Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Lamenting the Foulness of Life

My dog’s stomach is growling. She had a bunch o’ rib bones and now I can expect puddles of barbecued barf in my bed tonight. Disgusting, huh?

This dog weighs ten pounds and is by my side night and day. She’s laying snugged up next to me on the couch while I type, right in the path of the 140ยบ heat blowing out of my laptop. It’s like someone strapped a heating pad to my leg.

I generally like heat – love those seat warmers. My cousin always wants to drive my car when we go somewhere and all winter I’ve got my seat warmer on. He’ll be sitting there in the driver’s seat, talking about his latest BM.

“Boys, you should have seen what came out of me this morning.” He says boys no matter what the gender of his audience is. “Black as coal and all of 12 inches, coiled up like a cobra, part of it floating like it was ready to strike.”

“I do NOT need to hear about this,” I say.

“It was remarkable,” he’ll say. “Never seen anything like it. I got a picture of it here on my phone – take a look, you won’t believe it. Here, see? Why is it so friggin’ hot? My nuts are roastin’!”

He says it every time we’re in the car – like the seat has launched some sneak attack against his scrotum.

Worse than his stories are when my dog barfs in the car while she’s sitting on my lap. I hear this little burbing noise and a nano-second later she heaves and there’s a puddle the size of a spilled glass of milk on my thigh – slimy and the color of whatever nauseating thing she ate out in our woods. Sometimes it grass in a clear slime like some kind of Tai pad lemongrass soup. Others it’s brown and lumpy.

The worse part is that you can’t do anything about it. I’ll be on the freeway going 65 mph when she Ralphs on me. First the sound, and I try to get her off my lap but I’m never fast enough. Just about the time I get my hands on her waist and snatch her up, I feel the warmth on my thigh, then the wetness. Anyone who’s had a baby knows what that feeling is like. That baby’s happy and coochie cooing one minute, and the next minute you’ve got this foul ooze traveling south down your silk blouse.

At least the dog barf doesn’t smell so bad. You talk about smells, I went into the ladies bathroom at the permit office the other day. Oh my gosh! Women’s bathrooms after they’ve had their morning coffee are worse than paper factories. Woo-whee! Brings tears to the eyes.

I don’t know what’s made me write about these things. Oh yeah, it was that dog’s growling belly. It’s my lament of the unwelcome bodily functions I encounter daily.

Monday, September 12, 2011

What's with Democrats?

What’s Up with Democrats?

In my last blog I trashed Republicans. That was pretty easy to do because they have gotten so ridiculous. Their only reason for being in office, apparently, is to get Obama out of office - even if it means destroying these entire United States.

But for this to be a bi-partisan blog so as not to alienate half the country, I am obliged to also take a poke at Democrats. That’s pretty easy too.

Democrats believe that everyone deserves help – even the lowlifes who get pregnant to increase their welfare stipend. Actually, I’m not sure if that goes on anymore – surely even the most fertile dimwit knows that a child costs more in the long run than you’ll ever get from the government. But just in case there are people still doing this for a living, I believe the Democrats should at least ask them to give something in return for the handout.

Once you start giving people money for nothing, how many are going to want to go back to scrubbing toilets or plucking chickens? I say give these able-bodied people money, but only in exchange for useful work. Make the welfare moms work in day cares so they can get a belly full of children. Make them work in grocery stores so they can see how obnoxious the people getting food stamps can be. Let them deal with those very heavy, loud mouthed mothers in checkout lines with their carts are full of cigarettes and fried potato products, arrogant and entitled, chips on their shoulders – trying to sneak stuff by and arguing indignantly when they get caught.

These are the people the Democrats insist that American taxpayers help. We taxpayers don’t mind helping those people who are temporarily down and out, we are sympathetic to the man trying to support his family after he’s had a job yanked out from under him, but we’re sick of those who milk us because they’re lazy and no account. They’re almost as bad as rich Republicans who milk us because they’ve figured out how to avoid paying even one penny in taxes.

Democrats want better health care for everyone. You want healthy people, make them get off their lard bottoms and walk somewhere else besides to the refrigerator. Make food stamp people weigh in, or prove they’re buying vegetables for their children instead of Twinkies. Give them books on healthy living and test them once a week before they get our tax dollars. Force them to be healthy in exchange for their money so they won’t need doctors for diabetes for them and their innocent offspring.

Democrats want to help anyone without accountability so that people get lazy – and Republicans want to help themselves get richer so that people get bitter. Doesn’t anyone see this except me?

Thursday, September 8, 2011

What's with Republicans?

What’s with Republicans?

I know I should not talk about politics. It’s a total waste of time - you can’t convert anyone – you’re either preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall.

Nonetheless, I have to ask, what is freaking up with Republicans? The ones I know are either wealthy and don’t want the government to take any of their money, or they’re dirt poor and fiercely prejudiced – they resent everyone who isn’t like them.

It’s funny to listen to the fat cat Republicans fretting about taxes. The ones I know have two houses, drive Lexus’s, send their kids to private schools, take several vacations a year to Hawaii and Mexico, and so forth.

Yet they get very angry when anyone talks about raising taxes. They don’t want riff-raff sucking away all their hard earned money. I can almost understand these guys – at least they’re sensible. They’re trying to protect what they’ve earned.

It’s the poor Republicans I don’t get. They resent everyone and feel they’re better than the rest of the poor because they have more than 50 percent of their teeth. They are perfectly contented to send their kids to crumbling schools and packed classrooms because they think education is a waste of time – it never got them anywhere. They’re not worried about the condition of roads because their beaters bounce about the same whether the road’s paved or potholed.

As long as they’ve got beer after a sweaty day at work, and something fresh to complain about, they’re pretty satisfied. They don’t want to help anyone else because no one else deserves it, dammit.

If the rich Republicans paid fair taxes, then the poor Republicans could have better schools, roads, parks, libraries, police protection, early education for their children, health care, etc. But the rich ones want to stay rich – they have enough money to buy all these things - and the poor ones think these things are a waste. The poor wear their lack of ambition like a badge of honor.

These two groups have nothing in common, but they rely on each other to fight the battle against those who want a to raise the standards for everyone. When Republicans control things, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. I don’t get why poor Republicans are so hell-bent on being worse off. And rich Republicans have no remorse about hoarding their wealth and living the good life when they could share some of their blessings and make life better for everyone.

This is what dictators and wicked kings do. But in a country where people are free to choose, we ought to have better sense. However, the poor will spite their own selves rather than help those they hate, and the rich, knowing this, will egg the poor on and rile them up about illegal aliens or welfare or whatever it is they despise at this point in history. Then the rich laugh all the way to the bank. This, my friends, is why I don’t get Republicans.

Happy as a Clam

I am a crazy person. I’m crazy for doing what I did, and even crazier for telling you about it. But I said I’d write a blog tonight after a long, long absence and I’ve procrastinated until it’s late and I’m tired and woe is me. This story I can do quick.

My husband bought a bunch of clams last Saturday for a seafood feed at our friends’ vacation house. He cooked most of them, but decided to cull out some to take home the next day.

When we got back, he found a broken clam and decided all the clams could be bad, so he chucked them in the garbage.

I was livid. He should have just cooked them all at our friends’. He should not have bought them in the first place because there was way too much food already and we couldn’t’ plow through it all (though I tried). He should have been more careful bringing them home. These are all things I made sure he clearly understood after he tossed those clams.

But those weren’t the reasons I was so irritated. I was P.O.’d because I knew good and well that I’d think about those clams in the garbage can, dying a slow miserable death as the heat got to them, wondering what they were thinking in their little clam brains as the life oozed out of them like the yellow goo leaching out of a festering boil, and knowing that they were calling, in their tiny clam voices, “Somebody please help us.”

I knew I’d lose sleep, and I knew I’d remember it with remorse all the days of my life and into the very grave. This is what made me mad as a hornet, fit to be tied, and angry as a skunk tangled in briars.

I went out to that filthy, slimy garbage can and fished out those clams, one by one, amid the coffee grounds, corn husks, and used feminine hygiene products, and put them into a bowl in the refrigerator because, according to Google, that’s how you keep clams alive. I would drive them to the beach two hours away, by golly, and put them back in the bay.

This morning I talked my daughter into going with me and we headed to Netarts. We waded into the ice-cold Oregon bay, full of squishy mud, seaweed, and pointy rocks, and I gave those poor clams back to the clear brown sea. I don’t know how many survived the ordeal in the cooler and refrigerator, and I don’t know what will happen to them or whether they will be able to make a home where I left them, or if the seagulls and crabs will feast on them when the tide goes out, but I do know I will sleep tonight because they aren’t in my garbage can screaming in voices that I would have heard all night long in my dreams.

And if that trip to the beach makes me a crazy woman, I’d rather be crazy than wrestling nightmares for the next six hours.

BTW, it’s good to be back to my blog. You could say I’m, well, uh, happy as a clam. Snicker, snicker.