Bye Bye, Pie!

Your random acts partner

Hello!

Yesterday I suggested that in the spirit of the giving season, we all exchange good deeds with each other. I said to leave a comment, and pair up with the next commenter, then each go out and just do some random good deed (like opening a door for someone or tossing your old neighbor's newspaper closer to her front porch) then return here and tell us your good deed, and it would be a little gift to whichever commenter you paired with.

Who knew the pairing with another commenter part would be such a nightmare?

It was exciting, because everyone started commenting at once, but then the comment would take a minute or two to show up, and people started thinking they were paired with someone they weren't. Oy.

Then I kept going on the comments and saying, Wait! Don't think you're paired with anyone! I will do it tomorrow, but no one was reading the comments and everyone was saying things like, "Okay, Kelly! We're paired!" and Kelly would be seven comments above and did I say oy yet?

So here is the list of who you are officially paired with. Anyone who left a comment thinking they were paired with someone, I am gonna try to email.

There were many people who share names, so if you are unsure if you are the Kelly paired with Stephanie, please go back to yesterday's comments, find yours, and see who is directly above or below you who also said, "I'm in!" Keep in mind I am listing the names in the order they appeared on my blog, so if you said, "I'm in" later in the day yesterday, your name will be further down.

Okay! Here we go. The good deed partners are:

duffylou/Rebekah

Jan/Rhonda

The Other Erin/Jeanne

Paula/The Furry Godmother (see, here's an example of names. I know there is a Paula H&B who also signed up, and Paula H&B? You are NOT paired with Furry Godmother! You are further down this list!)

Nelson's Mama/d-lou

Kellye with an e/Hulk

lauren/Terraplane

Joann Mannix/Mamz

Erin on the West Coast/Erin

Lynn/Mary Vogel

Tarva/Katie

Pal from MA/Linda in CO

Culpepper/Roxie's Mom

Laurie in Victoria/LisaPie

Sharone/jazzblc

Kelly/Stephanie

Omom/Tiffaney

Sandra/Cosmo's Dad

Heather P/Fay

lisa/Stephanie

ASHLEY/Dawn

Cyndi/Jenn O

Brittani/Deanna B

Misti/Sleeping Beauty

Paula H&B/Gladys

Kate/Juice

Lee/Janera

Jess in FLA/pendy

Steve/apronstrings

Kim/SarBear

Laurie/Maureen in Il

Tanya/Joanie

Dee from Tennessee/Krista

Jeni/Trish

deb stone/Othermama

Melanie/Kelly

Deb in MD/Cristy

If your name was somehow missed, let me know. Or if you didn't read yesterday and want to do this, let me know and I will pair you with someone else!

Okay! Go do a good deed! You have till December 25!

Random acts

Do you find your dog crunching things all the time and you have no idea what they're eating and you just pray to God it's not glass or an ornament hook or a cat's leg? Or is that just me?

Anyway. I hope everybody's back and done NOT READING ME now. This was a dismal weekend for reader numbers. Stupid holidays.

All of our family members are now back in their respective homes and it's just Marvin and me again. Marvin went to Costco last night to buy enormous containers of things in an attempt to save money, and all this has led me to do is make fun of our groceries. "Do we have any ketchup?" I'll ask, holding a bottle of ketchup that's taller than me.

"Hey, is there any apple juice?" I'll ask, leaning into the fridge, where there are 7,000 bottles of apple juice.

How fun must it be to live with me?

Today I must proof proof proofread that statistics book, as I am about 60 pages behind where I wanted to be with that thing. I was entertaining, you know. And I don't just mean I was asking about ketchup bottles.

Is there anyone out there who's done with their Christmas shopping? Because the rest of us would like to hate you.

Oh! But that reminds me! I have an idea for Christmas!

I have a lot of friends. I am not just saying that so you'll envy me, with my friends and my clock radio and the clock in my car. I know. I have it all. The REASON I mention I have a lot of friends is I could end up spending $10,000 at Christmas if I exchanged gifts with everyone. So a few years ago, instead of exchanging that shitty candle one more year, we all decided to exchange good deeds instead.

For example, one of my friends put a quarter in every parking meter down one street, so no one parking would run out of time. Once I paid for the bagels for the threesome behind me in line. I don't mean they were having a threesome in line. You know what I mean.

Any kind gesture will work. You could tell someone she looks pretty even though she never really does. You could open the door for someone schlepping a baby stroller through a door. Whatever.

What I am proposing is we have kindness exchange right here on this blog. Let's say you are Faithful Reader Culpepper. Culpepper comments here and says "I'm in!" and then the next person says, "Okay, Culpepper, I'm in with you!" and the two of you exchange a good deed. You each write back here and tell me what your good deed was by December 25.

Does that make sense? Tell me you're in and note the person before you to exchange with, and I will make a little list here on my blog.

Are you in?

Expecting. To smell everything.

My friend Renee is pregnant again.

Renee is my LA friend, but right when Marvin and I moved to North Carolina, she and her husband moved to Maui.

Yes, Maui.

Yes, I hate her too. And now she's knocked up on Maui.

I met Renee in 2000, when she and I were both training for a marathon. We were in the slow group, which is also how I met my high school best friend; we were in the slow group in gym. My lack of athletic ability has garnered me many similarly uncoordinated friends.

At any rate, those of us training for this marathon met in the park every Saturday morning. Each week we'd run one mile farther than the week before. Because we were the slowest runners on planet Earth, we were sometimes there, you know, four or five hours at a time. You can imagine how you kind of get to know a person this way.

In fact it was funny, because our running group, our slowest-runners-on-planet-Earth running group, noticed a trend in our running conversation, so to speak. For the first eight miles of the run? We'd find ourselves talking about food. "Man, doesn't a Big Mac sound delicious," one of us would say, or, "I had the best lasagna last night." "Oooo! Tell us about it."

Food food food. Those were the first eight miles.

Mile nine? Sex. I am not even kidding you. I do not know what physiological changes occurred in our bodies, but someone would say something crude and I'd go, "Wait, was that mile 9 back there? Yep. Here we go."

Anyway, by the time we ran the marathon, Renee and I had sweated, chafed, bled, cried, gotten nauseated, cramped, and giggled together every weekend for six months. I remember running one morning, the sun barely up, and I announced, "I had to pull a dry cleaner bag out of Francis' butt this morning."

It was true. I did. I was getting dressed in the dark, putting Glide on my important parts so I'd chafe less, when I heard, "swish swish swish." Poor Francis, who loves him some plastic, had eaten and passed a dry cleaner bag, and it was sticking out the other end. I didn't know you are ABSOLUTELY NOT supposed to just pull it out, because you could pull out random intestine parts, but pull it out I did.

I told this story and Renee had to stop running, she was so bent over in hysterics about poor Francis and his dry cleaner butt. Right then I knew we'd be friends forever.

The part where she's pregnant again is exciting and also melancholy, because I am responsible for her first pregnancy. You know, sort of. In that I bought her a pregnancy test. Otherwise she'd have been one of those women who go to the bathroom one day and come out with a baby.

In 2005 Renee and I were going to go to the movies, so I drove to her house to pick her up. She was in the backyard, putting dog toys outside. "The dog's toys smelled so bad!" she said, gingerly tossing a bone. 

 
A picture from the day we found out Renee was pregnant.

When we were in line for the movie, I said, "You wanna split one of those big bags of M&Ms?" She said no and I told her not to be so LA. "No," Renee explained. "I want to eat one of those big things of M&Ms all by myself."

And you know she did? Before Alfie was even done with his first girlfriend. Yes, we went to see Alfie, the Jude Law remake. That's how good of a friend she is, letting me drag her to that thing.

Now, if you are delicate? This next part is a trifle crude, and I am sorry, but this is what happened, so you can skip this paragraph and stampede to the buying of the test if you want. But after the movie? We went to a popular candle store, let's just say, and all the candles had a certain...odor...to Renee. "What is this one, Vagina Oyster Stew?" she bellowed across the store, holding it out at me. And why do people want you to come over and smell something bad WITH them? "Is this Vanilla Vulva? Blueberry Butt-ass?" I mean, she was obsessed.

"Come on, Renee," I told her. "Let's get to the drug store." And even though she was married and in her 30s, she made ME buy the test. Like they were gonna talk about her after she left or something. Like the people at Yankee Candle Store weren't already abuzz about her.

At any rate, her daughter Charlotte is four now, and about to have a new baby sister. Yes, I know that Renee is having a girl, even though she's like a month and a half pregnant. I told you I am good at this stuff.

Renee said she was SO MAD that she had to go into the drug store herself over there in Maui, and she purchased a pregnancy test and some stickers--STICKERS!--to throw the cashier off, there.

What did it was she recently entered a house and it smelled like cat pee, butt, mold, and cheese. And she said the SMELL has STAYED in her NOSE HOLES until this very second. And it's making her sick and all she wants is Perrier and Bubble Yum, which is all she wanted last time.

I really do not see what is so alluring about being pregnant. Blech.

Anyway, please join me in congratulating my slow-running, candle-scent-announcing, living-on-Maui friend Renee. I think June is a lovely girl's name.

Old paint

Okay. That holiday's over.

Hellooooooo, Christmas!

Totally made my Jewish mother-in-law help me decorate today. I know I have sent her straight to Jewish hell or wherever. I don't even know if Jewish people have hell. Do they? Nice knowledge of my husband's religion.

Obviously, as you can see from the hot mess in front of said tree, I am not done decorating. We put in a good two or three hours but then my mother-in-law wanted to shop. Plus there was that whole going-to-hell thing.

Marvin's grading papers in his new Christmassy dining room. I like how he has his collar up like it's 1982. Did you layer an Izod under that shirt, Jake Ryan?

Anyway, my mother-in-law wanted to go to Ulta, which yeah. Okay. I can stand to go to Ulta. Then she wondered if I might want this bag.

Okay, hi. It's PINK and it's SPARKLY. Yes. I think I'd be okay with this bag.

Then she showed me what was inside the bag.

Hi. I'm physically aroused. LOOK AT ALL THE MAKEUP! You all need to go to Ulta and get all this makeup. Maybe every day next week I will put a bunch of it on and do a new look for my blog. Won't that be exciting? Slutty June. Nude-colors June. Smokey-eyed June. Smokey Bear June. Grizzly Adams June. I won't Nair.

Anyway, all I want to do is sit around and put on makeup, but all the relatives are coming back over in 19 minutes. We're eating leftovers. I know, right? I know how to entertain.

Did you shop today? Did you abstain? Are you trying to shop locally this year? I am. I am trying to support Greensboro, is what I'm trying to do. And I will do so painted up like a two-bit floozie.

My Thanksgiving, by June Gardens Gardensalad GonnaEatThat Cutoff Cash. Oh, just say June.

I hope y'all are satisfated. Which is a combo of satisfied and sated. I know I am. In fact, I could drift right off. I promise we are not about to have a dream sequence.

I did a lot of cleaning before the family got here. Henry supervised. He was a tough critic. As someone who bathes his harble with his own disgusting tongue, I think he has his nerve.

Finally, everyone arrived, and quickly messed up everything I spent 250 hours cleaning. From left is my stepfather Harry, Marvin, my father-in-law and my mother-in-law. They have names, but I call them mother-in-law and father-in-law. Marvin made them watch some movie which started out with a sex scene involving all of us having to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman naked. Which really, really, reminded one of a raw turkey a little too much.

Technically, I was supposed to be making the dinner. Here's mom, making the dinner.

Oh look, here's everyone else making the dinner. Hunh. Look, I was PHOTOGRAPHING. For POSTERITY. Note Lula bein' all helpful. You have never seen such shameless begging.

Finally, I gave Tallulah the enormous bone I bought for her, so she'd obsessively chew it and leave us the Sam Hill alone. It worked for several hours. Every time I came near her to photograph her, she was all, "GET HELL AWAY FROM LU! MINE BONE!" Like I'd want that spitty bone.

Our less social animals spent Thanksgiving in the back of the closet. Come out of the closet, Fran. Your family is here for you. Let me pet your--ow!

If you're gonna have Thanksgiving with me, you just have to accept the fact that a cat's gonna sit on me at the table. Look how happy everyone is to be associated with me.

Afterward, Henry slept it off.

Since it was 4:20, everyone rushed right out to smoke a doob. You know how they are. This just left Lula and me to clean up. "Lula help? With her lips?"

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

The girls

Remember yesterday? When I said I was swamped and couldn't post?

I lied.

I mean, I really do have people coming today and I have cleaning and cooking and proofreading to do, but that's not why I didn't post. I didn't post because I was busy being nervous.

Listen to this.

Last year I got my first mammogram ever. I waited three years past when you're supposed to because I was scared. My cousin Maureen, who was an aerobics instructor, really thin, didn't drink, didn't smoke, died of breast cancer at age 44. But last year I sucked it up and got a mammogram.

And they found something. I blogged about it last year. I am so freaked out by it still that I can't even make myself go back to those pages and look at them again to give you a link. It was November 24, 2008, I think.

What they found sounded really bad and really serious. My doctor told me to prepare for the worst. Those three days--the Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday before Thanksgiving--from the time I got the initial call saying, "We need you to come back in" until I finally got seen again? Three worst days of my life. Without a doubt. I have never been so scared.

So then when I went back for the second test, the day before Thanksgiving last year, the doctor said, "Oh, you're fine!" and he said I had to come back in six months.

Well.

There was a 2% chance that when I went back in six months that I'd really have something wrong with me. Two percent! Guess who spent those entire six months concentrating on the 2%? I Googled, I went on Mayoclinic.com, I read horror stories.

And then when I went back? I was still fine. But guess what? I was so freaked out by then that I was convinced they had missed something, and when I went back THIS year for my regular mammogram that they'd tell me oh, darn. There really WAS something wrong with you.

So last week I went back again. For my regular mammogram. They told me if anything was wrong they'd call me Monday. You can imagine how slightly...keyed up...I was on Monday. I shopped for Thanksgiving and called home 750 times to see if they'd called. All day I thought about it.

Finally, at 4:00, I figured I was in the clear. I was watching Francis bathe Henry, and I was smiling, and feeling peaceful. And the phone rang.

It was the mammogram place. They found something...ON THE OTHER SIDE.

All year I have been obsessed about what they found on the left, and now they had something on the right?

They told me I could come in next week, but I insisted they get me in sooner. So today? Just like last year? I had a day-before-Thanksgiving appointment for a diagnostic mammogram. I mean, really? Again? Seriously?

But here's the story. I'm fine! I'm really fine this time. I am a Birad 2 and not a Birad 3, as I was last year, which means I don't have to get rechecked in six months. They are 100% sure it was nothing.

When the doctor came in to tell me, after I burst into tears, I had so many questions for her, she asked, "What is your background? In what field of healthcare do you work?"

"I am a hypochondriac," I told her. I guess I'm really good at it. I've been given a lot of fodder for it this year.

So, happy Thanksgiving, y'all. I for one will be even more grateful than I was LAST year.

Wouldn't it be hilarious if I choke to death on the wishbone now?

Swamped

Got relatives coming tomorrow, and old friend arriving today, and 600,000 pages to proof. So here, go read these:

My oldest friend started a blog about her flowers: Click here.

And Blue Poppy's back! She's been gone for a year. Oh, I heart her. Click here.

Talk at ya.

'N

I have several odds and ends to clear up today, both on this blog and in real life. Or odds 'n ends, cause you know how I like that. Especially how the apostrophe goes just at the front, like it is short for "an." Or "in." Like "and" is such a big word, you have to abbreviate it in the first place.

Have I already told you about how I used to work for a newspaper, and I wrote up all the wedding announcements? While I was 22 and had NO POTENTIAL FOR MARRIAGE in sight? I didn't even WANT to get married when I was 22, but every girl in my hometown was giddily rushing in to that paper to turn in her announcement, and you just know they felt sorry for me for being single single single, and they probably blamed it on the spiral perm.

The POINT of my story is someone once wrote "mother-n-law" and "father-n-law," etc. throughout the entire little announcement. You have no idea how badly I wanted to call her fiance and talk him out of that marriage.

So, first of all, Faithful Reader Leah is the comment of the week. Yeah, I KNOW I usually award it on Saturday. Shut up. Go click on This Week's Special if you want to see it.

Also, WHAT are we gonna read for book club? When we pick a book, should we set our meeting date for the first week in January, lest people be overwhelmed with holiday-related things?

Okay, I know there was something else I was gonna tell you, but Henry is driving me BERSERK and I have to leave this room before I snap his little kitten neck. I got him a dangly toy and he is obsessed with it. When we are not dangling and leaping, it has to go in the closet so Lula won't eat it. So Henry is in that closet right now, chirping and trying to climb to his toy. Poor Henry.

If I think of whatever I was gonna say, I will come in and update this. I have to go to the grocery store and get all the Thanksgiving food now.

Hey, how do you cook a turkey?
 

Mr. Potter

Yesterday, I schlepped out to a pottery festival because my friend-since-seventh-grade, Peppy Whitemore, told me to meet him there.

Peppy Whitemore? In 1980? Told me to look at a girl from our high school when she was in the shower after gym? I had to report back to him every detail.

And I did it. For free. So you can see the odd hold my friend-since-seventh-grade Peppy Whitemore has over me.

Peppy lives sort of close to me now, and this pottery festival was a good meeting point. Plus also, he has a girlfriend I wanted to meet.

His girlfriend is a purse. Isn't that sad?

No. As usual, I went out with someone who didn't want to be photographed. But she let me take a picture of her cool purse, and apparently she collects these. This purse is encrusted with gems, can you tell that? Oh, it rocked.

Anyway, hearted the girlfriend. I think this is the first time I have met a girlfriend of Peppy's, because normally he just hit on all my friends for his dating needs.

Peppy and his purse wanted to find a butter dish, and seeing as there were 9295750210385759394.05 pieces of pottery spread out over 900 miles of tents, one might assume you'd find a slew of butter dishes.

But could my pal Peppy Whitemore have been any more fussy about which butter dish would suit his highfalutin' I-can't-believe-it's-not-the-right-butter-dish butter needs? This one was too weird. This one was too small. He was like Goldilocks.

I would like to point out that my mother is breaking out in hives thinking of Peppy at a pottery show. Peppy Whitemore broke ev.ry.thing. in our house from 1979-1984, although to his credit, he fixed all of it. I know my mother thinks he is still...energetic...but I assure you, mom, Peppy did not break one single thing. Including the bank, since he never did find a butter dish.

I told this potter I'd link to her website if she let me pose. So click here!

The best part was that they had pottery painting in the back, which if you think about it is just like going to Color Me Mimes or whatever those pottery-painting stores are that I have never gone to. Nevertheless, it was exciting. Peppy's girlfriend The Purse and I each painted some pottery.

See how I am using purple paint, there? Yeah. I painted that whole ding-dang thing that color and it came out white. I hate everything.

Were they also having a pickup truck convention?

And by the way, it was like 50 degrees out. Who has become light in her loafers about remotely cold weather? You'd think I didn't grow up in Michigan.

So that's my story of what happened yesterday. It's not the first time I've been around a lot of the pot with Peppy.

Oh. Hi, mom.

Romeo and Juliet. Except for the part where they like each other.

Marvin and I are meeting a friend at 10:00, so I asked him to set the alarm at 8:00 so I could get my bouffant in working order and such. When the alarm came on, Marvin made every song into something about the dog, who he was holding, and who kept looking at me with pleading eyes.

First he sang, "I'm alive! And my dog shines on me today. I'm alive!"

Then, "I will follow Lu if she'll follow me, all the days and nights that she knows will be..."

I got up during, "I never wanted, I never wanted to love a dog, the way that I want to love you."

Marvin tends to set the alarm to radio stations he doesn't want to listen to, so he'll have the impetus to get up. His ridiculous love of the dog is all I needed to bolt out of bed.

And speaking of the animals, which I'm sorry to tell you is probably all I'll ever do now that I am home with them and they are my coworkers, we had animal drama last night.

As you know, I am proofreading a statistics textbook, and I have so far worked on it for 6.25 hours and have not even read page 1. Or page i, for that matter. So I'm sitting on my pink chaise lounge, which by the way was originally owned by Loni Anderson, and I know you are impressed by my access to the big stars, and this sentence is the longest sentence in the history of time.

When I work on my pink lounge chair, Francis ALWAYS sits on it with me. That's just the way it is, Walter Cronkite, and 13 years of us doing that is not going to change just because some dreaded DOG now loves me too.

I have not really worked in that pink chair since we got Lula, so she was not abreast of the situation, see.

So I'm proofreading, Francis is on my legs, and Tallulah walks in.

Tallulah and Francis are not what you'd call pals. They are Hatfield and McCoy. They are Sarah Palin and Obama. They are Captain Kangaroo and the ping-pong balls. Remember how Bunny Rabbit would make those ping-pong balls fall from the sky? And they really went to town naming THAT character, by the way. Bunny Rabbit.

So they hate each other. Is what I'm telling you. When Lu was a puppy, Francis let that poor creature know, in VERY POINTED TERMS, that she was not to mess with Francis. Tallulah goes to great pains to look at everything in the room except Francis, just to avoid a confrontation.

But there I was, hour after hour, sitting there with that...that...enemy, and Tallulah couldn't stand it. She wouldn't come up near the top of my chair to let me pet her. She was too afraid. So instead she did this:

"Rrrrrrrrrroooooooooooooommmmmmmmmmmmmmmrrrrrrrrrr"

for about an hour and 15 minutes. And every time she started a new "Rrrrrooooo," Francis would say, "Hsssssssssssssssssss! GrrrrrrOOOOOOOOORRRRrrrrrr" back.

So that was relaxing, and not at all like I was trying to proofread during an est seminar. I really have no idea if people chanted during est meetings. I kind of just wanted to say est.

Anyway, finally Tallulah's deep and abiding love for me, and also her jealousy, overrode her fear of the Fran. Which is saying something, because even I am a little afraid of the Fran. But she slowly, and not all all distractingly (which is certainly a word), got on my lap.

Looks comfy, doesn't it? And so easy to read around! And I wasn't at all nervous that there'd be a dog/cat fight eight centimeters from my face.

Believe it or not, we all worked like this for at least an hour. I worked on statistics, and Fran and Lu worked on who was coming out on top in this eternal struggle.

Okay, I am leaving now. Am done talking about my pets.

I'm too shiny to talk about.