Wordjanitor Strikes Again

I try to make purchase decisions based on need vs. want. I'll often see something that I really like but opt out of buying it because I don't need it. I'd rather be happy with what I have than focus on wanting things I don't. (Yes, I did need the motorcycle. For mental health reasons. Yeah, that's it.) OK, let's not get distracted by facts. Admittedly, sometimes this need/want thing goes a little far. Exhibit A: I still have a bra that the dog chewed during her awkward post-puppy supportive undergarment chewing phase. She absolutely disabled another one, but this one survived with an interesting fringe in the cleavage area. It's serviceable. It's more of a yard-work bra than an office bra, not that anyone would really know. Until now, anyway. Bonus: I smirk every time I put it on.

TG likes to explain things. All sorts of things. And he likes details. Lots of details. Like today, he didn't have a level in Soquel because he didn't bring one from home so when he went to the store with J, B, and the kids he bought a new one. I made the mistake of making a pun about "taking things to a new level." And somehow that jump-started a very detailed discussion of cabinet installation. And about 17 other things.

Sometimes you can't do the things you're supposed to do. I was supposed to go to a memorial for a friend today. I couldn't. They're adding up. It would have been the fourth such gathering this year. Maybe that's not a lot, but it's enough for me right now. I'm tired of loss and focusing on loss. Real loss, impending loss, potential loss, metaphorical loss. There's a lot of it swirling around, near and far. I started running out of words. OK, I had words, but more often than not, they started resembling an unpunctuated string of cursing. I was running out of coherent sentences and paragraphs. I couldn't find them.

This whole Stanford Rapist Who Can Swim thing has been everywhere this week, and I haven't tried to escape it. I've read the letters, read the articles, and shared in the discussion. I found myself wandering between disbelief and outrage. It was strange to realize I've been in the courtroom of the judge who sentenced Turner to the prison equivalent of cleaning chalkboard erasers after elementary school. He annoyed me then. He infuriates me now. At first, I didn't talk about the Stanford case around my son. I didn't want to talk about rape. I didn't want to explain what Turner had done. I didn't want to talk about how a young man smart enough to go to a university as prestigious as Stanford could also be as vicious as to attack an unconscious girl behind a dumpster. But then, I did. I am raising a young man. I wanted him to see me angry, astounded, and affected by the case. My son can go toe-to-toe with me about how unfair it is that I limit his s...

I am angry. And I am sad. But at the moment, it's mostly anger. Keyboard and reader beware. That androgynous, faceless, scourge with too many names and ways of wreaking havoc.  That invisible stalker that sneaks in at the cellular level, latching on and demanding attention.  That predatory visitor that remains unseen until  it's too often too late.  It wins again. Today, cancer won again.  It won this morning, taking a young woman barely 30 from her world, her family's world, our world, this world. Quickly. Aggressively. Ruthlessly. I want to scream at cancer, cuss it out, kick it where it hurts, be heard. But cancer is a narcissist. It doesn't care that I'm angry. It knows nothing but itself and how to propagate until it wins.

First, there was a question of the location of the spare toilet paper. @ couldn’t find it. He looked in the right places. I told him to check the shelf at eye level. Oops, wrong eyes. TG had put it at eye level, except it was his eye level. (Remember, the T stands for Tall… ) Even better, it was at the back of the shelf. TG's choice of TP placement brought on a discussion of whether he was opposed to @ actually using toilet paper. TG claimed he was trying to get @ to think about Star Trek. @ had to think a second… Wait, Klingons? Yep. “Stop… that’s not funny.” Somehow that brought up a question of pronunciation. Specifically, is the name of the planet pronounced yur-ay-niss or yurin-us ? Where’s the syllable emphasis? Is it a long a or a short a ? Because yur-ay-niss just sounds gross and yurin-us doesn’t sound much better and it doesn’t even make sense anyway. I mean, why would pee come out of something labeled with a word that actually has the word has anus in it? ...

You'd think I had a crapload of cash hanging out my back pocket. I had neither crap, cash, nor a crapload of cash in my pocket. I checked. The safest lane for a motorcycle is the far-left lane. Not today. Apparently, a lot of people were in a "20 miles over? meh" hurry. I stopped counting after the 97th car tried to crawl up my, err... tailpipe. (OK, I didn't count. It's just a low estimate.) And the guy who tried to read the label on my jeans for 40 miles, but refused to pass until I actually pulled into a turnout? Charmer. "Perhaps you were riding too slowly," you think. Reasonable assumption -- after all, I'm a girl on a giant tricycle, right? I checked that too. My speedometer was quite clearly in the "this could be pricey" zone. Maybe if they realized I was in the midst of a 310-mile killing spree, they would have backed off. Shown a little patience. Evidence of many satisfying splats.

Blueberry is dead. Finally. Blueberry may have been the longest-living betta fish in the county for all I know. I searched "betta fish life span" and Google kindly told me "2 y on average (In captivity)" with a picture and everything. Yeah, Blueberry doubled that estimate. At least. Even after spending her first couple years in a pickle jar after she and her former neighbor fish called bullshit on the "females can be kept in the same tank" myth. Or maybe we just had particularly bitchy fish who missed the sharing lesson in school. (School. Fish. Yeah, I went there.)

First, let's be clear. I am not one of those people who has all of the holiday decorations staged and ready to put up immediately after the T-day turkey carcass has been turned to soup. Yet, there's a somewhat crazed looking eight-foot inflatable T-Rex on my lawn, complete with Santa hat, sweater, and a nifty little tree. Why? Because I wanted the Saint Bernard. As soon as I saw it, I knew I wanted it. Really, really wanted it. A nine-foot tall inflatable lawn puppy. Nine feet of awesome. Nine feet of cute. But I didn't want it because it's cute. Within minutes, maybe a few dozen seconds, I had a plan. I had it all figured out. I had a three-step plan.