Sometimes I'd just read poetry as my outgoing message. It's a wonder I kept ANY friends, isn't it?

I didn't have any pictures to show you today, so I did the thing where I looked at pictures we already have, and I found this cute one of Winston warming Marvin's fellas, if you know what I'm sayin' to you.

I adore Winston. Have I mentioned he's a flawless creature? Have I mentioned I ripped him from the jaws of death, as he was going to be put down THAT VERY NIGHT? Have I mentioned that is a travesty and everyone needs to ADOPT FROM SHELTERS rather than purchase their animals? Because this cat is worth 7 million dollars. (I wish literally, because if that were true I'd be selling him to the glue factory so fast that time would actually spin backwards.)

Anyway, I think I'm getting a cold. And I don't mean that in a my-grandmother kind of a way. When my grandmother first started getting the dementia, she started to be unable to come up with words, and when this happened she'd say, "I'm getting a cold, I have to sneeze." Which was a brilliant way of interrupting her own sentence and hiding the fact that she couldn't come up with the word.

Really, I did think that was pretty impressive of a save. Poor Grammy. Getting dementia would have been the last thing on her list she'd have wanted to get. She enjoyed coming up with the pithy, not-nice-very-often thing to say.

I have a tape of people leaving me messages from my old answering machine. (Before I had a blog to bug people, I had my outgoing message on my answering machine. Oh, I enjoyed holding you captive while you listened to the ridiculousness I had going on. Sometimes I'd just tape part of a movie. I had Dennis Hopper in Blue Velvet saying, "Heineken!? F*** that shit. PABST BLUE RIBBON!"

Sometimes I would just read descriptions of dog breeds.

Oh! And one of my favorites was I had the coroner Munchkin singing about the witch being dead. "As coroner, I vouch for her. I've thoroughly examined her. And she's not only merely dead, she's really most sincerely dead." And then after was my voice: "Or maybe I'm just not home."

People hated me.)

(One time I just screamed, for as long as I could, and that was my entire outgoing message.)

Anyway, I had some ludicrous outgoing message when my grandmother called, and I have her on tape saying, "This is your grandmother. And I just listened to a bunch of horse shit." *click*

I have used the "s" word a lot today.

Getting back to my POINT, which was eleven hundred paragraphs ago, I think I'm getting a cold and I'm annoyed. I catch more colds than anyone else on the planet. It couldn't be because of my diet, could it? I mean, Filet-O-Fish is an antioxidant, right? 

Speaking of which, my coworker had Peanut Butter Cups today and I heard him go into my boss's office and ask if she wanted one. Naturally she said no, because my boss NEVER eats anything unhealthy and I do not know why said coworker even asked her, and without any discussion whatsoever he walked into my office and I already had my hand out without taking my eyes from my screen.

The real question is, who SHARES their Peanut Butter Cups? Also too? I have a friend? She eats ONE of the Pop Tarts. She saves the other for the next day. And again, ?.

So I'm irritated about the cold. Oh! And the electric company came and it turns out our power outage was their fault and it cost us nothing and yay! I can have a cold under bright lights rather than that Abraham Lincoln doing our homework on the back of a shovel thing we had going all weekend.

I will keep you abreast of my impending illness. Sometimes it feels like a cold is coming on and the next day you are fine. Does that ever happen to you? It does me, but you may be shocked to hear I am hyper aware of every symptom, so.

This is you, and you just read a bunch of horse shit.

Comments

[reader]

My daughter used to have some song or other as her voicemail message. I'd have to listen to 5 minutes of music and pay for 5 minutes long distance charges before I could leave a message.

[Hulk]

I have a cold too...maybe that's why I was so irked yesterday.

Your title reminds of a line from my all-time favorite movie, "Bull Durham":

"Sometimes when I've got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay."

Before I got married, I did the same thing with my answering machine, Junie. My favorite was when I recorded a quote from "Cool Hand Luke":

"Wh-wh-wh...What we have heah is, failyeh to communicate. S-some men, you just cain't reach. So you get what we had heah last week, which is the way he wonts it... well, he gets it. I don't like it any more than you..."

[chinamommy]

Vit D- that's what Dr. Oz says & if he's good enough for Oprah, he's good enough for me! I also use to save the 2nd pop-tart for the next day until i read the calories, fat & ingredients, now I don't eat them at all- kill me, i'm a size 0. I can eat any amount of junk as long as i don't see that it has 5,693,858 grams of fat, once i see that- it's all she wrote!

[Paula, H&B]

I pink-puffy-heart-with-lacy-edges Winston.

I currently have one rescue cat and one I Can't Believe You PAID For A Cat. All my prior cats were rescues. I can't speak to the future but I have two kids that I would willingly trade in.

I cracked up that you had your hand out for the Reeses but I confess I don't eat Reeses. I don't like peanut butter thinking it can be a TREAT, masquerading in cookies or candy. It's a sandwich filling, end of story, it should get over itself.

Also I have never had a Pop Tart.

One of my grandmother's favorite words was "horseshit" too. Until she started calling one of my uncles a prick. Which he undoubtably was, but we were rather shocked the first time she said it.

[SueWis]

The coroner would have been the BEST message. Ha!

You brought back memories of my youth when there would be an opened poptart package with one tart and I wouldn't eat it because who knows how old it was and I wanted a fresh poptart. Fresh poptart. Is that an oxymoron?

[Stephanie]

Best way to stave off a cold? Vitamin C and Green Tea w/ honey. It works every time for me. My husband is the stuffy type. He would rather die than have an obnoxious outgoing message. Seriously though, who even calls the home phone anymore. Everyone in my house gets calls on their cell phone. The only people calling the home phone are telemarketers, bill collectors, and my sisters-in-law. The perfect group to have to listen to a bunch of horseshit.

[Jan]

How I wish I could call you up and listen to those messages. What a hoot. Love the coroner. My sisters and I leave each other rambling messages that go on for minutes until the machine cuts us off. Then we call back. We threaten, cajole and ridicule each other during these messages. My sister, Lee, has read an entire section of the IKEA catalog to me on my machine and I have broken into a special rendition of a hallelujah chorus on hers. I wrote it... it was entitled the "I Won't Be Ignored by the Likes of You" halleljuah chorus. It was uplifting. Like you, I heart myself.

And? Just last night I felt like horse shit. Body aches, headache, two marbles where my tonsils should have been. Today? Just fine.

Heart Winston.

[June Gardens]

Halleluiah!

My Uncle Leo once recited Hiawatha into my machine. Why are we such an obnoxious people?

[Nichole D.]

I used to have Garfield the cat explaining that I couldn't come to the phone because I was lying in a bathtub full of jello. the end was "call back later! Um, MUCH later." Loved it!

[Kathy F.]

ZICAM. Take it at the first little symptom and you will not get sick. You will feel like you're going to get sick for about 24-48 hours, but you won't actually get the full-blown illness. I haven't been sick in over 4 years. I use the Zicam oral spray. GO GET SOME!

[The Furry Godmother]

The only message I have is on my cell in which the Zali Lama and I appologize for not coming to the phone because we have more important things to do like eat ice cream and scratch inappropriately in public. My mother loves it not.

Tell cutie-patootie Winnie and Marvin's manly parts to get a room.

[The Chief]

I was just thinking the other day that in the time I'd been reading your blog, I had not seen you mention how you came to have Winston. Not that I sit around thinking about you and your pets all the time, there was some sort of reasonable context, I just don't remember right now what it was.

[June Gardens]

Im glad I could address that burning, itching question for you, Chief.

[The Expatresse (in RAINY! YUK! Moscow)]

I have a crazy Russian girlfriend who always says (imagine Natasha accent from Bullwinkle), "If you don't buy a pedigree cat, they will pee in your shoes!"

I like to point out that both her pedigree cats, and they ARE gorgeous fellows, have peed on her bed.

If you need a new cat, you just go outside and get one! In Moscow anyhow.

[Hulk]

Expa~
I say the EXACT same thing...except instead of "don't buy a pedigree cat", I say "marry a twice-divorced woman from Bridgeport". And instead of "pee in your shoes", I say "take all your money". Weird...

[LisaPie]

My daughter had the MOST obnoxious horrible song as her answering message on her cell phone for what seemed like an eternity. Or was that the length of time I had to listen to "My brain is just a jellyfish in the ocean of my head" each time I tried to call her? AAArrrrrgggghhhh!! I tell you that one made me want to find hot pokers and shove them in my ears.

Horseshit is a great word. When we were little my dad always said "Horse Hoonia" which I have no idea how to spell. He also said Parrot Squatchie. I guess horses don't have squatchie any more than a parrot has hoonia.

And last but certainly not least, Winston. Oh, be still my heart! I adore Winston. He is so aristocratic and aloof. He reminds me of recently departed (r.i.p.) Gato Pato who was just too good us. He must have thought he was stuck living with the white trash hill-william relations. Poor Gato. And if I had 7 million dollars I would trade you for that handsome cat. :)

[bell]

That is really cracking me up about the answering machine messages. That totally sounds like something I would do because I all the time do things that are hilarious to me and not so much to those who get sucked into it. But if it's funny to you, it doesn't matter about everyone else, right?
When I was younger I thought it would be so funny to teach my future children a wrong word. Like from the day the child was born, instead of saying "cereal" in reference to, you know, CEREAL, always say "rooster" instead. And you'd have to keep this up for a while. "Please bring a new box of rooster from the pantry, son." And then you'd have this child that had this one vocabulary flaw....and some major issues with his parents when he realized what you'd done to him...but it seemed so funny to me when I formulated this idea. I have three children and they all know the difference between a bowl of breakfast food and a male chicken, so I didn't follow through on that one. Don't report me for vocabulary abuse.

[Hulk]

Bell~
I had a similar thing that I thought was hilarious, but when I told people, they thought I was just mean. I used to think it would be so funny to be Stevie Wonder's assistant, but dress him up in really goofy outfits, miscolored shoes, oddball socks...then just tell him how good he looks. How would he know? Oh, I am going to hell. I'll be giggling, but still...

[Misti]

I love Pop Tarts! I put them in the toaster and then cover them in butter. Yes, I live in the South. We put butter on everything!
My nephew's voicemail just says "Hey, what's up?"...I fall for it EVERY TIME!

[Tee]

GLUE FACTORY? Have you lost your ever lovin mind?!!!!!

[Gladys]

Take some aspirin and sleep or is it eat a pot of chicken soup. Maybe if you put a mustard plaster on your chest, no that's for chest congestion. Have you tried sticking your head over a steamin pot? Garggled salt water? Used a nettie pot? And if you are keeping us abreast does that means it's in your chest? Well anyway I hope you feel better and that's not horse shit.

[Lenette]

June, is this your last week on the JOB?

[Jan]

Hulk~ From which Bridgeport did your lovely former wife hail? Just curious.

[Hulk]

She's not on FB, Jan...you won't be able to use your stalking powers to figure her out. Hell, I lived with her for 10 years and STILL don't get her...

Michigan.

[June Gardens]

Jan, right outside our hometown is an even smaller, less sophisticatedtown called Bridgeport. And I apologize to anyone reading this in Bridgeport. But really. Youre in BRIDGEPORT. Come on.