Bye Bye, Pie!

Catch you on the flip side, Davy. Oh. Also? Tallulalina Jowlie.

In the past 24 hours, Iris slept on my head, Edsel bit me, and poor Davy Jones died. Who gets his locker?

I liked Davy Jones. I mean, didn't we all? And one of my fancy LA friends just told a story about him, on Facebook, and the gist of it is he was a lovely person. Of course, we already knew that.

 

What. You thought I WOULDN'T put in a You Tube clip today? I practically AM YouTube by now. YouJune. Anyway, once he took Marcia to prom we all knew he was a good guy.

Oh, and Edsel didn't mean to bite me. We were playing with his stupid toy that if you ask me resembles a marital aid, and we were tugging-of-waring, which is a fine phrase, and his ludicrous teefs came down on my finger instead of the toy. "OWWWOWOWOWWWWwwwwww!" I said, and he was mortified. He kept pushing his luggish head into mine and wagging furiously, so I'd know how sorry he was. Then he groaned over to his sensitive chair and started at me for 70 hours, like he does.

...I just spent an inordinate amount of time looking for a photo of Eds in his sensitive chair,

and you know what I should do? Is somehow organize my photos on this computer. Anyway, my Mac has a fabulous feature called "Faces" that just shows you, you know, faces, and I got interested in looking at that, and I found a lovely photo of my pal Miss Doxie.

Even though she's this annoyingly pretty--and I was with her that day and all she basically did was shower, throw on a little lipstick and go--you can't help but like her. Mostly because she sends me stuff like this:

Would I still be able to love Tallulah if she grew an Angelina Jolie leg? Tallulalina Jowlie.

Anyway.

Oh, and I went to lunch with my ...friend yesterday.

We had Vietnamese food. Yes, I did drag out my tired old joke about Agent Orange chicken.

The place had everything. Marvelous decor,

in-proportion disco balls,

lots of food.

This leaf is from the collection of weird leafy things ...friend put in his soup. He ordered an enormous bowl of soup, then said, "I come here quite often. It's a break from the boring soup and salad I usually get at lunch."

"But you're ...eating soup. With leafy salad-y things in it," I pointed out.

It was then that I turned to the literature and read that.

I parked right here under this sign, and you can imagine how this did not bother me at all. "Walk in is." Or perhaps the "in" owns something. Not the walk-ins, though, because there is no hyphen to connect walk-in. Really the whole sign gave me a hive. I wish people would call me before they spend money on signs. Did I ever tell you about the place I drove past EVERY NIGHT in LA that said, "Eyebrown Wax"? Or what about the other place, that sold "stuffanimal"?

It is hard to be me.

Somehow during lunch, I mentioned the fact that I had gotten a perm in the '80s and afterwards I emailed this fine photo to ...friend.

What hair? Thanks, loved ones, for warning me not to get a perm.

I had better slip on my turquoise loafers and get started with my day. Some idiot felon-looking person already came to my door and asked if I wanted an estimate re my trees. It was 9 a.m.! Rude. And he did the thing where he rang the doorbell, then knocked insistently, as though he had something crucial to tell me. You can imagine how this pleased the dogs.

I was in my robe, and I am telling you he gave me the once-over. THE ONCE-OVER! While disturbing me at the early early hour of 9:00 in my very own home! Guess who did not say sure, give me that estimate. Perv.

Catch you on the flip side.

I had a dream, too. Mine just sucked, is all.

I had a dream. I had a dream that I was vehemently arguing with someone that "e.g." was really a thing. No, seriously, I had a dream about that. "It's LATIN!" I was yelling.

And this is why there isn't a June Gardens Day.

Anyway. In honor of dreams, and Martin Luther King, I bring you the following:

 

It's a little-known fact that at the very end of that, he says, "I similarly have a dream that everyone shall know that e.g. is a thing."

I've been looking so long at these picture's of you

I forgot to tell you that when I was on my date with Dick Whitman the other night, I read his tarot cards. He is going to meet a Libra in October and I already hate that wench.

Anyway, he said, "I had my tarot cards read before, in 1989. My sister read them for me and we videotaped it."

You know how I am. "Ooo! I want to see that!"

"You do?"

So Dick Whitman opened the tidiest closet you have ever seen and got out a covered box neatly inscribed with the word...

...are you ready?

Seriously, are you?

Video's.

With the apostrophe.

He took the lid off that box, and inside were the tidiest collection of videos ('s) since Felix Unger organized his videos. If I have any videos left they are strewn in one drawer, then another, and maybe in the car, or in my hair, and in Edsel's jaws.

"You, um, certainly are tidy," I said, trying to ignore the apostrophe.

"Yes, I am," he said, piling a perfect pile of tapes as he looked. "And I'm NOT GAY."

See. It wasn't the gay thing I was worried about. Finally, I asked. "So, who labeled that box?"

Dick Whitman finally stopped alphabetizing the pile of videos to look at his errant " ' ". "Oh. I'm afraid I did that," he said, and WENT BACK TO SEARCHING like nothing was wrong.

I started to feel a little woozy. "Do you, um, have any White-Out or anything?"

"June, there's a Sharpie in the other room. Why don't you go get it and cross out the apostrophe."

"No, no. That would be weird," I said, desperately wanting to get the Sharpie.

Anyway. We finally watched the video ('s) and in 1989 Dick Whitman was all hot with long hair and Malcolm X glasses, and I told him I had Malcolm X glasses back then too, and this whole entire stupid story was to tell you that. Well. And to tell you about the apostrophe. I hope that Libra is ready for a lifetime of 's.

So I told Dick Whitman I'd send him a picture of me in the Malcolm X glasses:

Mom and me rockin' out with our glasses out.

And in the meantime I found a bunch of other photos to show you. But now I have taken 60 hours to tell you that story so I can only show a few.

Dad and me on New Year's Eve when it was about to be 1984. I loved that dress. And those earrings. We thought we were cool. And we kind of were.

Even before I had a blog I had to stop and photograph ludicrous things. Like that sweater.

Why was everything brown in the 70s? Why do Coke cans never change?

Okay. Must shower. Or, as Dick Whitman would write, s'hower.

Okay ONE MORE.

My friend Lisa, pretending to be my bearskin rug.

June. Loving herself since 1991. Loving her rose pants since...why did I like those rose pants?

Okay, really going.

 

June in the trenches

Today I am wearing a gray shirt with a gray and clear necklace and I cannot get enough of myself in it, but for some reason the web camera is now refusing to come on and why must everything break? Really. Why?

Soon I will run out of clothes and this whole recap of what I wore to my new job will be over anyway. And maybe some day I will find that ding-dang battery charger for my real camera and I won't have to RELY on the webcam.

Where IS IT? How did I lose an entire battery charger? I mean, what possible place could I have put it? Could you all look up your buttockal regions? Because I have exhausted every nook and cranny here.

No one ever just says "cranny." It's always "nook and." Did you ever notice that?

Speaking of our fine language and the regular raping and pillaging of it, I am looking forward to Facebook this weekend, when I am sure to see 948593 posts that read: This goes out to all the mom's!

Mom's.

Maybe they all own something.

Maybe mom is.

Look, it hasn't even happened yet, and already I am twisted up and sick inside.

What are you all getting your mom's (see what I did there?) for Mother's Day? I mean, if your mom ('s) is still with us. I am getting mine an apostrophe.

Hardly anyone ever says "pillaging." It's always "raping and." Did you ever notice that?

Also, no one is ever a voracious anything except reader of books. "Oh, I'm a voracious strawberry eater!" "I'm a voracious giraffe raper! And pillager!"

Honestly I do not know what ails me today. Except I may have had real caffeine at work. It's Juan Valdez talking, not me. He's up in my crannies. Pillaging me. With an apostrophe. Voraciously.

Okay, then. My gray shirt and I are headed back to the office, where I hope the coffee has been thrown out. Everybody remember it's Thursday and our show is on! We'll discuss tomorrow, and don't let me forget to tell you about the $650 dog trainer I want to hire with all my riches.

Oh, look! I was just about to leave and I figured it out, because I am tweaking on the caffeine.

This goes out to all the reader's.

 

I procrastinate every day.

Okay, I've been seeing this transgression a lot again lately, so let's review.

I wear my everyday clothes every day.

I know you are sick of hearing me say that, but WHY CAN'T PEOPLE GET IT? You don't write, "This happens everyday." ACK! No! Every day, TWO WORDS when you are talking about WHEN something happens. Every day.

When you are talking about a humdrum, not-exciting occurrence, it is an everyday occurrence. So again, I wear my everyday clothes every day. Get it? Can't we stop doing it wrong, PEOPLE MAGAZINE and CNN?

Thank you. Oy.

In other news, I have finished The Glass Castle, our book for Mince Words with June. Oh, I wish we could talk about it right away, but we can't. It's a month away, for heaven's sake. I should write my review right now, shouldn't I?

I have never been good with doing things ahead of time.

When I was in college, I had an English class--which is a shock, seeing as I was an English major--and it was held Tuesday and Thursday. The professor said we absolutely had to attend every Tuesday. Each Thursday, there would be a quiz on our assigned reading. The quizzes totaled 50% of our final grade.

Now, we could attend the Thursday classes as often as we liked, but we had to remember that those quizzes. So if you did something stupid like only attend one Thursday, that one quiz would be 50% of your whole grade.

What do you think your pal June did? Did she blow off every single Thursday until the last one? And sometimes I would have even done the assigned reading, but then when Thursday got there, it just seemed like such an effort to walk to class.

The final Thursday was coming, so naturally on Wednesday I got out my--oh my God, what's that called? The thingamajig that you get in class, that lists your homework--SYLLABUS. Geez. You have no idea how that was gonna bug me.

I got out the syllabus and it said your assignment can be found at the library. I traipsed over there, only to find that our assigned reading was The Confessions of St. Augustine, which was an entire, you know, book.

I stomped on over to my professor's office. "Professor Hardarse, there's an error on the syllabus," I fumed. "Which parts of this book are we to read?"

Professor Hardarse chuckled. "I'm very sorry, Miss, but there's been no mistake." He was British. I'm not even making that up for dramatic effect. And he really did call me "Miss." "I assigned that book to teach you procrastinators. You must read the whole thing, and remember, the quiz tomorrow will count for 50% of your grade, since you didn't take any of the other quizzes."

I remember his Persian carpet getting blurry as I sat there and cried.

And do you know I took that stupid book home, and sat up almost all night and read those dreadful confessions? And let me tell you something. The confessions of a SAINT aren't that thrilling.

About a week later, the semester was over, but we could go to Prof. Hardarse's office to pick up our quizzes. I can honestly tell you one of the happiest moments of my life was when I got an A on that quiz, and in the class.

And did I learn anything about procrastination? No. Hell, no. All I learned was that St. Augustine should have whooped it up a little here and there.

I have no idea how I got on this subject.

Finally, I have been getting approached to do product reviews a lot, and I usually say no. But the Oxy-Clean people? Who were REPRESENTED BY BILLY MAYS? WHO LOVED HIM THE OXY-CLEAN, IN CASE YOU DIDN'T HEAR HIM? Offered to send me some Kaboom Shower, Tub & Tile Cleaner.

And I don't know about you, but I think Oxy-Clean is the best thing ever. A stray cat I took in once had six kittens on our yellow bedspread, and oh, how I wish I was blogging back then, because I had SIX BABY KITTENS and oh! Best time ever. Anyway, you can imagine how my bedspread looked, and Oxy-Clean got it out. Completely.

So I said okay, send me the Kaboom. And it worked really well! I use Tilex  usually, because that's what my cleaning lady used when I had a cleaning lady, but Kaboom worked just as well without that terrifying odor.

I told the Kaboom people I was gonna be honest even if I hated their product and they said they weren't worried, and they were right. KABOOM IS A GREAT BATHROOM CLEANER! IT WORKED ON MY COUNTERS AND IN MY SHOWER! I just yelled case you miss Billy Mays.

So there you go. And you'll be shocked to hear I put off using the Kaboom for awhile. But they told me I'd have to clean St. Augustine's bathroom if I didn't get on it, so...

Mona Lisa in yoga class. It's just a funny visual.

I stayed up till 11:00 last night to watch Mad Men, so you know I have no personality today. I will be brief and to the point. It'll be like a man wrote this.

1) How is everyone doing on The Fountainhead? I am almost done. I have enjoyed it. That's all I'm saying until our official discussion on it. Because I'm mysterious. I'm Mona Lisa. I have a severe middle part all of a sudden.

2) I really hate it when people say "all the sudden."

3) And "taken back." It's taken aback.

4) This is why people don't like to leave me comments, isn't it?

5) You guys are always good at this, so please help, and go ahead and make grammatical errors. I really do not get that bent out of shape. (Am picturing self twisted about, like I'm in some Lilas Yoga and You class, with my cloak and severe Mona Lisa middle part.)

It irks Marvin to the nth degree that I have 68 songs on my iPod. Marvin has every kind of iPod and has 3,200 songs. On our computer, he has over 10,000 songs.  You can see why my 68 bug him.

And let's just be polite and say we do not share taste in music. He says that every song he ever plays I claim is frenetic or depressing. I do hear myself say that a lot. "What's that frenetic SONG you're playing?"

Anyway. Can you please suggest songs for my iPod, preferably from this decade, although old songs will be fine, too. I will listen to whatever you tell me to listen to.

I was going to tell you no country songs, but then remember how I ended  up liking that one girl, the hot American Idol girl, the one who grabs the microphone over and over when she sings? Oh WHAT IS HER NAME? All I can think of is Kelly Clarkson and that's not it. The HOT one.

Crap.

I like how 5) has become not remotely brief. Or to the point.

6) Faithful Reader Karen sent me photos from yet another Halloween party at that same house. I was the night sky. I look 12.

That's also a picture of my body back there in the yellow thong.

 

Robert Smith is jamming out to my mock turtleneck.

Remember decorating with milk crates? I wonder when we stopped? When was the fateful day we tossed them because we had an Ikea shelf or some similar "I'm on my way to growing up" decorating moment?

7) Okay, going now. Mad Men is so worth my tired eyes. Which I'm sure I'll still say seven hours into my day of proofreading about electrophoresis.

8) Kellie PICKLER! Oh, thank heavens.

And another thing

It's not "kindeegarden." The word is kindergarten. Why did people even start thinking it was kindeegarden in the first place? Some people even say "kinneegarden," as the man who READS THE NEWS on my morning radio show did today. You can imagine the terse email shot off by yours truly.

Ask June

Faithful reader Catherine of Our Lady of Perfection--and by the way, she is also a proofreader and who is angry she didn't think of the blog name Our Lady of Perfection for her own self?--was waking a loved one this morning and she heard herself call, "There's muffins!" and then she thought, Oh dear God, June would vomit and die a thousand deaths if she heard me say "There's muffins" and yes, yes I would.

But then Catherine at Our Lady of Perfection went on to wonder if I had any colloquialisms of my own and of course I do, and then she went on to wonder just what was wrong with her that she was spending this much time thinking about someone she had never really met, and perhaps you at this point are getting a little twitterpated rolling around inside Catherine's brain for as long as you have so I will get to the point. For once.

Catherine had the idea that I should have an Ask June feature, where you could write in and ask me anything you wanted to know, like gee, does June ever say anything dreadful like "There's muffins" or is it really incorrect English to say "golfing" or whatever.

I was thinking maybe it could be like the Playboy Forum, where y0u could ask about any topic, from insanely personal questions you may have about me, to grammar, to what do you do when your cat steals socks (I just got that query the other day), to how to grill steaks (people always want to know that in the Playboy Forum and for the record I have no idea seeing as I am "vegetarian" [Sonictarian] and have no grill), or whatever.

Am I the only person here who reads the Playboy Forum? Really?

So, I don't know if you will barrage me with questions now and therefore Ask June will appear tomorrow, or the questions will trickle in and Ask June will appear later after I have compiled a few, kind of like the email I have for the guy who makes our website at work. Rather than email him with errors I find on our work website each time I find them, they are making me compile a list and email him with it all at once so that he doesn't come to my department with a rifle and spear me through the gullet. Because apparently I am the only one who finds the everyday/every day error to be an emergency that needs to be taken care of right now.

I wonder why I eat lunch alone so often?

So go ahead. Ask June!

But as for Santa and me, we believe

Okay, Christmas cards, done. Even though I ran out halfway through and had to go to the card store and buy more. Which by the way has never happened to me EVER and I figured out it happened this year because of stupid going-all-of-2007-without-spending so I had to wait until January 1 to buy 50% off cards and by then the pickings were slim so I only bought three boxes, one box of which in retrospect were TOTALLY NOT ME and the entire time I was signing them I felt like a total impostor. They were all modern and edgy and I'm all who am I, Edie Sedgwick with these cards? So, anyway, I paid 900 dollars for cards today.

How many Christmas cards do you send out? I send out 80. I do not do that "If they don't send me one, I don't send them one" thing. Seems mean-spirited.

I know I have told this story before, but it bears repeating, if you ask me, and it's my blog. One time it was the day after Christmas and I was on my annual quest for half-off Christmas cards. I was standing there for an hour and a half with all the other women, choosing cards. This set? No, too dark. These? No, the message is too long. Hey, these are nice! No, the envelopes are blue.

Suddenly, bursting through the crowd was a man. He leaned in, grabbed the first cards he saw, and left. You have never seen anything so shocking in all your life. Men do not understand about cards. My father also says men never buy cotton balls. Is that true?

Also, I had to go to the post office today and buy stamps and I was SO TENSE about going and do you know how many people were ahead of me in line? None, that's how many. I have to remember I am not in LA anymore, hence the DOWN JACKET zipped up to my medulla oblongata. Anyway, I have to tell you I am disappointed in this year's Nutcracker stamps, which look less Nutcracker to me and more Animal from the Muppets. However, they were really colorful and they made the "42 cents" part of the stamp the same color as each Nutcracker character and they looked good on the envelope so in the end it was less of a tragedy and yes I DO realize only girls care about this sort of thing and that this is a run-on sentence of gargantuan proportions.

Speaking of grammar and punctuation, as I was running around stressing myself out about Christmas, the Elton John song Crocodile Rock came on, and I have to sing it like this: I remember when rock was young, Susie and I had so much fun...

I am unABLE to bring myself to say "me and Susie." Just writing it now sends shivers down my bottle. I mean, I was ALONE in the car. Who would have KNOWN? But still, I couldn't do it. And I have already told you that when that pretty song If I lay here, if I just lay here... comes on, I have to say "lie" every single time. I mean, it would have fit into the song perfectly well to say "If I LIE here," so why couldn't he have sung that? And the NEXT LINE is "would you lie with me and just forget the world." So why did he get it right THAT time but not the two times before? Why did nobody in the recording studio point this out? If I ever see that guy it is the first thing I'm gonna bring up. It is the only thing I'm gonna bring up. After that his people will probably take me away.

Also too today, I finished shopping for my aunt, her husband, my stepsister, my soldier, my stepfather, and my mother's dogs. Shut up. Oh, and my step-grandmother. I have not even begun Marvin yet. He is a pain in the patoot to shop for. And yes, he accepts Christmas gifts and also Hanukkah gifts. He is fine either way.

I wasn't going to tell you about my soldier, because I figure the best good deeds are those that no one knows about. BUT, in case anyone else wants to do this, I am going to come out.

There is this organization called Soldiers' Angels, and through them you can adopt a soldier. Now, there are other ways to help soldiers with them, but the way I did it was I committed to writing a letter once a week and sending a care package once a month. And if you are flummoxed about what to send a soldier in a care package, they have premade ones there that you can choose from starting as low as $11. Adopting a soldier is free, although when you sign up, one of the ways to prove you are you is to donate a dollar through PayPal, but you do not have to sign up that way, and I didn't.

Anyway, it's a nice thing to do if you feel like being good at Christmas, although what I feel like doing tonight is drinking 17 enormous Cosmopolitans and going to sleep under a big fluffy down comforter. In reality what I will be doing is making some hot chocolate and bathing Tallulah. It is a lot like how Patty and Selma, Marge's sisters on The Simpsons, think their lives are just like Sex and the City, isn't it?

Vermont Country Store. For all your holiday and correct-English needs

You know how I get.

I was ordering something for my mother's birthday, which is coming right up. I am sure reader Deborah, who has disappeared ever since my mother yelled at her in the comments a few months back, is gonna wanna get right on her gift purchases.

(Again, Deborah, I am sorry. You see by the date that mom is a Scorpio. Scorpios are evil. I know this because I used to be an editor at that horoscope-in-a-tube place. You know, when you go to 7-Eleven and they sell you your horoscope up at the cash register in the little tube? I don't mean the cash register is in a little tube. Yeah, I worked at the place that makes those horoscopes. So I know from astrological signs. Mom can't help it that she's a Scorpio, Deborah. Marvin is a Scorpio too, and I could tell you some things.)

I have already sent mom a "That One in '08" T-shirt, which is only funny if you watched the second presidential debate (and perhaps only funny if you are voting for "that one"), but I also sent mom a  little something-something from Vermont Country Store, which is only the best best best store ever, on earth.

Please tell me you know about Vermont Country Store. They sell all sorts of things from your childhood that you thought were gone forever. Click-clacks, Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific, My Sin perfume, maple logs. It is all there.

Once, I even got to actually go to the real Vermont Country Store, as my Aunt Kathy of haunty house fame lived in Vermont, and we were visiting. It was SO COOL AT THAT STORE. Also, it happened to be my birthday that day, so both my mother and my aunt bought me things (pink cotton pajamas and some Muget Du Bois perfume by Coty, which it turns out? Months later, my Aunt Mary came to visit, and she said, "Why do you have this perfume? This was your great-grandmother's brand of perfume").

I also, inexplicably, had a GIANT panic attack at Vermont Country Store, and I don't know why, but it was still fun. It really was a bad one. My heart beat out my chest like Pepe LePew's does when he sees the cat for the first time. I had a cold sweat and sweated ice cubes like that little penguin that Bugs Bunny finds in the North Pole, except technically he cries ice cubes. What is Bugs Bunny doing in the North Pole? Is that one of the times he takes a wrong turn at Albuquerque? Why is it that when I have a panic attack all my symptoms are cartoon characters'?

And you wanna know what irks me? When people say they had a panic attack when in reality they were mildly annoyed. "I was standing in my closet having a panic attack over what to wear to work." Were you? Were you clutching your chest, thinking you were going to die because you didn't know what you were going to wear to work? Cause that seems a little extreme.

To get back to the point of my "You know how I get" sentence that is up at the top of K2, there, I ORDERED my mother said gift from Deborah and me from Vermont Country Store, and you know how they immediately send you an email back:

"Thank you for ordering from Vermont Country Store. Your order has been sent to June's Mom, 1413 Mean To Readers Lane, Saginaw MI. Vermont Country Store is open everyday except Christmas."

Well.

You know I had to reply.

"Dear Vermont Country Store (I said). You know I like you. You know I order from you all the ding-dang time. But it is EVERY DAY. TWO WORDS. I Wear my everyday clothes EVERY DAY."

Yes, I really did send them my infamous line about everyday clothes every day. I am seriously thinking of tattooing it on myself. Hey, if Angelina can latitude and longitude herself.

Oh, can I digress about that? I mean, I have been so linear thus far. The other day, Marvin was reading my Star Magazine, which somebody ought to as I have no time, and he was all, "What is that BEAR CLAW on Angelina Jolie?"

I said, "That is the latitude and longitude of her children."

Marvin was silent for a moment. "Don't they ever move?"

My POINT to you, and I KNOW you wish I would get to the sweet, sweet point so you could go read Dooce or someone actually entertaining, is that hours later I returned to my computer and THEY WROTE ME BACK!! VERMONT COUNTRY STORE WROTE ME BACK!

"Dear Mrs. Gardensalad (they wrote), We apologize for our spelling error and will let the appropriate people know."

I have never been so pleased in all my life. Do you have any idea how many companies I write to with my stupid grammatical and spelling corrections? Do you think any of them write me back? I will never buy anything from any other store. I will wear shoes made from Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific bottles. I will curl my hair with maple logs. I will wear click-clack earrings. I will not blanch at using Muget Du Bois for the rest of my life. (Thank you. Loved myself for that one.)

I will go now, sort of, but it occurs to me that this post could have been summed up like this: I wrote a catalog company about a spelling error and they actually wrote back! And it is for this reason that I am going to for sure email my friend MaryBeth to make sure she reads this particular post.

Sometimes I'll leave MB a message on her answering machine, and she'll rush in after work and hit the answering machine as she's headed to the bathroom. When it's me, she always starts to laugh and get mad at the same time, because she knows she is going to have to choose between hearing the whole 45-minute story I am inevitably leaving and peeing down her own leg, or rushing to the bathroom and going really fast and trying to run back in and hear the rest of my story and try to cobble together what she missed.

I got 142 words for you, MB: voice mail. 1995 called.