The Great Pretender

My son Brandon is a big Beatles fan; also a big pretender. He's growing out of it somewhat at 7, but when he was little he was always in a costume or carrying a prop, "being" somebody else.

Today he was apparently being Paul McCartney, and Paul was writing in his diary.

PAUL McCARTNEY (it said at the top of the page.)

Then it said:

"Today I will have fish and tea, and other British foods."

That was apparently as far as Paul got before he went out for a snack; a British one of course, old bean.

Only A Man Would Think of This Phrasing

Brian was in a recording studio this weekend doing a voiceover audition, and while there he went into the restroom. He told me he saw an interesting sign taped to the restroom wall. I may not quote it exactly right, but basically it said this:

If you are driving a long freight train,
Flush once and THEN use paper.

Not doing so may cause the train
to jump the tracks and flood the station.

How Alarming

At 1:30 this morning our house alarm went off, and if there had been an actual bad guy in the house, I would have rushed directly into his arms, so intent was I on silencing that piercing noise. I mean really. Our bedroom is mere steps from the kitchen, back door, and alarm control box thingy, and when my conscious memory of last night begins, I was already a few steps out of the bed and the phone was ringing and all I was thinking was STOP THAT NOISE. I turned the kitchen light on and noted that the kitchen door was OPEN a couple of inches, and still I was thinking SHUT UP, SHUT UP, how can I make this thing shut up. I closed and locked the door, maybe locking a bad guy inside with us, for all I knew. Brian had not arisen from the bed, where apparently he was having a chat with the alarm people and giving them the secret code word without bothering to ascertain that everything was actually okay. Although everything was, I guess.

It worried me, though. I had been in bed, but still awake, when Bliss came home at 11:25. I heard her turn off the alarm after her own entry and then reset it for the night. Then I guess I fell asleep while she was rattling around the kitchen fixing a snack. But the thing is, the door has to be shut for you to reset the alarm, so how did it come to be open two hours later? Brian theorizes that Bliss didn't shut it completely (much less lock it) and that our cat, who's always trying to make a break for it, worked on it bit by bit until he finally got it open. Pretty good theory, except that if the cat did painstakingly work until he got the door open, why was he still inside the house?

I had another alarm scare years ago that went like this: I was hugely pregnant with Bliss, and my then-husband worked at night, hence the whole decision to get an alarm. So on the evening after we got it installed, there I sat on the sofa, nervous, pregnant and alone, when suddenly a piercing BEEP, BEEP, BEEP caused me to leap up and then just stand there, paralyzed with fear, and wait for the intruder to appear. When he never did, I eventually figured out that the alarm company man (who had unplugged various appliances during the installation process) must have accidentally hit the button on big loud alarm clock in my kitchen, setting it to go off several hours later.

These incidents together suggest to me that the only thing an alarm is good for is to give me a few seconds' notice that I'm about to be murdered. Seriously, what we should have done last night was jump up and lock the bedroom doors, get the gun and wait for the cops to show up. Instead, I go running into the kitchen to silence the alarm so as to be killed more quietly. And to think I pay twenty-seven bucks a month for this protection.

Religious Cousin Cleans House, Finds Sex Toys

I have this dear first cousin who is very religious. (I apologize to her for encapsulating her in that one sentence, but I think her religiousness is the main quality that pertains to this dream.)She has also been known on at least one occasion to clean something in my house while visiting me. "TEN YEARS AGO," she'll yell when she sees this. Anyway.

So I had this dream a couple nights ago that she had come for a weekend visit. I was getting dressed to go someplace while she and my kids were outside. I looked out the window and saw that she had raked up a big pile of leaves. Next thing I knew, I heard a lawn mower start up. Thinking it was a neighbor, I looked out again, but here came my cousin, marching along behind the lawn mower, wearing a little a straw hat to keep the sun off. I rolled my eyes (which by the way is a lifelong trait that I learned from her). What visitor takes it upon herself to cut her host's grass? I wondered. But whatever--I don't ask her to do these things.

Still in the process of getting dressed, I went into a little vanity area of my house that normally has framed pictures all over the walls. But the pictures had all been taken down--for dusting, I assumed--by my cleaning cousin. I was beginning to feel irked by all this, when I noticed, on a shelf (which doesn't even exist in real life) a bunch of SEX TOYS that had been left lying around for all the world, including religious cleaning cousins, to see! I particularly noticed an oversized black one of the manly-shaped variety. My face burned with embarrassment, but of course I was mad at HER. I was all set to go out in the yard and give her a piece of my mind for having the nerve to clean my house to begin with. But I woke up.

You ask me, I'd say there's lotsa symbolism in this dream.

Gina Bingo

Gina is my very repetitive, very annoying chronic complainer of a coworker. As if it didn't suck enough to have to work in general, I have to sit right beside her. When she is not hacking and sneezing in my general direction, she is talking, which may be worse. She cannot stand to think that the rest of us may have failed to notice her for a moment, so she keeps up a stream-of-consciousness monologue all day.

There is not a lot going on in her brain, but whatever IS going on, we hear about it. So, since they don't allow us to play drinking games at work, I've decided to get some bingo cards printed up, to try to help us normal people survive the days with her. I think there could actually be several forms of Gina Bingo. We'll each keep the cards on our desks and put a little token on the square every time she says one of her trademark things.

The first game could be COMPLAINT BINGO. The squares on the cards could say: God, it's hot in here. God, it's cold in here.My husband's out of work. I'm broke and can't pay the bills. Mama's in the hospital again. I'm sick. My head/tummy/throat hurts. No matter what you do around here, it's not enough. This computer is so slow. This printer is so slow. This customer just chewed me out. I'm starving but I don't feel like eating anything. I'm hungry but I don't feel like going anywhere. Of course she doesn't feel like going anywhere--it's much more fun to stay in the office and complain! With any luck, someone will pay attention to her!

Once somebody has won a round of Complaint Bingo (which should only take a minute) we could play REPETITIVE ANNOYING STATEMENT BINGO. The squares on those cards could say, for example: I'm a Georgia peach all the way! I live in a lake community. I'd be more than glad to. The computer automatically does that.

Finally we could play VOCABULARY BINGO. Gina pronounces things however she wants to, and clings to her mistakes no matter what anybody tells her. The Vocabulary Bingo cards would say: "I was belivid." (livid.) "It was a hox." (hoax.) "I got tickets for Circus Delay." (Cirque de Soleil).

My only concern now is what the winner of each round will get to do. Oh, I know what we'd all LIKE to do. But that would be illegal, and not very nice either.

Our Hot Lingerie

So the other night we finished watching TV and got ready to clear out of the living room, and I felt compelled to remark upon Brian's appearance. His sleeping attire (he has several identical sets) consists of a gray t-shirt and a pair of white boxer shorts. He takes out his contacts at night, too, and wears these black-framed,nerdy-on-purpose Drew Carey kind of glasses.

It was the shorts that got me, though. The waistband of them always manages to slink down lower than his tummy, while the front of the shorts gets all wrinkled up and the fly gapes open. And once he's been sitting around in a chair for a while, the whole business tends to be sort of crooked on his body.

I shook my head at the sight of him. "God," I said, starting to laugh. "We've got to get you something to wear around the house that's not so terrible-looking."

He looked over at me--me, in my bleach-stained navy blue thermal pants topped by non-coordinating t-shirt and sweatshirts, neither of which disguised the fact that my chest was six inches further south than it is when I have a bra on. "Well, you know," he replied, "you ain't exactly setting the world on fire yourself."

Put These in Your Dictionary

I'll let you in on a couple of new words my daughter Bliss and I have coined. I like them so much that I wish I could find some way for us to get paid for thinking them up, or at least get the credit for them, but I've pretty well given up on that, so I hereby release them into the wilds of the English language.

The first one is hers--which figures, since she's in high school--and the word is IMPREGNITO. When you're pregnant but you're trying to conceal it, you're impregnito, see?

The other word, mine, is SARGASM. That's when you get finished having unfulfilling sex and your partner says "How was it?" and you roll your eyes and go, "Woo-wee, that was really something."

And come to think of it, it would really suck if you wound up impregnito when all you had was a sargasm.