestling on the bed. I asked Sash if he could go into the garage and get the diaper bag out of the car.

Kiefer (4 years old): Oooh, it's really dark and scary in the garage - I'm scared to go in there. Come with me.

Sash (getting off the bed): Alright buddy, I'll go with you.

Kiefer: Not you Daddy. I was talking to God.

Sash and E are not religious by any stretch of the imagination. They have Kiefer in this Christian school because it is really good (except for all the God stuff) and conveniently located. In a previous story, Kiefer had pooh-poohed the problem of being dirty and messy by saying, "Praise the Lord - we're washable!

Ray, after hearing the garage story, said, "Praise the Lord, he's brain-washable!"

Thanks to Kat

This chick is funny. I hope she writes often.

Okay I just checked out the dates of her posts and she doesn't write often. Let's just say I hope she writes again.

Hey Honda, WTF?!!

I love Rick, I do, really.

Rick is my Honda Service Guy. He's an older gentleman who has been married to "a good old girl" for 48 years, and tells me about the trips they are going to take for various anniversaries. He calls me "Honey" and he notices even minute changes in my hair colour. Sitting at his outdoor desk in his navy shorts and white Sherwood Honda golf shirt, he says smoothly in his sandy voice"You're a little lighter than before. That brown was too dark for you. I like you best as a blonde, Honey. You know that." Wink.

I went in yesterday because on Monday, my service light went on. After squinting at the faded ink on the crooked sticker stuck in the corner of my windshield, I deciphered that I was due for my 84,000 mile check-up. Okay, so an appointment was made, I got my ass there really, really early in the morning and dropped off the car for its "oil change." The "oil change" turned into a four hour servicing because Rick, who I love, I really do, told me that there was a recall on the ignition locking mechanism on my model. "The key literally flies out of the ignition...and the car is still running, Honey! You need to get that replaced. I'm just looking out for you."

So I thanked him for his kind attention, called Ray and asked him to pick me up. After chomping on some cream cheese and bread with coffee (actually, I should have said chomping on some coffee - it was really stiff), Ray knocked on the glass and we were on our way.

The day went by, the call came in to pick up the car, the car got retrieved.

Then I tried to start my car in the morning. The key would't turn over. It was like the wheel was locked...but it wasn't. Jam, jam, jam. Jam infinity....then it decided to crack past whatever was jamming it up and turned over. Hmmm, I wondered to myself, maybe it is fine now. Let's try this again. Jam, jam, jam. Arghhhhh! 5 minutes later it cracked past whatever again.

I just dropped off the car again this morning. Hi, Rick? You know I love you, I really do, but I'm recalling your recall.

cK's Interview

More on the interview front:

My questions from one of the best:

1. What flavor cookies would you bake for Mikhail Baryshnikov?
Right now I couldn't give a sh_t about Mischa. However, if I did it would be to feed him millet heart smart cookies. That pampered prima donna has never had millet cookies - I could practically guarantee it. Unless he has birds, which he might...in that case I'd invent a Vegemite cookie recipe, just to wow him.

2. If you won a contest to remove one obnoxious personality from the airwaves (radio or tv), who would it be?
Hands down, Rush Limbaugh, that pompous, stupid ass, rat bastard.

3. Where is the funniest place your cat has vomited?
On Ray's PlayStation. At the height of me hating it. Lovely.

4. What do you most often lose and where do you tend to lose it?
My memory, on the way up/down the stairs to go do the thing that I have immediately forgotten. Grrr.

5. Would you prefer to be taller or faster?
Right now, I would prefer to be faster - at getting pregnant. I just found out today that after 6 months of trying, we are still not there (hence, the angry bitter tone). When I was dancing, I would have preferred to be 3 or 4 inches shorter. I could have danced certain parts with certain people, but I was destined to be the big of the shorts and the small of the talls. I was horrifyingly average. Don't get me wrong...it worked to my advantage most of the time - I had more opportunity to get parts in both groups. But there were partners with whom I would have loved to have been part of a couple, and roles I would have eaten had I been a titchy thing.

If you want to you can...

1. Leave me a comment on this post saying, "Interview me."
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

2007 Just Got Wet

What a perfect lazy day. Woke up at the usual time in a panic and realized that it was Sunday. Ahhhh, back to sleep until 9:40.

Did the usual coffee run, stopping in to the 'Rents to illegally put water in the pool. Water in their pool? They are away for the weekend. Illegal? We are having a drought. During the half hour filling, I pilfered their fridge and made myself an ass-kicking cheese, green onion, cherry tomato and avocado omelette.

On the way home, I went to Joanne's Crafts and Fabrics to look for linseed oil. I had an informal oil painting course in E's garage with her Mom who was visiting for K's 4th birthday. It was great to get over the fear of starting a new medium, but I needed some linseed oil to stretch the paint (we used olive oil in the lesson!). Alas, no oil, so no painting today, which was the plan. So I moved to plan B.

Plan B: Laze by the pool and read.

Plan B turned into Plan C when we realized the pool temperature was 76 degrees!

Plan C: Swim in the pool!

2007's first swim day was relaxing and entertaining - the cat was being mocked by several of the neighbourhood birds. She was doing the growly meow where it looks like her teeth are chattering. Cracks us up every time we see it. It was lovely. We swam, ate sausages and read all day.

Then we had to move inside because the sky started to look a little ominous. The TV tells us we are in for a doozy of a thunderstorm, complete with hail and possible tornadoes. I can hear thunder now, so it's on its way.

I think we'll sleep with the curtains open tonight...I'm up for a light show.

The Birth and Immediate Death of a Superhero

There's a McDonald's across the street from the office, we frequent it fairly often. I went for lunch today (I got the Big and Nasty with cheese).

Today the sign outside indroduces a new product, but because of a spelling error, it reads with a slightly different meaning:

NEW
CINNAMAN
MELTS!

I Left My Heart in San Francisco

So.
Here we go.

I might have to do this in bullet form, I'm just feeling that kind of flow.

• Met Diva Dan at The Supperclub doors. She was ready to go in a blonde wig and a bathtowel wrapped around her bod. She was setting up a bed on the sidewalk to invite people into the club and to take reservations for the show...in her towel, perched upon the bed, on the sidewalk. Can I just say right now how much I miss San Francisco?
• Went upstairs to meet ex-husband, ex-husband's girlfriend and my old dance partner (Diva's life partner). Meet Michael, Corrie and Mario, respectively. Got right to work being a backstage-bitch sewing, setting up the stage, etc.
• Got into the evening's get-up: white wifebeater, men's boxerbriefs, four inch black patent leather peep-toe heels and a black silk peignoir.
• We all tromped downstairs and layed ourselves artfully on the gigantic bed in the middle of the dancefloor (our "table"). My friend Lovesong was dressed up as a bedbug and she bravely went around to each bed/table and cuddled, scratched or slept all over the patrons.
  
• Proceeded to be lavished with champagne. Even the dancers imbibed before the show. Holotta Tymes (another Drag Queen there to perform) flew across the bed to chat with me when I remarked that Diva's second outfit was "very Barbara Stanwyck." Holotta was encouraging the dancers to down more bubbly...she wanted to see them dance drunk.
• Shandy and her boy showed up and joined us on the bed.
  
• The food, oh the food. We started with a beautiful citrusy salad served in metal dog bowls with chopsticks. Then we had the best soup I've ever had. It was some sort of corn thing in a rocks glass.
  
• Between the salad and soup, a 25 year-old-kicking body Opera singer performed. She was wearing a white hand-held masquerade eye mask, a Marie Antoinette wig, a black corset, fundies, a garter with stockings, and a black strappy hoop skirt made of ribbons so you could see through to her legs. Wow. Her voice was divine. Set the mood for the whole night.
• After soup we had slices of beef on soft polenta and then Michael come out pushing his Ducati Monster on the dance floor. The piece was called Outline. He was out of gas, literally and figuratively. His makeup made him look tired and dead. He danced like the downtrodden. He pulled out an eviction notice, an IRS notice, an alimony notice. And then a gun. He does himself in and falls to the floor. Then the dancers came out. Or down. The stage was on the floor level, but they started on the second floor, sliding in these amazing ways down the banister. They were reminiscent of the devil beings in Ghost, except not all Disney and amateur looking. They were mean and tortured. Mario had his scary contact lenses in. They danced with abandon and total commitment. Made me miss dancing for a second... Michael got up as a spirit and they pulled and prodded him until he fell to the ground once again and they finished the piece by outlining his form with pink chalk. It. Was. Awesome.
• Back to the food. The fourth course was salmon - I have no idea how is was because I was really drunk by then. Shandy and Co. left for another engagement and Verna and Co. showed up. It was girls night for them. (I'd like to point out at this moment that their Girl's Night consisted of dressing up like Japanese Street Urchins, drinking their faces off at a night club, and dancing with each other til the wee hours. My usual girls night is a glass of wine in someone's living room, or if we're feeling really wild, a patio bar. Ooooooh. What has my life become?)
• Holotta got up and did the I Love Lucy Vitameatavegemin bit, which was hilarious. She was spot on.
• Somewhere along the way I lost the 25 dollars I was carrying in my hand to pay for a 20 minute back massage. Oh well, it was a free night for me, so someone got a nice tip.
• Diva Dan (after changing for the 5th time - it was like the GD Oscars!) did her bit with a latex vagina and calf birthing lube. Yeah, you heard me. Calf birthing lube. I've never been so entertained and grossed out at the same time.
• Dessert (who wanted to eat after that?!) came out. It was some sort of peach cobbler thingy with a cookie on top. Again, very drunk, not too clear on that one.
  
• The bed got split in half, pushed to the sides and the dance floor was made available to the hoards that came pushing through the doors from the bar. They open the dining area to the bar crowd once the meal has been served.
• So for the rest of the night, I spent time with all the performers and my friends dancing, chatting, dancing, getting hit on and dancing.

It was everything I wanted it to be. I called it quits around 1:45 because I had my flight home the next morning. I could have danced all night, however, my knees are still disagreeing with that statement. It is nearly a week later and they are still mad at me for abusing them so badly. The fluid is going down, but boy was it worth it! Cartilage be damned! You only live once!

Scattergories

Got this from Tate's blog. Anyone else interested can play along.

Rules: Use the 1st letter of your middle name to answer each of the following...They MUST be real places, names,things...NOTHING made up! If you can't think of anything, skip it. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

Your Middle Name: Deans

1. Famous singer: Dolly Parton
2. 4 letter word: dink
3. Street name: Devonshire
4. Color: dark blue
5. Gifts/presents: diamonds
6. Vehicle: Dodge Durango
7. Things in a Souvenir Shop: dolls
8. Boy Name: Doug
9. Girl Name: Delilah
10. Movie Title: Dark Water
11. Drink: Daquiri
12. Occupation: Driver
13. Flower: Delphinium
14. Celebrity: Dan Rather
15. Magazine: Dog & Kennel
16. U.S. City: Dayton, Ohio
17. Teams: Dolphins
18. Something Found in a Kitchen: dishes
19. Reason for Being Late for Work: dead battery
20. Something You Throw Away: dirty papertowels
21. Things You Shout: DUDE, DON'T! DAMN! DICK.
22. Cartoon Character: Dandy Dan
23. Food: dirty water dogs