conversation......

Xcalibur: You better be lucky I can't make a sperm font
wildorchid: o~~~
wildorchid: there's a sperm
Xcalibur: O'''''''
wildorchid: 0 o~~~
wildorchid: egg and sperm
wildorchid: & this is a fetus
Xcalibur: (*)
wildorchid: thats a boob with a high nipple
wildorchid: hahh
wildorchid: or an orange
Xcalibur: LOL
wildorchid: hee
Xcalibur: \_____/
Xcalibur: that is your legs up in the air
wildorchid: hahaha you made my crotch too wide
wildorchid: _
wildorchid: or that
wildorchid: hahaha
wildorchid: 8==D
wildorchid: that's an abstract rendition of your penis
wildorchid: 8==D and your balls, of course
Xcalibur: oh that is nice
Xcalibur: very creative


Ain't love grand?

Merry Effing Christmas

Mistake one: I decided to go to the Derby Street Shops to buy "nice" cards. Like a special card for Jam, special card for my grandparents, a special card in which to send my check to the dudes who made the Foster Parrots Calender, that kind of thing. When I had been bumped into for the 47th time and the 56th person had walked in front of me whilst I was browsing through the cards, I freaked out. Thankfully, I did this silently. I then put all of the cards back, called the woman who I held the door for and who didn't thank me "bitch" and got back into the safe green confines of the forester.

Mistake two: I decided to conquer Wal-Mart. I needed medicine for my canker sore, which is in the front of my mouth and out of control so I thought "go forth and brave Wal-Mart 4 days before Christmas." That was also an insane situation. Crazy absolutely crazy. The first thing I had to do was fight for a parking space. Then I made my way into the store, grabbed a basket and went right to the film section, to grab some Kodak UC400 professional because I'm a film whore and I'm stocking up for Kenya. I think 2 or 3 more packs of that and I'll be set, which is good, cause at $12 a pop, it hurts the wallet a little bit. I then wandered to the fabric section, because after driving my cousin to work and seeing her Vera Bradley tote, I decided I wanted to make the quilted tote I set out to make last fall......I didn't find fabric for that, but I did wander into the yarn section after knocking over a display (and saying "OH GOOOOODDDD" aloud - for that I got stares from the unkempt fat people known to congregate in Wal-Mart. I'm not sure why they were staring. Was it cause I was talking to myself? Was it because I took the Lord's name in vain? I DON'T KNOW!) anyways, yarn, and upon seeing cheap acrylic yarn, I was reminded of an email I received from lion brand knitting that said blankets and afghans were needed for hurricane victims in Mississippi. If you know me then you know how I am. I grabbed 6 skeins of yarn (hopefully two afghans worth) to make simple blocks that I will sew together into a blanket. Next I went to try and secure some Coke zero, no luck, so I moved on to travel size beauty products. Don't you hate it when you go to look for something and someone sees you looking at it and decides that they need whatever you're looking at too, so they STEP IN FRONT OF YOU and start reaching around you? Yeah, well there was a lady like that in the travel aisle. So annoying. The only person more annoying was the one that I made room for in the kleenex aisle. She had a big cart, so I stepped back to let her through, and she pushed her cart through, but stopped it in front of me, so she could take her sweet ass time perusing the Puffs and Kleenex looking for the perfect box while I waited for her to move. I wanted to scream. Needless to say, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. While using self checkout, an emo boy in this gay knitted cap comes up behind me with all these girlie pink toys and puts them on the belt. This always irritates me. So they go all the way up to the front by my stuff, so he walks up right next to me. Then he watches over my shoulder as I do the transaction. He was in one fat fucking hurry, which is ridiculous, since we all know nothing can be done fast around this time of year. He watches over my shoulder for the exact moment he can press "start" on the touch screen and start checking out the girlie toys with reckless abandon. He watched me swipe my card, watched as the number touchpad came up, watched as I hit "cancel" and when I was really sure he was watching my every move, instead of signing my name on the electronic signature line I wrote "Wait your fucking turn"

I am such a bitch! Merry effing Christmas!

Frustrated

So there was a quadruple homicide in Boston last night. So I don't live in Boston, but I work here, and the first ten years of my life were spent in a suburb pretty close to the city and the other 13 have been spent a little farther away, but if I were to ever identify with a city BOSTON IS IT - IT'S THE MOTHERLAND and I love it so much and I know that will never change. So a quadruple homicide, while it didn't happen in my back yard, is really disturbing, because I want Boston to be the best it can be, and it's just not doing that right now. That brings murders up to 71 this year, and at the rate we've been going lately, it will probably rise in the 3 weeks we have left. This is a higher murder rate than we've seen in a decade. A WHOLE DECADE! I remember the late 80s. It seemed like someone was murdered every single night. My mom would have the morning news on while she was getting us ready for the bus and every morning Jim Boyd from WCVB would tell us that someone had been shot or stabbed the night before. All of the sudden, things started changing....Over the course of 9 years, the murder rate plummeted, from 152 in 1990 to 31 in 99! THIRTY ONE! And some how in the course of 6 years, we've started to climb the ladder again. Why? I don't get it. Our mayor is the same. Our police commissioner is fairly new, but seems to be doing an ok job. There are initiatives to stop violence in "problem" neighborhoods, led by community leaders and ministers. The quadruple homicide occured next door to a Reverend that's been leading these anti-violence initiatives! What is going on here? And why are so many young people involved. It always seems like young people are the ones shooting at each other, killing each other. Have the churches become less involved? Are there less after school programs? Are there too few police? Are people turning a blind eye? I've been reading article after article trying to figure it out. I've read that the BPD suck and aren't doing their job...there aren't enough police...the churches and youth coalitions are fragmented or disbanded...the high school dropout rate is high and illegal firearms are easily accessible to deal for money because droupouts can't find gainful employment...budget cuts...churches and coalitions competing for money that has been poured into the city's crime stopping initiatives...small gangs of repeat offenders...personal vendettas...sense of hopelessness among teens and young adults....the attitude "he has a gun, so I need to have one"...all of this makes sense I guess.....
I hate feeling helpless. I hate that kids think they don't have options besides violence. I hate it and it's driving me crazy and I don't know what to do and I want to make it stop but I don't even know where to begin....I just want this Boston to be the best Boston, because I hear stories of how it was back in it's heyday, and its slow decline throughout the 70' and 80's. I remember it at one of its worst time and have witnessed "The Boston Miracle" and now work in the city, loving it more than I ever have. Something needs to be done. I am tired of all of this. I can't imagine how victim's families and friends must feel. They must be exhausted.

(pic: mit.edu)

In case of apocalyptic catastrophe, open freezer

So last night my mother made a roast beef dinner. It was, in a word, amazing (for those of us who like to indulge in cow every once in a while. The cow lovers would have wept at the sight of the beautiful red meat juices flowing from the deliciously browned and wonderful smelling piece of meat on our counter).

So you think now "well ex-cuuuuuse me, little miss "my mom makes a sit down dinner every sunday"

yeah right, that's what you'd like to think.

While my mother cooks nearly every night of the week and we usually sit down as a family (unless only mom and I are eating, then we get lazy, bring our plates into the family room and drape ourselves across the couch or in the recliner to eat while leisurely watching the tv), she usually does not do anything fancy on Sundays. I mean she's a great cook and cooks great meals, but cooking a roast beef is usually saved for Christmas dinner or something like that. Until NOW

What is different about now you ask? I'll explain

For years and years, basically as long as I can remember, my mother has very carefully planned out the whole process of buying and storing food. If a whole turkey is on sale one week at the supermarket for .99 cents a pound, my mom would buy it and freeze it. If chicken breasts were on sale for a good enough price, she'd buy 4 packages. Same with hamburger, steak, pork, etc. We were able to do this because through my dad's various "connections" he of course knows an appliance guy, and we were basically given the freezer because it had to get off the showroom floor or something like that, so we have the accessory basement freezer, which is huge and has a large capacity for frozen meats and stuff like that. My mother would also make soups and stews in bulk and freeze them (though she did slow down when one day we realized all of our tupperware storage bowls were gone - being used in the freezer for storage) buy loaves of bread in bulk and freeze them, buy pizza crusts, pie dough, flour and sugar (freezing them protected them from our damp cellar) and things like popsicles and frozen drink mixes. The freezer was organized in a fairly orderly manner. Top shelf: leftovers, random game meat such as bear and elk acquired by my father through his "connections", and meat that was not numerous enough to have it's own shelf, such as a turkey. The next shelves featured mostly beef and chicken, with the bottom drawer occupied almost entirely by bread products. This freezer was sometimes so full that when you opened the door, a cascade of frozen meats would come tumbling out and hit the cement floor with a hollow thud.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, we watched horrified at the scenes before us. Horrified. It also made us think. If a hurricane hit here, and we were trapped for a week or so, could we survive? (Note: while everyone has a different view and argument about this issue, whether or not the Northeast would ever be immobilized by a storm, I would like to point out that I have been snowed into my house twice, once without electricity and heat, that I can remember without a way to get out, and even when we made our way out we were pretty much trapped anyways, as nothing was open, you couldn't get gas, you couldn't get groceries or water or an oil delivere, etc)
Ok, back to the question - would we survive? My mom immediately said "no, we wouldn't make it"
I was quiet for a minute and said "have you SEEN the freezer?" She just stared at me, kinda like "what?" and I said "mom, we probably could live here for a month if we rationed our food, for a week if we ate whatever we wanted. We have stockpiled canned goods, pasta and rice, we have some frozen veggies (even though my mother looks down on them!), and MEAT, woman, we have MEAT. Her argument was "what if we lost power?" I said "if for whatever reason our generator didn't work (side note: get a gas or oil powered generator. it will save your ass. i'm not even kidding) we'd fire up the grill and have us some barbecue." Finally she agreed that we could make it until help arrived on the food we had in the house, nevermind the fact that we could probably construct a shelter out of the paper towels we have stockpiled for BJ's....

So from then on the basement freezer became known, in my head, as the "apocalypse freezer" because if the apocalypse came, and whatever the apocalypse involved didn't kill us outright, at least we could eat some steak and wings prior to our final undoing.

Where does the roast beef come it? The apocalypse freezer is sadly and systematically being emptied. Believe it.

My mother started to realize that things frozen for 2 years straight did not taste good, even when defrosted and cooked. She realized that freezer burn really did ruin meat and bread and vegetables. She realized that the bear meat that has been in our freezer and is dated "2002" will probably never be eaten. She has learned that all the crackers she bought and kept "in case of company" are now stale, and we are starting to throw away box by box. She also realized that just because you buy something as a snack doesn't mean your kids will know they can eat it, especially when you yelled at your daughter for not eating the turkey you bought for her sandwiches, and then yell at her again for slicing up the 1 inch thick slab of turkey you bought for a "special salad" that was sliced up because you never told anyone there was thin sliced deli meat turkey for sandwiches and a slab of deli meat turkey for a "special salad!"

So the roast beef was part of the emptying of apocalypse freezer. It's sad and lonely in there now...You can actually see the bottoms of the shelves, something I haven't seen in years. Now while part of me is worried about the shelves emptying and the cabinets getting dusty, I know my mom won't really be able to completely ignore her ways.

That's why when our "meat guy connection" from the end of the street showed up with about 100 pounds worth of various meets last week that my mother lovingly unwrapped and then rewrapped in meat paper, I know that apocalypse freezer will not be lonely for long. heh heh heh..

how boring work is today

sent to me by a coworker:

-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 12:32 PM
To: Allison

Subject:

Dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyying! god this is awful! i think i'd rather be at the gyn lol

my response:

AHAHAHHAHHAHAAHAHHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm not sure about that one.
wait.......let me think.....yup, I'd rather be at the gyn...

Written by my sister, posted here cause she's a badass

Morning Chain. Crappy, crappy, crappy morning for Amy, but it still has time to improve. There was a little improvement in Finance -_- The Taurus is, unfortunately out of commission right now. I ran out to the store last night and on the way my brakes went kaputz. So I figured out that I needed brake fluid, took my roommates car and THREE GAS STATIONS LATER I finally got some. At the first one, these two old ladies working there were like, "Honey, if we don't have it out, it's not here." Ok. Second one, the car products were next to the tampons, which I thought was pretty sweet. And all the labels under the products were for baked beans. And the door didn't shut all the way. And when I asked the guy about brake fluid, he goes, "Ooooh yeah. Someone asked about that a couple of days ago." I look at him and go, "Oh wow. Ok." Finally I found fluid at the third gas station. I come back and I'm all car-woman and I have the gigantic blue Mag-Light and I'm adding oil and I'm adding brake fluid and I'm talking to the Taurus and I'm like, "I'm putting fluids in you, bitch - you're going to work." I get in the car and start her up and pump the brakes a few times and then take it around the block. Nothing. No change. It's a little better but, I'm still braking all the way to the floor before I stop. I pull around back to park in front of my house and, HARK, a huge-ass puddle is on the street where my car was. I approach the puddle and stand over it in a dominating way. It's like out of a Western. I'm Clint Eastwood. I start calling it names and then I crouch down and sniff it. Actually, I stuck my finger in it and sniffed my finger because there was a distinct odor coming off the puddle. Yup, brake fluid. Ok, ok. Maybe I spilled or something. I go up to the car....approaching it much like I did the puddle. It's GURGLING. I bend over..... Yup, brake fluid. :(

So now, I'm waiting for Eddie's Towing by way of AAA to come tow me to good ol' Purvis Ford up the street where Tony, the nicest Ford Service man EVER who goes, "A 1997 Ford Taurus? Green? Yeah, there was about an 80% chance of that" and then when I told him I needed ot talk to my dad before I did anything, he was like "Oh honey, I deal with you young ladies all the time. You just do what you need to." I love you, Tony. You don't know it, but I do. Tony will help me out.

Pffft. Ok, so that's my story. The end

The Joy of Family

THE JOY OF FAMILY, TOGETHERNESS, MARTHA STEWART, AND GLUE GUNS........

Thanksgiving. Was it really a week ago?
The time does really fly this time of year...

I love Thanksgiving. I mean LOVE IT. I won't look to you and say "Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because everyone takes a moment to pause and be grateful (though we do) and I don't like Christmas cause it's commercialized and my birthday because it's centered around presents" HA I LOVE PRESENTS! I love Thanksgiving not just for the food, not just for the pausing and being grateful, not just for the football, but because Thanksgiving with are family is akin to a frickin' three-ringed circus.

It's partly my fault. Who looks at the Martha Stewart website at the Thanksgiving centerpieces and thinks "homemade pom-pom turkey placecards. Another brilliant idea, Martha....Jail really did a wonder for your creative flair...I am going to strive to emulate you this holiday season." WHO THINKS THAT? Oh shit, I DO. I am crazy when it comes to the holidays and craftiness. I think that came at a young age. My mother is extremely crafty and was a children's librarian for years and was the master of kid crafts. She always encouraged our craftiness when my sister and I were little. We were also sent to my aunt's church every Sunday after Thanksgiving for a number of years to make Christmas crafts. While I never quite graduated to the pine bough and holly floral arrangement and cut-out-of-white-paper nativity scenes (we still have the paper nativity!) I certainly had a grand old time coloring in woodblock shapes with fat vibrant crayola markers and affixing an iridescent rainbow angel or baby jesus sticker in the center. Or making little bells out of communion cups (probably some sort of mortal sin), or decorating a metallic glass ball by writing my name on it in glue and dousing (and I mean dousing) the thing with glitter. There was even one year where I made my own snowglobe, but since I was afraid of superglue, I used it too sparingly on the jar lid that served at the base of the snowglobe, so I was left with a leaky glitter-filled mess my mother had to clean out of the car, henceforth leading to a ban on the snow-globe making table. Anyways, my point is that we've always been a crafty family. My father is crafty in that Martha Stewart way, more in a "let me use fire and welding tools to make a wrought iron stand for the bird feeder" type way, which is pretty damn convenient, let me tell you.

So I decide to make the turkeys. I email them to my sister and she is all "alskdjlfaeuiroawhlasdhf asldkfja ldkjaosdlfhawoihaw erh WANT TO MAKE TURKEYS" excited and stuff. So I go on a mission. I go to the local AC Moore. AC Moore is my new obsession. If I was ever under house arrest, I would probably request that AC Moore be listed as "my house" and the conditions of my house arrest would be 1. never to leave the confines of AC Moore for the length of sentence and 2. be allowed to bring lifetime supply of pictures to AC Moore. There I would live on Dunkin Donuts (which is right across the mall) and I would scrapbook. I would pitch a tent right out front in the "seasonal" corner of the store and be as happy as camera whore in a film store....Right, on track, I go to AC Moore to buy the things Martha says I need for my turkeys: red, orange, white, black, gold and brown felt. It's on sale for 20 cents a piece, so I buy four of each color. Check. Black pipe cleaners. No prob, check. Red, black, brown, white, grey and gold wool yarn. No prob, I think. I go to the yarn section to the pure wool yarns. $5.99 a PIECE HELLS NO! I probably said it out loud too. I think "F this, I'll get a wool blend." NO wool blends to be had. I scrap the yarn and go to seek out the pom pom maker. AC Moore carries two brands. BOTH sold out. I think "some hyper crafty B*TCHES with too much time on their hands have the same idea and are MAKING THESE TURKEYS and have bought all the pom pom makers." THen I realize that I basically fit above description, ahahhaha oh well.. I decide to pay up and go to Wal-Mart, because Wal-Mart probably has cheap yarn, cheap pom pom makers and the type of clientele that goes there are not shopping for craft items. No luck. I go to Michael's. Nothing. DAMMIT!

Now this was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and I had really wanted to get a head start on things since I was making home made pom poms and my sister wouldn't be there to help until Wednesday, since we all knew that her flight would be delayed Tuesday coming out of DC (and it was, by about 4 hours or so) but instead I sat around, knitted (or maybe just plain sat on my ass I don't remember) and watched TV. My sister got in at about 12:30am and I went to bed, no part of the turkeys done yet.

Wednesday was a work day. When my sister picked me up at the train, we went on a mission. Joann's fabrics had a yarn sale, so we got three colors of wool acrylic blend yard for 2 bucks and a pom pom maker (yessssssssss). I figured we could start making everything when we got back from our Thanksgiving revelries at Friday's. Ha. Two huge margaritas and my sister was out of commision as far as crafts were concerned. She copied the templates while I made pom poms, and then had to eventually go to bed...

9AM Thursday. I wake up and flip on the Macy's parade (CBS coverage, unfortunately because my NBC doesn't come in too well) and go to work. It's like a sweatshop in my room (ok not that bad, and it was cold, so I wasn't sweating) and there were bits of yarn everywhere. My sister came in to cut out felt, but later bailed.....I will forgive her though, cause she went and got me a medium caramel swirl iced latte with whipped cream on it :) Anyways, I had stayed up on the phone til 2am making turkey bodies (multi-colored I may add, no easy feat!) and talking to boyfriend, who was cooking for Thanksgiving. By the time I got up on Thursday I had the bodies done at lease, and made a bunch of heads. I cut out the remaining felt, revved up the glue gun and got to work. I was a turkey-making machine. I glued felt and pom poms and pipe cleaners together and produced something quite unlike Martha's rendition of the pom pom turkey, but I was satisfied. I even made an emergency turkey in case a wayward wandering cousin showed up at my Grandmother's.

By the time we all managed to sit down, the table was quite lovely. My grandmother sets a good table, and had candles and beautiful centerpieces and everything. I took pictures too. And though being with my family can be a three-ringed circus (my great auntie spoke loudly through grace, cause she can't hear too well....my grandmother's hearing aid amplified my father's voice to the point of madness....the men fell asleep on the couch watching football....the cousins and women tried their hand a trivial pursuit....I almost fell asleep sitting up....etc etc) it was all in all FUN TIMES with the family, and FUN TIMES with the turkeys.....and the food....I can't even talk about it, I might have an orgasm if I do, and that would be inappropriate, cause I'm sitting at my desk, at work ;)