The Junk Drawer

1.  Knuckle-dragging cavewoman.

2.  Thrown from horse.

3.  Baby with a too-full diaper.

4.  Drunken Quasimodo.

5.  In high heels with one heel missing.

6.  Defective weeble.

7.  Angry Frankenstein.

8.  Eighty-year-old man with two hip replacements.

9.  Newborn elephant’s first steps.

10. Woodstock Joe Cocker.

If you see Valerie, the woman who suggested we do this fun activity during our first-ever blogger meet-up, throw a brick at her head for me, will ya?

Our other blogger guest, Meleah Rebeccah, fared way better than me. She golfed the next day. Golfed.

I hate everybody who can move right now.

It’s really a wonder I can function at all.

Yesterday I had to get gas for the lawn mower and while pumping the gas was uneventful, driving it home in the trunk of my car caused a three-alarm panic attack.

As soon as I pulled out of the gas station, I started imagining every possible scenario that would cause the gas container to spontaneously explode and render me extra crispy.

Is the cap on tightly enough? Is the cap on too tightly? Will it fall over and spill? Will the fumes knock me out?

Will the heat of the day boil it and make it explode? Can you survive an explosion if it’s at the rear of the car and not in the front?

An ambulance pulled out in front of me and I thought surely, if my car explodes, the driver will see it and render aid quickly. So I followed him as long as possible.

I released my seat belt so in case my car blew up, I could get out fast.

I had a headache when I pulled in the driveway, but at least I hadn’t been blown to bits. Is there anyone reading this who doesn’t think it’s a bad idea for me to be anywhere near gasoline?

Today brought more car challenges.

I used my husband Dave’s car to run errands so I could get used to driving it. I plan to take a road trip next Saturday and wanted to make sure I was comfortable with all the bells and whistles his car has that mine doesn’t.

Before I even got in it, I worried that I would set off the alarm and not know how to turn it off. Of course, because I’m me, this happened the minute I left the first store.

I did what every noob does with keyless entry cars and pressed ALL the buttons at once to make the alarm stop.

Unbeknownst to me, one of those buttons is the trunk latch release.

When I got home, I noticed the TRUNK OPEN light on and almost chastised Dave for letting me drive his car with the trunk open. An hour later, I realized it was me who opened it with the button ten miles ago. By the way, I try to blame all my shortcomings on my husband. Just doin’ my job.

I took another trip to a store later in the day and when I was about to come home, it started to pour. OK, now I have to figure out where the headlight controls are, as well as the wipers.

Wipers, no problem.

Headlights? WTF.

I had to call Dave to ask where the controls were and let me tell you, they are in a very stupid place on a Ford Fusion, way over to the side and low, not even on the steering wheel. Who does that?

I set my GPS to take me home (even though I was only 15 miles away) and all goes swimmingly well until I inexplicably ignored the GPS lady’s instructions and got off one expressway for another.

“Recalculating, recalculating,” she says.

I miss two opportunities to turn around and the GPS lady says “Dumbass! Dumbass!”

Ignoring her, I stayed on the wrong road and added 12 miles to my 15 mile trip home.

I am exhausted. Is it any wonder?

More importantly, why does my husband — who knows me inside out — think he could just tell me I’ll be fine jumping in his car and going?

I’m never fine. I’m a panic-stricken, instruction-needing, GPS-is-not-enough train wreck.

I think I need assisted living. Not an old folks home. Just an assistant. For living.

I hate instructions manuals. I pity the people who write them because nobody reads them.

But I deserve an “I told you so” for what I just did.

See the yellow part of my Dyson vacuum cleaner cylinder?

That’s what I somehow untwisted the first time I cleaned it out. It was real easy. I took the lid off and dumped the dirt out from the top.

But this time I couldn’t get it to do that.

Instead, I groped around for other buttons and found the latch that, unbeknownst to me, opens the bottom of the tube.

A weeks’ worth of dirt, kitty litter and hair came rushing out and landed at my feet. Smooth move, ExLax.

But Lorraine was happy to help me clean up my mistake. That’s right. I named my vacuum cleaner Lorraine. What about it?

I know someone who named his lawn mower.

So there.

On Saturday I had to run to the store to pick up a bunch of things. Among them, salad dressing, paper towels, hot dog buns, pickles and a blog post.

I grabbed the first couple items and moseyed on toward the pickle aisle.

I selected a small jar, but put it back down for something bigger. When I picked up the next jar, I changed my mind again and put it back — atop another jar on the shelf, as they’d been stacked two-high.

And then, what charted in as the 78th stupid thing I’ve done this year, my finger slipped.

Ruh-roh.

I knew as soon as I withdrew my hand the jar was going down.

Down, down, down it went and all I could do was watch for the inevitable crash, the broken glass, the wayward pickles and juice splattered a la Jackson Pollock.

Awww, crap.

I parked my cart over the mess of glass bits, juice and pickles. So many pickles! All of whom I’m sure suffered massive internal injuries from the fall. I warned fellow shoppers about the glass and to be careful. A girl of about age 10 looked at me with such scorn, I the Pickle Killer, Destructor of Glass Jars, Spreader of Pickle Juice.

I set off to flag down a store employee so I could admit my klutziness and make sure it got cleaned up. For a moment, I wondered whether I should say “Someone dropped a pickle jar down there.” I could blame in on that mean girl who was still in the aisle. But I opted to fess up completely and announce to the cashier in lane #8 that it was I who dropped the jar.

She asked “Where?”

“Um. The pickle aisle?” Where chunks of glass will cut people’s feet and if you don’t hurry I’m going to cry and run away and never come back, do you hear me?!

I dutifully added “Aisle #1.” I threw in an “I’m sorry” and headed back to scene of the crime. I still needed pickles.

I didn’t even know what kind to take, flustered as I was. Should I even continue shopping in this aisle?  Can I pretend like this didn’t just happen and say to other shoppers “Oh, look what someone did! Tsk tsk.” What’s the protocol here? Do I stay and guard the mess until someone comes to clean it?  Somebody help me!

All those questions gave me a headache and so I just grabbed a jar — any jar — and scurried away.

Then I made the broken-glass, splattered-juice, injured-pickle walk of shame through the rest of the store, hoping no one would look at me and point “There she is! She kills pickles and cuts people with glass!”

I have never wheeled a grocery cart so fast in my life.

When I finished speed-shopping, I queued up to checkout lane #8 with the cashier who’d summoned a clean-up crew. She rang up my things and when she got to the pickles, I kid you not, she said “I’ll double bag them for you so they’re secure.”

Why? Because now you think I’ll drop pickles wherever I go? You think I’m a pickle-droppin’ loser whose face will be posted on the employee break room wall so that everyone knows to walk behind me with a mop and dustpan? Is that it?

I thanked her for her help earlier, took my change and slunk out of the store, possibly never to return without a bag over my head.

When my husband got home from work, he noticed the pickles on the counter and said “Oh, you didn’t have to get those. I was gonna get them later when I went to the store.”

Sure. Now you tell me.

Because I really wanted that.

Also, scoops should come with a seat belt or something. It just went sailing.

Crap.

I loves me automation.

Automatic drive. Automatic coffee makers. Automatic car washes.

I do not love automatic doors.

At least not the ones who eat you like a Venus flytrap.

Some time ago I had a doctor’s appointment that finished up after the medical building closed for the day. By the time I got to the lobby, the place was deserted.

Not a problem.

I found my way to the exit and headed through the first set of double electronic doors.

They made a nice little swoooosh sound as I stepped through, but as I continued walking, the outer set of doors refused to open.

Oh, geez. They locked up already.

Not a problem.

I’ll just go back in the way I came and find someone to let me out.

Or not.

The first set of doors had locked behind me and now I stood in the belly of the beast. Stuck between two sets of doors that wouldn’t open and no one to set me free.

Think. Think.

OK, there’s a panel here that reads “Emergency Push to Release.”

Yea!

I’ll just push this latch and the doors will open.

Um.

No.

The doors will not open. Instead, I will freak the hell out and become the Incredible Hulk. My suddenly panicked self will gather superhuman strength and take the door clear off its tracks and it will get lodged in a way that renders it completely and utterly BUSTED UP.

I am now trapped and have just ruined a perfectly good door and I can’t run away because the beast ate me and now whoever comes to save me will know exactly who broke the door because I’m inside and I realize at that moment I’m just like that moronic burglar who gets stuck in a chimney trying to rob a house and the firemen and cops have to come and let him out and then have a good laugh over the chucklehead’s predicament.

Yeah, that’s me. In a predicament.

And so I, the newly-ordained chucklehead, waited.

And sweated.

And felt a good cry coming on.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock.

Will they charge me for breaking the door?

Will they even be able to move the door now that it’s broken?

Will I have to sleep here tonight?

I don’t have any food. And nothing to drink! I’m going to die here!

I considered pulling a Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate church scene (1:30), but thought better of it. No sense in making too much noise. But how will they know I’m here?

Why do these things always happen to me?

Just then, a maintenance worker — my savior — walked by and we locked eyes. From the belly, I mouthed the words “I’m sorry” and my ordeal was nearly over.

I can’t quite remember how he unjammed the door and I don’t remember what I said to him as I slinked out of the beast.

I do know that I don’t trust automatic double doors now. And you shouldn’t either. They’re hungry for humans. Just sayin’.

BURRRRRP!

Do you remember the other day when I found out I’m that crazy lady who talks to herself and that I’m thisclose to being a crazy cat lady, too?

Well, we’re there.

I took my cat Lucky to the vet yesterday for dental work.

When I arrived at the office, I checked him in, along with three other people who brought pets in for some kind of surgery.

After I finished filling out paperwork, I delivered my cat to the receptionist who said “We’ll take him from here.”

Being the worrying type, I suddenly got a thought in my head that maybe with all the other cats there for surgery, the vet might mistake my cat for another and do the wrong procedure on him.

And then I didn’t want to give up my cat.

What if they do a microchip implantation? I didn’t ask for that!

What if they declaw him? No, no, no!

What if they try to remove a gall stone? He doesn’t have any!

And what if they think he’s in for what the poodle came for? I’m pretty sure Fluffy McFluffster was in for a botox treatment.

So I asked the assistant “How will you know what he’s here for? How will I know you’re working on the right cat?”

She assured me that he’d get an ID wrist band just like people get in a hospital and walked further back to the prep room.

I said “So you’ll put it on him?”

“Yes.” She kept walking.

“Like, you’ll put it on him right now?”

Her walking, walking, me following, following.

“Yes.”

Hey! Did she just roll her eyes at me?

“You will? Promise?”

[blink blink]

“Mrs. Frederick, I can guarantee you Lucky will get the right treatment.”

And then I left, happy in the knowledge that Lucky would have his teeth cleaned and cared for and I wouldn’t be picking up a clawless, plump-lipped cat with an incision for a gall stone that never existed.

He did come home with one less tooth, though. Sorry, dude. I could save you from the wrong surgery, but I couldn’t save you from this.

You know the lady. The one who walks around life talking to herself. Carrying on entire conversations when no one but her is listening.

I never was that lady, but today I am. Officially.

Thrice today I was caught talking to myself.

1. On the way back from a meeting this afternoon, I walked along the street by myself (or so I thought), and to no one in particular I announced that I would really like some malted milk balls. As soon as I said it ALOUD, two joggers came up behind me and passed, no doubt happy that they were running away from said crazy woman.

2. Washing my hands in the ladies room after my meeting, I cursed myself ALOUD that I did not have any hairspray in my purse, complete with hand gestures. I went onto say that I should have popped it in my purse, knowing I would be walking back from the meeting in the wind and rain. I did not know I had company until another woman walked around the corner to find me discussing my hairspray neglect.

3. When I stopped at a grocery store after work, I stood in front of the bread aisle wishing ALOUD that they had my favorite type of bread flats for sandwiches. I said “Why do they never have the 7 Grain kind?! Where is the 7 Grain? God! I turned to leave and found a woman behind me, also looking at the bread, and wearing what must be the quietest shoes ever made. I did NOT hear her coming and she startled me.

Then, of course, I went on to explain that I don’t normally talk to myself like that and that she was the third person who caught me doing it in one day. The woman gave me a pitiful look, the look you give that crazy lady you’re just a little bit afraid of.

For the record, I have three cats, so I’m thisclose to also being the crazy cat lady. And we all know there’s no turning back from that.

Dear All the Burglars Who Could Have Taken Everything in My House While I Was at Work Because I Left the Garage Door Wide Open and the Inside Door to My House Unlocked,

Thanks for not noticing and stealing everything I own.

Sincerely,

The Dumbass

When I drove home from work yesterday and saw the garage door up*, I figured my husband Dave got home before I did. Until I didn’t see his car inside. Then I thought maybe he did get home, but left to run an errand and forgot to close the door.

Then I thought I’m the idiot in this relationship and realized that when I brought garbage cans in from the curb that morning, I likely forgot to close the door when I left for work.

I’m used to just opening the door, pulling forward and shutting the door. If I diverge from my morning routine, all bets are off. So, yeah, it was me who left it open.

When I came into the unlocked house, I thought “What if burglars harmed my cats? What if they stole the TV? What if they found our safe with everything important in it? What if they’re still here? Why am I walking into a house that I think might contain a burglar?”

I checked for cats and all were accounted for. None of them appeared to have had a particularly weird day, you know, like entertaining robbers as they wiped out everything we own. All of our stuff was still in its place. I breathed a sigh of relief and carried on with my business.

And then I beat myself up for an hour about being a dumbass.

Of course, I’m not the only one in my family that leaves things wide open for thieves. I’ll keep the offender’s name out of it. She knows who she is.

For an entire summer one year, we stayed fit by driving to a large park and walking for an hour around its perimeter. The routine was to meet there, get out, lock all but our car keys in the trunk and head off.

On this one occasion, the unnamed person and I got sidetracked trading things we brought to loan each other and then headed off to walk. When we got back, this is what we found:

1. Her driver’s side door still WIDE OPEN.

2. Her keys on the driver’s seat.

3. Her purse on the passenger seat.

4. Her wallet in the purse.

5. Everything that identifies her, including her home address, in that wallet.

6. A garage door opener to her house.

For an hour, the car sat like this. The first thing we did was scream. The second thing we did was ponder how it was possible no one stole a car with the keys in it. The third thing we did was vow never to tell anyone about this because, you know, it’s colossally stupid.

We drove away in our separate cars, thanking God that no one in the very busy park that day decided to steal the car, take her money, drive to her house, open the garage door and help themselves to everything inside.

Or maybe they thought of it, but considered that being stupid is punishment enough.

* If you’re not scared enough, read here about how bad it is to leave your garage door open.

I loves me a good nap. Naps that leave me waking refreshed are the best. Naps that leave me waking fuzzy-brained are the worst.

I’ve had one such nap.

I must have had a difficult day at work and laid down for just a bit, but when I awoke, I glanced at a clock and it read 6:30.

It was one of those sleeps where I didn’t dream, didn’t move, didn’t wake up once. I thought “Holy crap! I slept through the whole night. I must have been dead tired.”

I didn’t even remember Dave climbing into bed. Hmmm. That’s strange.

I pattered downstairs to make coffee and realized he was nowhere to be found. Uh-oh. He mustn’t have come home last night. This can’t be good.

So I got on the phone with my sister Marlene and immediately started screaming “Dave never came home last night! I don’t know where he could be! I’m worried!”

Marlene’s response? “Huh?”

Me: “He never came home last night!”

Marlene: “What?”

Me. “He never came home!”

Marlene: “When?”

Me: “Last night.”

Marlene: “What night? Tonight you mean?”

Me: “No! Last night!”

Marlene: “What are you talking about? What is wrong with you?”

Me: “Huh?”

Marlene: “Are you all right?”

Me: “What?”

Marlene: “You said Dave didn’t come home last night, but what did you do all day today?”

Me: Silence.

Marlene: “Kathy? You there?”

Me: “I’m confused.”

Marlene: “Ya think?”

Me: “What time is it?”

Marlene: “It’s 6:30.”

Me: “You’re gonna tell me PM, right?”

Marlene: “Yeah, what’s your malfunction?”

Me: “Um. I took a nap and woke up thinking it was 6:30 tomorrow morning. Nevermind.”

Marlene: “Good Lord, woman. Go back to bed.”

Me: Click.

A little while later, Dave got home from work and walked through the front door, oblivious to the fact that I’d almost filed a missing person’s report on his behalf and called all the hospitals in the area.

It would have been so hilarious explaining my mistake to the cops. Hilarious.

Attention all shutterbugs!

How bad did I screw up my new(ish) digital camera? I think it happened when I dropped my purse getting into my car yesterday.

Every good blogger carries a camera with them at all times. But every smart blogger puts it in its carrying case so it doesn’t sink to the bottom of their purses and break when it hits concrete.

D’oh!

For the record, I can still take pictures with it. I just can’t see what I’m taking pictures of until I transfer them to a PC.  I also can’t see anything through the small viewfinder. Why?!

Anyone ever done this and, if so, can it be fixed for much less than the cost of a new camera?

It snowed and sleeted and poured last night and this morning. I was concerned a bit about how well the sidewalks would be cleared around my building at work.

Icy sidewalks can be such a hazard.

But so can perfectly dry indoor steps that are pretty easy to navigate if you just pick your feet up as you ascend.

Not if you’re me. That’s right. I fell up the steps. I do not recall once in my lifetime falling up steps. Down, yes. Up, no. To me, there’s a big difference. The ego hurts more when you fall up.

(Note: Actual Steps of Death pictured above.)

I am currently nursing a very sore shoulder and a pretty ugly kneecap.

There is blood.

I ripped through skin when my knee stopped the fall.

The worst part? I fell in front of a colleague. He was terribly sympathetic and concerned, but if I were him, I’d be laughing all the way to wherever he was going.

I’ll be avoiding him forever.

Also, I’m getting a new husband because this is the email exchange we just had:

Dave,

I hurt myself pretty bad just now. I fell UP the steps in the back stairwell. I’m bleeding on my kneecap. I don’t think I need to get anything checked out, but I will have one hell of a bruise tomorrow.

His response?

Kath,

Way to go. 

—-

p.s. Since I started writing this, my knee is now softball-esque. Is that bad?

mo·ron  (môr‘?n’, m?r‘-): idiot: a person of subnormal intelligence.

The date: Circa 1971.

The location: Family doctor’s office.

The injury: Smashed fingertip.

My mother had taken three of us kids for an annual checkup at our family doctor. After my sister and I were checked out, we retreated to the waiting room while my mom stayed with my brother and the doctor.

With nothing to do and time to kill, little Kathy Simpleton became mesmerized by the opening and closing of the front door as other patients came and went.

Every time the door opened, a one inch crack opened between the door and its hinges, revealing bright rays of sunlight.

Open, sun, close. Open, sun, close. Mesmerizing indeed.

Curiosity set in. Kathy wondered if she could stick her finger into that sunshine-filled crack and …. do what? See if it fit? And then what? Cheer and bet her sister couldn’t do the same thing?

We will never know why. Asking why just makes it worse.

What we do know is that stupid is as stupid does.

When that two hundred pound metal door came to rest in its closed position on the finger of the dumbest child ever born east of the Mississippi, she learned in an instant that sometimes it’s best to be satisfied with imagining instead of doing.

Yeah.

Of course, one might think this qualifies as my most moronic kid moment, and yet, if you think about it at least I had the sense to do it right in a doctor’s office.

It is unclear whether my mother asked the doctor to examine not only the crushed finger of her whimpering child, but the brain that thunk up such a senseless idea.

Care to share the least thought-out stunts of your kiddom? Extra points if you needed a cast, crutches or a wheelchair as a result.

Doesn’t everyone want nipple cupcakes? I mean, come on. They’re awesome.

Step 1: Pour too much cake batter in the cups. No, not bra cups, silly. Cupcake cups!

Step 2: Don’t shake down the batter like apparently you’re supposed to do.

Step 3: Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.

Viola!

Nipplicious cupcakes!

Step 4: Pile icing high, high, high and no one will notice!

Good grief. I can’t even make a normal cupcake. Don’t even try to help me. There is no helping me. But I’ll take pity. Pity’s good.

Because God hates us, my husband and I started a weeklong vacation on Saturday and then promptly got colds Saturday night. This is a first for us. In the twenty three years we’ve been together, we’ve never been sick at the same time.

Which means our first fear was “Who’s gonna get food for us?

While I was still looking and feeling like I belonged to the land of the living, I went to the store Sunday morning and picked up a few things to last a while. But then Monday night rolled around and I was tired of chicken soup and wanted something high in calories and sweet. And that meant donuts.

But how could I possibly show up at a brightly-lit store amidst the general non-sick population in my condition just to get donuts?

I quickly realized I didn’t care what I looked like, grabbed my car keys, headed over and walked right into my grocery store looking a sight. I appeared to be wearing my Halloween costume early. The costume is called Disgusting Slob. Let me set the stage:

1. At the time I had not showered for almost three days.

2. Unbrushed hair pulled back in a scrunchy with wayward hairs sticking out in all directions. No makeup. Chapped lips. Chapped nose.

3. I was wearing what I’d slept in the night before. Stretchy pants and a shirt with chocolate stains on it.

4. I was not wearing a bra.

Walking into the store was an exercise in sheer willpower. My legs felt noodly and my head was spinning like a top. In a fog, I made a beeline to the bakery and grabbed a container of one dozen glazed donuts.

I pretended that if I didn’t look any of the other customers in the eye, they couldn’t see me either.

I held my purse tightly against my chest so as to keep the braless ladies in place until I got to the self-checkout. Thank God for self-checkout. I would never have put a poor clerk in a position to look at me. That’s not playing fair.

I did NOT look at myself in the giant floor to ceiling windows at the front of the store because then I’d have real confirmation that I looked the way I did. Denial is a powerful thing.

p.s. I’m still wearing what I wore that night. I still haven’t showered. We still feel like crap, but the donuts were delicious. Now can one of you come over here and make us meals for the rest of the week? I promise I’ll shower for ya.

4:15 AM

Me: Dave, I think there’s a fire in the house.

Hubs: What?

Me: It smells like fire.

Hubs: What? Go back to sleep.

Me: Wait. No. It smells like burnt coffee.

Hubs: Uh. No. It’s a skunk.

Me: Is not.

Hubs: Skunk sprayed outside.

Me: Maybe the furnace is broken.

Hubs: Skunk.

Me, on the floor, smelling the heating vent: Well, it’s not the heat.

Hubs: Skunk.

Me: I swear, it smells like burnt coffee. Maybe the cats turned on the coffee maker somehow. The pot’s not empty. Remember how Lucky called your brother stepping on my cell phone? He could totally turn on the coffee maker.

Hubs: It’s a skunk. And if you say one more thing, I’m putting a pillow over your head.

I love to mow the lawn. It’s good exercise. But there’s one problem. I suck at it.

While my husband Dave is recovering from shoulder surgery, I’ve taken on the chore of mowing every weekend. He feels bad he can’t do it, but that’s not the reason he should feel bad.

He should feel bad for the mower itself and everything it touches.

Herewith are the things I’ve done to the mower or with the mower in the last year:

1. I took out part of a tree he planted in the front yard. I don’t know how. All I know is when I motored past it, an entire branch broke off and got stuck in the hole that keeps the pull string attached to the mower. I threw the branch to the ground and mowed over it a bunch of times –the equivalent of hiding the body.

2. The first time I mowed alone, I got too close to a curb and the mower tipped over into the street. I heard a horrible propeller-type banging. That’d be the blade striking concrete at 3,600 RPM. I didn’t turn off the mower for a really long time because — all together now — I’m an idiot!

3. Dave likes to remove the metal rainspout extensions that run parallel to the ground before mowing. You know, so the grass is cut evenly. Why move perfectly placed rainspouts when you can run right over them? That’s mowing the efficient Kathy way.

4. Those big gashes at the base of the mailbox post? Sorry.

5. Remember, honey, how nice the front yard used to look when I would take the time to make nice diagonal lines through the yard? I know it looks like a child hopped up on Jujubees mowed it now, but really, can’t the grass just be short? We’re not going for design points, are we?

6. If the azalea bush doesn’t blossom next year, well, let’s just say I was getting tired and I had to take it out on something.

I love mowing! It’s so easy my way.

Dave, you’re not reading today’s post, are you?

Anyone who knows me knows I can’t cook. Never really tried. Didn’t get the gene.

But after enjoying a delicious meal at the home of Kim and Bryan, the bloggers I met last weekend, I decided I might like to try my hand at it. You see, Kim made homemade manicotti, including making the pasta shells from scratch!

I thought it would make a nice birthday dinner for my husband, Dave, and so I slaved away in the kitchen making my own pasta. You do it by pouring a thin mixture of eggs, flour, water and oil in a saute pan and swirling it around like you would a crepe. When the top dries, you simply pop it out on a plate and instant pasta!

I made 15 of those beauties and confidently went on to make the cheese filling and meatballs. Didn’t they turn out nice? Thanks for the recipe, Kim!

I basked in the glow of knowing that if I apply myself, I can pull off a decent meal and no one even has to go to the emergency room to get their stomach pumped.

And then God said "Get over yourself. It was a fluke."

The very next day I made a grilled cheese sandwich in the brand new saute pan I’d bought to make the pasta in, but didn’t wind up using.

When the pan heated, I started smelling something. I chastised my husband for not cleaning some burned food off the stovetop.

But the smell wasn’t exactly burnt food. Oh, no.

It was the smell of stupid.

We had a good chuckle over it, took this picture for proof a moron lives here and I ate my grilled cheese sandwich.

The very next day I was making an omelette in the very same pan.

Hmmmm. What’s that smell?

That’d be the smell of short term memory loss.

You’ll be happy to know I finally took the paper off the bottom of the pan and my house doesn’t smell like burning barcode anymore.

Is this universe’s way of telling me to get the hell out of the kitchen and leave it to the experts?

Yeah, I thought so.

Do you hear me?! I AM AWESOME! I recently posted that I was meeting up with some fellow bloggers 200 miles from home, and it would be the first time I ever drove such a distance by myself.

Sure, I was pee-in-my-pants scared getting there, but the way home was an absolute breeze. After a short time, I was whizzing by slow poke drivers, eating a box of chocolates off my lap, steering with my thumb, and cursing at all the amateur drivers who annoyed me because they seemed lost and inept. You know, like I was two days before. My, how I’ve changed.

The weekend with Kim, Bryan and Jenn was a laughfest and what a joy to finally meet them after a year of knowing them only through their blogs and emails. Kim and Bryan were the consummate hosts and Jenn was fun company at the B&B where we both stayed.

As a bonus, Bryan’s hilarious sister Lisa traveled over an hour to visit with us, along with her cutie pie son, who upon meeting me tried to ride my leg while I was sitting on the couch. I considered it a high honor.

Let’s review some random trip details, shall we?

1. A deer saw me naked. Freshly showered, I stepped out of the bathroom, turned to a window that faces the woods and saw this. I decided it was OK because he didn’t snicker or call over any of his deer buddies to get a look. In fact, he stared a long time. I think he wanted me.

2. Even though I took my cell phone, I lost reception during the return trip and later learned that a "reboot" would fix it. Until that discovery, I had to find a pay phone to call home. I found one on a desolate road, but some guy was using it and wouldn’t hang up! Why? Why would you talk on a pay phone in the middle of nowhere for ten minutes? I figured he was saying "There’s a lady here who looks desperate to use this phone, so I’m gonna keep talking about nothing, OK?" Jerk.

3. It took me three weeks to lose four pounds before my trip. I gained the four back in three days. I won’t be eating again until Thursday. That oughtta do it. 

4. I don’t get out enough. Kim planted some lovely Lamb’s Ears in her front lawn. I’ve never seen them before, and after Jenn told me "Feel ‘em, they’re velvety soft," I stooped down to touch every Lamb’s Ear I encountered from then on. I’m not sure if everyone thought that was endearing or just sad. I’m guessing sad.

5. Kim needs her own cooking show. In the span of a day, she made homemade soup, homemade bread and homemade manicotti and meatballs. My version of homemade means "I made water boil and dumped a box of pasta in it, in my home."

6. I overpack. It’s a disease. On checkout day, my fingers slipped and I dropped my suitcase flat and it almost blew a hole in the floor and killed Jenn in the room underneath. When will I learn I only ever need half of what I think I need? 

7. Bryan agreed, at my request, not to take any photos of me. Yes, yes, I need therapy. He decided instead to take pictures of only my feet at various places we visited. Check out his foot photologue for proof I was actually there.

8. I hope someone located this lost baby. I found a "Missing" flyer taped to an ice cream shop window, but I can’t figure out why the baby would be wearing a collar and a harness. And only a $50 reward? That’s shameful. 

9. All of my pictures of the beautiful Pennsylvania Grand Canyon look like this. Each one features a view-obstructing railing because I refused to step any closer. Railings good. Falling hundreds of feet to my death bad. I thought it best to enjoy the pictures that others took; people who aren’t afraid to live close to the edge. Literally.

So there you have it. The trip I made all by my lonesome awesome self!

Next up? I fly alone for the first time this summer, wherein I’ll cry for two hours, clutching my blankie and teddy bear. Or maybe not. Awesome people don’t need no stinking teddy bears!

Next weekend I’m taking my first ever road trip alone. This should worry every single one of you, for I am The Queen of Getting Lost. You earn that title by losing your way only two tenths of a mile from your house.

Despite that, I agreed to drive 180 miles to meet up with three of my favorite bloggers, Bryan of Unfinished Rambler, his wife Kim of Dispatches from the Outpost, and Jenn of Cabbages and Kings.

For the record, I have never driven alone more than 30 miles from my home.

Am I nervous? Yes. Is my husband nervous? Crazy more. Have I considered all the things that can go wrong from here to there? Only since the day I agreed to this insanity.

But for every problem, there is a solution.

1. What if I get lost only ten miles from home? Solution: Turn around, shake my head, and ask myself why I thought I could do this.

2. What if the GPS breaks? Solution: See if I can finish navigating with my Mapquest directions.

3. What if the GPS breaks and my Mapquest directions get sucked out a window? Solution: Call my husband to come get me.

4. What if the GPS breaks, my Mapquest directions get sucked out a window, and my cell phone dies? Solution: Pull over and commence meltdown.

5. What if the GPS breaks, my Mapquest directions get sucked out a window, my cell phone dies, I have a meltdown and nobody stops to help me? Solution: Lock the doors, sleep in my car and have a nightmare about all the murderers waiting for a sitting duck like me, in which case this will be my last post. It was great knowing you.

If I do actually make it there, I likely won’t blog during the weekend. But I will tweet and update on Facebook. So check there next Friday afternoon to see if I’m alive.

If I’m a no-show, send a search party. I’ll be sobbing quietly somewhere in the middle of Pennsylvania.

Making some room in my desk drawer today, I came across my interesting filing system. I do enjoy a good alphabetical one, as it’s kind of helpful.

I do not know under what circumstances I thought it would be appropriate to file My Laptop Order under M for, you know, "My."

Discuss.

My husband Dave and I went car shopping today. He knew exactly what he wanted, picked it out, and we went for a test drive.

Even though it’s his car and I thought I couldn’t care less about it, he drew the following out of me when he was about to sign on the dotted line.

Dave: So you like the car, right?

Me: Yeah. Sorta.

Dave: Sorta?

Me: I don’t like the passenger seat.

Dave: How so?

Me: It makes me look fat.

Dave: Come again?

Me: It makes me look fat. I feel like a giant.

Dave: What in the hell are you talking about?

Me: The seat isn’t low enough and I feel like I’m sitting up too high. Higher than the driver’s seat.

Dave: The seats were adjusted the same.

Me: No they weren’t.

Dave (to the saleswoman): Do you believe this?

Saleswoman: Do you want me to bring another car around to test the seat?

Me: Um. Do you mind?

We wait a while until the exact same car in another color is driven around to the front of the dealership.

We walk outside and I get in the new and improved, make-me-look-skinnier car.

The seat is exactly the same as the other one, but somehow I don’t look as fat as I thought I looked before. I went back to the original car and, magically, it didn’t make me look fat.

So either my fat perception is off a little or, more likely, maybe I’m just insane.

Pity my husband. The guy’s got his hands full.

Woman #1: What is with this thing?! Why aren’t we moving?!

Woman #2: Because you keep pressing the square with the Braille dots on it. That’s not a button.

Woman #1: Oh.

Any guess who Woman #1 was? Any guess how fast she ran from Woman #2 when the doors finally opened? You just do not know how hard it is being me some days.

Be happy and grateful. For when you think you have done an unimaginably stupid thing in public, say it loud and say it proud: At. Least. I. Am. Not. Kathy.

I have a bone to pick with the people who write up instructions you’re supposed to follow before having a medical test. What’s that bone?

Be more specific than you think you need to be.

A few years ago I was scheduled for an ultrasound and was given a leaflet with instructions on what to do beforehand. The only real requirement was this:

Drink plenty of water.

OK. I can do plenty. Hmmm, but what’s plenty? Most normal people might call the office and ask how much is plenty, but not me. I prefer to wonder and guess and be stupid, and for that I almost drowned myself.

For two hours leading up to the test, I guzzled an entire gallon of water (3.8 liters). I did wonder if all that water could fit in my bladder, but I’m nothing if not compliant. I was always a good student. Do as I’m told. Don’t question the teacher. Drink.

And drink and drink and drink I did.

By the time I got to the doctor’s office, I was a little queasy. No problem. They’ll call me soon. They can get the test done and I can go empty out.

Um. No.

I waited five minutes, then ten. My eyes began to cross and tear up and the pain in my lower region was indescribable. My toes curled in agony.

I stopped fidgeting in my seat because fidgeting was likely to break the dam. I did not want to trigger the mighty Hoover.

At the fifteen minute mark, I started to see little green men. I’ve heard of water intoxication and I’m pretty sure this was the start of it. Mercifully, the nurse called my name and I mustered all my strength to stand and not empty my bladder on my shoes.

I immediately notified the nurse of my predicament and to my horror, she scolded me. Me! The good student who follows instructions!

She said "You shouldn’t have done that. You can’t have a full bladder for this test. You have to empty….."

and this is the part that made me want to scream if I didn’t think screaming would trigger a flood

"… only some of your bladder. We need it about half full."

Eep!

Do you know how hard it is to stop midstream when your bladder wants desperately to do what it does every other time? Emptying is what it does best. Stopping short of empty is not in the manual.

My confused bladder and I did our best to estimate half full. I apologized to my bladder numerous times and promised it that as soon as the test was over, we’d scurry back to finish the job.

Only half-satisfied, I waddled out to the exam room, had the test, found out it was fine and then off my bladder and I went to enjoy the other half of my cruelly-truncated ahhhhhh moment.

And so, as a Junk Drawer public service announcement, in the context of vague medical instructions plenty of water means a lot less than a gallon. You’re welcome.

I had to cash a check today. To have everything ready at the bank, I pulled my driver’s license out of my wallet and slipped it into the side pocket of my purse with the check.

When I got to the drive-thru window, I dropped the check and my driver’s license in the plastic tube and waited for it to come zipping back to me with my cash.

When I got home, I took out the bills and fished for my driver’s licence to put back in my wallet. My license fell out — but so did something else. My doctor’s appointment reminder card for my next gynecological visit.

I’m sure the bank teller was pleased to be informed that I have an 8:30 appointment at St. Luke’s Professional Building on August 9th, 2009 for my annual exam.

I’m just glad I sent the license with it. I’m pretty sure you can’t cash checks with a card from your OB/GYN.

God.

Happy New Year! And a pat on the back to all the smart people who got an artificial tree.

Crap. I published a post last night that, after some reflection, I wasn’t happy with. So I deleted it.

Never do that. Why? Because the post will get picked up by Feedburner and sent out to places that draw from the feed. Immediately. And there’s no undoing it.

What does that mean? Anyone who uses a feed reader, such as Google Reader, will still be able to read the post. But if they click the link back to my blog to comment, for example, the post isn’t there. Instead, you get an “Error 404 – Not Found” message. Translated, that means “This blog author is very stupid.”

The recommended course of action if you want to delete a post is to simply change the post content to something like “This post has been removed by the author.”

Or, better yet, be really sure you want to post something before you hit the Publish button. D’oh! Geesh. You’d think I’d know what I’m doing by now.

Other notable Kathy mistakes:

The night before our wedding, I made tuna casserole for my husband-to-be and me. I forgot to put the tuna in. He married me anyway, knowing full well I couldn’t cook and that the tiny roster of foods I knew how to make included tuna casserole.

I let my car run out of gas.

Follow-up blunder: I walked two blocks to a gas station, bought a gas can and pre-paid for $10 worth of gas. The can took only $2 worth. I was too embarrassed to go back and reclaim the difference.

I wore a banana hair clip into my twenties. It’s customary to stop when you’re thirteen.

On my first visit back to the eye doctor after getting fitted for contact lenses, I showed up with a lens in only one eye. My doctor so carefully danced around my stupidity, saying “I’m unable to locate the second lens.” I asked if he was sure. I asked an eye doctor, looking through $20,000 optometry equipment, if he was sure.

For the record, I was able to come up with these mistakes in less than five minutes. I could run a whole new blog on my mistakes alone. It’s hard being me.

In a  previous post, I made mention of getting my head stuck in a wrought iron fence when I was a kid about the age you see me pictured here. All of my memories of it come from the memories of family members who repeatedly bring up the story at holiday and other gatherings. Always when there are enough people around to hear the story and laugh at me.

Yeah, well. I’m having serious doubts that this event ever took place. Why? Because my own mother can’t remember the details. And neither can my one of my sisters who’s a little older than me and likely was there when it supposedly happened.

I think this has all been made-up so that, as the last born child in our family, there will be always something to ridicule me about ’til the day I die. Stop picking on me already!

The story goes that I was playing around on this porch. I got the idea to shove my head through the fence (the fence at the top, not on the steps) and then couldn’t pull it back out.

It’s been said that the fire department had to come rescue me and that they had to cut out one of the rods to make enough room to release me. Indeed, one of the rods was missing for years. But something tells me that it fell out or was taken out for some other reason and that this whole story was concocted to validate my lifelong suspicion that I have a gigantic freak head.

So what is it, my dear siblings? Did I really get my head stuck in a fence, or has this been a 40 year joke at my expense? Was there some truth to it, but over the years it gathered steam? I call bullsh*t on the fire department showing up.

I’d appreciate if you didn’t tell the story again at Thanksgiving. I can withhold pie, you know.

p.s. If that picture doesn’t prove I’ve been a cranky pants my whole life, nothing does.

Maybe my Canadian friends could help me?

UPDATE: It’s a Junk Drawer miracle! My sister, Ann of the Shampoo Bag, was able to take a couple days off work so she could join me on a DRIVE to Toronto! No trains, no planes!

And by “join me,” I mean she can do all the driving and I won’t have to help much because she has a GPS and even if it doesn’t work, we’ll have maps. I have lots of trouble with those, too, but thankfully, her daughter is coming with us, so I’m putting her on map duty. If she was old enough to drive, we’d let her do that too.

Thanks everyone for your advice and offers of help! We’re crazy excited for this trip! I’ll catch up with comments later tonight.

These are trying times. Kathy has no words. A whopping ten drafts in her queue and nothing worthy of posting.

I think if I don’t post something today, nothing will ever get posted again, the Junk Drawer will close shop and you guys will loiter outside wondering what the hell happened.

I have to get something on the page to kick start me out of this funk I’m in.

Come back in a couple days if this post bores you to tears. I’m about to tell you about my weekend:

1. I fell asleep on the couch at 5PM yesterday and awoke at 8PM thinking it was the next day already. I slept hard. I even had full, movie-length dreams. In one of them, I was standing in a reception line at a political function, holding hands with Henry Kissinger. Discuss.

2. I worked all day Saturday, brought a lunch, but ate it before 10AM. So the rest of the day I took from the other junk drawer in my life and gave myself a headache, a stomachache and left work on such a sugar high I don’t remember how I got home.

3. My husband cleaned the bathrooms, God bless him, but broke the toilet seat off one of the toilets. How is this possible? Broke an entire toilet seat off its hinges? Men, if you’re going to help clean the house, don’t do it in the manner you would, say, play football. Cleaning a toilet needn’t be a race nor a destructive act. It just needs to be wiped down — gently.

4. In the process of preparing to send DrowseyMonkey her prize magnet for having the fattest head, I got sidetracked researching whether I can mail it with U.S. postage or if I have to take it to the post office to get international postage put on it. I tried Googling for the answer to this simple question, but could not find a satisfactory one. I’m too embarrassed to ask Drowsey, so I’ll just head to the post office tomorrow where I’m sure a clerk there will tell me what a moron I am.

5. I didn’t have the energy to fix something that’s been bugging me for a month. Our wall clock is stuck at 4 o’clock. We don’t know why because the batteries are fine. The pendulum below the clock face continues to swing to and fro. I meant to check on why it’s malfunctioning, but now I’m getting really used to it being 4 o’clock all the time. Four happens to be my favorite number, so I’m keeping it.

6. Since I took such a long nap yesterday, I couldn’t get to sleep until midnight last night. But my body always, always gets up between 4AM-5AM, which means I’m running on fumes right now. I’m sorry. This is the kind of post you get on fumes.

Forgive me for having to post such lame material, but this was the prescription for funkitis and it had to be done. Pray I’m funkless tomorrow.

Night.

One of the places I went to as a kid on a class trip was Ringing Rocks Park in Upper Black Eddy, Pennsylvania. The park features a huge boulder field made up of rocks that, when tapped lightly with a hammer, will emit a pleasant ring.

It doesn’t seem that geologists have determined exactly what makes the rocks ring, but kids don’t care. They just want to take a hammer to them and play rock music!

Here’s a short sample of how it sounds. Cool, huh?

One of my favorite bloggers, Kev over at Special Kind of Stupid, is paying me back for tagging him with a meme in November. He’s assigned me the “To Do List” meme, a list of five things I have to do unrelated to work. Here goes nothin’.

1. Send two friends their birthday cards I bought two weeks ago. One is sitting in front of me as I type, the other is on my desk at work. I see the cards every day and every day I tell myself to mail them already. Yet, every day they sit there not wishing anyone a happy birthday. So JD and Alice, I’m thinking of your long gone birthdays and hoping you had good ones. I do realize I’m possibly the worst friend in the world. Please forgive me. Still, I wouldn’t expect the cards any time soon.

2. Clean the litter boxes in the basement. Ever since our arthritic cat Stinky started having trouble taking steps to get there, we decided to move one of three litter boxes to the second floor where she spends most of her time. It seems like all three cats are using it, but you never know. The boxes in the basement may now look like two huge archeological digs and we’re going to need a backhoe to clear it out. I wonder if those kids we hired to shovel our driveway do poo detail.

3. Backup my hard drive in the home office. Yeah, I know. I’m a computing consultant. I should backup regularly, but I haven’t done it in months. Yesterday a client came to my office nearly in tears because his hard drive crashed and he needs tax data recovered. It might cost him a fortune to save it, assuming it’s possible. My advice to everyone is “You don’t put on your seat belt expecting to get in a car accident, but you do it anyway, just in case.” Same with your data. I half-jokingly told my distraught client to pray to St. Isidore. For the uninitiated, he’s the patron saint of computers and the Internet. Who said you couldn’t learn anything here?

4. Clean up the remnants of the pumpkin on my back porch. Yes, part of my autumn display is still there. From October. I’ll spare you what it looks like after having spent six months exposed to the elements. I did at least get rid of 90% of it, but the 10% that’s left would give you the dry heaves if you saw it. But if you’re into science experiments, I’ll be running the Guess the Mold, Win a Prize contest in April. Stay tuned!

5. Write my final blog post. I have a will for myself, but I don’t have a will, so to speak, for my blog. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, how would you guys know where I went? I know it sounds morbid, but I’d like to write a post that will be published in the event of my death. I would hate to have people asking where I am in the comments section and my husband having to deal with that. You’ll know if it happens. The post title will read simply “I’m Dead. The Junk Drawer is Now Empty.” It’ll be hilarious.

If you’ve read my 10 Things I Don’t Have the Guts to Do post, you might assume I’ve left most scary things to the experts. That’s not entirely true. I have tried some fear-inducing things in the past. Some didn’t end so well, and that’s why they were a one-shot deal.

The High Dive from Hell

I was lucky as a kid to have a community pool only three blocks from my house. It was my home away from home most summers. For years I watched other kids jump off the high dive, marveled at their fearlessness and wished I could be like them.

I don’t remember the circumstances that led me one day to climb that ladder and patter down to the end of the board. I guess I wanted to say that I did it, even if it ended with me passing out or winding up in the ER.

With a throng of friends cheering me on below, I glanced at the water that, to me, appeared a mile away. Fear punched me in the face and I wished I’d left well enough alone.

I considered heading back down the way I came up, but I reasoned that my embarrassment would be worse than the fear of flying through the air. Besides, it always looked so fun when other people did it. All I had to do was step off the board and fall in! Weeeeeee!!!!

Oh, yeah, and I should have planned the flying-through-the-air part.

When I jumped off the board, I did so feet-first. As soon as I was airborne, I changed my mind and decided I’d like to do a head-first dive. Physicists and people with an IQ over 23 know that unless you’re a cat, you cannot change your body position while falling such a relatively short distance.

But I tried anyway and damn near killed myself in the process.

According to diving experts, “At the moment of take-off, two critical aspects of the dive are determined, and cannot subsequently be altered during the execution. One is the trajectory of the dive, and the other is the magnitude of the angular momentum.”

I landed with a lot of magnitude. Do you remember that earthquake in Pennsylvania in 1977? That was me.

Here’s what a normal pike dive looks like for someone who’s planning to open the pike and enter the water head-on, perfectly straight.

Look again. That’s exactly how I hit the water.

Pain ripped through me in ways I hadn’t known before, like a hundred little knives stabbing me in the gut. All the physical pain was localized to my abdomen, but the emotional pain was much worse.

Because I was under the water, I couldn’t see the looks on the spectators’ faces. But I imagined everyone wincing in unison, while clutching their own stomachs. That had to hurt, I’m sure they thought.

What little ego I had before going in was washed away as I surfaced from the Dive from Hell. To their credit, my friends didn’t laugh at me. Instead, they gathered around to make sure I was OK and hadn’t broken anything.

My ribs were fine, and so was my head, but I certainly had the wind knocked out of me. The only thing broken was my spirit. I never tried anything like that again in my life. But I did learn two important lessons. One, if your instinct tells you not to do something, listen to the voice. It usually knows when you’re about to be an idiot. And, two, I’m not a cat.

—–

Humor-bloggers prefer the belly-flop.

My husband Dave and I have been dieting religiously the last six weeks, but we lost our minds tonight and ordered take-out.

Here’s what Dave asked for when he placed the order by phone:

• Four cheeseburgers with mayo
• Two perogies
• One garlic knot

Here’s what we got when I picked it up and brought it home:

• Four cheeseburgers with mayo
• Two orders of perogies (3 to an order)
• And this…….

One garlic knot.

Every other time we’ve ordered from there, “one garlic knot” meant “one order of garlic knots,” which contains six knots. Ordering one garlic knot is akin to ordering a single french fry. It’s just not done.

The joke was on us. We got exactly what we asked for.

I don’t know about you, but we can eat about ten of these, and that’s after the burgers and perogies. So who took ownership of the one knot? Our cat, Stinky. She was smelling it up and down while I took this picture. Now we don’t have to split it, which is good because half a delicious knot is worse than no knot at all.

If you think my brain is twisted enough when I’m awake, you should see how things look when I’m asleep.

Here are a few of the recurring dreams I’ve been having for years:

1. I’m lying on the couch in the living room of my childhood home. The room is packed from floor to ceiling with very large balloons. They are suffocating me. It’s only when the clown comes downstairs and parts the balloons as he walks through the room that I can breathe again.

2. I’m suspended on a girder that sits perpendicular to the top of a familiar bridge in a nearby city. I straddle the end of it and, as it pivots, the girder swings way out over the river and I’m screaming. I don’t know how I got there or if I can get down. I feel death is imminent.

3. In my childhood neighborhood, I’m swimming through waterless air down a hill near my home. I do the breaststroke all the way to the little candy store at the bottom of the hill and around the corner. When I get there, I land lightly on my toes and walk into the store, where I go on to buy Giant Pixie Stix. I consider it very normal to have flown there.

4. I’m trying to put a punch bowl-sized contact lens in my right eye. It does not seem impossible that I can do this. In fact, I manage to squeeze the lens all the way in — and it fits perfectly. I don’t know how. It just does. I never put one in the left eye.

Why do I keep having these bizarre dreams over and over? Beats me. I suppose if you want to try and analyze them, you can. But maybe I don’t want to know.

I’m just glad I stopped having the one where I’m being chased by a homicidal maniac with a cleaver and a gun.

Care to share your wackiest dreams? Scary, fun, inexplicable? Recurring or not, let’s hear ‘em!

* Yes, that’s me in the clown gear.

——-

My worst nightmare is that my ranking drops at Humor-Blogs.com. So click that link!

I have issues and everyone knows it. It’s really only a question of degree.

While waiting to collect two friends for lunch yesterday, I was standing by one of their desks and noticed it was not aligned with the wall. “Rich, why is your desk crooked?”

“I don’t know. Does it bother you?”

“Yeah. I know. It shouldn’t. But fix it.”

And so he lifted the 200 pound desk and righted it because he knows if he doesn’t, I will whine and complain and then no one’s getting to lunch on time.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) is an anxiety disorder:

characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as handwashing, counting, checking, or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these so-called “rituals,” however, provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety.

I’m pretty sure I don’t qualify clinically, but I have my fair share of odd behaviors that might put me in the ballpark. Here’s my list of things that some might consider obsessive, irrational or just plain stupid. Is there an NIMH definition for stupid?

Let’s begin.

1.  While driving, I’m troubled if I’m delayed by anything that puts my car under a bridge, however briefly. I don’t like to sit under an overpass because I think the bridge will fall and crush me.

2.  I’ve never pressed the mileage reset button in my car. When I bought it new 7 years ago, there were only 16 miles on the odometer. I have never pressed the button that resets it to zero. I can’t do it. I don’t know why. I just can’t.

3.  If it’s raining and I pull into my garage, I have to keep my wipers going until all the rain is cleared. I can’t let one or two streams of water crawl down the windshield. No drips allowed.

4.  If I turn off a two-way lamp that has only a single-wattage bulb in it, I have to turn it to the OFF position, not the second position because I’m afraid juice will continue to flow and somehow that will start a fire.

5.  I must align picture frames wherever I find them crooked. I’ve realigned pictures in my colleagues’ offices, in other people’s houses, and just recently, in a restaurant. Does that embarrass me? Yes, but I do it anyway and I feel better.

6.  I won’t take a shopping cart at a store if it has papers or coupon flyers in it. I won’t pull them out. I’ll pick another cart.

7.  I never let a microwave run down to zero on the timer. I have to catch it to within 10 seconds of finishing and manually shut it off. I love catching it at the one second mark. It makes me feel like I beat it in a race.

Shake your head if you will, but I would bet some of you have weirder things on your lists. Do you have any rituals? Anything you always have to do (or can’t do), yet can’t explain?

Please share. The only thing that keeps me afloat is knowing there are people worse off than me.

—–

Humor-bloggers are an obsessive bunch.

While cleaning out a closet this morning, I ran across this photo I took some years ago when I was on a random picture-taking excursion. I love this guy. His eyes look so soulful to me. It makes me feel guilty for wanting a delicious char-broiled quarter-pounder right now. With cheese.

Seeing it, I’m reminded of one of my childhood memories involving cows, ice cream and my dad’s Lincoln Continental.

Around the time my sister Ann and I were seven and five years old, respectively, a favorite treat was our Dad driving us to a nearby dairy for ice cream. Part of the fun was driving fast over a hilly section of the road leading up to the dairy. Dad would speed up before the incline and coming over the crest we’d get that flip-flop feeling in our stomachs and shout WHOOOA!!! as we came down the other side. Funny, the little things we remember.

When we got to the dairy, Dad would go in and chat it up with the owner and Ann and I would stand outside the cow pen and hope that one of the mammoth creatures would saunter over and say hello. I can’t think of any small dairies that still exist around here, but if I see one, I have an irresistible urge to stop and moo at the cows.

On one particular visit, Ann and I were all moo’ed out and went inside to collect our ice cream. Typically, we’d get started licking in the store and be just about done by the time we got home. But this trip was different. It was the first in a long series of incidents that end with the question Why do these things always happen to me?

My problems started almost immediately after my Dad got out onto the country road. It must have been a hundred degrees that day and so the ice cream melted faster than I could lick it.

And then the dribbling started. All over my hand, down my arm and all over my lap. And then Dad found out. Nevermind that half my cone was running down my leg, all I could think was how mad he would be when he saw the mess I just made of myself.

If it’s one thing we kids tried to avoid was bringing harm to his only prized possession: his deep blue, formerly clean, 1970 Lincoln Continental with the doors that opened outward in opposite directions. He worked hard all his life to support his family and make sure we had what we needed. The car was the one thing he allowed himself to splurge on.

Unable to pull over on the narrow, one-lane road, he opted to at least keep things from getting any worse. “Stick it out the window! NOW!,” Dad shouted.

“Oh, no! Dad! My ice cream!”

“Get it out of the car!”

I did as instructed and shoved my delicious treat out the window. All my glorious chocolate ice cream hit the wind and, unbeknownst to me, rained down all over the side of the car. I thought for a second that I could stick my head out the window and keep licking, but I was too busy sucking it off my arm and hand.

What’s interesting, in hindsight, is that my Dad didn’t make me throw it out the window. Only stick it out the window. Perhaps none of us guessed that so much of it would splatter back onto the car door.

It did in a big way.

When we eventually got out of the car, we gathered ’round to assess the damage. What we had before us was the Kathy version of a Jackson Pollack painting. Thick splats at the start of it, thinner towards the middle, and dot dot dots where it tapered at the end.

I don’t remember my Dad being mad at me. After all, it only required a quick cleaning. What I do remember is I’d given up a perfectly good cone to the forces of physics and wondered whether it was possible for me to still eat that. The one rule for ice cream and kids? Do not separate.

My pal Lee from Tar Heel Ramblings tagged me for the Seven Weird Things About Me meme. I’m not a meme person so much as I’m a weird person. Putting this list together will take all of five minutes.

The rules: Cite and link to your source (me), then enjoy writing about 7 Weird Things About Yourself, then tag some people and help spread the weirdness.

Here we go:

1. I once took my cat, Calvin (RIP), to a therapist for his anger “issues” and paid $200 for the pleasure. He almost bit her and I was secretly happy because she should have known better than to stick her hand in his carrier.

2. I microwave salads and ice cream before eating them. Twenty seconds for the salad, fifteen for the ice cream.

3. I purposely keep snack bags open so chips or cheese curls go stale. Mmmmm…..stale snacks!

4. I’m physically unable to burp. Not even after drinking a carbonated beverage. It’s not fun. It hurts. And it leaves me bloated.

5. I enjoy the most intense of amusement park rides, but I can’t cross a bridge by foot because I know I’ll pass out from being up so high.

6. To finish my bachelors degree, I voluntarily took the last 12 courses in 12 months, while starting a new job. It almost killed me.

7. As a kid, I almost threw up after eating homemade strawberry ice cream. I only ate it because it was served to me at a friend’s house and I thought it would be bad manners to decline. Later that night, I talked in my sleep and hallucinated a movie on the walls of my bedroom. My sister and I shared the room and she thought I was the devil.

Now, I’m not one to thrust a meme on anyone, but if any of my fellow bloggy friends want to join in the weirdness, consider yourself tagged. Hop to it!

No one has to tell me I’ve gained weight this year. Not that anyone would dare say that to my face, or they’d have a mouthful of Chicklets for teeth.

And not that I don’t recognize what happened to my body over the last 12 months. I see it every day in the mirrors I haven’t already thrown a drape over.

But as so often happens with weight gain, you tend to ignore the obvious and just buy bigger clothes. Last week, my butt decided to publicly and rudely remind me of just how big it’s gotten. It almost injured a person.

The date: Friday, January 4.

Where: In a seminar room at work. I was about to give a presentation to a group of graduate students, who had just begun filing in at the door next to the instructor’s station.

How it happened: As I was preparing materials and kicking equipment cables out of the way, I backed up into the line of students and my butt nearly jettisoned a petite, twenty-something woman past the coat rack, through a wall and into the next room.

I. was. mor-ti-FIED. One, because my body was capable of almost knocking someone to the floor, and 2) because SHE apologized to ME. Oh, please don’t say you’re sorry. I almost killed you.

For those of you who think I’m exaggerating, I swear on a stack of Twinkies I’m not. The scale doesn’t lie. I’ve gained 25 pounds since last December. Twenty-three of them went straight to my butt, and the other two went to my face: one pound to Chin #1 and the other to Chin #2.

This bizarre distribution is because I have one of those pear-shaped bodies. I’m two sizes bigger on the bottom than I am on the top. I look pretty much the same in my blog photo as I did when it was taken about a year ago. It’s the lower half of me that needs work.

So what to do? I’m not averse to exercise, but it’s much harder to get outdoors and walk in the winter. I prefer walking as exercise over anything else. My plan is to try and burn calories indoors, at work, so I don’t have to walk in the cold and darkness at night.

Here’s the plan I’ve devised:

1. I’ve begun to stand at my desk while working. So that I’m not hunched over while typing on my laptop, I stuck a box under it so that it’s at waist-level and easier to work. It looks stupid, but I’m considering alternatives.

2. A friend sent me some information about JARM-ing, (J)ogging with your ARMS, an upper-body exercise you can do anywhere. Basically, I’m flexing and flailing my arms around in the privacy of my own cubicle and burning extra calories while doing it. It looks a little goofy, but I’ll take goofy over fat any day of the week.

3. No more junk food, especially not take-out. My husband and I like to order take-out on Friday nights. And Mondays. And Thursdays. And weekends. When he asked yesterday if we could get cheeseburgers and cheese sticks, I replied “No. We’re not doing that anymore.” Simple as that. I’m pretty militant about my plan. He has no choice but to lose weight with me. He’ll thank me later.

Although this “standing while working” thing has its benefits (you burn about 100 calories an hour vs. 40 if you’re just sitting), standing so long will hurt you in some way. The first day I tried it, I did it for six of nine hours and started to get short stabbing pains in my lower back.

Tweaks to the plan:

1.  When a colleague saw what I was doing, he promptly yelled at me “You can’t do that in THOSE shoes.” So now I wear supportive sneakers when I’m not meeting with clients.

2. I mentioned my crazy plan to my sister, who promptly yelled at me “You can’t do that! You probably have a quarter inch of carpet over a concrete floor! You need a special mat for that!” A special standin’ and flailin’ mat?

So I’m off this weekend to shop for a couple things. One, something else to put my laptop on, so I can get rid of the cardboard box it’s currently sitting on. And two, a “special mat,” whatever that might be. I need to find something that a chair can roll over for times when I need to sit down and rest.

Is my plan working? Most definitely. I’ve lost three pounds this week. I’m not going for quick weight loss, although I know how to do that (I once lost 7lbs in one week on The Survivor Diet, eating nothing but rice and water. It works, but it’s unsustainable. Plus, I think it can kill you.) The loss has to be gradual, the way it went on. I accept that, despite wanting to get rid of this big butt by next Wednesday.

If you’d like to share creative diet and exercise tips that work for you, drop a comment in the drawer. I’m open to crazy.

——-

Humor-blogs has some fine butts, I’ve heard.

Last month I treated everyone to the product of my laziness: The Pumpkin Tree Display. Make sure you go look at it to see how nice it looked a couple weeks ago.

Here’s how it looks now. The day before I took this picture, none of these pumpkins looked that bad. They had mold, yes. But they were still round. And not oozing. And still pumpkins.

Somewhere between 7AM and 5PM Monday, the two orange ones simply gave up the fight. Actually, they had help.  Here in eastern PA, we enjoyed a 70+ degree day, blue skies and balmy. Me thinks this isn’t the best environment for three-month-old pumpkins to thrive.

Now, we had trash pickup day on Thursday. Do you think I’d be smart enough to take them to the curb? Of course not. Here they will sit for another week and God knows what they’ll look like then.

Since it seems that members of the pumpkin family have a built-in, self-implosion mechanism in place, it’s my hope that they will keep imploding and somehow they will disappear on their own and I won’t have to don a gas mask and hazmat gear to remove them.

I no longer go out to turn the Christmas tree lights on. I’m afraid of the pumpkins. But someday I’m going to have to face my fear and bag these babies up. It wouldn’t surprise me if maggoty things are living under them. I’m paying dearly for my laziness.

Pray for me.

I’m a good driver. Really, I am. I just can’t handle getting my car in and out of the garage. They never teach you that in driver’s education. Apparently I needed a special class for driving at .2 MPH.

Getting out:

There was the time I was in such a hurry to get to a hair appointment, I failed to wait long enough for the door to go up before I started backing out. The door scraped the entire length of my car’s trunk before I realized my mistake. It was a costly one: $500 to replace the whole hood.

Getting in:

Today when I returned from an errand, I decided to back my car into the garage. But I did it from the opposite direction that I’m used to doing it. I cut it way too close to the edge of the garage and my side view mirror ripped off half the garage frame’s molding. Nice.

The vinyl strip came down and wedged itself between the mirror and the driver’s side door. If I put the car in reverse, I’d pull more off the frame. If I pulled ahead, I’d scrape my car door. So I just sat there for a second or two.

Luckily I had my cell phone.

Ring… ring… ring…

"Dave?"

"Yeah?"

"I got in an accident."

"You OK? Where are you?"

"Um. The garage. Can you come help me?"

Click.

Dave gets to the garage and studies things for a moment, while I’m trapped in my car long enough to feel my stupidity weighing heavily on me. He shakes his head and figures out he can pull the molding down from under the mirror without too much more damage, but it has to come off the garage frame. Fine. Do what ya gotta do.

The molding can be tapped back onto the frame, but it won’t ever be right again. It’s all mangled and sad-looking. And I did scratch my car. I doubt it can be buffed out, and so now I’ll always be reminded of the degree of dumbness I possess. I’m really glad I’m not into the fancy, expensive car thing.

OK, folks.  Time for you to share your dumb driving experiences. You didn’t think I posted this for your benefit, did you? I’m looking for the dumb, stupid, idiotic stuff. Make me feel better.

Ready, set, go!

I know. It’s sad and it doesn’t make any sense. Welcome to our Pumpkin Tree Display. We never intended to leave our autumn pumpkin display out on the patio, but it just happened. OK, strike that. It didn’t just happen. It happened because we are the laziest people we know.

Then a friend gave me a small artificial tree to stick out there because we can’t keep a tree in the house. Our cat, Lucky has "chewing issues," and would likely eat the needles and puncture a necessary organ. This is how we still enjoy a tree and keep Lucky from using up some of his nine lives.

I want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas. I hope that Santa is good to you and better than he was to me. Today I woke up with a huge zit on my chin. So now when I have family pictures taken of me today and tomorrow, I will be instructed to cover up that thing or get out of the picture. Can someone please tell me when the pimples of my youth will stop showing up on the face of my 40-something self?

Happy Holidays to all my zit-free bloggy friends!

In that order.

I’m Forgetful

Last week I thought I’d run to the grocery store, order a fresh-made pizza and pick up a few items while I waited. The woman who took my pizza order said “Sure. It’ll be ten minutes.” I left and did some shopping, came back ten minutes later, and found another employee just starting to make my pizza… S-L-O-W-L-Y.

Fully-loaded with groceries, I had nothing else to do but stand there and wait while the guy finally put my pie in the oven. I decided to bide my time by reading all the little recipe cards by the international cheese section. Did you know there are over a dozen types of brie cheese? But only two can be called “true Brie?” I moved about the cheese area and ventured over to the olive bar to stare at the ten types they had available, all swimming in their olivy juices. They all looked disgusting to me. I then made my way over to the sausage and questionable meats section. I wondered if anyone ever checks the expiration dates on these things. Is that really sausage? Does anyone ever buy this stuff?

Bored out of my mind, I went back to my pizza moving through the exposed oven on a conveyor belt and counted down the seconds until it made its way to the end. The guy finally put it in a box and handed it to me with outstretched hands. “Gimme, gimme, gimme already!”

I couldn’t have been more excited to get through checkout with my pizza and other items. When I got in my car and drove away I thought “Oh, this pizza’s gonna taste just gr….” Oh, wait. Where’s the pizza? I’m officially brain dead and now I have to park my car again, walk back up the the cashier and reclaim my pie. “Um. Hi. I forgot this,” I say. “Yeah, we were about to eat it, it smells so good.” I try to avoid eye-contact, as I’m sure the cashier and customers can’t believe anyone would forget they bought something the size of an end table.

I’m stupid

My husband Dave and I aren’t big drinkers, but he did just discover a great new beer he likes called Magic Hat 9 and he keeps a few in the fridge for an end of day treat.

The other day, Dave asked if I’d grab him one out of the fridge. I obliged and thought I’d be super nice and pop the cap for him. Because I don’t drink beer at all, I didn’t even know if we had a bottle opener in the house. Searching through the silverware drawer, I came upon the only thing I thought would work: a manual can opener.

I yelled to the other room “Can I open it with this can opener?” Dave said “Yeah, that’ll work.” What I did next made him wonder if he married the stupidest woman on the planet. He wondered why things were taking so long. I had a lot of trouble opening the bottle. See, that big hook on the bottom works. That little indentation at the top does not work at all, no matter how hard you try. Even if you work up a sweat.

I’m old

There’s only one piece of equipment that makes you look older than your age and that is an eyeglass chain you wear around your neck so you always have your glasses handy. I’ve known only one person in my life who did this and I thought she must have been 100 years old: Mrs. Weinhoffer, my sixth grade teacher. She was the quintessential schoolmarm, if ever there was one. Her eyeglass chain was silver and antique-looking. I have associated old with eyeglass chains ever since. Having avoided the old people eyeglass accessories display case at my pharmacy for months, I realized I had to break down and buy one today.

I’m so tired of taking my glasses on and off when I want to read the newspaper, and then put them back on when I want to see something on TV or anything more than six inches in front of my face. I don’t know how bad I’m going to look, but I do know I’ll look older than dirt. Up next, a scooter, a hearing aid and a box of Depends.

God help me.

Question: What’s the safest way to carve a pumpkin?

Answer: Let your husband do it.

I am not good with knives. I don’t know who’s looking out for me, but I have thrice dropped knives on the floor mere inches from bare feet. My luck may not last forever. I see a missing toe in my future.

The last time I held a slasher-movie-sized knife was Easter Sunday circa 1981. I was hand-washing dishes after our holiday meal and I was cleaning a 10" long serrated knife. I somehow let go of the dishcloth while I was wiping the smooth edge of the knife, and the cloth slipped out of my hand.

The knife kept right on going. And so did my hand. Slicing through your fingers in warm water feels exactly like nothing. It wasn’t until I looked into pinkified water that I wondered what happened. Quite a bloodfest.

Because I cut my right index finger in an unfortunate place, right where the top section of the finger bends, I needed several stitches. Living so close to a hospital, I got sewn up in no time at all.

Since Dave and I don’t live across from a hospital, I leave all the knife work to him. He has his own issues with injuries, but he seems to have slicing and cutting under control. Yea! It means we get to enjoy at least one Mr. Happy Face Pumpkin Head for the season.

You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I possess two amazing superpowers. First, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had bionic hearing. Even before Lindsey Wagner (pictured left) acquired hers. You know, the Bionic Woman, now world-famous spokeswoman for Sleep Number Beds. (I bet she never saw that coming.) My husband, Dave likes to call my special ability "dog hearing." Woof.

I don’t know of any other superhuman entity who can hear as well as I can. Someone should wire me up to a machine and study me. I would find it extremely gratifying to be listed as a freak in a medical journal. It may be the only way I ever get published.

Listen up. Here’s how my ears work.

I can tell if a television is on in the next room, even if it’s muted.

I can hear the ever-so-slight noise a VCR makes when it records a program, so much so that I made Dave go with me to Circuit City to buy not one, not two, but three different VCRs until I found one that taped quietly enough. The man is a saint.

Once while working alongside a technician in the computer repair shop where I work, I repeatedly asked "What’s that noise? I hear a noise." The technician kept looking around trying to find its source and he had a lot of trouble since he couldn’t hear it himself. After flipping random switches and turning assorted knobs, he found the machine that was causing the noise and turned it off. I breathed a sigh of relief. He looked at me, cocked his head slightly and then splashed holy water on me because he thought I was the anti-Christ.

I hear my DVR machine recording. A DVR is able to freeze-frame and play back live broadcasts because it’s always taping the current channel. I hear it doing its job, but nobody else can.

I once had a very unusual problem in my car where when I made hard turns, I could hear fluid sloshing around in the dashboard innards. I’ve had four people in my car at various times when this noise made itself known. Nobody but me could hear it. They asked if I was on medication.

I now know better than to ask people "Do you hear that noise?" because the answer will always be "What noise?" I haven’t figured out how I can put my special powers to good use. I know the Bionic Woman would always pull her hair back and point her souped up ear toward bad guys who were up to no good. Then she’d save the day because she overheard secret information and then used it against them. Yeah, I wanna do that. But I don’t know how to work that into my non-espionage life.

My other superpower is one that I have not perfected yet, though it has served me well when it’s worked. I can mentally cancel meetings I don’t want to attend. I do not always want to skip meetings, so I only pull this skill out when I really need it. My record stands at 8 out of 12 meetings successfully killed. And, yes, I’m keeping track.

Before you ask me if I can help you get out of meetings, don’t bother. The talent is non-transferable. I’ve tried, but it only works when I’m the one who doesn’t want to go. It’s a shame, because imagine the money I could make if I could stop one of the world’s biggest time-wasters on behalf of others. I’d be a millionaire.

Sure, there are other superhero women out there with special abilities, but can they hear inaudible sounds without bionic help and cancel meetings at will? I’m certain there is a place where these skills would come in handy.

If you can figure out how I can put these two talents together to save the world or something, drop me a line. I’ll get back to you if I’m not in a meeting. I’d like to hear about it.

There are a few pretty cool things you can do as a kid, and one of them is breaking a bone. All the better if you get a cast for your efforts. See that innocent looking swing set in the picture? It’s the reason I broke my left wrist when I was 10 years old. Why was it a good thing? Because it could have been my head.

The accident took place one Friday night when my parents were out grocery shopping. It’s the one time of the week they could get away from us kids for an hour or so. All they had to do was let an older sibling take charge and make sure nothing bad happened while they were gone.

As soon as they left, something bad happened.

It was wintertime and a blanket of snow covered the backyard hill. An excellent place to take the sleds out for a spin. We never settled for sledding on mere snow. We insisted the best way to experience high-octane thrills was to throw buckets of water down the hill to form a nice sheen and add 30 mph to our speed. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Sister Ann and I prepped the death slope with about six or seven good bucket tosses and waited until it froze up good. We grabbed our sleds and set off to fly down the hill with the greatest of ease. Until….

I sat down on my trusty wooden Flexible Flyer at the precipice of our freshly-made, glassy goodness and gave myself a mighty heave-ho. Heading straight down the middle, I must have leaned too far to the right and began to veer directly toward the left legs of the swing set. In a flash, I’m thinking I either stay put and crack my skull open when I hit that thing, or make quick work of leaning the other way to shoot toward the middle of the hill.

There is a 10 foot open swath between the swing set and an old rusty laundry pole. I’m shooting for left of the swing set, but overcompensate and now I’m heading straight for the pole. I’m back to square one in the skull-saving, decision-making department. Do I split my noggin on the pole? Or do I try and brace myself with my arm and break that instead?

I opted to save the skull and stick my arm out to protect my face and head. My hand hit the pole and snapped all the way back as the rest of my body followed behind and landed in a rumpled heap at the bottom of the hill. I saved the skull, but my wrist doesn’t feel too good. Not good at all.

I can’t remember who came running first or how I got back up to the house. I’m sure I was blubbering like an idiot and screaming how "Mom and Dad are going to kill me!!!" They apparently can’t go anywhere without some trauma befalling us kids. But at least we never set fire to anything.

Once in the house, I’m sobbing on the couch and my brainiac brother Michael is yelling at me.

"It’s not broken if you can move it. Here. Let me see."

He flops my hand back and forth, over and over.

"Oww!! OWW!! Oh my God, OWWWWW!!!"

"OK. Yeah, it might be broken."

"Idiot."

So we wait until Mom and Dad come home from the store and then promptly announce that now they have to take me to the hospital. The one thing that made our accidents so much more bearable was that the hospital was located only a block away. I wonder of Mom and Dad, knowing they’d someday have a houseful of imbecilic kids, told their real estate agent "We need a house next to a state-of-the-art hospital with a band of qualified ER doctors. We’re going to be spending some time there. Can you do that?"

As we trek over to the hospital, I’m getting really angry. Not because I broke my wrist. And not because I got in trouble for sledding in the dark on an ice-encrusted hill. It’s because now I was going to miss the Brady Bunch. Back in the day before VCRs and DVRs, you absolutely needed to be planted in front of the TV when your favorite show came on or you would miss it forever.

As I sat in the ER waiting room, I watched as it approached 8:00 and then 8:30 and then 9:00. I mourned the loss of getting to watch the fanciful antics of my beloved Brady Bunch kids. The only bright spot was knowing that none of the Bradys ever broke a bone and they don’t get a cast and they can’t show it off to their friends at school. So there, take that!

Here’s a lesson for the kiddies — if you have a choice between breaking your skull and breaking a bone, go for the bone. Brain is so much more worth keeping in good working order. Besides, having a cast on your head is just not as attractive.

My sister Marlene treated her daughter, Amy, and me to an afternoon at Dorney Amusement Park on Saturday. Every year her company gives its employees free passes, plus two for their guests. Excellent deal, since tickets normally go for something like 30 bucks. I know I’ll still pay a fortune on food, drink and at least one impulse purchase. But since I’m not starting out $30 in the hole, it’s all good. Plus, the park hosts "Halloweekends" in October, where they decorate every square inch for the fall holiday. Even if you don’t go on rides, it’s really nice to just stroll around and get into the Halloween spirit.

But I do go on rides. At least the ones I think I won’t die on.

We meet at my house and pile in one car. For the next half an hour, we complain about the extra weight we’ve put on, how we hate exercise and that we’re doomed until we get serious about weight loss. We get to the park, walk through the entrance, look around and the first thing out of our mouths is "Where do we want to eat?" What did we JUST SAY people???

We head down a pathway that leads to one of the park’s many Dippin’ Dots carts. Dippin’ Dots is (are?) ice cream molded into the shape of tiny beads. Strangest ice cream I’ve ever had, and difficult to maneuver, since half of those little buggers tend to escape and roll away with every spoonful. Whatever. We each pay $5 for a small cup. And I do mean small. I’m done with it in 2.5 minutes, but that could also be because half of the beads have jumped the cup and are now bouncing happily away.

We decide it’s time to consider going on rides. When I say "we" should go on rides, I really mean just Amy. I’ve appointed her the ride inspector and the "oh-come-on-you’ll-be-OK" motivator. It works this way — She picks out a ride she likes, or thinks I’ll like, gets on the ride and then reports back to me about how violent said ride felt. Then I decide whether I can handle it. She gives me the blow-by-blow account of each one, and then we determine how much I would cry and how embarrassing a scene I would make.

While discussing whether I’m going on any rides, Marlene whips out her digital camera and begins taking the first of several hundred pictures in the park. We shall refer to her now as The Sisterazzi. Nobody’s safe. "Look over here! Amy! Kathy! Stand in front of this! Over here! Just one more picture! Oh, wait! Come over here!"

We tolerate this because she loves taking pictures. But we have requirements. Our hair can’t look like any of the scarecrows dotting the park. Above-the-waist shots only. No rear shots. We think Sisterazzi complies, but I haven’t seen the pictures yet. It was too sunny to make them out on the tiny screen.

We head over to the one ride I’ll consider, Talon. It’s one of the best in the park due to its smoothness. Steel tracks are the best. Wooden ones will cause teeth to fall out of your head and you’ll be a bruised and battered mess when it’s over, assuming you survive at all. We wait for Amy to go on Talon once, alone. She’ll report back about how long the line is and whether the teenaged ride attendants look responsible enough to trust our lives with.

Sisterazzi is busy taking pictures of other people on other rides, while I’m getting my stomach in knots just thinking about going on Talon. What freaks me out most is not the ride itself. The ride is awesome. It’s having to walk the stairs to the platform where you queue up for seats. I have real trouble standing still in high places. I have no problem hurdling to the earth at breakneck speeds (possibly literally break neck speeds), but I can’t handle waiting in line up really high, long enough to realize that the ground is way down there and I’m way up here.

Amy returns from her quick trip on Talon and begins her motivational speech. She assures me she’ll talk me through the ascent and that I’ll love it as much as all the other times I’ve been on it. And, no doubt, we’ll ride in the front row. If you ride a coaster, the only good seat is the front seat. Totally clear view of the ground coming up fast at you. There’s no better thrill, except maybe bungee jumping or skydiving. Those I won’t do, because I can’t hang my life on a string. But I will fly through the sky if I’m nailed to a seat.

We decide around now it’s time to eat a real meal and head off to a pizza place. The line is very long, so we briefly contemplate going over to a Subway instead. None of us wants to eat healthy, despite our complaints about wanting to lose weight, so we remain in the long line and then pay a small fortune for a slice of pizza and bottled water, $10. Extortion pizza.

As soon as we sit down at a table in the shade, Sisterazzi is at it again. This time, taking pictures of Amy and me with stringy cheese hanging out of our mouths. Thanks for that. We feel better now that we’ve had food and gotten out of the sun. But it’s a record-breaking 85 degrees on this October day, and we’re suffering a bit from meaty paw syndrome. Amy suggests we could cool off more if we go on Talon and I’m back to stressing about whether to go on it.

We slowly walk up the hill toward the ride and I remind myself that the reason I want to do it is for the exhilaration of flying through the air for little over a minute. There are four inversions: a vertical loop, a zero-gravity roll, an Immelmann loop (whatever the hell that is), and a corkscrew.

Two things happen in this environment. You briefly cannot breathe (wheeee!) and your hair winds up looking like this. At least mine does.

I decide I’m ready for the climb up the stairs and onto the platform. Fortunately, the line is short and I don’t have to spend time standing still on the stairs. But I do need some encouragement from Amy. She distracts me from the reality of my situation by discussing a very boring topic. Routers and wireless access points.

She goes into a long discussion about what kind of network she has at work and talks about getting a wireless router for home. I ignore where I am for a moment and talk about a new laptop and wireless router I’m thinking of buying so I can blog anywhere in the house. I’m hearing all kinds of screaming from passengers already on the ride, but I ignore this. Amy also directs me to look at a spot on the platform full of people and that doesn’t overlook the ground below. I pretend I’m anywhere but there.

We are soon led like cattle into the front row chute. We are shocked that they’re sending the ride out without a full front row. What’s wrong with these people? The front row is the BEST seat in the house. I’m all cocky about it — until it’s my turn to get in the seat.

Blogger’s note: I’ve begun to sweat just writing this. The memory of front row seat lockdown is fresh in my mind and I’m very tense right now. My keyboard has asked me to stop pressing so hard.

So we are led to our seats and we get nailed in. I’m thankful that the ride operator clicks the metal harness into my lap even lower than I got it to go myself. This makes me happy for two reasons: 1) It tells me that my stomach is not as huge as I thought it was, and 2) I’m 100% bolted in. I no longer worry that I’ll somehow slip out of my chair and die a horrible, screaming, bloody death. Wheeeee!!!!

We begin our ascent up the 100+ foot hill and Amy’s still talkin’ about routers. I have my eyes closed because I hate the ascent. She asks me if I want to know when we get to the top, and I reply "No, I’ll know it when we’re about to fall off the face of the earth. Thankyouverymuch."

The ride is exceptional. Smooth, fast and breathless — exactly as I remember it. Since it’s hard to scream when you can’t breathe, I opt for the silent descent. I just smile a toothy smile the whole way through.

Without further ado, here’s how the ride went. It’s my one impulse purchase. The park used to offer still shots of riders screaming their heads off, but now they offer DVDs of riders screaming their heads off. That’ll be me on the left, and Amy on the right. We appear 30 seconds into it.

Amy wanted a picture of me when we got off because I looked like I’d just been electrocuted (sign of a great ride!). We don’t have a camera, but of course Sisterazzi does. She gets the shot and now we can relax a little because I don’t have to stress anymore about doing this ride. I’ve done the deed.

We stroll around the park for another hour or so, jump on a train that chugs throughout the park and decide we’ve had our fill and start thinkin’ about what to eat again. Everything we do begins and ends with food. Will we never learn?

So Saturday was the day I didn’t die on a ride. I’ll have to pencil this in again for next year and, with Amy as my co-pilot, I’ll do just fine.

I break stuff. It’s what I do. On Sunday I broke our toaster while cleaning the kitchen. This is not the first time I’ve damaged a fairly important piece of an appliance and it won’t be the last.

Here’s a rundown of all the fixtures I broke:

The victim: Toaster
When: Last weekend
How it happened: I picked it up by its pushdown button to move it to a cabinet and the whole thing crashed to the floor. The button broke off and cracked into two pieces.
Can we still use it? Yes, the larger of the two pieces slides back onto the metal lever quite nicely.

The victim: Vacuum cleaner
When: About 3 months ago
How it happened: No idea. The metal hook thingy just broke off from cord tension over the years, I guess. And now there’s nothing to wrap the cord around.
Can we still use it? Yes, but it’s only used in the garage because when you turn it on, it smells like an electrical fire. I won’t use it in the house. I shouldn’t even let Dave use it in the garage, but hey, if your husband will vacuum anything, you let him. Bought a new vacuum for inside that won’t spontaneously combust, because, you know, fire bad.

The victim: Carpet shampooer hose
When: Almost a year ago
How it happened: There is a knobby thing that connects to a thin tube that solution runs through. I over-twisted it and now it twists no more. FACT: Duct tape does not fix everything.
Can we still use it? Nope. But I keep it hanging in the garage because I’m too lazy to throw it out. New hose fixture is on the right.

The victim: Garden hose pipe
When: Last summer
How it happened: Ran the lawn mower into it. I’m a pretty spastic mower. I mow the grass about as well as a Flowbee cuts hair.
Can we still use it? Yes, but you have to turn the water on by the nub that remains. A rubber gripper used for opening jar lids does the job just fine. I don’t know why we keep the broken piece.

Because I’m trying to earn knob karma for all the ones I’ve broken, here’s one I actually fixed myself! The previous knob would never secure well enough to keep the door completely closed and our trouble-making cat Lucky would always run full tilt into it and push it open. Because it’s the door to the laundry room, I was always afraid he would chew through the dryer hose and get stuck in the vent (he has a very little brain).

I wanted to surprise Dave with my knob-fixing abilities and decided to install a new one myself. With some phone assistance from my brother-in-law, Dale, I was able to do just that. Lookie here!

p.s. It was fun to watch Lucky run headlong into a door that used to open real easily a minute ago. The skull that protects his little brain makes an interesting sound when it hits wood. Don’t worry, he’s OK.