Mania

I think I have been having a bout of mania.  I can't seem to stop my mind from racing a million miles a minute and I have gotten more done the last week than I have in the past six months.  Now I see the allure of crystal meth, I have all the productivity but without facial scabs and rotten teeth...  Well, without facial scabs.   I don't even want to list the things I've done because A) it's boring, and B) it would just make me tired to think of it all again.  Does that sound braggy?  Because it kind of is.  However, I would really like my mind to slow down and relax a little bit but until I get settled in my job, I don't think I will be able to.  Oh well.  Better than being depressed and not being able to do anything.

I had book club this week.  We met at a Thai restaurant and when I told Mitch he said, "Whoever chose that place doesn't have any nerve endings in their mouth."  He went there once and apparently what he had was spicy, which isn't saying much because we think ketchup has a little too much zing sometimes.  I had something delicious and non-spicy.  The ladies were hilarious, as usual.  I actually did a spit take with my water at one point because some of the ladies were talking about people jumping off a tall building in Duluth where some of them work.

this building

Apparently one time a woman went there for a medical appointment of some kind and while her husband was in the waiting room she went up to the roof and jumped.  Someone said, "I wonder if he saw her do it?" and the lady who told the story said, totally seriously, "I don't know...  I don't know the speed at which she flew by."  That's when I almost choked on my water.  It was funny.

We also talked about my cute dentist.  I told them that Mitch thinks the next time I'm there and he has his cute little hands in my mouth, I should lick his fingers and make eyes at him.  The ladies all think that is a great idea, which makes me wonder if they are really my friends because I'm pretty sure that wouldn't end well for me.  Or maybe it would..... hey...

Hopefully this week I will get a handle on my new life and get back to my old self.  Until then I will get all the things done that I have been putting off for the past five years.

Have a great week!

Maria Bamford

For Book Club tonight, the ladies and I went to see comedian Maria Bamford do a show at St. Scholastica.  It was great.  She is the one who does the Target ads at Christmas time.

She's really strong.

I have been a fan of hers since my aunt sent me a home-made cassette tape out of the blue and told me to listen to it.  It was one of Maria's albums and I loved it so much that I wrote her (Maria) an email and told her that I thought she was so funny that from now on I would buy her albums myself and not rely on my relatives for bootlegs.  She wrote back and said she was glad I liked it.  Nice!  So I have bought her albums since then and I have kept up with what she has been doing.  She had a web show for a while that I loved.  I'm not a huge fan of stand up comedians but for some reason I really love Maria.  She does a bit about "Christy the Christian Teen" that just about kills me, and she also does impressions of her family members that are hilarious.  One of my favorite bits she does is about leaving her mom voicemail messages from the baby Jesus.

Tonight Maria did some material about mental illness that I thought was great.  She said people still don't think of mental illness as a "real" ailment because you never hear someone say they should treat their nearsightedness or cancer with an "attitude adjustment."  I loved that.

After the show we hung around and got to chat with Maria for a few minutes because my friend Dana went to high school with her.  Dana took a picture of the two of us.

But by far the most bizarre thing that happened all night was that I was sitting in the front row of the second section and a lady in an enormous motorized barcalounger came rolling up and everyone in the row had to scooch their chairs down so she could back into her spot right next to me.  The lady was on oxygen so she had a big tank and she also had bags and bags of stuff hanging all over within arms reach.  She took out a big bottle of water and a cup and had a little drink at one point. But that's not the bizarre part.  She also had a  wiener dog on her lap who was wearing a silver necklace and a pink, gingham, halter dress. I couldn't stop looking at that stupid dog.  And the dog couldn't stop looking at me.  It was unnerving.  Other people were looking at the dog too and I think the lady was getting self conscious about it because she put a pink vest on it that said, "My name is Rosie and I'm a service animal.  Please don't pet me."  I couldn't really pinpoint what service Rosie was providing, unless having a dog indefatigably lick your nasal cannulas is a service.  If it is, Rosie was doing a great job.

Stiffy

I had book club again last night.  I haven't had that much fun in a long time.  Probably since last month's book club meeting. 

One of the ladies told a story about how when she was a girl sitting at dinner with her family, she asked the question, "Why do people alway say, 'Ward, don't be so hard on the Beaver' and why is that so funny?"  Nobody would tell her.  Later when she learned the hilarity of the double entendre she was mortified that she had asked her parents, and incredibly grateful that they didn't tell her.

Another lady said when she was a teenager, again sitting down at dinner with her family, she told a joke that she had recently heard.  Everytime she heard someone tell the joke it got a big laugh, but she didn't really get it.  She told the joke to her parents.  "What is better than roses on your piano?  Tulips on your organ!"  And then she laughed and laughed, pretending to get it.  Her parents gave her a courtesy laugh and quickly changed the subject.  She says when she was older and thought about it, it dawned on her that she told an oral sex joke to her parents and she didn't even get it.  Mortifying. 

This brings me to something Kira did lately, and when she thinks back on it in five or ten years she will be mortified and tell her book club all about it.  She had one of those long balloons like clowns use to make balloon animals.  She blew it up and to be funny said, "I made a balloon animal.  It's a snake."  Then she waved it around a little and said, "It's kind of a stiff snake.  I'll name him Stiffy."  And then she went up to Mitch and poked him relentlessly and kept saying in a deep growly voice, "Hey Mitch, say hi to Stiffy.  Stiffeh.  Stiffeeeeehhhhh!" and then she said something about Stiffy only having one eye and, "Hey Mitch, look into Stiffy's one eye and say hi!"  Mitch tried to stifle his laughter and thought it best to try to ignore her so she would stop poking people in the ribs with her balloon phalus and yelling "MY NAME IS STIFFEEEEHHHHHH!" and eventually she did. 

I hope I am around when it dawns on her how inappropriate it was that she blew up a balloon, named it Stiffy, and ran around the house poking her parents, grandparents, and brother yelling out "Say hi to Stiffy!"  I really really hope I can see her face when that happens. 

Stiffeeeehhhhhh

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Book Club

It was book club night last night.  We met at a quiet little coffee shop where there were several young college types working on laptops.  We tried not to be too loud and disrupting and to act as mature as we look, but it didn't last long.  We dutifully discussed the book and picked a new book and then things kind of fell apart.  One of the ladies told us that she was going to Pampered Chef-like party, but instead of selling kitchen utensils, they sell sex toys.  Some of the ladies said they would be too embarrassed to actually buy anything and one of the ladies said that she went to one of those parties long ago and bought some strawberry-flavored edible body gel, but never used it and forgot about it until she was cleaning one day and found it.  She opened it and it had apparently gone bad.  She said it smelled like Robitussin.  She didn't want to just throw it away (that shit's expensive!) so she thought she could still make some use of it and kept it in case her husband was ever feeling amorous but also had a bit of a cough. Two birds, you know?

Then someone noticed a nearby table of three young women who looked like they were in the midst of a Bible study.  They all had Bibles, anyway.  We know they were Bibles because one of the ladies craned her neck to look and then turned back and whispered, "They aren't dictionaries, I'm pretty sure they are Bibles." because if it's not a Bible study, its probably a dictionary study, right?  Always a master of segue and conversation, I said (quietly), "Speaking of Bible study and sex toys, have any of you ever seen the Baby Jesus Butt Plug?

which the second after I said it I thought might be a show-stopper and would cause the our book-club meeting to be abbreviated, but it wasn't!  I love these ladies!  Unfortunately it did lead to a (quiet) discussion about butt plugs and how they could possibly be sex toys.  We don't see the appeal.  Hear that, kinky men out there?  No matter what your enthusiastic lady-friend says, nobody likes butt plugs.

I learn a lot at book club.

Book Club

Hi.  I'm teaching high school right now.  Well, not really.  It's my lunch break and I'm writing on the blog, so I'm not teaching anyone anything.  I like this teacher.  He seems to have his act together.  The kids have been super. 

I had book club last night and every time it's a book club day and it gets later and darker, I think to myself, "Oh geez, I don't want to go outside in the cold and drive and freeze my butt off, and park blah blah blah, lazy, lazy, lazy;  but every month I do it and I am so glad I did because those ladies are so much fun. 

Last night we talked about the book for a while (A Circus in Winter), and the general concensus was "eh."  That took about ten minutes.  Then we picked a new book (Undead and Unwed), and then we gabbed for about two hours on a variety of topics such as:

- when do our teenage sons start secretly looking at porn on their various electronic devices and what we should do about it and HOW GROSS IS THAT?  (answers ranged from "ick, I would pretend I didn't know" to "I'd make him watch it with me and tell me if he thinks the actors' parents are proud of them."

- how some of our kids get bullied at school or are struggling with some pretty awful social situations and what we should do about it.  (general concensus:  take the low road and make the little fuckers hurting our little angels PAY.)

- if the show Game of Thrones is or is not about lesbians. (is not)

- don't buy boots from CheapUggs.com because apparently the little Chinese children who make them aren't very concerned about quality.

- a general inquiry into when in your life your eyebrow hairs and pubes stopped knowing that they aren't meant to grow long and luxurious, (after the first baby) and what happens when your surgeon sews your C-section scar crooked (long and luxurious pubes grow at a jaunty angle).

- what is anus bleaching, how did it get so stained anyway; and how terrible a job is that?

And my favorite quote from the whole night was

"I've always considered myself low-maintenance but after today I'm beginning to wonder."

That had me laughing all night.  Then we picked our next meeting place and went home.  I am refreshed for another month.  Then today Dana, our leader, sent out an email that summed up the night with bullet points for the ladies who didn't make it.  It was so funny I stole the idea for this post.  Thanks, Dana!  Thanks ladies!  See you next month!