Category Archives: blogging

February 20, 2010 · 11:01 pm

“sss-fear”

Tap, tap, tap… tap, tap, tap…

Hey, is this thing working?  Can anybody hear me?

This little old blog of mine is like a favorite hangout of my youth, one I haven’t visited in ages.  I’ve been away so long, and now, upon my return, I find it dreadfully neglected.  It needs some dusting, perhaps some weeding, definitely needs a broom taken to it to clear out the cobwebs.

I’ll try and get on that.

Where have I been? You may wonder.  Or maybe you don’t.  As the lyrics to that Tom Petty song go, maybe you don’t come around here no more, either.  I wouldn’t blame you. I realize it’s not much fun to hang around an old place like this, one where the proprietor can’t even be bothered with its upkeep.

I’ve just been doing other things.  Nothing exciting, nothing worth writing about or believe me, you’d have heard about them. Mostly, work. And reading books (hey, I bought myself a Kindle!), and running.  Lots and lots of running.  But not with the Kindle in my hand.  It seems a little delicate.  I JUST bought it, I don’t want to drop it.

And then, well, Snags is growing up.  And growing up means there just isn’t as much to share. 

There is this, though….

The other morning at breakfast Snags was telling me about the world and how in some parts of the world, because the world is a “sss-fear” (that’s sphere but he can’t pronounce it correctly) people are walking upside down.

“Mom,” Snags asked.  “Do you know why that is? Do you know WHY they can walk upside down and not fall off the planet?”

I was happy. I felt like it was the Final Jeopardy question and guess what?  I knew the answer! (Which is totally opposite of how I feel when he quizzes me about Star Wars, by the way).

“Um… gravity?” I replied.  (You see, I added the “um” before I said gravity so I wouldn’t sound too smug.  I’m a nice mom like that).

“No!” Snags replied.

“Not gravity?” I asked, stunned.

“Nope.  It has to do with the way the earth spins around and the angle it tilts and all that.”

Folks, I was a geography major in college.  I learned a little about the earth and how it spins and its tilt and “all that”.  The kid has mixed up gravity with the seasons.

But I let it go, because here, where we live, we’re in the middle of the snowiest winter on record, and schools have been closed for over a week and the roadways are one lane wide, and snow piles hide stop signs and swallow turn lanes.  It’s pretty grave, for sure.  I can see how Snags would confuse gravity and the seasons.

Now if I can only get him to say “sphere” instead of “sss-fear”.  I’ll try and get on that too. 

And oh, yeah… I’ll be back.

2 Comments

Filed under blogging, geography, kids, seasons, Snags, snow, Star Wars

June 1, 2008 · 7:02 pm

Happy Blogiversary To Me (or How My Cousin Saved My Nose Piercing)

Exactly one year ago today I wrote my first post on this blog.  For those of you with nothing better to do than watch reruns, I will point you to that post here.

Since that time one year ago, I have written 125 posts; kind readers have left me 798 comments; and this blog has been viewed a whopping 16,478 times. 

But that’s not the point of today’s post.  The point of today’s post is to tell you about how my cousin (Hi Cousin!) saved my nostril piercing from early retirement.  Something I’m sure you all have a great interest in, no?  No?  Really?  Huh…  Then here, go read this instead.  It might make you laugh.

But for the rest of you, the story goes like this…

I was sitting on my front porch last Monday, Memorial Day actually, and I stood up to go take a look at something that my son wanted to show me in the yard.  And at the moment that I stood up it felt like someone had hit me in the back of my head with an axe.  A sharp axe.  And the pain, it took my breath away.  When I sat down, the pain disappeared. As long as I was sitting down, life was all flowers and sunshine and twittering birds with hearts overhead.   When I stood up however, the pain was back again, with a vengeance.  Think Michael Myers in Halloween.

Tylenol didn’t touch it.  Motrin barely made a dent in the pain.  And neither pill did a thing for the fear, for the anxiety, the knowledge, like nails dragged across chalkboard, screaming, THIS IS NOT RIGHT!

So early Tuesday morning I called the doctor and went to see her.  She felt the headache was probably the start of migraines, even though the pattern didn’t match any Google Migraine searches I had done.  Still, she gave me some headache pills and sent me on my way with an order to get an MRI, just to prove to me that this was nothing.  Not a tumor.  Not a stroke.  Just an invisible axe in the back of my head when I stood up and walked around.  Proof that life is best enjoyed napping or sitting quietly in the shade with a book and a cool glass of lemonade.

I scheduled the MRI as directed and read the instructions on how to prepare for the test.  My biggest hurdle would be removing my nostril piercing, because THOU SHALT NOT HAVE METAL NEAR THE MRI MACHINE, lest its powerful magnet suck you into some kind of break in the time-space continuum and fling you and your nostril piercing into outer space.

But my nostril piercing, I’d never changed it myself.  I’d read a lot about it, I visited the tattoo parlor where I had it done to ask for advice, and I shopped around and bought $25 dollars worth of clear plastic retainers, things that you can put in a piercing in place of your normal jewelry to keep the hole open.  Because according to all I’d read, these little holes from a piercing, especially the ones in your nose, can close in a jiffy.  Ten seconds flat, read one website.  And then, if that happened, I’d never be able to get my little diamond stud back in my nose.

Thursday night I took out my jewelry and after a bit of a struggle, managed to finally get one of the many different plastic retainers stuck in my nose in its place.

Friday morning I went for an uneventful MRI where they didn’t even care that my bra had metal underwires in it.  Hello?  Boobs surrounded by metal…giant magnet…fling into outer space?  Apparently, not a problem when they are merely scanning your brain.  Who knew?

But then came the tricky part.  After the MRI I came home and removed the retainer and tried to re-inset my nostril screw.  Without.Luck. I tried again.  And again.  And again.  And again. Eventually I gave up and put the retainer back in.  I drove to a local piercing place where they were “too busy” to help me. 

So I went home and tried again.  And again.  And again.  Think of it like the very first time you tried to change your earrings.  How the earring would go in, but you couldn’t get it to come out the other side.  Or if you were one of those lucky girls who changed her earrings without any problems on the very first try, then imagine trying to pierce your ear with a dull backed earring.  When you’re sober.  Ouch, right?

I tried numerous times throughout the day.  I emailed my cousin no less than six times with my Tales of Nose Woes.  And then, on Saturday morning, I gave up.  I took out the retainer and emailed my cousin to tell her I’d given up.  I was done.  Finished.  My nose, the nostril piercing, it was already closing up, healing, the hole was gone.

And I was more or less okay with it.  The hassle was too much, and how, I wondered, could I have my nose pierced if I was unable to take care of it, unable to change the jewelry by myself.  I emailed my cousin to tell her so.

She sent me an email back. She knew I couldn’t even manage to get the plastic retainer back in.  She makes jewelry for a living , and her nose is pierced too.  She said: For your nose…do you have a tiny regular earring you could put in there for the weekend?  I did, but I didn’t even want to try.  I was done. 

Except, apparently I wasn’t, because that one little question got me thinking.  And suddenly, I HAD TO KNOW whether the hole in my nose was really closed. Or not.  The same way I sometimes try to stick an earring in the 3rd piercing in my left ear, expecting the hole to be closed because I never wear anything in it but being pleasantly surprised that here, 20 years after I first got that hole, it is still open and I can still put an earring in it if I want.

So one more time I grabbed the nose screw and my tube of KY Jelly.  Oh stop!  I’ll have you know that the KY Jelly was purchased specifically for the purposes of changing out my nose screw because all the advice I had read on the subject said to lubricate the jewelry to make insertion easier.  And the tub of Vaseline I had was so old I was afraid to use it.  I bought the KY Jelly at the grocery store when I had a bunch of other things to buy because I was afraid if that was all I bought, I’d end up in the checkout lane run by the only male teenage cashier in the store.  And you and I both know he would barely be able to contain his giggles as he assumed the stuff was for something else, like the commercials suggest.

Anyway, so this was my last attempt.  I had no expectations because I had tried so many other times to change the jewelry and it didn’t work, and my nose was sore, and like I said, I had officially given up.  But what do you?  This time, it worked!  The jewelry went in!  And there it stays for fear of never being able to repeat this miraculous feat.

It may be that leaving the piercing empty for a day let the swelling and irritation of my previous attempts go down and that is why it worked.  Or maybe it was because this attempt was out of sheer curiosity and I wasn’t even really trying.  But I actually attribute it all to my cousin, who with that one little sentence, got me curious enough to try it one last time.

Thanks, cousin! And Happy Blogiversary to me!

5 Comments

Filed under blogging, family, grocery shopping, Halloween, life, nose piercing, thanks

August 24, 2007 · 12:09 am

Glad I Could Be of Service

I don’t know how many people realize this, but my little blog here, like nearly all blogs, I suspect, has something called a “dashboard.”  It’s a behind-the-scenes tool through which I manage this place.  It’s through the dashboard that I access my page and write my posts and respond to comments.

And like the dashboard in a car, my blog’s dashboard has some instruments that give me feed back.  I have stats! About my blog!  Almost as if I had a crystal ball, I can tell how many people visited my blog on any particular day, and I can see what site referred them to me, meaning, where someone clicked on a link that brought them here. 

But no need to panic.  My dashboard is a bit dusty, my crystal ball a bit murky.  I can’t tell who exactly these people are.  I can only get a general idea.  In other words, it’s like walking around without my glasses.  I can tell it’s a body, I just can’t make out the faces or read the name tags. 

I can, however, tell you that over a 30 day period the following posts here were the most popular: The Unfunny Files led the group and Okay Listen Up came in second place.  That means these two particular posts were viewed by the most people. 

You see, the feed back you get from a blog’s dashboard is not unlike the speedometer on your car.  It tells you how you are doing.

Probably the best feature on the dashboard, or at least the one I find most fascinating, is the tool that tells me what search engine terms people used to find me.  Because that’s where it gets interesting.  Or scary.  Or funny.  Depending on your perspective.

I’ve been watching my search engine list and decided it was time to share some of these with you.  In doing so, I thought I might be able to provide additional, um… guidance, to those people who found their way here via the search engines.  I try to be helpful like that.  So without further ado…

I’ve had nearly a dozen people find me by searching on terms like:
carmex bad for you?; lips feel like sandpaper; why Blistex is bad; Blistex addict;
lip smakers addiction; and my personal favorite blistex DCT+the truth, as if Blistex has a big conspiracy going and the truth about it can be found on the internet.  Or here, at my site. 

I’m heartened by the fact that I am not the only one with a lip balm addiction.  If you have found me by searching the internet for information about your own lip balm addiction, I point you here, and tell you that your problem is most likely related to the phenol (also known as carbolic acid) in your lip balm.  It’s drying.  That’s why you need to keep applying the stuff, why you can’t live without it.  I did not make this up. I read it in the 1997 issue of Self Magazine.  I have the little article, ripped from the magazine, at my house.  If you really need to see it you can email me and I will scan it and email it to you.  As a public service.  To save your lips.

Over half a dozen people found my site because they have apparent problems with their feet.  Queries on lost toenails from running; treat lost toenail; whole toenail black injury will it grow, are just a few. I am not a doctor.  But, if you are a runner and you have lost a toenail, or if you’ve dropped a hammer on your toe and the nail has turned black, then let me tell you that yes, in my experience it will grow back.  It could take six months to a year for it to do so.  Just so you know.  Also, for the person searching on treat lost toenail if you are still hanging around, I suggest you let the lost toenail go.  There is nothing to do about it, once it’s lost you can’t treat it.  Focus your energy on the remaining part of the toe that’s still there.

I am sorry to say that I cannot help the person who searched on pain in foot after car ran over it except to say that Ouch! I bet that hurts!  If it happened to me I would probably cry and curse loudly, take some Advil, ice it up, and see the doctor.  Maybe I’d get some x-rays.  And a lawyer.

Then there’s the bunch of folks who got here by searching on guy ran over foot with lawn mower; man runs over foot with lawn mower; and mower cut off toe.  If you are simply mocking my husband, that’s ha! ha! ha! ha! um… not funny!  I am the only person allowed to do that.  But if you’ve suffered a real accident, whoever you are, I do hope that you got yourself to an emergency room tout de suite.  And by the way, that is French for immediately.  Don’t waste time googling it.  If you ran over your foot with the lawnmower, Go!  Go now!  Get to the emergency room!  Google will not tell you how to stitch yourself up.  Lawn mower cut patterns are very individual you see, and Google cannot hope to tell you all the possible ways to suture your particular injury.  You need a doctor for that.  Are you still actually reading this?  Go!

Okay, now that the bloody stump guys are out of here, let’s talk about the people who are searching for the proper thing to wear under their skirts.  I suggest a slip and a pair of underwear.  You don’t want to get caught on film like Britney, do you? 

To the person who searched for actresses wearing bunny tails:  You are at the wrong place.  Sorry.  Try again.

For the person who searched on Why three year olds don’t like to wipe their own butt, I imagine they don’t like to wipe themselves for the very same reason you want them to wipe themselves.  Poop is gross and it smells bad.

Finally, to the few of you who searched on husband doesn’t acknowledge birthday and husband doesn’t buy me birthday presents, send the cheap bastard here.  I’ll tell him off for you.  And if that doesn’t help, then I suggest you buy yourself a big expensive bling bling kind of gift and tell him to go to hell when he complains about the credit card bill.  My husband buys me gifts, he just doesn’t like my favorite kind of pizza.
 

5 Comments

Filed under blogging, blogs, dashboard, google, humor, internet, search engine terms

July 19, 2007 · 12:42 am

Ya’ll Ready for This?

(Whispering)  Come ‘ere.  Can I show you something?  Look… over there.  (Normal voice) No, not there.  THERE!  To the right of your screen.  You may have to scroll down a bit.  See what I’m talking about?  Those two boxes?  One is rectangular and pink with a yellow star and one looks Steven Segal’s biceps.  Dreamy aren’t they?  I mean, can you believe it?  I know!  Me neither!

And here I am, caught so unprepared!  Never in a million years did I expect to win a prize, let alone two!  I mean, I never win anything.  But my luck must be turning because yesterday I won a Rockin’ Girl Blogger Award AND a Schmooze Award from the FANTABULICIOUS Jo Beaufoix.  And then… are you ready for this?  Seriously.  You better sit down for this one because it’s some kind of miracle and I don’t want you to get hurt when you fall down from the shock…

Okay, then.  Are you sitting?  Good.  Look here:  Yes folks, that’s right.  I found, in my garden, TWO (2) cucumbers and NINE (9) green beans!  In. My. Garden.  GROWING! 

But how can that be, you ask?  Because you’ve read this and you know my garden produces nothing but rocks.  Well.  If you must know, I’m fairly certain it wasn’t a trick, that nobody just set this bounty in my garden to fool me because they were still. attached. to. the. plants!  I had to pick them!  Off PLANTS!  Growing in my garden.  Bearing food!

And so now we have our dinner ingredients for tomorrow.  I don’t know exactly what I can make with 9 green beans and 2 cucumbers, but I will come up with something, some kind of salad I suppose.  It will be my celebratory dinner for the blogging awards that Jo bestowed on me!

I have to admit I feel kind of funny though.  I thought only bad things happened in three’s and now I’ve got this good fortune and I am tempted to go buy a lottery ticket.  Only, I don’t want to push my luck here, so I think I’ll quit while I’m ahead.  Plus I’ve been drinking mojitos and we all know that drinking and driving don’t mix (public service announcement).

I’ll be totally honest here now too and admit I was drinking in the first place not because I won the awards (although that’s perfectly good reason to have another, I think) but because prior to all this goodness, Snags wanted to know “where a dog’s puppy chute is.”  I shook my head to clear it because surely I must have heard him wrong.  But upon further questioning I learned that he really WAS asking “where the puppies come out of a dog.”  I hemmed and hawed and mentally ran down the list of  mind numbing alcoholic beverages I had on hand and could consume to erase this awkward moment from my mind and I said I thought it was “near a dogs butt, but probably hidden like a trap door.” Well what would you have said?  Because I didn’t want him to play the role of gynecological veterinarian on our dog!  So he said “Oh, so you can’t see it until it opens!”  I agreed and we left it at that.

Except later I found he had drawn this and I am praying the small figure inside the large figure is nothing more than a monkey on a t-shirt, but I’m not sure, and I’m afraid to ask, because I am not ready for this and I don’t have enough liquor for this situation, especially because I just finished all the mojitos in celebration of my new awards!

And real quickly, before the Academy cuts me off (I see them twirling their hand in that “wrap it up” kind of motion) I’d like to thank Jo for this awesome recognition and extra special thanks to my husband and to my son Snags, without whom, none of this would have been possible.  They even helped with the garden.
 

9 Comments

Filed under awards, blogging, celebration, garden, humor, life, mojitos, puppies, Rockin' Girl Blogger, Schmooze award, sex education