“You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait. You need not even wait; just be quiet, still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.”

–Franz Kafka

1. Today I bought Spike a t-shirt for $.49 at Gymboree.
2. The other night while we slept, Pete barfed up about 9 barf logs in between Larry and me.
3. Later that night, he jumped on my back and started scratching at the covers LIKE HE WAS ABOUT TO POOP.
4. He did not poop, as I threw him on the floor.
5. Are you watching The Next Food Netwood Star? Here is why the show is midly interesting: when people exhibit bad behavior, the judges have no choice but to boot them because if we see that the guy with the big eyebrows and the eyes that are too close together is a douchebag, we will not watch his show were he to win. It’s the only reality show with any sort of justice, as they aren’t about to give a tv show to somebody the universe hates. This may be why it’s kind of boring, since it violates The Omarosa Factor, but whatever. My favorites are Gay Seth Rogen (if he would just say “heavens to Murgatroyd” my life would be complete–whatever accent Snagglepuss has, GSR has it, too), Large Forehead Man, and Chubby Asian Lady. Who needs names? I’ve got stereotypes.
6. I just started watching The Wire. So I watched the first episode and followed what was happening pretty well, then watched the second episode and thought uh what but then remembered that a lot of dumb-dumbs watch this show and maybe it gets easier, and then went to watch the third episode and realized that I had actually skipped the second episode and THAT is why major plot points happened off screen. So anyway. I have no opinions so far except that Dominic West = hot.
7. You will be happy to learn that Spike is getting better about eating real food these days and will also let me feed him if I do it fast. This means there are less things being immedately thrown on the floor (although everything hits the floor eventually). Last night the child ate baked chicken and roasted zucchini! Over the weekend he ate a sloppy joe! Because I am bragging, tonight will be a floor throwing extravaganza.
8. Did you know that a position used to exist called the Groom of the Stool? This person’s #1 priority was wiping the king’s ass. NO, REALLY. He would then examine the turds and, if necessary, administer an enema.
9. I ran into this guy today! He is just as weird as ever.
10. Did you see how many comments there were on that post? TWENTY-EIGHT.

In Facebook news, someone scanned and posted the large composite 8th grade class photo and tagged most everyone in it. Lots of the scary freak girls are tagged, and thus when one of them makes a comment, I get an email with the following subject:

Jenny Meanstein Who Tried to Kick Your Ass in 1985 commented on a photo of you

And I die a little bit inside. A few weeks ago there was this exchange between the scary freak girls (who are giving the camera the stink-eye in their black Ozzy t-shirts):

Jenny Meanstein: We look so MEAN! How horrible!
Lucinda Asskicker: Girl, we WERE mean! LOL

Today there is a discussion about what the area was called where the scary freaks hung out — freak corner or freak alley? And I got this email a few minutes ago:

Kelly Awfulness commented on a photo of you:

“It was freak corner and freak alley was the scheduled arena for afternoon fights!”

The glee in the part about the fights gave me hives. Do you know how many times the scary freak girls ordered me to freak alley after school? And how many times I hid in the school office until I saw my mother’s car drive up? HIVES. I now have a hive virus.

Vanity tag spotted in Kroger parking lot:

GODDTIT

I tried to make it about God (God did it= God dit it?) but I can’t. It’s totally go double-D tit. I’m sticking with that unless someone can come up with a better explanation.

I was just looking through a stranger’s set of photos on Facebook — dammit, I love looking at strangers’ photos — that were all headshots for professional use. The photos featured a prominent chest mole. Not a cute birthmark, but a big ole moley mole. All of the photos, people…every last one. It was on a spot she could’ve covered, a spot that 90% of my clothes cover anyway. I’m wondering if there is some mole power movement going on.

In other skin-related news, Spike has a weird rash. I am a champion symptom Googler and I came up with nothing, so here, fellow mamas who like consulting Dr. Google, perhaps your child has this: flat red spots all over the body, mostly on the arms and legs, but with larger, still-flat red welt-esque things that suspiciously appear and disappear at random (usually on the back). Is your child exhibiting these symptoms, yet is feverless, cheerful, eating well, singing songs, pushing a Swiffer around the house? Congratulations! I will save you $134 (some of that was for the strep test) and tell you that your child has a RASH VIRUS.

A few weeks ago Spike had a high fever for several days with no other symptoms. For $80, I learned that he had the popular FEVER VIRUS.

“Virus,” while accurate and actually a word that means something, is also a clever descriptor that means “I don’t know.” Put your symptom in front of the word “virus” and voila! You have an official diagnosis. Par example: do you want a cheeseburger? HUNGER VIRUS. Overslept this morning? SLEEP VIRUS.

By the way, you owe me $134.

Hey, I read a couple of mediocre books this week! Want to hear about them? Ok then!

Many years ago I read all of Alice Adams’ books. I don’t know why; I barely liked her, but after the first couple, they were familiar. And they’re not bad, just not awesome. (I should write blurbs on the back of books.) Anyway, I saw an Alice Adams book at the public library that I hadn’t read (Medicine Men), and so I did, and lo, it was mediocre. Here is why: there is a character who has been having an affair with a married doctor for several years and decides to break it off. He is not happy about this. She gets her housekey back from him, but when she returns from a trip, she finds that her bedroom is filled with tulips. Creepy. Then each night, she hears her back yard gate squeak open and hears something watery hitting the leaves of some plants. She guesses that it’s the doctor and that he’s peeing in her yard. Almost every chapter ends with the yard and the peeing and the creepiness. It’s obviously building to something, right? (Even though my question is: if you can hear pee hitting a leaf, aren’t you close enough to the yard that you can look out the window?) Anyway. She gets a new boyfriend, who puts a garden bench in front of the gate, and that night after they do it for the first time they hear the squeaking gate and a yell and find the doctor laying in the yard with a broken ankle. What? No ominous murder scene? So after CHAPTERS and MONTHS of thinking the doctor is peeing in her yard, we find out that. . .the doctor is peeing in her yard! Wtf, Alice Adams.

The other was Curtis Sittenfeld’s The Man of My Dreams. Look, I love the Sittenfeld. I loved Prep and I adored American Wife. But The Man of My Dreams feels like a book she either wrote quickly or in a writing workshop. And I wouldn’t say it was mediocre, but it is definitely not as good as her other two books. One bonus: no creepy peeing doctors.

In related news, I am going to try to get all the way through Lolita next. I don’t usually feel guilty for not having read books, but I feel like I should’ve read it already. I mean, I read Twilight. I should balance that with Lolita.

What the cat dragged in: my pajama top
Where he dragged it: into the litter box

Spike, who likes to play with my cell phone, apparently needed to know the weather one day and therefore accessed the Weather Channel on my non-internet-capable phone. It cost $7.99.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store at lunch to get a few things — eggs, cheese, butter, more steamable-in-the-bag sugar snap peas that I am currently obsessed with — and so brought the bag in and stowed it in one of our work fridges. At 2:50 I happened to look at the clock and suddenly remembered that I had a meeting across town. I got halfway to my car when I remembered my bag o’ perishables and had to go back upstairs. Anyway: just so we are clear, I arrived at my meeting a) late and b) with a carton of eggs. Oh hi! I brought snacks. Well, snacks-to-be. Almost snacks. Deconstructed snacks. Snacks in their purest form. OKAY FINE. I BROUGHT EGGS.

Speaking of the grocery store, on my way there yesterday I was listening to the soft rock easy listening station (of course I was) and heard part of that song that goes “Sunshine, go away today…” which is not a song I’m terribly familiar with (weird given my love of the soft rock easy listening station). Then as I was walking into the store, a man was walking out and what song do you think he was whistling? The same song. The grocery store was playing its own frightening mix of jazzy Muzaked favorites, so apparently the universe was just trying to tell me something. You do realize that I am the sort of person who really does think the universe is trying to tell me something, right? If you’d like to play along and perhaps guess what secret message I was supposed to receive, you should Google it. (I linked to some lyrics online that were apparently on a cruddy site that made people’s computers go nuts. So Google it yourself, why don’t you.)

And speaking of the soft rock easy listening station, I also heard “Careless Whisper” yesterday. Does anyone else think it’s funny that he says, “Though it’s easy to pretend, I know you’re not a fool”? It’s easy to pretend you’re a HUGE IDIOT DUMBASS, but you’re not, so, you know, we’re cool.

Lately the most pressing thing on my mind has not been what’s on tv or what I overheard somewhere, but what my child, who will not be fed yet rejects 90% of all food, is going to eat for dinner. (New food is inspected using one’s index finger, and once fully destroyed, is flung to the floor with abandon, much to the delight of the waiting dog.) Or how to get mildew out of all of my white napkins that apparently were wet and sat in the damp laundry room for a week. Or where to find a cheap, yet not cheap-looking rug for the back room, which used to be the junk room, then turned into Larry’s office, and is now going to be Spike’s playroom. So see, you haven’t been missing much.

But really: the mildew on the napkins is pissing me off. The mildew laughed when I bleached that load of laundry. I thought it was the spin cycle but it was really just the sound of mildew cracking its ass up. Using cloth napkins is just one of those things that makes me feel like a grown-up even though the rest of the house is crumbling around me. I do NOT want to buy new ones. Heloise? Are you reading this? I need a hint.

The rug thing is also on my nerves. I am thinking of buying this $35 striped rug I saw at Big Lots. I am now in the process of convincing myself there is such a thing as “70s schoolroom mod,” because that’s TOTALLY what the rug looks like. And at $35, Pete, Lulu, and Spike can barf and poop on it every day ON PURPOSE and I will just call up mildew and we will have a hearty laugh. However, it is a $35 rug and probably, once unfurled, looks that way. In fact, it probably looks worse. It probably looks like an $11 rug. Sigh.

I’m also still in the boring loop called “I need new contacts” — even after the 8th pair of trials. People, I do not WANT to be a glasses-wearer. So, to sum up: the attempts at child-feeding, the mildew, the $35 rug, the glasses…all of this makes Sally a dull girl. OBVIOUSLY.

Also, I hate my hair.