Clown Day was a huge success, except for the fact that students on our campus couldn’t have cared less that a clown walked among them. I’m still calling it a win because no one threw a pie at me.

I’ll recap the day and then let you enjoy the movie trailer we produced to commemorate events. I’m submitting it to Sundance. They take everything.

The day began with my clown assistant sister Marlene collecting me at my house. I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to eat later, and she immediately chastised me for putting too much of everything on the bread. I can’t do anything right.

We piled in the car and headed to work, getting noticed by no one. We clowned around in my office with everyone who came to get an eyeful. Took video and pictures and then headed out to our first stops.

No one said anything to us. And I looked like this. I don’t get it either.

Students, if anything, simply glanced and put their heads back down. Only one student spoke. “Run! Run away!”

Wow. Tough crowd.

We headed for visits to various buildings on campus, stopping at my satellite office, where I followed a grad student back to hers, saying “Would you mind if I followed you back to your desk? in the creepiest way possible. Until I told her who I was, she would not look me in the eye. Note to self. Creepy is only fun for the clown.

Before we knew it, lunch time! We headed to a deli nearby, where I had my first and last PBJ sandwich. I know I made it wrong. I know I used the wrong jelly (strawberry), but that didn’t matter. I was a “mouth feel” thing. Jelly too slimy. Make clown sad.

So my videographer graciously offered me half his BLT sandwich. Bacon good. Make clown happy.

The rest of the afternoon was more of the same: Students not caring, but friends and co-workers loving it.

By 3PM, my clown assistant and I were exhausted. Clowning is much harder than I thought it would be. You always have to be ON. We felt OFF by then and decided to head home.

Made a quick visit to my clown assistant’s workplace for pictures. Found out that her co-worker’s son is a campus police officer where I work and got the email that I sent warning that a clown would be on-campus (can’t be too careful).

Can you imagine the morning briefing? Be on the lookout for a clown today. She’ll be unarmed and hilarious.

So what did I learn by clowning all day?

• A clown can hold her bladder for eight hours and not suffer any ill effects.
• She can also eat a whole pizza for dinner by herself.
• No one’s butt looks good in a clown suit. Hourglass figure? Forget it.
• A blue afro rocks.

Thanks go again to my sister for helping me with picture-taking and lugging all my clown paraphernalia around. Clowning is hard, but I think clown assisting is harder.

Jason Slipp, my good friend and co-worker, filmed and edited the following movie trailer. Thanks for your creative spirit, time and talent! (Movie to come in a later post).

Here you go!

Many of you know that this Friday, January 20th, is Clown Day.

The day I agreed I would go to work dressed in full clown gear after you donated so much to my food bank fundraiser.

Let me tell you, it’s hard being a clown. But it’s also some of the most fun I’ve had in my life.

In the past weeks, I went shopping for just the right clown suit, makeup, a wig the size of a basketball, white gloves, a dozen balloons and a tote bag to keep all my girly clown things secured.

It took me four attempts at a face to land on one I’m happy with. YouTube videos helped, and so did pictures on the Internet and makeup packaging. I started out with a dreadful Joan Crawford face, but wound up with much more cheerful one in the end.

I took my clown self for an “in public” test drive yesterday, visiting my mother first. I had to call and warn her that she would not recognize my fully-painted face and to please not attack me with a baseball bat.

I drove around town before and after and waved at anyone who would look at me. If you have a bucket list, put clowning on it! It’s a laugh a minute!

All but one person waved back or smiled.

That one person who didn’t?

He flipped me the bird at an intersection.

I think he needed a hug. If you can’t smile back at a clown, you’re dead inside. That’s all I have to say about that.

So that you can all follow along with my clownal shenanigans, I’ve set up a Facebook page that you can “Like.” I’ll post pictures and updates as often as possible.

I’ll also blog about it after, with plenty of photos and video.

You are as much a part of this as anyone I run into that day. I hope you enjoy following along with me for the ride.

Thank you again for making the food bank fundraiser a huge success!

We’re embracing the crazy again at The Junk Drawer. If I gave you the chance, what would you dare me to do? Something gross? Something scary? Something embarrassing?

If I offered the power to choose one of those things, and I promised to do it on camera, would you pay for the opportunity?

Read on and see how the crazy works.

Bill White, a columnist from my local paper, The Morning Call, sponsors a fundraiser every year for a food bank in our area.

He’s also responsible for one of my family’s most-anticipated holiday traditions – visiting elaborately decorated homes on a Christmas lights tour that he designs based on reader submissions.

He drives by every nominated home and publishes a tour of the very best ones, including driving directions to take from house to house. It’s a huge deal around these parts and my family picks one of the routes to enjoy every year.

What’s really fun is that Bill turned his fundraising efforts and the lights tour into a challenge for his readers to collect as much as possible for a chance to win a personal tour with him.

Those who make the largest donations to the Second Harvest Food Bank of the Lehigh Valley get to be driven around in style to see homes on the tour.

And I want a tour!

Here’s where you come in.

If I can reach my fundraising goal of $750 by December 14 that should guarantee me and my family a tour with Bill.

AND! My sisters and I are willing to match your gifts (up to $250).

What’s in it for you besides spreading Christmas cheer? YOU. GET. POWER.

Your reward for making a donation is to vote on which of the following you’d like to see me do. I MUST DO whichever one receives the most votes.

1. Eat my first ever peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Many of you know I find these two foods together a rather disgusting combination. I’ve gone my entire life without one, but I’d make an exception if it meant others could go a little less hungry.

2. Ride a horse. Some of you may recall this being on my list of 10 Things I Don’t Have the Guts To Do. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid. And the horse should be, too. Do horses have weight limits?

3. Wear full clown gear to work all day. Face paint, big red shoes, wig. Everything. I will work as normal on my clients’ computers, go to meetings, and eat lunch with strangers. In public.

If you’re willing to donate, please use the ChipIn tool below to make a secure contribution. And THANK YOU!

Then leave a comment indicating which task you’d like me to do. If I hit my goal, I’ll get the job done and post back with a video of me in action.

REMEMBER: ALL DONATIONS DUE BY DECEMBER 14! That’s not a lot of time, but I know you can do it.

You have the power!

So. Some of you know that I’m taking Prednisone, a steroid, for injuries I suffered while trying to do something good for my body.

My cardio workouts are to blame for all sorts of hurty problems with my shoulder, knee, bicep and elbow.

This is obvious proof that exercise is stupid and doesn’t really do anything except accelerate your body falling apart.

There. I said it. Stop doing it. It’s dumb.

Anyway, so I’m on this steroid, which is doing next to nothing for me. But I consider myself lucky to not be one of the people who experiences all kinds of side effects like: extreme hunger, mood swings, and a fat face.

Actually, I have all those things already, but whatever. At least it’s not any worse.

What I did experience was super human strength today while cleaning my kitchen floor.

So I’m gettin’ my Swiffer on and all of a sudden I snap the mop like a twig. With no effort whatsoever.

See? All brokey.

Granted, the handle is plastic, but it’s sturdy plastic that should not just break in half.

I get all sorts of angry (mood swing!) because I have to shell out another 30 bucks or so to buy a new one, unless duct tape fixes it.

But then I quickly move through the anger phase, straight to the “I’m a superhero” phase. Look at me! I’m the Hulk now.

So if you need me to chop firewood for you or move some heavy furniture single-handedly, ring me up. Wanna see me lift a car? I can do that, too.

Unless, of course, grandiosity is one of the drug’s side effects. In that case, never mind.

What are you lookin’ at, jerk?, I thought.

I’d just left my Catholic grade school to walk home immediately following mass, held at our church adjacent to the school.

As I reached the halfway point of my four-block trek, some creepy guy in a car slowed down, drove my walking pace and stared at me.

For a 10-year-old, this was disconcerting. You know, Little girl, want some candy? and all that. I’d always been leery about walking on that particular block anyway, since there was a mental health facility nearby.

Anxieties peaked after the day two guys wearing their orderly whites came running down the street and shouted over to me on my porch “Did you see someone run down this way?”

Rut-roh. An escapee. Not good.

So I’m walking along, when Creepy Guy slows down and stares at me. He rolled down the window and said “What’s that you got on your head?”

And then it hit me.

I still had my white church veil pinned to the top of my head from mass.

Oh.

I felt silly. But also completely skeeved out by a guy who would scare a little girl half to death. And about something so trivial, no less. Weirdo! With one swipe, I removed the veil and tucked it in my pocket and bulletted home.

So.

The veil.

All girls in our school were required to wear their white veils to mass, which we attended every Friday.

If you forgot to bring your veil, you had to wear a Kleenex on your head.

A Kleenex. That made you a target for snickers. But if someone sneezed, it also made you convenient.

Most veils we wore were smallish and lacy, the size, look and feel of the doily your Grandma put under crystal bowls full of hard candy no self-respecting kid would eat.

Some veils were longer, like the one my classmate Theresa wore. I wonder if she ever became a nun like she wanted to be for the longest time. We could all see her becoming a nun because she wore her uniform well below the knee, kept tissues tucked under her sleeve and piously said grace before lunch.

I wore my doily, er, my veil in the style of a taco, which is to say I folded it in half and fastened it to my head with the rounded side toward the back, two bobbypins in the front on either side of my head.

I rocked that look, trust me.

Other girls wore their tacos folded out flat in a circle, but that made it harder to pin because you essentially had to rip a hole in the middle of it to stick the bobbypin through. Slobs.

Theresa’s was basically a wedding veil, which hung down almost to her butt. That required all sorts of special rigging because of the weight and because her hair was thin. She would have been better off just Crazy-gluing it to her head and leaving it there 24/7, practice for nunhood and all.

But no one, not even Theresa, wore a headscarf veil, tied under the chin. That was reserved for old, crunched-over Italian women who dressed in all-black wool, even on sweltering hot days. Sweatiness is next to godliness, you know.

We mercifully didn’t have to wear veils to high school masses. I think the administrators took pity on us. There’s just so much other stuff to tease girls about. Thank you for one less thing.

OK, so for all the non-Catholic readers, did you learn something new today? For the Catholics out there, holla! Do you remember wearing veils to church? What style did you wear?

Oh, and that’s me in the picture. Not wearing a veil. Probably worried about Creepy Guy on the way home.

Major renovations are taking place in my building at work. Workmen padded the main elevators that they use for shuffling large and dirty materials all around.

Today I spotted a powdery smudge on the cardboard padding that looked like someone could have painted it, were it not just plain old dirt.

I know it’s faint, but I think you can still make it out.

Do you see what I see?

Yes, people wanted to know what I was doing taking pictures in the elevator.

Yes, they all think there’s something wrong with me.

But that’s OK, because you all know I’m perfectly normal. Right? Right?

Bethlehem, PA – A local man today avoided certain death by not over-exerting himself changing out a roll of paper towels.

The man, David Frederick, when asked by his wife whether it would actually kill him to swap them out, responded “Yes. Yes, it would kill me.”

Though he got close to changing it – the roll made it within inches of the holder – he insisted it would have been much too difficult to lift the old roll and put on a new one.

Frederick’s unwillingness to change the roll makes no scientific sense, given new research from American University that suggests men in households with easy-to-change paper towel holders are 34% more likely to change the roll than households with the wall-mounted type, requiring two hands to change it.

“I just didn’t feel like it,” Frederick said.

Lead researcher, Robert Jones, says that Frederick’s difficulty in changing the roll may stem from his general laziness or the fact that he worked that day and felt he had no energy left, despite the fact that his household sports the one-handed type of holder.

Although Frederick’s wife was pleased her husband didn’t have to die by changing the roll out, she expressed frustration that she would have to do it herself – again.

“I mean, he went to the trouble to get a new one and put it down next to the holder. The empty roll weighs, what, two ounces? I just don’t understand it,” she said.

Reports indicate that Frederick’s wife did eventually change the roll, sighed heavily and then stomped away from the kitchen.

Frederick and his wife have been married nearly 20 years. There was no indication whether Frederick’s near death experience will keep him from changing new rolls in the future, but researcher Jones suspects so.

“Once a habit of neglect has been formed, it’s very hard to change, particularly for husbands. They have a hard time with toilet paper rolls, too,” he said. “It’s just asking too much.”

Me: You know what I could go for?

Husband: What?

Me: A Pepsi.

Husband: Are you pregnant?

This exchange is hardly odd because I haven’t had a real soda in about ten years and so Dave thought something was up. I’m strictly a water and coffee drinker.

The last time I drank a Pepsi was the first day of a vacation. It was a special event that I was going to drink a soda. And so after that, any time we had real soda for Dave in the house, it became known to me as Vacation Soda.

I tried to drink a carbonated Orange Crush at a picnic once and I remembered why I don’t bother with liquids of the bubbly variety. My eyes and nose watered and then I experienced that ever-painful thing where I blow up and can’t burp. Fun.

I don’t drink alcohol either. Not because I have anything against imbibing. It just turns me narcoleptic, which makes me no fun at all for the people who are enjoying a drink. I can’t even be the designated driver because I’m two sheets to the sleep after even a half glass of wine.

So if you’re considering taking me out to dinner or a night out with the girls, you pretty much have to order me a water on the rocks or things could get real ugly. And by ugly, I mean I’ll either explode at the table or fall asleep in your lap.

Dave’s running out now to get me that Pepsi. Mark the date. June 4, 2011. Kathy drank a soda this decade.

Today I had an ear lavage. The word lavage is derived from the French verb laver “to wash.”

An ear lavage thus means “to drown through an opening where only a Q-tip should go, if that.”

Last weekend I developed what at first seemed like a cold, but turned out to be only a cold wannabee. Some sniffles for a day, some sneezing, no cough. In the end, just clogged ears.

My doctor says “Could be allergies. You might be one of us now.”

Yeah, me.

She recommended I have my ears irrigated to eliminate wax build-up as an issue and I agreed.

A nurse came into the room with what can best be described as Thanksgiving dinner supplies.

A huge turkey baster, some plastic mixing bowls and a tablecloth.

In one bowl was what I thought must be a gallon of water, the other one empty.

The turkey baster kinda scared me because I know this woman had plans to squirt all that water into my ears until my brains came out.

“Have you ever had an ear lavage?” she asked.

“Yes. Once. And I didn’t like it.”

“Most people find it enjoyable,” she countered.

“I’m not most people. Something must be wrong with most people.”

First she prepped the equipment, then she asked if I could pull my hair back so it didn’t get wet.

“Uh. I really can’t because once it’s shellacked like this, it doesn’t move. But I’ll braid it.”

Done. The back is braided, but the top is not and now my head looks like cotton candy on a stick.

The nurse cloaks me with the plastic tablecloth to keep the water from spilling on my clothes. I’m asked to hold the empty container up to my ear to catch my brains as they fall out.

Then instead of asking me to sit on a chair that’s way lower than the elevated exam table, she climbs up on the table with me and leans in with the turkey baster.

I find this positively medieval and tell her so. She either doesn’t know what the word means or she’s heard it all before because she totally ignored the remark and continued on with Death by Lavage.

Very quickly she starts shooting warm water into my right ear and I want to scream because it’s a freaky feeling and ME NO LIKEY!

But I put my big girl panties on and made it to the end of six or so injections of water where water shouldn’t go.

After each gusher, she looks inside my ear with yet another medieval device and proclaims it “really bad in there” and continues with the torture treatment.

Each time, more of the same. Nothing but clear water dribbling into the giant cup I hold to my ear.

Where’s all the wax she sees in there? Maybe it’s not wax at all! Maybe it’s a T-U-M-O-R! It’s always a tumor! I have a tumor!

After the last treatment, she looks again and says wax is still “way back there.”

I disagree that what she’s seeing is really wax, because all of a sudden my ear pops, a little water comes out and I’m almost totally clear now.

I believe what the nurse saw was the part of my brain that’s suspicious of nurses who stick turkey basters in people’s ears.

She does the other ear and this time, and after 7 or 8 tries, some gross globs of wax come out and she shows it to me as if I might want to confirm that it is, in fact, not brain matter.

See? Not brain!

We’re done now. I’m happy it’s over and I’m pleased my ears are much clearer than they’ve been. I can hear all the voices in my head much better now.

Maybe I have allergies. Maybe I don’t. I got a prescription for a nasal spray because apparently I also have sinusitis. Or a tumor.

So.

Ever had an ear irrigation? Did you like it? Maybe like it a little too much? What’s wrong with you people?

Everyone told me that when I joined a gym, I would have lots of blog fodder to write about.

On the second day, fodder stepped on a treadmill right next to me.

There’s a sort of etiquette you have to follow at the gym, and Rule #1 is that you don’t stare at anyone else working out out near you.

You can get a sense of them, you just don’t actually look at them.

But fodder was mesmerizing.

I couldn’t look away because he was wearing the most hideous toupee I’ve ever seen.

I feel bad for men who go the toupee route. None of them look good, but I suppose being bald is the lesser of two evils.

I get it.

What I don’t get is why this guy chose to get a perm toupee. A black, poodle doo that was probably the last one on the foam heads when he went shopping.

Y’all probably know I have a hate/hate relationship with my curly hair. It never does what you want and you only get like three good hair days a year. (BTW, I had one on Tuesday, so I only have two left for 2011).

Anyway, this guy looked like a Chia pet and I felt bad for him. Not because he was bald. He probably looked better bald.

But because he chose to buy the worst kind of fake hair imaginable.

I sometimes have dreams where I have long, flowing, thick and shiny straight hair and I flip it around like a model does during a photo shoot.

I always feel happy during these dreams because if you have the power to imagine yourself with good hair, you don’t ask for kinky curls with a mind of their own.

You ask for lush and luxurious hair you can run your fingers through without getting them stuck in it.

I suppose perm toupee guy might have different toupees to wear out and about and maybe perm toupee is also gym toupee.

I haven’t seen him since and if he’s swappin’ out his head for a different look, it’s possible I wouldn’t recognize him.

In a way, I admire him. If he’s so sure of himself in that mop top, then I shouldn’t feel so bad the way I look without makeup, sweating at 5:30AM surrounded by rock hard bodies.

Just please don’t have a blog and consider me fodder. My fodder looks pretty ugly at that hour.

I had a nightmare last night. One of the sweaty, high-anxiety, glad-I’m- awake-now variety.

It wasn’t about being chased by an ax murderer. It wasn’t about finding myself taking a college exam that I hadn’t studied for. It had no vampires, ghouls, ghosts or zombies. Nothing monstery.

It was far, far worse.

It was about accounting.

Bookkeeping.

Ledgers and missed deadlines.

Yeah. I know. It was that bad.

I haven’t worked in a university accounting office for twelve years, and yet last night I found myself back there and freaking out about a month end close.

At the end of each month, I ran a report that automatically redistributed the months’s utility and maintenance charges to all the fraternity and sorority building accounts.

A percentage of the services bill was allocated to each building based on its square footage. It was a pain to do because the data entry was tedious and time-consuming.

Plus, one wrong number and the program would fail. If the percentages didn’t equal 100%, the whole thing would explode and you didn’t have enough time to recover. You’d have to fix it the next month.

In my nightmare, I realized I went eight months with old percentages. Incorrect ones meant nobody was billed correctly and now I’d have some ‘splaining to do.

THE HORROR!

In my dream, I told my boss about the problem and started crying. There’s no crying in accounting! Luckily, she was understanding and I could dab my tears away.

The nightmare ended well, but still had me in a tizzy. That I could even be thinking about that job after 12 years away is horrifying and probably something for which I still need therapy.

I’m debating whether to contact the person who replaced me in that office. To warn him or her that a decade from now, they’re going to find themselves still worried about numbers. Scary, screwed-up, blood-thirsty numbers.

My advice? If you see a giant, ax wielding calculator leering at you from the shadows of a dark alley, RUN!

So do any of you ever have nightmares about things or places that stressed you out a hundred years ago, but that can’t possibly hurt you now?

Anyone who’s been to the Junk Drawer before knows I have a special place in my heart for delicious bacon.

So I was over the moon when a friend sent me a link to a blog documenting the adventures of Bacon himself.

I love, love, love this blog!

Bacon’s owner, Devon Boatwright, graciously agreed to an interview so I could learn more about my new fatty best friend. 

I’m Bacon’s #1 fan, possibly in a Kathy Bates/Misery sort of way. I just love him so. Where did you get Bacon and how did you get the idea for Bacon to have his own blog?

Bacon was actually kind of an accident! My mom ordered Bacon for my sister but accidentally ordered two Bacons. Not knowing what to do with the second one, she decided to give it to us as a family gift. She kept joking that it wasn’t a big deal and we could open it before Christmas and it was just a silly gift. Well, I opened up the box and completely freaked out even more than my children.

Since I opened Bacon before Christmas and my sister was also receiving a Bacon, I was not allowed to post pictures of Bacon. Despite my begging, I posted no pictures of Bacon for 3 days! Then Christmas day I managed to wrangle Bacon from my children and was inspired to pose him with the turkey. Then I thought it would be funny if he helped Ray with the dishes. And it just went from there.

When I posted all the photos, people on my Facebook loved them and someone told me I should start a blog. I figured I would do it and make a coffee table book out of it when I was done. I didn’t realize how many people would actually think Bacon was as cool as I did! 

I don’t know if I should say that! It’s a secret! Hee hee. Really, Bacon has this wire along the sides of him that make him poseable. His mouth also moves when he says “I’m Bacon!” so that actually allows me to use the mechanics of his mouth to hang him on something. I have a thing about people handling Bacon for photographs so I try to make sure as much as possible that no one is touching Bacon when I photograph him.

If someone has to be propping him up, then I try to cut their hand out of the picture. Sometimes I snap really quick pictures as Bacon slowly slides down whatever I have managed to prop him on. I probably look like a weirdo posing Bacon in public. Especially at our night out where I took like 20 photos of one of my friends holding Bacon up on the pool table to play pool. I kept saying “I can see you in the picture and I can’t crop that!” So we’d repose. Heh.

I think we can learn a thing or two from Bacon. What is Bacon’s philosophy on life?

I asked Bacon what his philosophy on life was. After all, he’s read many books and must be quite brilliant by now. I waited with bated breath as Bacon thought long and hard about my question. Finally he answered, “I’m Bacon!” So there you go.

Bacon believes everyone should be like him. We could interpret that to mean he thinks everyone should live life to the fullest and go on many fabulous adventures and take lots of pictures. Or we could take it to mean that Bacon has a bloated self image and thinks everyone should be him.

—-

Devon, thank you for taking the time to help us get to know Bacon better. Also, if you get that coffee table book published, I want a signed copy (and I wouldn’t be disappointed with a Toilets of Rome book either!) I just hope Bacon remembers me when he gets famous.

Adventures of Bacon blog
Author, Devon Boatwright’s Facebook page

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor, but I’ll play one on the blog today.

If you have sinus problems and prefer a non-pharmaceutical treatment, go get yourself a neti pot.

A neti pot is a container that looks like a cross between a small tea pot and Aladdin’s lamp. It’s used to irrigate your nasal passageway and relieve sinus congestion or allergy symptoms.

It’s also used to make you look more ridiculous than you ever thought possible.

You fill it with warm water, add non-iodized salt and then place the spout into one nostril, tilt your head and run the water out the other.

Ridiculous!

If you do it right, it’s not uncomfortable, just oddly, weirdly, bizarrely strange. If you do it wrong, you’ll feel like you’re drowning. I strongly suggest you do it right.

Why the neti pot?

I have not been able to breathe clearly from my right nostril for years. What’s worse is that I also suffer intense pain in my ears when I lie down, more so on my right side. I’ve discussed the ear thing with three different doctors and they are intrigued, yet stumped as to the cause.

While researching the ear pain issue on my own, I came across a forum where someone suggested a neti pot as a possible solution. Because I take advice from total strangers on the Internet, I thought perhaps if I relieved the congestion in my right nostril, it might also alleviate some pain in my ear(s), assuming the two issues are related. Isn’t that a good doctory assumption? I should know. Because I’m a doctor.

I prepared the pot and got right to it. I. Was. FEARLESS! I was also alone and not in front of a mirror. No one, including me, needed to see a drainage of the Kathy Canal.

The clearing effect to my nostrils was immediate and lasted a good while. I breathed equally well out of each side for the first time in probably a decade.

What remains to be seen is whether regularly-administered neti pot action will do anything for my ears.

More about that ear pain

Whenever I lie down, pressure builds up and it feels like someone jammed a knife directly into my ear and left it there. The pain varies. It can be sharp, burning hot, dull or throbbing. I’ve described the pain to my doctors as simply “My head’s on fire.”

Fun. 

I’ve also said that if I had this kind of pain while awake and walkin’ around, I would be on disability. It would easily incapacitate me if I felt that measure of pain 24/7.

The reason I can tolerate it is because I’m mostly sleeping through the pain. It often wakes me up, but then I flip over to the other side to relieve pressure and pain in the ear. When the other ear hurts and wakes me, I flip back. I do that probably a dozen times a night.

Again, fun.

If the neti pot doesn’t help with my ears, at least I’m seeing results with my plugged-up nose. So it’s at least a partial win.

Oh, and some of you remember I said on Facebook that I might videotape myself using the neti pot.

For. Get. It.

Imagine filming yourself doing this and you will understand why I changed my mind.

Robot Lady Using a Neti Pot

So have you ever used a neti pot? Are you like some friends of mine who bought one, but are too afraid to try it? If you love your neti pot, share your success story!

UPDATE: I just discovered that I can’t use my neti pot over the kitchen sink, where I find it more convenient.

My cat Shadow thinks my nose is a faucet. Because she loves to drink water right from the tap, she tried doing the same out of my nose.

I know. Gross. And annoying. Thanks, Shadow. ‘ppreciate it.

There must be a sign on my back that fellow grocery store shoppers can see. It reads “Ask me anything. I have all the answers, even though I don’t work here.”

That sign had me shopping for baptism cards once for complete and clueless strangers.

Today it had me explaining eggs.

While I was scoping out butter, a nearby unkempt but harmless-looking young man addressed me thusly: “Can you tell me the difference between these eggs?”

Oh, God. Here we go again.

I don’t know anything about organic eggs, brown eggs, or Omega-3 eggs or the difference between them.

I don’t know if they taste different and I don’t know where they’re hatched, if they’re local or shipped-in, or if they’re more expensive or healthier than regular eggs.

I. Do. Not. Know. What about me says I know eggs?

In the millisecond it took for me to get all stressed out about this impromptu egg class, the young man followed up with this:

“The sizes. What are the different sizes? This is my first time shopping for my wife and I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I thought “OMG, dude. If you don’t know that the difference between regular, large, extra large and jumbo eggs is purely their size, then no one can help you. Ever.”

But because he was just so adorable and helpless, and I wanted his wife to have the illusion of a husband who can make egg choices all by himself, I decided to give the egg noob a straight up answer.

I said “There are large and extra large eggs. Jumbo is probably unnecessary. Just go with the large eggs and you’ll be fine.”

He grabbed the large eggs, thanked me as he walked away and I wished him a good breakfast.

Then I picked up eggs for myself. I opened the lid to see if any were cracked. Some were. At least three.

Egg noooooooooob! I forgot to tell him to see any of his were cracked!

There go my chances for becoming a Certified Egg Instructor at an accredited grocery store near you.

And I was doing so well.

I had an email exchange with some friends of mine today. In it, I mentioned that I have never eaten a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Not even a nibble. I just can’t do it.

In the same conversation, I mentioned that burping is among the other things I can’t do.

I don’t mean that I can’t burp at will. I mean that I can’t burp at all. It’s an affliction I’ve had as long as I can remember, but my mother assures me that I did, in fact, burp as a baby.

All around me, people are burping. They burp on command. They burp after a big meal. They burp the alphabet and laugh riotously about it.

But not me. I am silent.

And I am in pain.

When I eat almost anything, air pushes up my esophagus and wants to come out a burp. But what I get is the air bubble equivalent of a ten-car pileup, a giant mass of pain and then a series of pathetic gurgling noises that sound, as my husband puts it, “like a sink backing up.”

Meanwhile, he’s over on the couch burping the theme song to Gilligan’s Island.

Before you suggest that I drink a soda pop to induce burping, it won’t work. All that does is add more bubbles that park themselves in the middle of my chest. And then the sink backs up. And then I have pain.

Also, please don’t suggest, as my friend Jen did, that I pat myself on the back to get things moving. Self-patting seems impossible and I can’t ask my husband to help because I’m pretty sure he doesn’t have time in his day to burp his wife.

And so I cope.

I don’t know what my co-workers think when they hear the gurgling after lunch coming out of Cubicle #1. I’ve never asked.

When I can suppress the gurgling, I’m happy. But that means no air is moving and so I blow up like Violet Beauregarde, the big round blue girl in Willy Wonka. I am a ticking, expanding time-bomb that wants to go off so desperately.

So listen. If you can burp, burp away. Burp like the wind! I will forever and always be jealous of you.

And I will never ask you to mind your manners. I’ll ask you instead to “Teach me, Master.”