American Girl

Ok, I love Tom Petty. No other music inspires me to writhe and dance around in the kitchen in quite the same way. The music makes me feel happy and amazing. So, I was stunned to find out tonight that according to rumors, American Girl is about a girl throwing herself off her dorm room balcony. Ok, besides the fact that he says that's not what it's about at all, (says Petty himself) who has a balcony outside their dorm room? When you listen to it don't you feel happy and hopeful and like everything isn't quite as crap as you thought it was 10 minutes ago? The song is about moving on, people. Stop being so damn depressing. For those of you unfamiliar with the genius of Tom Petty, I posted a neat scrolly lyric thing (yes, that's a technical term) up there.

Happy Father's Day

I intended to post this yesterday, but the battery in my camera was dead. My dad is amazing. We've always been very close and I feel so lucky to be living close (sometimes too close...) to him again. When my parents divorced and my mom tried to take us far, far away from him he put everything he had into getting us back. At at time when it was almost unheard of for a father to get custody, my dad got it. Don't get me wrong, I love my mom and she has done a lot of really wonderful things for me and I don't know what I would do without either of my parents, but I've always been a daddy's girl.

1983

1987

2006

Unicorn

When I was a little girl, every night I wished as hard as I could that my bicycle would turn into a unicorn. Apparently some little Italian girl has been wishing the same thing, and she's better at it.:

'Unicorn' deer is found in Italian preserve

By Marta Falconi

ROME - A deer with a single horn in the center of its head — much like the fabled, mythical unicorn — has been spotted in a nature preserve in Italy, park officials said Wednesday.

"This is fantasy becoming reality," Gilberto Tozzi, director of the Center of Natural Sciences in Prato, told The Associated Press. "The unicorn has always been a mythological animal."

The 1-year-old Roe Deer — nicknamed "Unicorn" — was born in captivity in the research center's park in the Tuscan town of Prato, near Florence, Tozzi said.

(Rest of the Story)

Cats & Dogs

Any apprehension that I felt at taking in the kittens has totally disappeared. They haven't caused any real trouble and there are few things as pleasant as falling asleep with a soft, rumbly kitten smashed against your neck. They also clearly understand that their jobs include catching bugs and keeping the dogs constantly entertained. I'm watching Marlowe and Gatsby play at the other end of the sofa. The game goes something like this:

1. G sticks his paw in M's mouth.
2. M looks confused and then s l o w l y closes his mouth around the intruding paw.
3. G yelps like he's been set on fire.
4. M jerks away and looks around to see if he's been caught doing something wrong.
5. G sticks his paw in M's mouth.

They've been doing this for about half an hour. Occasionally Maybe (who thinks the kittens are her babies) tries to intervene and save Gatsby, but each time she's run to the rescue, her reward has been a pretty nasty bite to the ear. Gatsby obviously isn't interested in being rescued.

Gratuitous Kitten Pics

Possible Side Effects

So, I've been having a some pain in my neck and shoulder, (probably from the uncomfortable way I'm forced to sleep at work when I'm supposed to be awake and fully engaged in the life of a deaf drug dealer, but I digress....) and so yesterday I finally gave into Justin's demands that I "take something already and stop whining." We happen to have a wide assortment of medications lying around because one of us is always sick or hurt or interested in the possible side effects of a drug we saw on TV so there was no need to run out to the drugstore. Justin brought me a Tramadol, which they market as a pain reliever, but it's really an opioid. In other words, my shoulder would still hurt, but I wouldn't much care.

Apparently the makers of Tramadol believe that the best possible way to make someone forget about their pain is to make them itch all over and provide frequent and entertaining auditory hallucinations. I slept for about 5 hours (possible side effect: drowsiness) but the entire time I heard the noise that school buses make (you know, that air-brake noise) outside my window. There was also one brief and startling moment when, I swear to god, Johnny Depp leaned over me and whispered something (which I naturally can't recall) in my ear. (I'm pretty sure the constant, high-pitched kitten mewing was real.) Anyway, I'm sore again tonight, this time from thrashing around (I prefer to call it interpretive dance) while Justin played Guitar Hero last night. This time I'm going to try Relafen, which is an anti-inflammatory. It promises to avoid the sound effects and just make me nauseated. Cheers!

Thank You Wall Street Journal

Once upon a time, I started a job at which the dress code required women in the office to wear pantyhose, even with pants, even in 100 degree weather and in spite of the fact that the men in the office didn't have to wear ties. (Which apparently is the standard male equivalent. For the record, the guys also didn't have to wear pantyhose.) I didn't know about the pantyhose rule (because really, who wears pantyhose with pants?), so the first day I wore a skirt and got in trouble for my lack of hosiery. Because it was my first day, they let me slide, but they didn't tell me that not only was hosiery required with skirts and dresses, but also pants, so the next day, I wore pants (with closed toe shoes), and again I was reprimanded for my stocking-less feet. On the third day, I wore tight jeans and a t-shirt and quit that job. I felt that the dress code was discriminatory, outdated and just plain stupid. Just because a local politician has a thing for women in stockings, he doesn't have the right to require his employees to dress for his fetish.

Finally, someone else has encountered this problem and the Wall Street Journal, bible of the business world, has weighed in and said that stockings should be optional. I'm so tempted to call my ex-employer and say neener-neener-neener!! Or better yet, waltz into that office, bare-legged and stick my tongue out at him.

I've heard the argument that naked legs are too racy for a professional setting, and that may have been true in the 40s (remember how badly I did on the 1940s wife quiz...), but I tend to believe that the opposite is true now. Stockings have become a highly sexualized article of clothing. If you do a Google search for pantyhose, the first 5 pictures demonstrate this quite nicely, in fact, I couldn't find an appropriate picture to post with this blog. (I finally just posted a picture of my own legs.) I must admit that if I wore stockings to the office I'd feel pretty naughty, considering the types of activities that I'd normally don them for.I haven't been in contact with that old boss in years, but I'd be interested to know if an uprising in a small Kansas town big enough to make it to the Wall Street Journal has had any effect on that super oppressive office.

I Have Clearly Lost My Mind

I was recently talked into bringing home two kittens that a little girl left at my parents' house. This makes us two people with four animals, and we are officially outnumbered. I'm pretty uncomfortable with this, but cats are easy and they are already trying to catch the mouse that's been terrorizing us for weeks. I'm not sure why they choose to sleep in the trash can, but whatever. I present to you:

Iris
and Gatsby

Yeah, I know the pictures aren't great, but kittens aren't really known for being still.