For years — say, 20 years — whenever I have a headache, the words “Fie, how my head aches! What a head have I!” pop into my head against my will. The nurse says this in Romeo and Juliet. I just looked it up, and I have been robbed. She says “Fie, how my bones ache” and then “Lord, how my head aches! what a head have I.” I just feel wrong all over. I mean, to be the kind of person who quotes (even internally) Shakespeare and then to get it wrong? Lame.

Speaking of lame, I just read Dead Until Dark, the first Sookie Stackhouse novel. So: story good, writing bad. Bad. BAD. BAAAAAD. Casting of True Blood? Spot on! And omg, Sookie’s clothes are hysterical. My all-time favorite: “Finally I yanked out some khaki slacks and a bronze silk blouse with short sleeves. I had brown leather sandals and a brown leather belt that would look good. I hung a chain around my neck, stuck in some big gold earrings, and I was ready” (130).

Slacks! Blouse! Sookie has been living with Gran too long.

In other news, I am also reading The Mysterious Benedict Society. Yes, it’s a kids book. (In the voice of Fred Armisen doing Joy Behar on SNL): So what? Who cares?

Oh, hi. I’m pretty sure that I have the flu.

You know what’s gross? Lifting the toilet lid and discovering the cat turds you scooped but forgot to flush.

I have seen the face of evil, and it resides in a face-shaped pattern of old detergent, cat hair, general dirt, and dust clumps under one’s washer and dryer. I swept up an absurdly large pile of crap that took 5 dustpan fillings to dispose of. That washer and dryer have been in the same position for over 5 years. What if they had lasted longer? The gigantor clumps of evil would most likely have come to life, demanded a sandwich, and then eaten the baby instead.

I got locked out tonight while Larry was gone, and instead of hovering around the outside of the house near the baby’s room, fretting about whether or not I could hear him if he were to cry out in his sleep, instead I did what any rational person would do: borrowed the neighbor’s rake and started raking the front yard in the dark until Larry got home.

Today when I picked up Spike from daycare, he and his buds were playing with some homemade play-doh, but god help them all, it was dark brown. Dark brown homemade play-doh. I knew it was play-doh, but seeing your child happily pound on a clump of something that could very well be poop was still weird.

Speaking of daycare, the last time I sent diapers to school with Spike, something came over me as I was writing his name and I ended up drawing horns, a pointy goatee, and a tail on the baby on the package.

Ok, I’m done now.

For today’s discount NaBloPoMo entry, I link you to this entry written exactly 5 years ago today (and check out how people totally hijacked my comments! y’all! get your own blog!).

I also link you to this picture posted a year ago tomorrow. One of those kitties lives at our house now and one went to kitty heaven after playing a game of pinochle in the street.

Oh, law. I wish I could really tell you about my Sunday, which was filled with family resentments and furtive text messaging and me having the best game face ever (that is, unmoving, unreacting). But that would be rude, wouldn’t it? Instead, I will tell you that I put cream cheese, sour cream, butter, milk, and cheddar cheese in the vat of mashed potatoes I made, and now I will never be satisfied with plain old milk and butter mashed potatoes.

Today, I did the following:

–ate a coupla orange danish
–swept, Swiffered, vacuumed
–ate delicious cheese fries at the Cherokee
–watched in horror as my child ate honey mustard like it was ice cream
–bought a new washer and dryer (LG, front load, pretty) that will replace the washer that screams like it’s dying at the end of every cycle and the dryer that takes 2 hours to dry one pair of underpants
–shared a chocolate milkshake with Spike
–watched 27 episodes of Law and Order
–successfully wore my contacts for the first time in months!

The other night when I was looking for the PFWID (purple folder with important documents), I came across a lot of great stuff. How often do you dig through the recesses of your junk storage areas? My answer: not often enough. Here’s some of the stuff I found:

1. A VHS tape of my friend’s brother on The Price is Right, wherein he wins a washer and dryer in the Showcase Showdown

2. Photo postage stamps of the Doag Loaver in a Santa hat that Professor Fury made me

3. College transcript, where among all the Cs and Ds, the thing that irritates me is that I got a B in Folk Dance

4. Some scraps of paper with quotations on them, like this:
“There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.” — Willa Cather

5. A drawing depicting the events at a party at xyz’s house, circa 1999 (way too big to post here!), featuring Shirk curled up on the floor talking to a wooden camel

6. A notebook with this picture in it:

I felt sure that “moave doak” was a Doag Loaver reference, but on the next page is this list, and if you read carefully you’ll see that there were mauve shorts-wearing frat kids involved, so I think this must’ve been how one of them was standing. Thank you, tiny notebook, for bringing us this moment.

Hey, I found the folder! In the baby’s closet like I said, LARRY. There was no reason to worry!

And yes: this is all I’m writing today. NaBloPoMo rules.

If you were a purple folder with a couple of car titles and birth certificates in it, where would you be? And don’t say “the file cabinet” because I’ve already looked there. Don’t say “inexplicably in the guest room dresser drawers,” either, because I’ve looked there, too. I’ve narrowed it down to the following places, as I am running out of house to search:

a) shelves in baby’s closet (baby’s room used to be the guest room)
b) under the bed
c) up my butt

Larry is not confident in my cheery refrain of “it’s in the house somewhere!” but seriously, it’s in the house somewhere. Will we find it before we sell my car on Sunday? Now that’s debatable.

NaBloPoMo is already a pain in the ass. Hooray!

Today, I did the following:
1. Woke up with my left eye completely sealed shut with goo.
2. Walked into the guest room (where my mother was) with my arms outstretched, claiming to be a one-eyed zombie.
3. Went to the doctor and got some antibiotics for the sinus infection that is coming out of my eye.
4. GROSS
5. Sent an email to a high school friend suggesting that the reason her high school boyfriend just friended her on Facebook is that he wants to cut off her head and use her for a prop for the haunted house he runs.

It’s going to be a long month.

Today I took great satisfaction in this: I was chatting online with a friend and telling him about this (semi-unexciting) church carnival we took Spike to on Saturday. Then I said, “And there was a dunking booth with a guy dressed as Jesus in it!” and my friend believed me, at least for a minute.

The other thing is, on Saturday I took Pete to the vet for a small vacation while my mother is visiting, and he was yowling so melodiously on the way that I called the workplace’s main desk and let Pete meow it up on the voice mail. Of course, I ruined the surprise this morning by saying, “HEY LET’S ALL CHECK THE VOICE MAIL TOGETHER HA HA WHAT NO REASON.”

I could never commit to NaNoWriMo, but this, this I can handle. Especially with the handy way WordPress lets you backdate your posts. Not that I would ever do that!

Here is a vanity tag for today:
6FTUNDA

I love regifting. I just got back from a baby shower where I not only regifted the two items I gave (fuzzy lamb, baby blanket), but the gift bag as well. I am, admittedly, a cheapskate, but one could argue that I am also environmentally awesome.

OH DEAR GOD AREN’T YOU GLAD NABLOPOMO IS OVER.

So Larry calls me and says, “Get a piece of paper and a pen.” Ok. “Write this down.” Ok. “WKO” (pause) “FART.”

–WKO FART?
–Yep.
–What the hell does wko mean?
–Don’t know.

5 minutes later the phone rings again.

“Oh,” Larry says. “It’s ‘work of art’. Not WKO FART.”