A Day with Miss Goldie

I had been intending to go the the LA Times Festival of Books with my friend Alicia today, but Miss Goldie's eye was irritated and she needed to make a trip to the vet (open on Saturday. Woo hoo!).

Here is a photo of her eye. Right at the top on the lid there is a little triangle of white - a cyst that is hanging down. The vet gave me some meds and says to watch it and it might go away. If not, surgery. She actually has one on both eyes. Poor girl.



It doesn't seem to bother her, though. She goes about her normal activities. Here she is on our walk, doing her favorite thing: digging.

First she surveys the area (choke collar. I KNOW. She can slip out of any other kind of collar or Halti and she is not going to stand still for a harness. We have tried.)



Then she goes to work.



She checks out the finished product: total destruction. Happiness.

Hit the showers

Dear TB of Soul Gardening, Christina of A Mommy Story and Liz of Mom-101,

Good God, somebody mistakenly invited me to this big blogger baby shower for the three of y'all. I mean, I am capable of coming to a baby shower, but they also want me to give you the worst ASSvice I got before or during my having a baby and the best advice I have for you.

Uh oh. I don't have any. I forgot to have kids.

I guess my best piece of advice would have to be "Don't let Aunt Suebob watch the kids. Especially when she has been into the gin."

I'm serious. Despite my status as an Assistant Sunday School Teacher, I am hopelessly incompetent at watching children. The last time someone asked me to keep an eye on a toddler while the mother went to the restroom, the mother came out to find said toddler teetering at the top of a flight of stairs. Me? I had forgotten I was watching the kid in the 2 minutes it had taken the mom to go pee. Dang, those little monsters move fast!

But this is not about me. It is about you wonderful, crazy, honest, smart, funny women choosing to reproduce for a reason that is quite beyond me. I hope you enjoy it. I think you are some of the coolest parents I have ever met and I am glad it is people like you who are carrying humankind into the future. I trust you to do a great job.

There is a virtual baby shower going on over at Shower Me, Baby and everyone is invited. There are games and prizes and other stuff. I only wish we could do the virtual "How many squares of toilet paper does it take to go around the prospective mommy's belly" game somehow.

Check it out.



I believe that children are our future (our future Angels fans, that is). I have no idea who these cute guys are. They were sitting behind me at an Angels game and I just thought they were adorable.

Queen Size

Jonniker wrote a great post about weight and body image that got me thinking.

I don't have a very good body image. I don't mean that I think badly of my body. I mean that I don't have a very good image in my mind of what it looks like. This image-blindness allows me to wear odd clothing combinations without shame and to appear naked in front of strangers without feeling embarrassed. I guess it is a mixed blessing. I am blithely ignorant while others may be horrified.

And if I can tell they are horrified, I fall back on the old biker adage: "F**k 'em if they can't take a joke." Thought I don't know how wise it is to be taking fashion advice from the Hell's Angels.

One by-product of this image blindness is that, instead of knowing how I look, especially size-wise, I try to figure my body out in relation to others. Am I that fat? Am I in better shape than her? I'm not that big, am I? I AM??

For instance, I always think of this one woman at work as being somewhat fat. The other day I realized she is slightly smaller than me. Duh.

I work in a very, very fat company, though. My co-workers and I will be at lunch in the cafeteria and remark "God, what a bunch of fatasses we are."

It isn't uncommon to look around the 40 or so people eating in the cafeteria and see 6 that are life-threateningly obese, and 5 others that are merely huge.

For me, this is a chance to get on my high horse and do some judging. I mean, I may be FAT but I'm not THAT FAT. I'm practically the Little Mermaid compared to those people! Bring on the brownies! I have another 100 pounds to go before I get THAT bad.

This way of thinking? It isn't getting me out of my size 16 jeans. Sigh.

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New posts at True Employee Confessions and Linkateria.

Freaks and Geeks

I have been reading Dooce forever. She may have even been the first blog I ever read after journalism gossip blog Romenesko (which doesn't count because it was for work).

Dooce has said plenty of shocking things before, but today took the cake:

Never before has that house been so clean, and people, that house has seen some very clean days. Cleaning is the primary way I deal with stress...

Huh? What kind of mutant IS she? Doesn't she know that the proper way to deal with stress is to curl up on your bed with your blankie and some high-calorie snacks?

Cleaning? As a stress reliever? I can see going to the firing range or practicing judo holds before I can see cleaning as something that would relieve my stress. I just can't get over how weird I think that is.

Heather saying that was almost as shocking as my friend Stacy's college roommate Dave "Hotttt" Wilson saying that he got restless reading and just had to go out for a run to counteract the effects of being stuck inside with a book.

We tried to tell him "Reading is the REWARD. Exercise is the punishment!" but Dave claimed not to understand. Maybe his hatred of reading had something to do with his rock-hard abs, but we didn't ask. We were too busy staring.

My college friend Mike Cameron proved what a freak he was when he told me he would rather do calculus than write an essay. But Mike, writing an essay is like skipping happily down a garden path! And calculus is like...urk...calculus!

Cleaning. Exercising. Math problems. What is the world coming to? It is full of freaks, I tell you. Freaks.
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People! Do not neglect your Linkateria. Lots of good linkies and videos over there.

A little help

The furor over the Virginia Tech shootings has already begun to die down, but mental illness will not go away. I venture to say that all of us are affected, even if we are not aware we are affected.

I have decided to join this year's NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) Walk. Any support would be appreciated. Go here to make an online donation.

I know that there are a lot of good causes to go around, and that you can't donate to them all. But to me, this year, this one is special because with more awareness and more help, maybe 32 intelligent, productive people would be in class today and another would be getting the treatment he had needed for so long.

Karl's fault, two ways

Karl over at Secondhand Tryptophan made me do it. Blame it on him.

First, he said that he doesn't like blogs without images. That one got me because Red Stapler had been image-free for months (recent car photos excepted). I decided to work on that.

Then he got the brilliant idea from Jessica at Daughter of Opinion to post a "rise and shine photo" - a photo taken upon first awakening. Jessica, is of course all dewy and fresh and beautiful first thing in the morning. And me? Well, your mileage may vary. At least you can enjoy my sexy plaid nightgown. Hey, Goldie likes it.

















As a bonus, here is a photo of me attacking Karl with the Red Stapler at BlogHer last year. Why does my hair look exactly the same as when I just woke up? Hm.

I was mad because Karl was a man invading the Sacred and Holy Blogging Conference of Women. I was smiling because I had had a few gin and tonics. Karl was truly afraid. (Photo by Chase of Taste the World.)