Sometimes I just write posts so you can feel better about yourself

I'm the first to admit that I'm not a great housekeeper any kind of housekeeper at all. Ok, let's face it, I'm terrible at housekeeping.

I once told Goon Squad Sarah "I realized that I'm just not interested in housework, so I'm not going to do very much of it."

This means that, when I tell you I'm doing housework? I'm probably reading blog posts. Full disclosure, people.

The thing I did - or didn't do really takes the cake. The lint-covered, fur-lined cake.

My vacuum had not been working well. It is a Sears canister vac and I mostly love it. It has a little powered hand tool that is great for upholstery.

I figured it needed a new belt and a new filter, because it was smelling kind of dusty and leaving little trails of dog fur on the floor. What with one thing an another, it took me a while to face going to the demonic Sears appliance department where Mitch is the only person who knows anything and Mitch isn't speaking to the other employees. When I finally got there, they didn't have any belts and yadayadayada a month (or three) passed.

I finally bought and installed the new belt and filter ALL BY MYSELF I AM WOMAN HEAR ME ROAR AND USE A PHILLIPS-HEAD SCREWDRIVER.

The vacuum still sucked. Or didn't suck, to be more precise. I decided to further disassemble it and take a look.

Oh mah gah, my people. Are you sitting down?

I thought there was a little clog at the base of the tube that connects to the floor cleaner thingy. I took it out on the lawn to shake it out.

Eventually, a 4-foot dirt cylinder emerged like a germ-covered furry dust snake.

The tube that connects the floor cleaner thingy to the hose that leads to the canister had been PACKED FULL of dirt and dog hair and random filth and whatnot.

Sorry I have no photos to prove this. There are some things too horrifying for photos. There aren't many - but this was.

That dusty smell? Yeah, that was dirt flinging itself out of every little seam in my vacuum, trying to escape the fact that my vacuum tube had become a de facto bagless dirt catcher. Except the dirt, instead of being nicely contained, was just kind of hanging out.

I think you must agree that I win at sucking at housework. Just a warning so that you know. If you come over, a Tyvek suit and gloves are advised. Respirator is recommended but optional.

My Ultimate Family Vacation

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Not having kids of my own, I don’t have a little family unit to define as mine. When I got assigned to write a post on my ultimate family vacation, it took me back a bit.

I feel lucky to have a family that is not so much defined by blood as by love. It doesn’t matter if someone was born into our family - if they hang around long enough, they get absorbed. Like Annie, the woman who has been vacuuming my folks’ house for the past 20 years. She started having a little sit-down before she got to cleaning. Then a longer sit-down. Then phone calls and visits and Facebook - and she’s one of us now and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Even the ultimate vacation idea is rough for me to narrow down, as I love to travel anywhere. I am happy whenever I wake up somewhere away from home, even if it is just 10 miles away. There’s always something cool to see. I always want to know everything about wherever I am and I'm happiest just wandering around with a camera, checking stuff out.

My travel wish list wraps around the world every which way. The only places I really don’t want to go are caves (ewwwwww) and ski resorts (because I am, as a bred in the bone Southern California girl who thinks snow is something Up With One Shall Not Put)…other than that, I’m packed and ready to go if you give me half an hour.

The idea for an Ultimate Family Vacation took some head scratching, but Dave from Blogography gave me inspiration with his most recent travel adventure.

The whole family. Me. Mom. My sisters and brother. Their spouses. As many of their 8 kids as I could round up. And might as well throw in their steps- and halfs, too. We love them all. And now the great-nieces and -nephews – I think we would be up to about 20-something little ones. And heck, let's grab Annie and her husband, too.

On a boat. A cruise ship, to be precise. If you’re going to have a large, unruly group, it is best to keep them somewhat contained so they can’t wander off, thus the cruise ship.

Watch out, world. The big extended Davis family is heading for the gangplank.

How awesome that would be. I have nieces and nephews who have never met each other. This would give them a chance to know their cousins. They could run around like little maniacs (what else is new?), play, swim and sun while the parents and grandparents got some relaxing in, too.

I think it would be so much fun that it wouldn’t much matter which itinerary we chose, but as long as I am having an impossible fantasy, the 11-night Mediterranean cruise that Dave did sounds awesome. Spain. Tunisia. I can almost feel the warm breezes and smell the spices. And maybe there’s an Armando or Felipe out there with an eye for a certain saucy older American woman…Olé!
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Don't forget to enter the “Do What You Love” Sweepstakes, for a chance to win your own ultimate family vacation. I was selected for this sponsorship by the Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

The boundless and mysterious capacity for self-delusion

I smell a lie!





Do you listen to This American Life? You really should. It's the best thing on earth. No, I'm not exaggerating. Look how great technology is - you can listen to it right here. 

I was listening to this week's show, "Frenemies" and one of the stories, the one about the long-lost friend who had a problem with her daughter, triggered me to remember my days as a girl reporter.


I used to think that people knew what they were saying.

I used to believe them.

After being a reporter for a while, I knew why we catch politicians in stupid lies like when Hilary Clinton said "They were shooting at us when we landed in Sarajevo."

People don't even know when they are lying much of the time. This includes me.

Stories, bits of facts, embellishments, photos, other people's words - they all swirl around in our brains to make a fertile ground for new stories to sprout. Stories that SEEM to be absolutely real but may have little to no basis in fact.

And then there's the stuff we want to believe about ourselves. We want to think we are better people than we are, so we say we are better people than we are, never mind the truth. 

Let me give you two recent examples:

• I met someone I know at the beach who was walking her off-leash dog. We started talking about dogs, as dog owners are wont to do, and I bemoaned the intractability and viciousness of the fleas this year. She said "Well, you know what I do? I keep my dog off the beach, which helps a lot!" Mind you, her dog was walking on the beach less than 20 feet from her.

• I was having Italian dinner with a friend and he asked me about why I was a  vegetarian. We chatted for a while and then he said "Well, I really don't eat red meat at all anymore." While he was reaching for a slice of steaming pepperoni and sausage pizza. 

Sometimes I open my mouth and hear these sorts of things coming out. "Oh, I take vitamins every single day without fail." "I make all my dog's food." "I never talk on the phone when I'm driving anymore." 


The first one is patently untrue, though I think about taking vitamins all the time. The second is true when I have a lot of time on my hands. And the third is mostly true but there are exceptions. Still? None of them are really truly true like you might expect them to be, since you heard them come out of my mouth.

What about you? Do you have lies that you tell out of habit? Oh, do tell!
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Sorry about the way these past few posts have looked. I am fighting with the new Blogger post editor.

Rise of the Poo-Flinging Monkeys

Internet trolls come in all shapes and sizes, but lately a super special kind of troll has popped up - the do-nothing troll.


This special member of internet society not only disapproves of what someone has done, but they disapprove that they have even done it.


My dear @grace134 on twitter got this comment the other day where the person told her she was "sad" for having to "exploit herself" on the internet.


Then Catherine of Her Bad Mother got one about her trip to Africa that is a real doozy:
Ack. Could any of this be a bigger cliche? Look, I don’t want to cast aspersions on anyone’s personal experiences, I guess. I guess. But… come on. Every bit of this, and especially all the uber-cliched photos that come with it, I knew to recognize as one big cliche by the time I was four or five years old. No one is going to change the world or even their world with these kinds of stories. Just the opposite: the suffering-but-smiling black kids who smile in pictures with the “OMG-I’ll-never-be-the-same-again” white people who come visit them are a staple of our culture at this point. If they weren’t suffering-and-smiling like that, we wouldn’t get to take a nice vacation from our indulgent-but-frustrated lives once in a while to stand next to them and get to feel so simultaneously humbled and self-satisfied...


It goes on. And on.

I used to just shake my head and chuckle at these kinds of things, but now I'm mad. I'm really angry at the contention that it is better to do nothing than something. Or that if you try something, earnestly and with enthusiasm and love in your heart, it's ok for others to come spit on your parade just because they can.

It makes me want to go beat on these brats with a baseball bat.

The only reason I can see for these kind of comments - and I should know - is that these people have so little going on in their lives that all they are left with is their keyboards and a pile of steaming poo that they are too lazy to clean up, so they fling it at other people.

From now on, I refuse to call them "trolls" anymore. I'm calling them
"Poo-Flinging Monkeys."

I like the sound of that.


Photo by Ben and Laura Kreeger from Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons license.