Someone Stole My Dirty Laundry and They’re Airing it On This Blog

So now that I’ve been on this new medication for awhile, it’s become clear to me that my  occasional lapses of memory are probably not caused by terrorists poisoning my food.  I mean, that’s pretty ridiculous when you think about it.  It’s not like terrorists are that subtle.  They bomb restaurants; they don’t sprinkle memory altering drugs on the filet mignon.

Clearly, I have Mad Cow Disease.

The problem with this is that I used to be a vegetarian.  So, I only have myself to blame.  I hate blaming myself.  It’s really not healthy.  Although I don’t think it’s quite as damaging as Mad Cow Disease.

Before you pooh pooh my occasional lapses of memory, you might want to hear about the most recent example.

I forgot to take my clothes out the washing machine.

Don’t worry, there is more to the story.

When I finally remembered, I opened the washing machine – only to find it empty.

This was perplexing, to say the least.  Puzzlement turned into fury, however, when I opened the dryer to find all of my clothes.  Very dry.  And very small.  Because they are not supposed to go in the dryer.  But my loving husband, thinking he was doing me a favor by not pointing out that I forgot to transfer my clothing from one appliance to the next, did it for me.

“Fine, I guess I’ll do him a favor back,” I thought in a not very vengeful way.  At that point I was actually feeling remorseful because between finding out my clothes would be better suited for a Barbie doll and thinking that I should do my husband a favor, I had already sent a slightly sarcastic and biting message to Cap’n Firepants not exactly thanking him for his “favor.”

On the slight chance he really did mean to do me a favor, I realized that I might have been somewhat rude.

Cap’n Firepants had a heap of jeans on his side of the closet, so I decided that I would apologize for my sarcasm by washing them.

Now, although we don’t actually take our clothes down to the riverbank and beat them, the procedurefor washing clothes in the Firepants household is nearly as labor intensive: 1. Turn on the washing machine,  2. Pour in detergent.  3. Put in the clothes.  4.  Run around the house and grab more clothes from various nooks and crannies to make sure you do not waste water on a load that does not quite exceed the weight limit of a service elevator.  5.  Add the bra that you extracted from the dog’s teeth.  6.  Close the top of the machine.  7.  Come back in 5 minutes and realize the machine stopped.  8.  Open the top and let it drop hard in a very dramatic way to restart the cycle.  9.  Kick the machine to show it who is boss.

I got the whole process rolling, and patted myself on the back for being the bigger person.  Even though I was really not bigger; my clothes were just smaller.

Thirty minutes later, I passed by the laundry room, and realized it was awfully quiet.  I looked in and, sure enough, I had forgotten to close the top.  I closed it.  I kicked it.  Noise ensued.

Don’t you see?  Total proof that I have Mad Cow Disease.

Oh, need more?

So, a couple of hours later, we returned to the house after having taken Dimples to and from piano lessons.  I proudly remembered that I needed to put the jeans of Cap’n Firepants into the dryer.

I opened the washing machine.  No clothes.

Now, Cap’n Firepants was still at work, as far as I knew.  But, it seemed clear to me that he had driven twenty minutes home, put his clothes in the dryer, and then gone back to work.  Obviously.

I looked in the dryer.

Empty.

Oh. My. God!  Someone stole Cap’n Firepants’ clothes.  While we were gone, someone snuck in the house, stole 5 pairs of jeans and my bra, and left.

Nonsense, I realized – after a few minutes of complete panic.

Obviously, Cap’n Firepants came home, put his clothes in the dryer, waited for them to dry, put them away, and went back to work.

Easy to prove.  I’ll just walk into the closet and there will be the freshly folded clothes.

I walked into the closet.

There was the heap of jeans.

Oh. My. God!

He came home, put his clothes in the dryer, waited for them to dry, put them away, got them all dirty, put them back on the floor, and then went back to work.  In the space of 2 hours.

Or I forgot to put them in the washing machine.

Oh. My. God.

I just did a load of laundry with no clothes in it.

And that, my friends, is why you should not eat meat.

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This Is How People End Up On Nancy Grace

I was looking through some rough drafts I wrote last week and came across this gem that I wrote after my post on kitchen decor.  Clearly my medication had worn off at that point…

Crap. I just looked up The Four Manners of Death on the internet. Now I know someone near me is going to be murdered and I’m going to be implicated and my computer is going to be confiscated.

The detectives who hack my highly sophisticated security system (named Wonderbutt) to access my search history aren’t going to believe that I couldn’t remember that when you just die all on your own it’s called “Natural Causes” and I needed to know that so I could give the cause of death of my refrigerator.

Plus, I keep mentioning terrorists in my posts, which is sure to raise some red flags – even though I am warning you about them, not supporting them (at least not that I know of).

Oh. My. God.  I just did it again.  I was trying to find something to rhyme with “flag” because I wanted to put a little twist on that expression, and I found bag, and then I thought, “What are the bags they put dead bodies in called?”

And I SEARCHED for it.

Stupid because A. Duh, they’re called “body bags” and 2. NOW THERE IS MORE EVIDENCE AGAINST ME.

And III. I noticed some kind-of-interesting titles in the search results.  AND NOW I WANT TO GO BACK TO THAT PAGE.

So, basically, I’m going to end up on Death Row because I have a bad memory and an insatiable curiosity for weird things.

And I live in Texas, where everything is bigger – including the number of executions each year.

Would someone please take this keyboard away from me before I implicate myself into my own body bag?

From the Woman Who Brought You Terrorists Who Poison Your Food

If someone stole your only scrubs from a hit soap opera, you would want them returned to you, right?

Technically, I didn’t bring you the terrorists. I just called attention to them. Well, I tried to call attention to them. As far as I can tell, the F organizations (FBI and FDA) have made absolutely no attempt to thwart the terrorists’ blatant attempt to slowly sabotage our population by putting memory-erasing additives in increasingly gluten free food.  Of course, they could be making efforts that I don’t know about – or that I’ve conveniently forgotten.

In the meantime, the terrorists have infiltrated the dry cleaning business. How do I know this? My keen powers of observation tell me so.

I was recently at the cleaners, and got a bit nosy about one what of the employees was doing behind the counter.

“What is she doing?” I subtly asked the person dropping my clothes into a bag.

“Her? Oh, she’s just ironing a bar code onto those pants. You know, so we can make sure they don’t get lost.” She said this kind of nervously. And who can blame her for being nervous when being interrogated by the intrepid Mrs. Cap’n Firepants?

Before I could ask any more penetrating questions, the terrorist/dry cleaner employee shoved my claim ticket into my hand, and beckoned the next customer.

And then it hit me.

“Oh. My. God.” I thought. I raced home and dashed into my closet. Sure enough, all of my recently drycleaned clothing had bar codes in them.

So much for my keen powers of observation.

“I’ve been violated and I didn’t even know it!” I whispered to my bar-code free pajama pants.

Sure, they say it’s to make sure my ten dollar blouse doesn’t end up in the hands of a serial dry cleaning thief. But I know better.

The terrorists are tracking my clothing.

That way, when I finally kick the bucket as a result of their food poisoning plot, and my husband gives away my clothes to someone, and the new someone brings them in to be cleaned, and the terrorist/dry cleaner sees that someone else used to own those pants, and they call my house to let me know that my pants have been filched, and my husband lets them know that the pants are no longer mine because I am deceased due to forgetting that I’m not supposed to walk in front of cars going 65 miles an hour (and he assures the terrorist/dry cleaner that those are not the actual pants I was wearing when I met my demise), the terrorist/dry cleaner will be satisfied that the food poisoning plot is working just as planned and report this encouraging progress to the Head Honcho Terrorist with a cryptic tweet, like, “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants wears control top panty hose.”

My husband seems to think this is a bit “of a reach”.  Coincidentally, he uses a different dry cleaner.  Who does not put bar codes in his pants.

So, clearly, I am sleeping with the enemy.

The plot thickens.

And yet another reason you may not want barcodes in your clothing… (Click on above image to read this thread of an online conversation about barcodes on clothing.)
from: http://www.warriortalk.com/archive/index.php/t-72981.html

I Would Pay The Whole 4 Cents to Be Sequestered with Brad Pitt

Until I can find the tangible evidence that my doctor hates my hair stylist, thus giving him the perfect motive to tank my thyroid test, I have decided to blame my depression on The Sequester. I mean, if my problems aren’t the result of thyroid dysfunction, they clearly must have some external cause. And this whole sequester thing is definitely stressing me out.

First of all, I’m totally bummed that “Sequester” has a completely different meaning than the one I’ve known all of these years. Until now, a sequester was something I could only dream about – having the government pay for me to stay in a hotel with maid service, room service, and all of the books I could ever want to read since I wouldn’t be allowed access to any media in case Nancy Grace might somehow manage to cajole me into nailing Jodi Arias to the wall.

When the news outlets started warning about an oncoming sequester in Congress, I pictured the whole muddle of them being locked inside the Capitol until they  knocked each other off and one person became the victor – kind of like a mix between Twelve Angry Men, Fight Club, and the cardinals in the Vatican conclave.  I was sorely disappointed to find out that this was not the case.

I was even more alarmed by rumors that this whole sequester thing might delay my tax refund.  After all, I use my tax refund to pay my psychiatrist, so if I don’t get my refund, I don’t…well, you get the picture.

Of course, I should be completely straight with you, and admit that we have received an unexpected endowment from the county recently.  Although, to be honest, I don’t think it would pay for the gas to take the check to the bank, much less thirty seconds with my psychiatrist.

In fact, I find it depressing that the county actually paid for a stamp to send this check to us.

Yes, folks, that is a check for 4 cents.

And then Hugo Chavez died.  The only person more paranoid than me. The person who said, “Would it be so strange that they’ve invented technology to spread cancer and we won’t know about it for 50 years?”

Remember?  I’m the one who said terrorists are poisoning our food.  And now I’m depressed.  Hugo said there are mad scientists spreading cancer – and he died of cancer.

I think the connections are pretty obvious.

If my doctor had just said, “Your thyroid is wonky, and that’s why you’re depressed,” we wouldn’t be in this big mess.

People Who Eat Food From a Farmers Market Are Ignorant

from: http://twomenandalittlefarm.blogspot.com

Don’t hate on me yet.  I know the title looks bad, but bear with me.

So, I was eating lunch today, and eavesdropping on conversations, like I usually do.  One of the women began to proselytize about how much better it is to eat fresh food than something from a supermarket.    Her rationale was that, with supermarket food, “you don’t know where it’s been.”

And I thought, “Well, you kind of know more about where it’s been than you do with food from a farmers market.  I mean, you pretty much have just the word of the farmer that he hasn’t painted arsenic on it or anything.  I’m not saying you should buy all of your food from a grocery store, but if your main reason for buying your zucchini from someone on the side of the road is that you think you can count on the goodness of people’s hearts not to poison your purchase by growing it in something other than pristine conditions, then you might want to rethink that. ”

But I didn’t say it.  That is what this blog is for – whatimeant2say, but didn’t.  This way, I don’t get fired from my job or shot at (this is Texas, after all).

A few minutes later, the same woman launched into a diatribe about anti-depressants.

“Well, I just don’t believe in them,” she said.  “I think people just use them so they don’t have to deal with whatever is making them depressed.  I mean, look at me, [insert details about her life that were very traumatic] and I didn’t take anti-depressants.  Get over it.”

Oh boy.

Wow.  I can’t even type whatimeant2say because so many sentences crawled into my brain at the same time I think I almost blacked out.

Here is the long and short of it:

Not everyone who is depressed needs to take anti-depressants.  But some people do.  Like me.

Not every farmer’s market sells food that kills people.  But sometimes they do.  Like this one.

And not every person who eats food from a farmers market is ignorant.  But some are.  Like you. *

*(Not you, the person reading this; you, the person who likes to make sweeping generalizations on topics about which she is not an expert.  I know you are not that person.  So, don’t hate on me.)

Of course, I’m the person who thinks terrorists are poisoning our food.  But just some terrorists.  And some food.  Some people, namely the author of this blog, like to be judicious when they jump to conclusions.

You (sweeping generalization person) should try it some time.

There’s a Big Difference Between Mostly Dead and All Dead

It all began with a death threat…

Mrs. Cap’n Firepants, Give us your computer as hostage for 3-5 business days or your hard drive will die a slow and painful death.  Sincerely,Apple

Upon receiving this demand, I promptly threw it in the pile with my other death threats.  After all, I am a pirate’s wife.  I do not take death threats seriously unless they are repeated a couple of times.  Plus, I don’t deal with terrorists.

Then I got the e-mail.

Mrs. Cap’n Firepants, we are not joking.  Your hard drive is about to kick the can.  Sincerely, Apple.

Okay.  Fine.  I needed to replace my hard drive.  This, of course, necessitated backing it up, which I hadn’t done in over a year.  So, I plugged in my backer upper thing, fired up my Time Machine, and let it do its thing over night.

The next morning, all was good.  Backer upper filled.  Time Machine back from the future.

One of my friends had advised me to keep backer uppering once a day, and only the new things would be added.  Sounded good.

Next morning, error message on my computer.  Time Machine seriously messing with my computer, making me feel like I was traveling at light speed and about to throw up.  Absolutely no data on my backer upper.  Time Machine apparently ate everything in the backer upper and spit it out in a parallel universe.

Not good.

Further research made me conclude that my backer upper needed more space.  This meant I needed a new backer upper.

It was Christmas time.  I was busy setting up my Harry Potter nativity, and consoling my daughter over the inadvertent beheading of her Harry Potter ornament.  I did not have time or money to purchase a new backer upper.  Besides, no new ransom notes had arrived.  So things were probably not that serious.

I think you know where this is going.

I will skip the death scene, which occurred a couple of days after Christmas. Suffice it to say, that it’s good that I take anti-depressants and that I hadn’t, at that point, seen Les Miserables yet.

I got a new hard drive.  For free.  I suspect that the kidnappers, upon meeting me in person, rightly concluded that I was not a person with whom they should trifle about ransom.  I doubt the hysterics had anything to do with it.

But a new hard drive could never replace the old one, the one that knew all of my secrets and –

I decided that I needed a Miracle Max.

It turned out that, like The Princess Bride’s Man in Black,  my hard drive was only mostly dead, and Miracle Max was able to resurrect it, for a small fee equivalent to the cost of a year at Harvard.

Heartened by this turn events I brought the new body of my old hard drive home, and plugged it into the old body of my new hard drive so they could become one.

And now, it seems, that I apparently pimped my computer to a rabbit.  Instead of years of photographs, or the complete absence of photographs, my pictures exponentially reproduced, so that I now have 4 times as many photos as before the hard drive died.  And, ironically, I once again have too much data to fit on my backer upper.

I know that, if you have suffered the death of a hard drive, you have no sympathy for me, at this point.  I mean, why should I complain that I now have 100,000 pictures of Wonderbutt hogging space on my hard drive when, a week ago, I was sobbing because I had none?

That’s okay.

When my Toyota falls apart because I procrastinated responding to their ransom note (which they cleverly disguised as a “recall notice”), then you will regret your hard heart regarding my hard drive.  I only hope you can cope with the guilt.

P.S. This one is for you, Guap:

Cock(roach)-Blocked

I am the woman who saves spiders from my daughter’s sound barrier breaking screeches. I am the woman who distracts my husband long enough so that he cannot stomp on the lizard in the shower. I am the woman who grabbed a live rat snake at the back of his head, walked him to our back door, and flung him into the back yard – probably bruising only his ego.

I am the woman who becomes a boneless lump on the floor whenever I spot a cockroach.

I do not know why I am so completely unnerved by only these creatures, but they are definitely my Kryptonite. (Except for hissing cockroaches in the Science Lab next door to my classroom. For some reason, those do not overly concern me.  Probably because they are in containers…)

But 6 foot long cockroaches that hide in my moving boxes in my brand new (to me) classroom, and leap into my face when I lift up a book, and are obviously planted by terrorists with the intention of dismantling the United States’ educational system one terrified teacher at a time, have a hard time getting on my good side.

I do not like squishing cockroaches. This is not out of any kind of concern for their well-being; it is because the last time I tried to squish one, it refused to die. My fear of live cockroaches is only rivaled by my fear of live cockroaches that will not die – reminding me that when I die they will crawl in my ear and have babies for the rest of eternity.

So, I did what I considered to be a very well-thought-out maneuver. I grabbed the box with the leaping cockroach, and ran outside my classroom so I could fling it. Away. From. My. Ears.

My classroom is in a portable building. For security reasons, we must keep our doors locked at all times.

As soon as I ran out of the room, the door slammed behind me. Locking me out.

I set down the box. The cockroach flung himself to freedom.

Toward the hole in the bottom corner of my door.

The cockroach was in and I was out.

I weighed the benefits of quitting my job and walking away from the classroom forever or walking to the office to get someone to let me back into my room.  Say my room is Texas.  The office would be Mars.  That’s how far the office is from my classroom.

I knocked on the door to see if the cockroach would let me back in.

Apparently, he does not welcome unsavory characters like me in his living space.

I sighed, and walked down to the office.  I did not tell them that a cockroach locked me out.  But I made certain the burly custodian entered my classroom first.

She did not seem too worried about terroristic cockroaches.

She showed me how to keep my door unlocked so I could avoid the re-occurence of absentmindedly walking outside and allowing the door to slam irrevocably shut.  Even though I can’t keep it unlocked because it’s against the rules.  Another moral dilemma that I get to debate in my head.

Then she left.

I think that, if we sell the car, cancel our cable, and stop eating, I could probably afford to stay home.

Or, I can just walk around with cotton in my ears.

It’s a tough call.

Posted by my cockroach on my classroom door. His name is Neumo. And I am not his guest.

Hypochondriacs Should Not Have Access to the Internet

There is something wrong with me.  No one knows what it is.  The CIA refuses to believe that terrorists are poisoning my food.  And the doctors refuse to believe that I am not crazy.  But has anyone bothered to test me for cat litter disease?  I think not.

I thought toxoplaswhatever was just a great excuse for getting out of changing the litter box for the nine months I was pregnant.  But, it turns out that pregnant women are not the only victims.  In fact, 1/3 of the world’s population is walking around with this infection RIGHT NOW!

A test of a bunch of Danish women showed that the ones with the infection had a higher risk of suicide attempts than those without the infection.  According to the scientists, it is not necessarily causally related.

But, I’m not fooled.  Notice that this study consisted entirely of women.  The scientists are just trying to cover up the fact that these poor women all married husbands who force them to change the litter box.

Of course, I have not attempted suicide.  (Unless you count the time, last week, when I drove on the highway at night without turning my car headlights on.  But, that was kind of not really deliberate, so I don’t think that counts.  And, let’s not mention that minor incident to Cap’n Firepants, okay?)  And, I am not Danish.  So, I guess that is why no doctor has recommended this test for me.

Oh, and we don’t have a cat.  We used to have a cat, though.  Who committed suicide.  Okay, not really.  But, I am pretty sure that I did get toxoplaswhatchamacallit, and I am, right this moment, suffering from other problems that it causes which the sexist Danish scientists have not yet discovered – such as an inefficient colon and a tendency to acquire mattresses that need immediate disposal.

My point is that I am quite frustrated with the inability, or the complete lack of curiosity, on my doctors’ parts to figure out what is wrong with me.  Doesn’t anyone know how to Google besides me?

You should really thank me for not including any of the other pics I got when I did a search for  “kitty litter”.
photo credit: Rescue Rabbit via photo pin cc

I Think I’ve Narrowed it Down

After months of data collection and very scientific experimentation, I feel that I am finally ready to assure you that our Diet Coke is not being poisoned by terrorists.  Last year, when I began experiencing worse than usual intestinal issues, and no doctor could find anything physically wrong with me, I surmised that terrorists are poisoning our food.  This was supported by the additional symptom of memory loss.  Whenever I mentioned this theory to my husband, he would raise his eyebrow and suggest that I cut back on my Diet Coke.  On second thought, I don’t think he raised his eyebrow.  I’m the eyebrow raiser.  He is the blue-eyed deadpan starer.  It’s very disconcerting.

So, I quit drinking Diet Coke.

Well, that did not help at all.  And, now, I have the added side-effect of being drowsy all of the time.  But, at least I have eliminated the possibility of a Diet Coke Conspiracy – a feat which I think is deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize.  Between refusing to harbor a fugitive immigrant host a foreign exchange student and discovering that Diet Coke is not the cause of my considerable discomfort (thus avoiding an uncomfortable confrontation with suspect enemy nations), I feel that I have done more than my share in promoting peace and goodwill around the world.

Of course, using the process of elimination to root out the precise poison-carrying food in my diet could take a long time.  So, I informed my long-suffering husband, Cap’n Firepants, that I was considering quitting eating altogether.  He huffed, which is what he does when he thinks I have just hatched a ridiculous plan.  He huffs a lot.

Overhearing this one-sided conversation, my daughter chimed in, “You can live quite a long time without food as long as you have water.”   (She just read The Hunger Games.  And watched a Beanie Baby version of it on YouTube because I won’t take her to see the actual movie.  So, I guess this makes her some sort of famine expert.)

Which I already knew of course.  But I also knew that starving myself would not have the desired effect of becoming a National Hero who Was the Normal Mother who Uncovered a Terrorist Plot to Poison our Food (or Drink).

So, I will continue this ridiculously slow procedure of removing one item at a time from my meals in order to discover the offending pabulum.  And yes, I just used the online thesaurus to learn a new word.

I am a Hero, a Scientist, and a Logophile.  This is what they shall proclaim after the Flash Mob performs at my funeral.

Who died from Unnecessary Diet Coke Withdrawal during the Pursuit of Terrorists-Who-Don’t-Kill-But-Just-Irritate-Your-Bowels.

The Terrorists’ Grocery List                                            photo credit: passiveaggressivenotes via photo pin cc

Mafia Nuns Could Totally Rule the World

I am convinced that the power of suggestion has much more strength than actual demonstrations of brute force.

When I was a kid, I could not understand terrorism.  It made absolutely no sense to me.  Why would someone do something considered to be particularly heinous by the majority of humankind, and then send a letter actually claiming responsibility?  And, secondly, if they had admitted to it, why weren’t these people thrown in prison immediately?  No one explained to me that terrorists like the Symbionese Liberation Army didn’t sit around at registered addresses watching The Love Boat and waiting for the police to politely escort them to a cell in the local jail.

In elementary school, you learn that it’s wise to stay out of trouble.  Especially when you go to a Catholic school with nuns wielding rulers that never seem to be used for measuring.  You do your best to walk the straight and narrow, and if, for some inexplicable reason, you commit one of the Deadly Sins (which was a much longer list according to the nuns than the Vatican version), then you make darn sure that you never admit to it.

Mind you, I never once saw a nun use one of those rulers, and none of my troublemaking friends ever actually reported getting paddled when sent to the Principal’s Office.   But the rumors were prevalent.

However, every time I happened to overhear a news report about a plane being hijacked or hostages being taken, my understanding of human behavior based on my observations at school seemed to become less reliable.

“No one has yet claimed responsibility for the bombing.”

“Well, of course they haven’t,” I would think to myself.  Geez.  Is that all you need to do to be a news anchor – state the obvious?  Let’s think about this.  If Mother Superior could paddle you for cheating on a spelling test, what horrible consequences would be inflicted on someone who admitted to planting a bomb in a marketplace?

Then the next day, someone would “claim responsibility,” and I would be completely perplexed.  Why would they do that?  Especially if they weren’t Catholic and didn’t believe in confession?  What was the point?  You don’t brag about committing crimes (unless it was to a priest), because then you get caught.  Not that I ever committed crimes – or broke any rules for that matter.  But I did, according to my mother, have some Mafia relatives dangling off of a distant branch of the family tree.  And the Mafia has a whole different approach to advertising its misconduct, if you know what I mean.

Now that terrorism seems even more prevalent – or I just listen to more news – I get the point of the responsibility claims, but I understand human behavior even less.  Why do terrorists think they are going to get what they want by making people hate them even more?

Comedian Jeff Dunham’s puppet, Achmed the Dead Terrorist, pretty much sums up the effectiveness of this strategy:

“I can’t wait to see Santa Claus. I sit on his knee, I tell him what I want, then I blow him up!”

And so, I submit to you that a group of women dressed like penguins and about as brutal as Oprah, might have known a little bit more about getting people to behave the way you want.  Of course, you might argue that they were merely dealing with 5-10 year olds.  And my response would then be, “Have you tried to teach a class of 22 5-year olds lately?”  I think you’d rather negotiate with terrorists.

thanks to paddymccann on Flickr