It's All About ME!

So what am I about?

I'm about beng positive.  For example, I'm positive I'm a dork.

Ba dum DUM!

No but really, it may be trite, but I DO believe in the power of positive thinking.  I do believe in the harm that negative energy can do.  I'm happy more often than not and I do not attribute that to a series of fortunate occurences or to having all the right building blocks of life all stacked neatly.

I attribute that to my positive outlook.  I TRY not to harbor anger, hate, resentment, jealousy, bitterness, envy, etc etc etc. 

"Try", of course, being the operative word.  It's by no means easy to do but I've found that if I don't take myself too seriously then half the battle is won. 

So what else?

I'm about being a mom.  I have three wonderful, incredible, beautiful children.  My eldest, Buttercup, is 15.  And looking forward to getting her learner's permit in about a month.  AAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEE!!!!  But she's also got a really good head on her shoulders (despite her goofy streak a mile long....hmm....wonder where she gets THAT from), a killer sense of humor and better taste in music than I do.  (She?  Likes Queen and David Bowie and Guns n' Roses and Erasure and Duran Duran.  Me?  I like Britney Spears).  She has chosen to put her schoolwork BEFORE being popular and cool and yet despite that, she's got a great circle of friends.  I am fully aware of how lucky I am with her, how so many kids her age get lured into bad things (BAD BAD BAD!).

My middle child, my boy, my Opus.  Oh, I don't know where to even start with that yellow headed kid.  He's a wild child.  He's on the wrestling team for his school and all of his female friends are cheerleaders.  I keep saying to him, "Don't be that boy".  But it's not quite as bad as it sounds.  He's not the popular/dumb jock.  He has a lot of friends but he's more the class clown type than the BMOC type, you know?  He'll be 13 this year, though, and I'm dreading having two teenagers.  Calgon, take me away!!!

And that leads me to my youngest and the one I think I have to worry about the most.  Little Miss Maisy Mouse.  She's ten.  And always has a boyfriend.  Sometimes more than one at a time.  One of her new friends has a purple streak in her hair.  I said to her, "Your hair is purple."  She said, "I know".  I said, "Does your mom know your hair is purple?"  She said, "My mom is the one who took me to get it done".

Oy.

All I know is MY Maisy is not coloring her hair.

In addition to her questionable friends (one of her boyfriends last year used to throw rocks at smaller kids.....luckily once Maisy found out about this she broke up with him so all is not yet lost) she's also a very sensitive child....sensitive bordering perhaps on manipulative.  She uses her tears to get her own way.

So let's recap:  Boy crazy.  Questionable friends.  Crocodile tears.  Yep.  Gonna have my hands full with her.

Moving on.

I'm about being a friend.

I am blessed to have the most amazing, wonderful group of girl friends to ever exist.  At some point you can be sure I'll talk about all of them.  But for now, all I can say is that I wish to be as good to them as they've been to me.  Without going into too much detail, it's been an....interesting year for me.....and my girls have been with me every step of the way.  I look at the person I was at the beginning of the year and compare her to who I am now....and the difference astounds me.  And I have these lovely ladies to that.

And more....

I'm about cooking
I'm about reading
I'm about shopping
I'm NOT about mindless TV watching but I DO love me some Glee
I'm (sometimes) about partying.
I'm NOT (currently) about boys.  More than likely, eventually I'll get on the dating train again but for now, I am enjoying my life to much to mess it up with some silly stinky boy! 
I'm about beer.  I'm a total beer nerd.
Right now, I'm about Ravens football.
I'm about being healthy. 

And now.....I'm about done.  Thank you for reading.  SMOOCHES!

It's All About ME!

Needed: A case of Raid. And a new car.

I killed a spider yesterday. 

This is notable. Me + Spider killing is often notable.  Things usually go wrong.

As an example, during the years that Krumpet and I lived together (Krumpet being my co-bff.   I LURVE her in a way completely opposite from the way I LURVE spiders which is to say, NO LOVE for spiders and LOTS o' love for the Krumpet.)

As I was saying!  During the years that Krumpet and I were roomies, there did, upon occasion, arise the need to kill the odd spider or two.  (The phrase "odd spider" is oddly disturbing.  I mean, spiders are creepy enough on their own, do we really need to add oddities to the mix???) 

Whenever a spider sighting occurred, we would try to have our other roommate, Charlie Brown, deal with it.  But he wasn't always around.  Seems he had this thing.  Called a job.  And he actually felt compelled to do it.  Sometimes.

So our second favorite weapon was the Feline Army.  There were four.  Ziggy, our primary experimental cat.  Molly, the secondary experimental cat.  Bob, the tertiary experimental cat.  And Izzy, who was basically useless.  Although if we could have figured out the next word in the "primary, secondary, tertiary…" sequence, I'm sure we would have found a purpose for him.

Back to the spider.  It was a large spider.  It was up by the ceiling.  Atop the vertical blinds.  It was being…..spidery.  And up to no good.

Normally, the cat known as Bob would have been up there.  (As opposed to the spider known as Bob who will most likely make an appearance a few paragraphs from now)  Bob's favorite place to perch was atop the vertical blinds.  I do not know what she was doing on this particular day but clearly she also was up to no good, most likely trying to lead the others in a Feline Rebellion.  At any rate, there were no cat soldiers to be found.

So, we resorted to our THIRD line of defense.   The can of Raid (RAID!)  Except….this was the day the Raid failed us.

We sprayed it.  Have you ever sprayed Raid (rhyming!) in an UP direction?  Do you know that what goes up, must come down?  Have you ever gotten a facefull of Raid?  Is "facefull" a real word?  Should I be "faceful"?  "Face-full"?  I just don't know.

My point is!  Raid to the face is not good.  Whilst ducking the raining Raid, we lost sight of the horrible evil mutant spider. 

We looked up.  We looked down.  We did the hokey pokey and we spun ourselves around.  Finally, we looked behind the vertical blinds, hoping to see a withered up old spider corpse.

BUT NO!!!  IT WAS STILL ALIVE!  Very much so.

And it was PISSED.

AAAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEEE!!!

It charged us.  Its monstrous spidery legs skittered across the linoleum as it headed for us at top speed.

We did the only thing we could do.

We threw a bottle at it.

The bottle hit the spider, the spider flew up in the air, landed on the vertical blinds and it clung there, glaring at us with spidery hate in its spidery eyes.

And it all came clear to us. 

This was no ordinary spider.  This spider…..was a descendant…..of BOB. The Ocean Spider.  The Cape Fear Spider.  The Spider Like No Other.  DUM DUM DUM!!!!

Bob is an example of what happens when you don't kill a spider.  If you merely wound it, it will come back and haunt you.  It will live through a hurricane, biding it's time, nursing its two broken legs, broken by a flyswatter vengefully wielded by Krumpet's father (henceforth to be known as King Krumpet), wielded at the request of Krumpet and yours truly, Miss Marie herself.  It will WAIT.  For the day two young, innocent girls return to Ocean City, site of the Flyswatter Ambush.  And on that day of return, it will cling to the underside of their car as they return to their hometown and then it will amass an army of its own.  Fear Bob.  FEAR HIM.

We did the only thing we could do.  Screamed, fled the house and went out for margaritas.  (Okay, I had the margaritas as Krumpet is not a drinker…..I drank hers.  It was good). 

I do not know what ever happened to this particular soldier of Bob's.  Charlie Brown might have gotten him.  Or the cats.  Bottom line, when it comes to spider killing, this one was a huge fail.

So let's move forward a few years, shall we?  (And NO, we are not discussing exactly how many years that might be, suffice to say it's A LOT and NO, I'm not dead yet!)  I no longer kill bugs.  I decided a few years ago (more than five, less than ten, I can't remember exactly) that it is not up to me to make life or death decisions for any other living creature.  Even if said living creature is a creepy crawly icky SPIDER.  (This goes back to my spiritual beliefs which I will not discuss except to say we're all God's children, dont'cha know). 

Now, this doesn't mean that I will not seek other means to annihilate the creepy crawly ickies that sometimes cross my path.  For example, if I happen to be coming home from work one night and I happen to have scooped up Primary Cat Gracie as soon as I walk in the door (because she was trying to pack her tail and run away from home, such is her disgruntlement over the presence of the interloping boy cats) and I happen to switch on the hall light whilst holding Gracie and I happen to see a big black hopping insect, it does not violate my code of ethics to launch Gracie at said insect as if she were an ICBM, giving her a firm directive to KILL GRACIE KILL, this is not wrong, OKAY!  This is just nature doing what nature does.  Cats KILL bugs, it’s their job!

But about a month ago, I had to break my own law.  Because apparently, when I adopted the boys, I also adopted….fleas!  ::shudder::

I hate fleas.  I lived through a bad flea infestation once when I was a kid.  My parents' condo had 'em BAD.  We had to bomb.  It was ugly.  And unforgettable.

So I knew I had to take swift and decisive action.  I did struggle mightily with this decision but really?  It was me or them.  There was NO way I was going to live with fleas and since I had no plans to DISCONTINUE living…..well, you know.

So, one massive vet bill (Frontline is not cheap, y'all!), an afternoon of spraying the carpet and every inch of upholstery in the house (including all my stuffed animals….sorry Pookie Bear!), one asphyxiated Amy and one broken vacuum cleaner later, I had effectively committed mass genocide.

And I'm not sorry.

But see, apparently killing the fleas was a gateway drug to harder crimes.  Because yesterday, driving home from work, there was a spider.  Crawling across my windshield.  On the inside. 

So I smashed it.

But you know what this means?  It means Bob is back.  And I'm ready for him.

Needed: A case of Raid. And a new car.

Chilly Willy

Okay, so I shared yesterday's post with Coworker Number One and Coworker Number Two, who, if you may recall, I dubbed Dot and Minnie.

WELL!  Dot pretty much threw a hissy fit about her name.  "DOT??!??!  Who the hell is called Dot?  What's Dot?  Are you making fun of me for being Polish?"

Me:  "Huh?  Wha???  Polish? I didn't even know you were Polish.  You're not Polish"  (As aside......Dot's name is not even REMOTELY Polish sounding.....nor does she look Polish....um....not that I know what Polish looks like exactly.....when I picture Polish, I picture a little old lady in a babushka which is probably more Russian than Polish I guess, but who knows because I am Russian (well, half Russian) and I am certainly not a little old lady in a babushka.  So I have no idea what Polish even looks like but damnit, it's NOT Dot)

So Dot's all, "I am TOO Polish and you're making fun of me by calling me Dot which we all know is short for POLKA Dot."

At this point, I am too flabbergasted to speak but Coworker Number Three, who shall be known as Cruella (her suggestion!  I'm not making fun of her for having weird hair, I SWEAR!) chimed in with "You're not polished!" which, because of her very strong accent (Spanish! From Spain!) sounded like "Polish" but we all knew what she meant which is that Dot is refined, uncultured, A HEATHEN!

So Dot is going on about how she doesn't want to be called Dot and Cruella is going on about what she wants HER name to be and everyone is all aflutter over NAMING and I'm trying to be strong and say "NO!  No one gets to pick their own names!  It's my blog damnit" and I'm getting ready to bap Dot in the nose with a newspaper and Cruella says, "If she gets to be Dot I want to be Com" so we all turn and look at HER because with her accent, "com" did not SOUND like "com" it sounded like something completely different and "NO!  I'm not calling you that, this is a FAMILY blog" but then she clears it all up and everyone goes back to yelling at ME!

Finally I throw my hands in the air and say, "FINE!  If you don't like Dot, I'm going to call you Chilly Willy, is that better?"

And she stops and thinks for a minute and says, "That's the penguin right?"  (YES)  "Okay, that's cool"

So Chilly Willy it is!

Then she says, "No wait, I want to be Babette"

Well damnit, this isn't a porn blog!

So I turn to Minnie and say, "What about you?  Do you want to change your name too?"

But no, Minnie is NICE.  Minnie doesn't give Marie a hard time.  Minnie shall be my new workplace bff because she is just FINE with being Minnie. 

So.....Dot is now Chilly Willy and I shall take vengenance on her and her troublemaking ways by telling a "Chilly Willy is a Dork" story.....becuase although there are plenty of "Marie is a Dork" stories, Marie is not the only dork in this blog. 

It happened last year around this time.  It was the day of our annual Health Fair.  We were all fasting in preparation for our Biometric Testing.  Chilly Willy does not do well with fasting.  Chilly Willy likes her candy.  A lot.  Chilly Willy was cursing her water.  "Stoopid water!"  Chilly Willy was fading quickly.  Getting dizzy.  Losing consciousness.  Chilly Willy was starving, yo!

I say this to give her some excuse for what happened next.  Because somehow, she got sap.  On her wrist.  Do not ask me how.  She must have found a tree in a conference room or something.  All I know is she came to me and asked how to get sap OFF of her wrist.  Because apparently, it wouldn't wash off.

She asked whether I had any White Out (which I think is actually spelled Wite Out but I'm too lazy to check) and sure enough I did.  Her plan was to paint the White (Wite?) Out onto her wrist and then the sap would stick to it and then...?  Um?  I'm not sure exactly what her plan was.

Next thing I know, she's coming back from the bathroom.  "White (Wite?) Out doesn't wash off!"

So now she's got a big white splotch on her wrist.  Which isn't noticable AT ALL.  ::snicker::

I pull out a stamp from my desk drawer and stamp the word "VOID" on her wrist.  "There, now no one will notice the White (Wite?) Out!"

"Well, YEAH but now I have this big blue spludge on my wrist!"

"So why don't you take a knife and try to scrape it off?"

So yeah, I've got Chilly Willy scraping a knife against her wrist, trying to remove the White (Wite?) Out/Void stamp/sap from her wrist and all the Health Fair people are milling about and here's this skinny chick scraping a knife against her wrist and WHAT COULD POSSIBLY BE WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE???

And this was the day that I realized that I absolutely adore Chilly Willy and she's been one of my bffs ever since.  Even if she is a total pain in my blogging ass.

Chilly Willy

Make New Friends but Keep the Old

Y'know, decimal points are very small things.  As are commas.  I mean, they're teeny.  Easy to overlook.  But they're so darned crucial.  Especially when it comes to numbers and stuff.  Which is my job, pretty much.  In a nutshell.  Numbers and stuff.

Doesn't make a lot of sense.  You'd think they'd be all sparkly or flashy or covered with rhinestones.  I mean, hey, it may be a teeny tiny little dot but it still makes the difference between, oh, say......ten thousand dollars and ONE MILLYUN DOLLARS.  And also, perhaps, the difference between me keeping my job and me being a HOMELESS Crazy Cat Lady.  You know, a little flair would not be out of place.  I'm JUST SAYIN'!

So you can understand my concern the other day when my vision started getting all blurry and the teeny tiny commas and teeny tiny decimals started wavering before my eyes, almost as if they were doing the hokey pokey (WITH YOUR MOM!).

But luckily, because I am very smart and ALWAYS well prepared, I keep a spare pair (rhyming!) in my purse (which I like on the desk!) just for occasions like these.  So I scurry off to the ladies room to swap out the old and replace with the new. 

As I'm switching out the right lens, another company employee (whom I shall call Lucy) wanders in.  We don't work together but we both reside somewhere on the Crazy Cat Lady spectrum.  (She is further along than me though.  MUCH).  So we have a bit of a bond.  Don’t judge.

She asked me about my current cat situation.  As previously mentioned, I have four cats.  A neurotic, kleptomaniacal Primary Cat, - a Norweigan Forest Cat named Gracie.  Then I have Amy, the Bonus Cat, who is equally neurotic but with 75 percent less thievery.  And then the two recently acquired brother cats, Maine Coons named Reuben and Mason.  They serve as my Emergency Backup Cats. 

Gracie hates Reuben and Mason.  A LOT.  There is much growling and spitting.  Gracie has anger.  In bulk.

So the aforementioned Lucy, who had previously suggested putting Gracie on Prozak (see?  I told you!  MUCH further along the Crazy Cat Lady spectrum) asked how things were going.  I told her Emo Cat was still emo but I wasn't quite ready to send her to the kitty therapist (because I am NORMAL!)

So conversation over, I return to my desk and try to get back to work.  Seems my vision is only 50 percent improved.  My right eye is fine but my left eye is still blurry.  I figure I just need to let the lens settle on my eyeball.  So I kinda scrunch and wiggle and stretch my face in all directions in an effort to get the durned thing to just SIT STILL DAMNIT....

....and right about then is when Cute IT Guy wanders by.  Smooth, Marie.....real smooth.

Eventually, I decide the lens much be defective so I call 1800Contacts to register a complaint.

Me:  'ELLO!  I would like to register a complaint!  I wish to complain about this contact lens what I purchased not half a year ago from this very boutique….

No wait.  That's not what I said.  Sorry, my bad yo.

I actually had a very pleasant interchange with the very pleasant 1800Contacts lady who I have no complaints about whatsoever because she was very helpful and agreed to send me a replacement contact and thank you 1800Contacts, I love you very much and wish to have your babies.

So I get off the phone and feeling very smug I skip on over to visit with a few of my coworkers to tell them my story.  (YES, skipped!  Shut up)

Coworker number one we shall call Dot.  And coworker number two will be Minnie.  (Eventually y'all will notice the theme behind my naming.....a prize to the first one who gets it!)

(A quick aside to introduce Coworker number one:  Dot is snarky and funny and hysterical and I love her to death.  She very quickly became one of my bffs.  She's also got a vicious sense of humor.  She will CUT you, man!)

I tell them about the blurry vision and the new lens and the continued blurriness and the epiphany and the aggrieved call to 1800Contacts and the eventual satisfactory resolution and they look at me all funny and Dot says, "Maybe you just put it in backwards, dork."

"I didn't think you could do that!"

"Yuh-HUH!", Dot nods emphatically.

So I take it out, smack it up, flip it, rub it down OH NO!

Wait.  Let me start over.

I take it out, flip it around, TRY to pop it back in.  But it won't go.   So I give up and start to put it back in the way it was but then I stop and say, "Wait, why bother even putting it in, I can't see out of it anyway?"

And Dot says, "Well, can you see better with it out than you can with it in?"

So I close my right eye and peer around the room with my left eye (HI Cute IT Guy!) and sure enough, my vision is relatively clear.

So....let's listen to a moment for the thoughts running through my mind:  "Huh....that's odd......I see fine out of this eye....I've been wearing contacts all these years when I didn't need to?  Damned eye doctor, selling me vision correction for two eyes when I only needed it for one, must have been in cahoots with the contact lens companies, trying to sell me extra contact lenses when I have PERFECT vision in my left eye and only my right eye needs correction, my doctor owes me 50 percent FOR LIFE, shyster, hey wait...."

"HEY!"  (This was outloud.  And LOUD)

My inner voice quieted, my outer voice quieted.  I look at the contact lens resting on the index finger of my left hand, the useless lens I was about to throw out. 

I slowly transfer that contact lens to my right index finger and reach up to my left eye with my left index finger.....

.....and remove the original lens.

Yep.  Marie = DORK.  Seems that when Lucy came into the bathroom, I got all distracted (SHINY!) talking to her and put the new left lens in ON TOP of the old left lens.  Talk about double vision.

But hey, at least I didn't bump into any walls this time.

Make New Friends but Keep the Old

X Things = NOT boring

If I'm ever gonna to get this thing started, I guess I need to stop all the mental dilly dallying around about what I'm going to write and how I want to design this thing and just get with it....just do what I do best....write.  Nonsensical, loopy, meandering, stream of consciousness.....WRITE.

Of course, going all stream of consciousness got me into a bit of an awkward situation yesterday when I almost told my not so secret crush I was visualizing him as a lumberjack.  (Seriously, it made sense in my mind, but to spell all it out to him would have sounded even stranger (not leaving the house if it's below 50 degrees, hibernating all winter, turning into a bear, Grizzly Adams....LUMBERJACK!).....so I told him I was picturing him vacuuming in a frilly apron instead.....yeah.)

So let's do a X Things list where X equals a number roughly equivalent to the number of random things I can think of about me before I get bored.

1. I've done a lot of blogging over the years. 
2. A LOT
3. Pretty much every blog I've ever done has a "things" list somewhere. 
4. Even my FB has a hidden list....two separate lists of 20 actually.  But it's kinda for my eyes only so neener neener neener
5. Hey lookit that little button up there!  It will do all the fancy formatting of this here numbered list for me!  Thanks little button, you're my best friend!
6. Even though I like to think of myself as a stickler for proper spelling, grammar, punctuation etc etc etc, I let that all slide when I'm writing for teh interwebs. (6a - the one exception - I often leave the periods off at the end of sentences (but only sentences that end paragraphs).  No, I don't know why.  Yes, this irritates many)) (6b - DOUBLE NESTED PAREN FTW!!!)
7. For the longest time, I couldn't write without dropping at least one "yo". There was even a poem, Ode to a Yo, which I might share with y'all one day
8. For now though, my pop culture word of choice is "Imma"....as in "Taylor, Imma let you finish...)
9. Note that I used the word "word" loosely.
10. Word
11. I have two jobs
12. And three kids
13. And four cats
14. 2 + 3 + 4 = One very tired Marie (that's ME!)
15. No, my name isn't really Marie, it's Vicki.  All will eventually become clear
16. I'm fighting the good fight against becoming the Crazy Cat Lady of folklore and legend
17. So far I think I'm winning. 
18. Others may disagree.  Those others would include my coworkers who have to listen to me tell tales of Gracie, my Primary Cat.  Amy the Bonus Cat.  And Reuben and Mason, the Emergency Backup Cats. 
19. But I figure, as long as I maintain an active life that does NOT revolve around the cats, that I engage in human interaction with more regularity than I do feline interaction, that I can not be accurately called Crazy Cat Lady
20. At least, that's what the cats tell me
21. I titled this blog "Fall Down....BOOM!" because that's what I do
22. A LOT
23. Fall down and go boom, that is.
24. I walk into walls too.
25. Stoopid walls.

Stay tuned because my next entry will have actual content involving an actual story about actual ME.  Imma write it tomorrow.  Mebbe.

X Things = NOT boring

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