Dear Diary - I've gone all Austin Powers

 

Dear Diary,

I want my Mojo back!

It's been a few short weeks since I started my new job and I have no inspiration to blog.  I have nothing to talk about.

I mean - come on! - everyone on the team is so nice.  

Yes, I know I'm still in the honeymoon period, but seriously, there isn't one person I don't like.

We have none - count them: none! - of the usual suspects.

We don't have a Mr Step-On-Your-Head who tries to take over every meeting, take credit for work other people do, or take over the coolest projects.

We don't have a Dead Wood Guy, who is a complete waste of space, has been doing what he does for years, doesn't want to change or improve or think, likes his simple life and is gone by 4pm every day.

We don't have a Chatty Cathy Time Warp, who comes over to your desk, asks inane questions and somehow manages to take up 30 minutes of your time discussing absolutely nothing.

We don't have a Preggie Peggy, clomping around, sitting down slowly and getting up while panting, touting her ultrasounds and interrupting meetings to say her baby is kicking.

We don't even have a Sneaky Suck-up, who talks a lot without saying anything and repeats whatever the boss has said when asked for his opinion. 

Crap.  

I hate having nothing to complain about...

Dear Diary - Ho! Ho! Ho!

 

Dear Diary

I walked past the Nordstrom shop window yesterday and there was Santa taking photos with families and kids.  

I stopped to watch.

A family with little kids came up.  Santa, whose mike is broadcast outside the store so you can hear what he is saying, said hello and made reassuring noises but, of course, the girl baby started to scream.  

Her older brother, originally fascinated and quite comfortable with Santa, became suspicious when his sister started to wail and took a step away, putting his right hand in his mouth and looking a bit freaked out by it all.  I didn't see what happened, because I went to buy coffee, but I was thinking that Santa must have the patience of a saint.

When I walked past again, Santa was chatting to two pre-teens, who were clearly forced to be there by their parents and were totally DYING, Dude.  Like, Oh.  My.  God!

They looked like the only thing that could be worse would be water boarding, and they were both standing as far away from Santa as they could, looking at the cameraman, willing him to get this damn thing over with.

It reminded me about a story a colleague once told me about a friend of hers who made her kids go every year until the youngest was 25 years old, at which point the children ganged up against their mother and flat out refused to co-operate.  

On the other hand, it must be nice to have that yearly chronicle of how the kids grew up.

Maybe we should go see Santa Paws with the puppies...

Then again, I don't want to be the bitch whose dogs killed Santa...

Dear Diary - 6 months to live?

 

Dear Diary,

I am watching Bucket List on TV and, apart from reminding me to update my own list, it's making me think what I'd do if I was told I had 6 months to live.

Here are a few ideas:

• Take up smoking again
• Drive an American muscle car round a racetrack
• Have a lot of sex with Fluffy Bear
• Hire a female prostitute to give Fluffy Bear a threesome
• Walk my dogs a LOT
• Throw a big party for all my friends - 80's theme, of course
• Get one of those massages where 4 people massage you at once
• Try smoking pot
• Try Ecstasy
• Skydive, tandem of course (fuck taking all that pre-learning crap)
• Go back to South Africa and throw another big party for my family and friends there
• Go on the scariest rollercoaster I can find
• Hire a professional dancer to dance salsa with me at a club (I know enough to be led in a fairly decent dance)
• Sit on Fluffy Bear's lap and be held.

Dear Diary - Thanksgiving

 

Dear Diary

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I suppose I should think about the things that I am thankful for:

• My wonderful, master chef husband, Fluffy Bear
• My handsome Puppy Dog
• My cutie wootie Puppy Girl
• My new job!
• Any person out there who doesn't dock their dog's tail or mutilate it's ears
• Any person out there who has a pit bull as a loving, family pet
• My warm home (even though we don't own it)
• My family who keep me in their hearts, even though I am far away
• My friends nearby, my surrogate family
• My friends afar, who keep in touch
• Nordstrom, where I can go to experience real customer service at any time
• My blog, where I can express myself
• My therapist, who helps me see the connections and lessons in my life
• Anyone who fights for gay, women's, or race rights
• Anyone who works or volunteers for a charitable cause
• Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk, for transitioning my home country without bloodshed 
• The Queen, for consistently giving us an example of dignity
• Cable TV, for entertaining me
• Books, for transporting my imagination
• Anyone who knows how to drive round a roundabout properly
• Anyone who has a hands-free cellphone kit in their car instead of holding their fucking phone to their ear and driving with one hand
• My fellow bloggers and twitpeeps
• Anyone who serves in the military, doing our dirty work for us
• Military families, who sacrifice so much
• Anyone who works in one of those jobs that's badly paid, not respected enough, yet vital to us all: Police, Firemen and women, Ambulance people, Nurses, Doctors and Psychiatrists who do public or charitable work
• My parents, who watch over me from above.

Dear Diary - The Crap Creep

 

Dear Diary,

I broke down about a week ago.

I just couldn't stand it anymore.  

I called our cleaning company.

We aren't earning like we used to (OK, so I'm not earning at all), so we had stopped our weekly cleaning services.

When you have to economize and get rid of the cleaner, you say you'll do it all yourself, but it just doesn't work out that way.  Sure, you clean, but you do bits here and there, and the whole house is never completely dusted, vacuumed and mopped.  

And then, one day, you sit down on the toilet, humming a happy tuneless ditty, and make the mistake of looking down.  You see the kazillionth dusty little hairball and the camel screams in pain while the straw roars in triumph.

And so, dear Diary, our dear cleaner came back to us.  Just once.  Just today.

In the time that she would normally clean the whole place and do washing and ironing, she wasn't even able to get to Fluffy Bear's office.  And she fucking worked.

The microwave was unplugged and put on the floor to clean the counter.  The sofa was moved away from the wall to get to the radiator.  The bed was stripped and she probably was totally freaked when the linen marched off the mattress on it's own.

And so we came home this afternoon to a foreign place.  

Air smelling the way it should.  Linoleum the color they made it. Throw pillows on the sofa where they ought to be.  A spotless kitchen sink.

And then, dear Diary, the Crap Creep began.

It doesn't take much.

A Coke can put next to the microwave to go into recycling, my purse emptied onto the dining room table, the dogs shaking vigorously and sending their hairs flying in every direction.

By tomorrow, we'll be untidy again.

By the end of the next day the paw print collage will stretch from the back door to the living room.

Before a week has passed, there'll be gunk behind the bath taps.

But - guess what? - this isn't tomorrow, dear Diary. Not yet.

This is today.

And a clean house is pure blissssssssss...

Dear Diary - I'VE BEEN CENSORED!

Dear Diary,

I am pissed.

In the American sense (pissed off), not the English sense (drunk), unfortunately.

Although I'm about to head for the Vinho Verde and correct that.

Why am I seething, dear Diary?

Well, here's what happened.

I read a blogpost on a California newspaper website.  It was about another blogpost by a Virginia man who had taken his 11 year old son to Hooters.  Mr Virginia said on his blog that he had taken his son there to see how he would react to the women. 

I left a comment on the California newspaper website.

If I remember correctly, it went something like:

If there was a restaurant chain called Shooters, where tanned, handsome men with six packs waited on tables in Calvin Klein tighty whities and leather chaps, then this would be OK.

But there isn't, so it's not OK.

If Hooters had male waiters in orange shorts and tank tops stretched over their pecs, this would be OK.

But they don't, so it's not OK.

If this man had taken his son to another part of town to "see how he reacts to black people" would that be OK?

If there was a restaurant called NIGGAS where all the waiters were black and you could call them “boy” would that be OK?

If you are ever confused about whether something is sexist, substitute "black" for "women" and see if it sounds wrong to you.

And by the way, Hooters' hiring practices are something Mrs Palin, on her bookpushing Magical Mavericky Tour, believes in -- "profiling."

The reason I said that the above was what "I thought" I wrote, is this:

THEY DELETED MY COMMENT.

Here's their very nice email:

Hello,

I am one of the managers of [The Blog] on [Website]. While we
welcome comments to our posts and try our best not to censor anyone, I have
to ask you to revise a sentence in your comment before we can publish it.

Here is the sentence: If there was a restaurant called NIGGAS where all the
waiters were black and you could call them “boy” would that be OK?

I understand the point you are making, but it is our policy at the [The Newspaper] not to print the N-word except if it is necessary in the context of a news
story for news worthy purposes.

I really do like the points you made. Could you please re-send your comment
without the use of that word?

Thank you,

[Name]

[Job title]

I guess they don't have a very strong sense of irony.

Dear Diary - I love you, Donald Mills, you Crabby Old Fart

Dear Diary

 

As you know, I love to read other people's blogs as much as I like to write mine.

 

One of my favorites is "Crabby Old Fart: The Problem with Young People Today is..." written my Mr Donald Mills.  He doesn't like young people and who, dear Diary, can blame him?

 

Recently he created a brochure for old people to help them if they have a scary encounter with a younger person.  Having experienced the utterly revolting "youf" on London buses, I see where he is coming from.

 

His post is here.

 

I had to reply to him, dear Diary.  Or, put it this way, he inspired me.

 

Here's what I had to say:

Dear Donald

I have another suggestion for you.

I suspect that one thing a Teenage Hooligan detests is someone of la troisieme age who tries to be “hip” and talk to them.

The key is therefore to attempt to engage them in conversation while repelling them at the same time.

Teenagers think they are so cool with their “code” of slang, and the last thing they want is anyone over 25 participating.

1) Try butchering the modern vernacular:

“Hey dood wassuuuuuuuuuup?” (the key here is to draw out the “up” part as long as possible, preferably till you start coughing). I’m feeling totally bangin’ and I’m gonna bee-arch ma tude. You gonna gangsta that gettin’ jiggy with it?”

2) Even more effective is dated vernacular:

“Hello young champ. You look like a hip cat. Been to any good discos lately?”

“Yo your outfit is far out! Hey can you give me the skinny on where a man can get down and boogie in this town? Or can I get some honeys by hanging at yo crib?”

“Yo funkadelic! You groovy baby and jive turkey today? Or you just mondo cool with yo moofy?”

3) Most effective – misuse of modern and dated vernacular:

“Backatcha! You are to the max digging those threads. You bitchin’ a bogart dudet with the freaky deaky and cut the cheese? Catch my drift? Totally sick, dude!”

“Hey dude! You gonna up hit up the holla? You peeps the phat (pronounced “fat”) po po (that’s as in Edgar Allen Poe, not poo as in poop) in the man? Cos (as in because) I pardy hardy peace out! Go pimpin!”

Oh, and I’d also recommend pepper spray.

Best of luck.

ittybittycrazy.com

 

Dear Diary - Good morning?

 

Dear Diary,

Yesterday I had lunch with a good friend.  Like us, she and her husband have two dogs.  She was telling me about how much her dogs like routine, and how theirs worked.

She gets up in the morning at 6am, walks the dogs for 15 minutes, feeds them, then gets ready for work and is out of the house to go to work by 7:15.  She said that the walk in the morning gets her blood going and wakes her up, which sounded like a really good idea to me.

Well, Puppy Girl wakes us at 6am anyway, so I decided to give it a try.  I got up at 6am, let the dogs out for potty, brushed my teeth, got dressed, caught Puppy Girl so I could get her harness on her (she hates it), tried to get Puppy Dog to calm down and stop bouncing when he saw his leash, and finally got out of the front door.

Puppy Dog is on an extendable leash, and Puppy Girl on a thin nylon normal one.  He doesn't like her first thing in the morning - who would like a baby jumping all over them nipping their ears before they'd had breakfast? - so I have to keep them apart.  She can't differentiate his play growls from his I-am-going-to-bite-you-if-you-don't-stop-it-NOW growls.

So she spent the entire walk pulling at the harness, whimpering, trying to get to her brother.

We walked for about five minutes before I realized I had made a mistake not putting my gloves on.  I wrestled one from my pocket, held both leashes in one hand, and wrangled a glove on.  Puppy Dog immediately decided to squat and have his morning ablutions, so there I was, two dogs straining at the leads, taking the glove off again, shining the little torch on my keyring on an neighbor's bush, trying to find the poop and scoop it.

On we went.  Puppy Girl strained against the leash all the way around the three blocks, and I became concerned that she was learning the wrong thing about going for a walk - pulling.  No better time to deconstruct bad behavior and replace it with good behavior than right now with a puppy, so I put Puppy Dog back in the house and took Puppy Girl out for another walk, with treats in my pocket, trying to get her to walk at my side.

Giving her treats with gloves on was a mistake.  She thought it was a new biting game.  We got halfway up the block with her jumping up at my side, trying to nip my gloves.  Then she saw another dog coming down the street and started barking her head off.  I turned back and went home.

I put Puppy Girl in her crate - after I managed to catch her - when we got home, and fed Puppy Dog, then put her breakfast in her crate.  She wasn't interested, and kept barking and whining.

I figured maybe she needed potty - she had only peed on our walk - so I took her outside.  But all she wanted to do was play. 

I got her back inside, herded her back into the crate, suffered the crying (you have to ignore it) till she ate.

Thank God.

Potty time again.  She ran straight to her potty place (yay!), and peed.  I knew she must need to poop by now, so tried to get her to do it.  Nope.  She barked and barked.  I was confused. 

And then I saw it.  She had obviously pooped first thing this morning - outside the enclosure - and I had stepped in it.

I scooped it, then got the hose to clean off the bottom of my shoes.  Of course the water got into my socks.  I squelched my way inside, seriously contemplating a cup of tea laced with whiskey.

It was 7am and yes, dear Diary, my blood was pumping.  But I didn't feel awake.

I felt exhausted.

Dear Diary - To blog, or not to blog?

Dear Diary,

My online friend, Snooty Primadona, asked herself - and all of us - why we blog.

And, as they say, she got me to thinkin'.

Why do I blog?

I think it's because, deep down, I'm a creative person, and that creativity has always expressed itself through writing.

Languages, and the way people express themselves using them, has been an endless source of fascination for me.  When I was a kid at school, English was my favorite subject, closely followed by French and Afrikaans.  

The fact that people chose to assign gender to nouns interests me.  La table is feminine, whereas le chien (dog) is not.  

The fact that you have to say no twice in Afrikaans interests me too.  They use a double negative.  Ek het dit nie gese nie (I didn't say it).  

How people expressed themselves through words - the art of prose - was something I grew to love.  Dickens' humor, Shakespeare's prose-poetry and Judy Blume somehow getting into my head and helping me work through the difficult parts of being a teenager.

The more I read, the more I realized that writing can be as much about working through things for yourself as about telling stories.  I never had a diary as a kid - I'd start one and then not take the time to keep doing entries - but I wrote a book when I was about 12.  It's somewhere in my stored stuff.  I seem to remember it has something to do with a boy and my transformation when my braces came off.

After High School, when studying English at University became about analyzing the writing of others, I never wrote creatively for years.  I guess I didn't need to.  I was having fun growing up, getting out into the world, travelling.

But then I got into the corporate machine.

I was working in a large company, dealing head on with a matrixed hierarchy, 15 hour days, business travel, working on weekends, useless meetings, yearly goal-setting and reviews and a curve on which my team-mates and I were graded for bonuses so we were effectively in competition with each other to get our projects noticed by our managers.  Bureaucracy and office politics seemed to stifle any creative or artistic thought.  

Even emotions had to be regulated - one had to appear enthusiastic and be PC at all times, no matter what you were feeling or what was going on in your life.  This was particularly difficult for me after I had major surgery and went back to the office too early.  Consequently, I was labelled "a bad fit" and my work life became even more restricted.

It was all looking a bit bleak, dear Diary, until my therapist suggested I find a way to write again.

I'm not the kind of person who can set up a story outline, develop characters and have the self-discipline to produce a novel.  I admire the people who do.  My creativity comes to me in little bursts: observations, jokes and the need to vent.

And so, the blog.

And that, dear Diary, answers the question.

Update on Sunday, November 15, 2009 at 4:41PM by Ittybittycrazy

You might find this article interesting.  

The article is from the UK newspaper, the Sunday Times.  You can find it here:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article6896061.ece

Extract:

Women's blogging: the new home front

November 1, 2009

By India Knight

From the trivial to the titillating, the hilarious to the heart-rending, women are spilling their most intimate secrets on the internet — and revolutionising their lives

We know about Facebook and Twitter, about downloading free music, and that the current crafts explosion started online. We know about forums and celebrity gossip; about sinister blokes “grooming” pre-teens in chat rooms; about funny clips on YouTube, online gaming and techy nerdery. But it’s a mysteriously under-reported fact that the internet has also dramatically changed the landscape for “ordinary” women. Many people still view technology as off-puttingly masculine and the joys of the online world as geekily blokeish — either that or a tiny bit sad. That’s certainly true at one level (there’s the overwhelming preponderance of porn, aside from anything else), but it ignores the seismic — and I don’t use the word lightly — difference the online world has made to women’s lives, by holding a mirror up to them and celebrating the minutiae of their existence as if it mattered.

Dear Diary - Lassie come home

Dear Diary, 

I RESCUED A DOG TODAY!

No, I don't mean that I went to the Humane Society and brought a dog home.  I mean that I found a dog that was lost and took it home again!

It was so amazing!

I want to share the story with you, dear Diary.   

I was at the coffee shop, walking to the car, balancing a latte and a cappuccino in one hand and fumbling with my car keys in the other.  I saw a dog out of the corner of my eye.  

I had no reason to react to it but somewhere, in the back of my mind, I knew something was wrong.

So I put my coffees in the car, grabbed a bag of dog treats and walked down the block to where the dog was.  I saw that he didn't have a leash and watched him run into the yard of a house next to the coffee shop.  We have sat at outside tables next to that yard very often, and I have never seen any sign of the people who live there being dog owners.  

I threw some treats into the yard and then walked in, closing the gate behind me.  The dog was obviously scared, so I gave him more treats, and slowly walked up to the front door.  I rang the doorbell.

The dog looked at me, looked at the closed gate and immediately knew what was going on.  He wriggled under the gate and took off, crossing the street and running up a hill.

Shit!

I ran back to my car, backed out of the parking lot and followed the dog.  I found him in front of a church.  I pulled the car onto the sidewalk, made reassuring noises at the dog and started luring it with treats.  

I eventually grabbed its collar and it was petrified.  The ears were all the way back and it was quivering.  I knelt down and stroked it, petted it on the head, massaged its ears.  It seemed to calm a little, but still tried to pull away a few times. 

This was clearly someone's pet.  He was well fed, well groomed and had a collar and tags.  Just no name tag with his owner's contact details on it.  

More treats, more soft voice, more petting.

Then I started to put the treats on the car bumper, and then in the back of the SUV.  The dog jumped inside.

Success!

I got in the car, cranked up the heat (the dog was wet and dirty and it was cold out) and headed home.  

I called Fluffy Bear out of the house and he brought water and more food.  We checked the tags, but only the pet license one was readable.  I had my laptop and tried to find a place online where I could look up a dog from the pet license number, but I couldn't find anyway to do it.

So we drove across town to the Humane Society and they were amazing.

We met a lovely lady who looked up the pet license, told us the dog's name was Jim, and called the owner.  As soon as she said she was calling from the Humane Society, he must've asked if they had her dog because she said:

  "No, I don't have your dog, some good Samaritans have him."

Then she passed me the phone.  I can't tell you how good it felt to talk to this man.  

Life is full of challenges, irritations, sadness interspersed with little moments of comfort, times with friends, love from puppies.

But, when you live in suburbia and work in corporate America, there are few opportunities to really do good in this world, unless you are one of those amazing people who regularly give their time and effort as a volunteer.  

Fifteen minutes after that phone call we were giving Jim back to his family.

He had crawled under the fence in his own yard (we saw the hole), somehow made it across a very busy road, and run 5 blocks West and 4 blocks South before I found him.

The smile on his owner's face, Jim's wagging tail... What a lovely sight. 

I rewarded myself later, dear Diary, with a Babe Ruth bar and a nice cup of tea.

Dear Diary - Here's why nothing gets done

  

Dear Diary,

Yesterday, Fluffy Bear had a go at me about not submitting the claim for our new glasses to our medical insurance.  He's right, it's been over two weeks since we shelled out our savings because neither of us could see a damn.  

But I keep forgetting, even though the paperwork is 80% done and is sitting on the coffee table in plain sight.

Me, who is normally so organized.

What's going on?  

I'll tell you what's going on, dear Diary.

Let me give you a snippet of my morning:

I walk towards the couch, determined to sit down, pick the paperwork off the coffee table, get it done and ready to hit the mailbox.  But, to get work done, I have to distract the dogs first.

What to do?

Ah... toy exchange.

So I quietly pick up some of the toys that are still out from yesterday and move towards the Toy Box.  Of course they see me.  Of course they know what is going on.  Of course they decide that yesterday's toys are suddenly deeply fascinating and try to grab them out of my hands.

I wrestle the toys into the box, I make a big deal about pulling different ones out and make very excited whooping noises as I throw them across the room.  

It seems to work.  They chase after the toys.

I head for the couch.

Sigh.  Sit down and do the insurance claim.

Nope, there are dogs at my heels.  All that work and I managed to distract them for a whole five seconds.

Puppy Girl starts sniffing and scratching at the bottom corner of the couch.  There's something under there.

I push the couch back to reveal a nylabone, a hedgehog carcass and a solitary piece of kibble.  They both go for it like T-Rexes.

I kick the nylabone and hedgehog out of the way.  OK, they have all their stuff.  

Sigh.  Put the couch back, then sit down and do the insurance claim.

As I walk across the floor where the couch normally is, I feel crunching underfoot.  Gross.

Time to go and get the Shark - a hand vacuum.

Now we have Puppy Girl growling and bounding at the Shark then running away as I try to suck up the dirt.

Hairballs.  

I have the Shark in my hand, I might as well suck up those hairballs I saw last night.  Now, where were they?

Ah, the usual places:  next to the bookcase in the dining room, next to the armchair in the corner of the lounge, behind the kitchen door.

Right.  Hairballs sucked up.

Sigh.  Put the Shark away push the couch back, then sit down and do the insurance claim.

I go to push the couch back to where it should be.  I have managed to wedge it between the end table and a little set of shelves.  I have to climb over the couch, push it around and into place, then fix the end table, then fix the shelves.  

By this time I'm a bit pissed off.  I need some Nicorette.  Where did I put the Nicorette?

I look on the shelves.  I look on the end table.  I feel in the pockets of my robe.

It takes me five minutes to find the Nicorette, and another two minutes to get the fucking child-proof wrapper off a piece.  I break a nail in the process.

So now I have to find a nail file.  I head to my little basket of nail thingies, stuffed with various colors of O.P.I. polish.  No nail file.

Shit.

Where did I put it?  

Think.

I used it last night after I broke a nail taking Puppy Girl out to potty.  

I walk around the house, peering at horizontal surfaces.  I find it on top of the fridge.  I have no memory of putting it there.

I file what's left of the one nail I have that was longer than 1 millimeter - my hands have gone hobo since the puppy - and consider making a cup of tea.

I'll make a cup of tea, I tell myself, and then sit down and do---

What was I going to do again?

Puppy Girl jumps up at my legs and barks.  Time to take her out in the rain to potty.  

I'll remember what that thing was that I had to do later...

Dear Diary - Good Morning and here's a punch in the face

 

Dear Diary

Puppy Girl woke me up at 5:30am (I HATE the time change!) so I let the dogs go out, and fed them.  By that time my brain was awake so I put on the telly.

And, in the last five minutes, dear Diary, I have learnt that:

• 2 fires have broken out in an area that seems to be an arsonists playground
• We have an 18 foot, jagged toothed thingy in our waters
• It's going to be rainy and cold today.

See you later, Diary.

Screw this, I'm going back to bed.

Dear Diary - The wheel of fortune turns, turns, turns

 

Dear Diary

Guess what?

I just got a call by the Hiring Manager from my recent interview.  

I thought I'd done really badly in the meeting with her Boss Man, but she said that I was worried for nothing, and that it had gone well!

I'm having a Sally Field Oscar moment!

He liked me!  He really liked me!

WOOOO HOOOO!

Dear Diary - The Lovely Blog Award

 

Dear Diary,

TheHubbyDiaries gave me a One Lovely Blog Award!!!

How wonderful is that!

It's especially flattering because I love her blog - her husband is obviously a lot like Fluffy Bear.

Apparently the rules of the award are:

1. Accept the award.
2. Post it (the image) on your blog together with the name of the person who has granted the award, and his or her blog link.
3. Pass the award to other blogs that you’ve newly discovered. Remember to contact the bloggers to let them know they have been chosen for this award.

Share this award with other bloggers I like and ask people to please take some to time to visit each the blogs I recommend and to keep this blog meme going.

So TheHubbyDiaries got me thinking...

Apart from her, of course, who should I give a Lovely Blog Award to?

Well first, there's The Bloggess, because she is so brave and funny and non-PC.  We can all do with a little less political correctness in our lives, right?  She says she's "like Mother Theresa, only better" which pretty much sums up her excellent sense of humor right there.  She makes me laugh.  And she links to hilarious things on her sex column.  Nuff said.

Then there's The Midlife Gals.  KK and SalGal look after their Ancient One, mix martinis and make hilarious observations on life in general.  They say that "it’s okay to love/hate your elders, your teenage children, one of your siblings or the grocery store cashier."  Well, Diary, you've seen my Hell is Other People series.  Because hell really is other people, and The Midlife Gals totally get that.  How could I not love these two women?

For short vignettes on all sorts of topics, I love Debineezer's A Beautifully Messy Mess of Contradictions.  Hell, Diary, the name alone is pure genius.  Not Debineezer, silly!  Although that is pretty good.  No.  The blog name.   The site is about her explaining her latest IM screen name, which she changes every day.  Sometimes she IM's me and I'm, like, who the F-- is "A lot freaks there…and people from Arkansas"?  Then I remember... it's Deb!  She's a good friend, too.  And she makes incredible fried chicken.

I have to congratulate Snooty Primadona, who not only has "a sparkling outlook on life... or not", but just celebrated 32 years of marriage with Mr Snoots!  An inspiration for Fluffy Bear and I.  Imagine if we make it that long?  Without him killing me first?  Relax, Diary, I'm just kidding.   

Hang on, Diary.  Puppy Girl is farting.  I have to take her outside to potty and air out the living room before I asphyxiate. 

...

I'm back. OK, where were we?

Ah yes, Everywhere Eventually, my dear friend who is so much more courageous than I and chooses to travel to places I wouldn't dare go.  Like Jordan.  Not that there is anything wrong with Jordan.  I'd just worry about my ignorance of local culture and doing something offensive.  Everywhere Eventually's ambition is exactly what it says on the tin - he wants to go everywhere and see everything.  So far, he's not doing too badly.  And he's been my friend for over ten years. And he and his Polar Bear came to visit us, which was great fun!  And I love him.

Last but not least of the normal people blogs, there's Booshy.  She has a chocolate lab, like me!  She also has children and cats and another dog but, you know, whatever.  She has a chocolate lab!  And she writes cool things about daily life or her memories of childhood, like driving lessons and buying alcohol after she turned 21.  21!  Ha ha, Diary!  Thank God I grew up in a place where legal drinking age was 18!  I shouldn't be mean, though, because Booshy is really cool.

Then, the celebrity blogs.

Everyone knows who John Cleese is.  Actor, writer, raconteur, minister of funny walks, owner of a dead parrot and now, apparently, chickens.  The mind boggles.

Not everyone over the US knows Stephen Fry.  But they should, dear Diary, they should.  For the world has seen no greater wit since Winston Churchill.  Like Mr Churchill, Mr Fry has all sorts of other talents.  He is interested in technology, he acts, he writes books, he gives speeches, he does radio, he does TV (including a travel program on the USA).  He is one of the most followed people on Twitter and only he can be so amusing and interesting in under 140 characters.  For he is a character, dear Diary, in the mold of Goucho Marx, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde and Noel Coward.  He is an English treasure, and long may he reign. 

These are just a few, dear Diary, of the wonderful online writers out there. 

Special mention, although it isn't a blog per se, must go to @shitmydadsays, on Twitter, because it's utterly hilarious and it makes me want to adopt that Dad.

Dear Diary - Pleasuring Mr Ben and Mr Jerry

 

Dear Diary,

I may have had a bit of an oopsie last night.  

You know I spoke about my 1441 goal?   Well, the weight loss goal is still there, I just haven't done the plan yet, and I may have had a food porn moment and pleasured Mr Ben and Mr Jerry last night.

It's not completely my fault.

Oh, don't sneer at me!

It isn't!

OK, so my friends Barbra and June cooked me dinner and came over to celebrate my birthday the other night.  I can't leave the house for more than two hours because of little miss Puppy Girl, so they graciously transferred the party to my house at the last minute.  Unfortunately, Dolly, scheduled to bring one of her delectable desserts, couldn't come, so I did what any lazy woman would do - I bought Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

But, you see, dear Diary, I didn't know what flavors they'd like so I had to get four different kinds... with an extra Chunky Monkey in case someone liked that too much and ate it all.  I had to avoid myself being rude and snatching the carton from their hands, you see.

So anyway, I had a lot of ice cream left over after the dinner.

Then Kathy and Will invited me over for dinner last night, to eat the most amazing freshly made risotto, and so I took 4 of the ice cream cartons (yes, I left my extra Chunky Monkey at home) to their house.  So I had ice cream at their house.  Some Chunky Monkey - of course - some Pistachio Pistachio and some kind of yummy caramel Haagen Dasz thing Kathy had.

So I come home with a little bit of the Chunky Monkey No. 1 left.

And it's late, and it takes me half an hour to get the Media Center PC to play my "The Proposal" DVD so, next thing you know, it's 11:30 and I'm watching Sandra Bullock and that-guy-with-the-abs-whose-name-I-never-remember falling in love on a flickering screen and I'm struggling to stay awake.

So I think:

"I'll just finish that little bit of Chunky Monkey No. 1 left at the bottom of the carton and get a bit of a sugar rush to stay awake.  Because you should either have popcorn or ice cream while watching a movie, and popcorn makes me cough."

Perfectly logical, right?

But here's the thing, Diary.  Ice cream is very cold.

Too obvious?  Wait.

See, here's the report I kept getting from my tongue:

[Insert digital voice here.  Your choice: Stephen Hawking's wheelchair, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry as the Star Trek Computer or Hal in 2001.]

Flavor receptors frozen.  

Unable to confirm pleasure experience.  

Please repeat spooning procedure.

Who can ignore an official status report?

And next thing you know I've eaten the small amount of leftover Chunky Monkey No. 1 and the whole 1 pint carton of Chunky Monkey No. 2.

Diary!

Don't look at me like that!

You don't know how good that stuff tastes!  It has banananiness, and chocolate and walnuts.

Oh, bugger off.  I'm ignoring you now.

Dear Diary - No more pity party

 

Dear Diary,

Well, after chatting to 2 good friends over devilled eggs, stuff mushrooms, slow-cooked ribs, mashed potato, corn, coleslaw, Ben and Jerrys and 3 bottles of wine, the pity party is over.

I am 40.  

I am jobless.

I am fat.

The first thing I can't change.  The second thing I am changing.  The third thing needs a plan.

So here's my plan, and it's called 1441.

There's a saying in the UK, "1661."  It's to describe those skinny, groomed, well-preserved women with incredible hair. They look 16 from the back, and 61 from the front.

Well, I am going to be size 14 (American) by the time I am 41.

Oh, and as for not being able to change being 40 - I do have one small comfort.

I don't look it.

Onwards and upwards, dear Diary!

[insert fanfare here]

Dear Diary - I am Woman, Hear me Whimper

 

Dear Diary,

Turning 40 sucks.

Maybe it won't/didn't for you, but for me it did.  

So there.

Why does turning 40 suck?

• Because all my friends expect me to have a big party and all I want to do is climb under the duvet and hide for 6 months
• Because that hotel that gave us 3 free nights turned out to have crappy food and crappier service and was so fucking overpriced that we ended up spending a fortune there anyway - so much for a deal
• Because I don't have a job and every time I think of a fun thing to do - like have a massage - I remember, a second later, that I can't afford it
• Because I had a wonderful interview today with a lovely person and then, suddenly, I realized that, if I got this job, my boss would be almost ten years younger than me
• Because I made a resolution 9 months ago to weigh 75kgs by the time I turned 40 and - guess what? - I weigh exactly the same as last year
• Because I feel stuck.

And this is why I have two pints of Ben and Jerrys in the freezer and a life plan and goal setting can wait until tomorrow.

Bah Humbug!

Dear Diary - Turning 40

  

Dear Diary,

I'm turning 40, and I am not sure how I feel about that.

I think it kinda sucks a little.

According to popular Western media, a woman over 40 is mother/career overachiever/cougar/crazy old bat.

I am none of those things.

I am a mother to two doggies, but I've never given birth to a human child or held a little mouth to my breast.

I am a career woman but not an overachiever.  My career track was derailed a few times, so I am not at executive level and, frankly, I don't want to be.  I want a life outside of work.

I'm not thin enough or pretty enough to be a cougar, and I resent the implication that a woman who is strong, available, financially independent and sexually active is, by definition, a predator.

I may be slightly crazy, but you can't see it if you just talk to me out in the world.

So who am I now that I am 40?

Stay tuned while I figure this out...