1. If you saw a dude not just picking his nose, but, like, playing it like it was an instrument while driving down the highway, would you be surprised that he had a vanity tag? Me either. Bonus: it was 2RAW4U.

2. In Sunday’s NYT Magazine, there’s an article about Stieg Larsson, author of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. While who controls his literary estate is interesting and all, what I thought was most fascinating was this:

“Baksi [who has written a memoir, "My Friend Stieg Larsson"] does not have the typical Swedish personality. He’s voluble, talkative, a bit of a self-aggrandizer. His book has offended a lot of people, because it violates the Swedish principle of jantelagen — of not sticking out or making too much of yourself. He has claimed, some of Larsson’s friends say, a much bigger part in Larsson’s life than he actually played.”

JANTELAGEN. It’s kind of what I’ve been waiting for my whole life. After I read more about it–that while it’s a Swedish principle and all, it originated from a novel and that it’s much harsher than the NYT explanation–I thought maybe I wasn’t a jantelagen enthusiast after all, but I’ve decided to embrace it anyway. I’ve decided the Mississippi version of jantelagen is “no one’s studying you.” It’s okay to think you’re special, but don’t assume everyone else agrees with you. And shut UP about youself, will ya? (Uh, says the lady with the blog.)

3. I just read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Why was I under the impression that this book was narrated by an elephant? Friends, it is not. I was so convinced that at the end of every chapter I kept waiting for the aha! elephant narrator! moment. Nope. Narrated by a human all the way through. Set in the Depression, it’s about a man who accidentally joins the circus. (You’ll like it better if you ever entertained the idea of going to clown school. What?) It’s one of those books that is engrossing but not necessarily your favorite book of all time. Your mom will probably like it, but tell her to watch out for the scene where the lady in the cooch tent does the act with her boobs.

4. Is it ok if we don’t talk about Lost? I’m tired of talking about it and getting mad that Shannon was apparently Sayid’s one true love and not Nadia. Let’s just say, “Goodbye, Lost! It was fun for awhile and then you made us mad and then it was good again and I always kind of thought you were dicking us around and then it turns out that you were but it was a pretty good ending anyway so let’s all start watching Treme with real interest even though every time Steve Zahn sings I want to die, ok?”

5. Someone recently signed an email to our entire workplace staff with “Love you all.” Not a typo, just an outpouring of love. Can’t a person be real and emotional in this world? Is everything a joke? Look, it’s a beautiful thing….that I forwarded to several people.

6. I ate a huge lunch and am about to start crying I’m so sleepy.

From an Amazon review of a booster seat:

It does seem a little small to fit a toddler into, but once the tray is removed and it is used as just a booster seat, it will probably be fine. I really like that your child can get so close to the table using this little seat.

Thumbs up, way way up, for this little seat. I plan to buy two more as baby gifts for my brother and cousin who are expecting babies in October (not with each other).

Larry is always losing things. There is much stomping about in the morning, looking for keys, wallet, special pens (one black, one blue), sunglasses, computer bag, et cetera. You name it, Larry’s looking for it. So this morning before he left for the spin class he teaches at the asscrack of dawn on Wednesday mornings, he was looking for his keys and I was laying in bed trying to ignore him because it was 5:41 when UH-OH I remembered: yesterday I put a clean tablecloth on the dining room table. [Sidenote: I halfheartedly wiped the table down before I put the tablecloth on, but did nothing about the dried-on yogurt globules in Spike's spot. I just felt like I needed to confess that.] And while I did notice that there was a strange lump on the corner, I thought was just a weird foldy thing but…oh, right. Turned out to be Larry’s keys. A particularly mean (yet unintentional!) trick to play on someone who is prone to misplacing his stuff, no?

I wish I had something clever to say about the end of Lost, which of course could not come too soon. Lost has turned out to be one of those people who says “gimmee five!” and holds out his hand and then takes it away when you try to slap it. Lost, that trick was cool, like, five seasons ago.

Yesterday I had the misfortune of eating a foot-long chili dog in my car. This isn’t going to turn into a SALLY AWASH IN CHILI story, but rather a story about how it made me feel as though the chilidog had arrived fully formed in my stomach and was attempting to make an escape through my belly button. Gross? Yes. But it reminded me of the last time I had this precise stomach pain, which was in 1997 or so when I ate a Wendy’s super smokey bacon cheesey specialburger, which was delicious, but which also reconstituted itself into its original, non-chewed up shape and was busy Jazzercizing. I was laying on the couch in the TA offices (gross! I can’t believe I ever laid on that couch!) bemoaning my fate, when gclark’s roommate and I had this conversation:

GCR: Didn’t you eat one of those last week and didn’t it do the same thing to you?
Sally: Yes.
GCR: Well then, you’re a fuckin’ idiot.

And….there it is.

1. I grew up eating meatballs instead of meat sauce with spaghetti, and that is the way I do things now. It came to my attention that Larry is rather fond of meat sauce, so occasionally I have made it, and thought it was rather dogfood-like in its consistency. And then one time I was going to make meat sauce but accidentally mixed everything up for meatballs, and then decided to make the meat sauce anyway, and lo: I discovered the secret to delicious meat sauce. You mix everything up and then brown the meat! It becomes tender and not dogfood-like at all.

2. My stereo has one million parts: a tuner, a cd player, a turntable, and two speakers. (Note my math: five = one million.) I don’t have a good place to put it, so right now it’s in the guest room doing no one much good. I am actually considering buying one of those gross all-in-one Grandpa record player deals, just to save space. And yes: we have a digital turntable, but gah that’s a lot of effort just to be able to play a Carole King song once every five years. I am telling you this because I just inherited 500 more records, most of them semi-horrific (Bobby Darin Sings Ray Charles?).

3. Recently, I went to lunch with Spike and an Unnamed Person, and as he is two (TWO!), Spike was unhappy with the state of his life at the restaurant, and was whiny and loud about sitting in his high chair. (Note: the restaurant is a home-cooking, kind of dirty and greasy buffet and had plenty of other whiny, loud children expressing their disgruntlement with the state of their lives.) The whining wasn’t even on my nerves and I was happily plunging into my plate of fried things, when the Unnamed Person told me with no joking in his/her voice that my child was totally out of control and that if I didn’t straighten him up I would need Supernanny to come fix him. While I didn’t react (I am well-schooled in not reacting, y’all), I seethed for a while but now think this might be the funniest thing Unnamed Person has ever said aloud. Plus, it is awfully fun to yell out “Supernanny!” when Spike does something remotely bad. Like picking up his milk cup, bringing it to his lips to fake me out, and then carefully dumping it on the dining room table. SUPERNANNY!

4. I just read An Education, the expanded version of the essay that inspired the movie, and while I enjoyed it, I have to say it was one of the more boring memoirs I’ve ever read. I don’t know why I expected the author to become a lesbian in the end, but I was actually really disappointed that she was married to the same man for thirty years. What could this mean?

5. I hope all of you are married to/dating people who will switch entrees with you when yours comes and you don’t like it because it “tastes like salmon” (it was salmon) and he has shrimp in a delicious garlicky sauce with grits. Thanks, Larry!

Internet, I have been keeping something from you. It’s about Pete, o he of putting his cat butt on the tub drain and pooping directly into it/attempting to eat the faces of all of our guests/attempting to eat my face off while I sleep.

While Pete was a terrible cat a great majority of the time, he seemed to understand that to do bodily harm to Spike would mean only one thing. And while Pete ate or attempted to eat the faces of our houseguests/housesitters, he was strangely tolerant of Spike. Pete would lay directly in Spike’s path as he was running through the living room pushing a truck, and then dart away right before he got creamed. It was a fun game, but as I have lived with a psychopath cat for almost five years, I know this: he is not predictable. One minute he is purring in your lap and the next you have a pillow over your head as you yell for your husband to rescue you from the demon who is doing that sideways kitty dance with the ears back and the huffing/puffing. A few months ago, Spike got away from me and was happily beating on Pete, and while Pete took it, he also raised his paw as if he was going to smack him, and I thought, what am I waiting for? Because it’s going to happen. As much as he may have understood me (and I really and truly thought he understood me) when I said “IF YOU HARM THE BABY YOU ARE GOING AWAY FOREVER,” Pete was not 100% in control of his kitty emotions and one day, he was going to try to eat Spike’s face off. This is a fact.

It occured to me that if I waited for this to happen, not only would I have a baby with no face, I would also have:
a) my parents yelling at me about how I let this happen
b) Larry’s parents yelling at me about how I let this happen
c) lots of tears
d) a dead cat.

So instead of waiting for this to happen, we just decided it was time for Pete to go away. And being put to sleep was the only option for old Pete-Pete. We tried drugs. We tried putting him outside, but he was terrified and would stand at the door and moan. He was not rehomeable, at least not if we told the truth about his temperment/lack of sanity. (We tried.) Sending him to the pound would mean he would be put to sleep as soon as they realized he was insane, i.e., 10 seconds after he was dropped off. Sending him to the no-kill shelter would mean he would spend the rest of his unhappy life in a cage, getting more and more pissed off, and eating the faces of those who cleaned his litter box. We decided it would be best for all of us if we just chose a day when no one was bleeding or screaming and said our goodbyes. This wasn’t a punishment for Pete, and even though he was just a stupid cat for christ’s sake, he couldn’t help it that he was nuts. If he had a faulty liver and needed to be put down, this would be the humane thing to do. Pete just happened to have a faulty brain.

I didn’t tell you before, Internet, because I didn’t want you to say, OH THERE’S ANOTHER SOLUTION! Listen: there was no other solution. I loved that stupid cat even though he used his poop as a weapon to control us all.

Let me take a moment to say some nice things about Pete: he had very soft fur. He was a loud purrer. He was a very neat eater. He bathed often. He was very talented and several times removed a large, five-foot painting from the wall, slinging it behind the bookcase. (Mix, who was housesitting, saw him do this once. His technique was to stand on the back of the couch and shove the painting with his front paws over and over until it got enough momentum to pop off the wall and fly through the air.) He loved to play with his mousies, and because I loved him, I once rescued a mousie he dumped in the toilet. (Additional detail you don’t need: the toilet had pee in it.) He would fetch his toys Larry threw for him, and played a mean game of tag. (Mean because eventually he would get carried away and try to eat my face off.) He was very photogenic. See also: this. This one’s good, too. Aw, ok, last one, I promise.

An interesting thing about having a Peteless household is that Lulu, who was the butt of all of Pete’s jokes, is shedding less. Is that weird, or what? Apparently Lulu was constantly in a state of distress and would shed whole chihuahuas’ worth of fur just walking though the room.

Another interesting thing is that the other cats now have a chance to hang out inside without fear of getting their asses kicked, and it turns out that the other cats are incredibly boring. They just eat and sleep. They don’t do anything exciting. You know how some girls like guys who treat them poorly, ignoring the nice guys who only want to love them and curl up beside them, purring heavily? I am like that with cats. I liked my bad cat. My relationship with him was exciting. What will he do today? Will he be nice or will I find poop in my bed? He was an unpredictable, hilarious, horrible cat. And I miss him.

There is this couple whose baby is at Spike’s daycare. Every day they both come to pick him up. Every day they hold hands while they make their way to the playground, and every day I find myself barfing into my sleeve. Then I try to examine why this group love effort triggers this reaction in me. Am I jealous? Are they so dependent on each other that one can’t run to the store while the other picks up the baby? Do they work together?

OR MAYBE THEY ARE JUST GAGGY.

Get Me Out turned out to be a pretty good read if you like medical stuff/histories of stuff/gross stuff. Two words (one of which is hyphenated): do-it-yourself forceps. I started reading My Freshman Year: What a Professor Learned by Becoming a Student, but I think I need to read fiction next. I would ask for a recommendation, but I have roughly 8 quadrillion books waiting to be read in this house, and as I am stuck in it, I should read them.

I’m stuck in it because I have pneumonia. Doesn’t that sound DRAMATIC? It is the weirdest ailment I’ve ever had, and this is why: with a sinus infection, you feel rotten, then you start an antibiotic, and within a day or two you’re better. I started my antibiotic Thursday, felt worse Friday, felt better Saturday, felt worse Sunday, and still feel bad today. And the bad-feeling isn’t like “oh my [insert body part that is affected]” but “oh I have no energy” and “oh I just got some clothes out of the dryer and now I have to lay down for awhile.” I’m just not used to not bouncing back quickly from illness, and it’s weeyid.

One good thing about not being able to clean out closets and mop floors while I’m home (which is usually how I spend my sick days) is that I am watching an insane amount of television. As luck would have it, we are doing a Nielsen survey this week, and so it looks as though I am a lazy sloth who watches 3 episodes of Law and Order: Criminal Intent in a row every Monday. Oh, Nielsen. I would if I could. Bonus: today I saw one I’ve never seen before! This is unprecedented. Thanks, pneumonia!

I also watched An Education, which I loved. Larry is excited about this because An Education was my Netflix movie, and usually it takes me three months to watch them (or else he mails them back!). Which is why I have yet to see Julie and Julia.

omg do you remember when i wrote blog posts about what i did every day all the time how did we stand it

1. I just read Julie Klausner’s I Don’t Care About Your Band, and whatever feeling that the first few chapters gave me that I was going to love the book were killed around the time Julie tells us that when she gave her first blow job, she felt like she was coming home. I think she is allegedly empowering herself by revealing the gross, sad details of her dating life, but it doesn’t come off that way; it just comes off as gross and sad. While there are some really funny parts, I found the whole thing to be incredibly depressing. I had to unfollow her on Twitter, too.

2. I am currently reading the opposite of a humor book about someone’s romantic misadventures, which is Get Me Out: A History of Childbirth From the Garden of Eden to the Sperm Bank by Randi Hutter Epstein. It’s really interesting, but I find myself wishing that Mary Roach had written it instead. Oh, the zingers in the footnotes that she would’ve come up with regarding Dr. William Smellie and the term “laudable pus”! I also found a great typo: “William of Orange took over the thrown” (26). Yes! I love finding typos!

3. Books I have recently checked out of the library, but became bored with after 50 pages or so, include:
Shiksa Goddess by Wendy Wasserstein. I’ve been wanting to read this for years. What a disappointment! It just….wasn’t funny.
Scenes from a Marriage (the teleplay) by Ingmar Bergman. Got tired of the smug man in the first scene.
Last Night in Twisted River by John Irving. Stupid book flap! Had I not read the book flap, I would’ve made it farther in before overwhelming depression crushed me. The first scene is depressing, but knowing that it’s ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE gave me no incentive to keep going. I still have Until I Find You rotting on my bookshelf anyway.

4. I just got a copy of The Letters of Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh, but it’s kind of a heavy book and I am sick in bed and it’s a little unwieldy. That’s a pretty lame reason not to read a book I’ve been wanting to read for awhile, but I never said I wasn’t lame.