*taps microphone gently* Boy have I got bullet points for you.

[constance]

• I had a dream last night that featured cows with no heads; instead of heads, there were capped-off nozzles, kind of like the way a capped gas line in an old house looks. That is really all I remember about the dream, and I do not know what to make of it.



• A Conversation:
  J: Cammy, are you wearing white hose? With sandals?
  Me: What? No, of course not.
  J: *peers closely* No, I guess not. Jesus, your legs are pale.
  Me: Don't I know it.



• My dog is trying to kill my daisies. He needn't bother, because I will kill them myself, given time, and I keep trying to tell him this, but he keeps knocking the pots over anyway, displaying, perhaps, an unbecoming tendency to alpha-dog it over me.
  
  I bet you did not know that alpha-dog was a verb. But it is.



• I have finally broken down and bought new underwear. I am a little embarrassed to say how long it has been since the buying of the last underwear to enter the house under my aegis, but at least now if I am in an accident, I will be able to hold my head high on the gurney as they wheel me into the hospital.



• This particular manifestation of our company's twice-yearly (semi-annual, as we say in The Business) barbecue is no barbecue at all. It is instead a chicken-fry. We will be having fried chicken (with a little baked for the no-fried-foods people), beans and corn and slaw and potato salad and brownies and pecan pies. (quick question : pe-CAHN or PEE-can?) We will be giving out door prizes and cash awards and talking about job safety and health insurance, and of course you are invited. You will be coming, right? Because really, who does not want to listen to tales of other people's PPOs while eating?



• I am currently having a ridiculous mock flamewar in which one of our superintendents has questioned everything I hold most sacred: the TOTAL UNQUESTIONABLE OMNISCIENCE of snopes.com. Here's what happened: he sent me an email of an enormous dog; the attached text claims that it's the world's biggest dog. I sent him a snopes link saying that the dog may or may not be as big as he is in the photo he sent, but the text about the world's biggest dog refers to a different dog altogether. And HE DOES NOT BELIEVE THE WORD OF SNOPES.COM. I cannot believe this. Never in my life has anyone questioned the word of snopes, which I wield the way some Christians wield the Bible to prove that homosexuality and the eating of pork are WRONG (what, has no one ever lectured you on the profanity of pork consumption?). My faith in the universe has been shaken, and as I respond to his emails in which he accuses snopes of being an enormous hoax perpetrated by our company's compulsive liar, I am thinking, God, what if he's right? What if snopes has been lying to me all along?
  
  I think I will need some time to recover from this. And also, remind me to tell you someday the story of the Internet Porn, which involves this same superintendent but is not a part of the current bullet-point narrative.



• Confidential: Yeah, me too. For whatever that's worth.



• Have I told you about the way I cope with stress? I draw house plans. Big houses, little ones. I copy them out of historic plan books and modify them for modern life. I make up my own. I look at them and imagine fitting my life into them, where the furniture would go, where I'd hide the litterbox, what they'd be made out of. Where I would put the electrical outlets.
  
  I guess I've mentioned that I do this, but not why, exactly -- mostly because I've never really connected stress with this habit before now (I always connected it with a desire for a house of my own, but now I've got not only a house of my own but also the house of my dreams, and I'm still doing it, which has forced me to reassess my motives, because I know you were interested in hearing about that particular process) -- but anyway, I have been drawing a lot of houses lately.
  
  Sorry for being gone. That's what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to do better. I've got posts planned. Reading schedules. Bookmarks. Et cetera.

Comments

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

• Welcome back! I missed you!
  
  
• I would love to go to a chicken fry. (Not as much as I would love to go to a proper pig roast, but still.) Our annual office BBQ is always hot dogs and burgers made by the company cafeteria and served in a tent on the lawn with a bad cover band playing light-FM hits. The big attraction is ice cream bars. There is always some lame theme with weird souvenirs. Last year it was 'circus' and there were horrifying bags of pre-packaged cotton candy on each table. *shudder*
  
  
• Snopes! Snopes is absolutely sacred and much more useful than the Gnostic Gospels, not to mention Leviticus. (I always ask the gay bashers what they did last sabbath, just to get the ball rolling.) I've converted my mother to the Gospel of Snopes and she wields it madly against the tide of glurge she receives from other ladies of a certain age.
  
  
• I haven't actually drawn house plans in years, but I also love to think about how to use spaces differently. It's one of my best distractions. In childhood I furnished my orthodontist's warren of examining rooms into an endless variety of apartments and suites while he tortured my teeth for six years.
  
  I also used the fantasy house plan to get over a bad breakup some years ago. Whenever I'd have a quiet moment where I wanted to brood about the ex, I'd force myself to return to specifics about just how the French doors should lead from the living room to the back garden or which wall would be best for the hutch in the dining room. I think I started it after reading something about how a POW kept his sanity by imagining he was building a house one brick at a time. I just had better china patterns. I still go back to that house sometimes when I need to stop brooding. I think my favorite part lately has been the crafts studio with the big skylight that is over the detached garage.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

I've converted my mother to the Gospel of Snopes and she wields it madly against the tide of glurge she receives from other ladies of a certain age.

Hahahahahahahahahaha! That's fantastic. I use it sometimes the same way against the glut of "Underarm Deodorant Will Kill You!!11!" e-mails my aunt forwards me. Now if there were only a Snopes-esque way of stopping her from sending those "Sisterhood is Gold- pass this on to five women you think a lot of" chain letters, I'd die happy.

Also, I had the best dream about you last night! You brought your scarves to show me, and stayed around to help me critique several grocery sacks full of modeling clay dogs sculpted by my erstwhile elementary art students. You were ruthlessly hilarious with the bad ones, but very fairly pointed out structural/artistic strong points with the good ones. And then we broke for cake and coffee. :D

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

OK, I can take a hint. I need to take the scarf pix. Sunday night!

And I keep breaking the chain on those "Celebrate Your Wonderful Womanhood" things but I keep getting the anyway. Maybe that is actually the bad luck that I've attracted to myself. They always make me think that somebody is about to try to lure me into the Red Hat Society, for which I will actually be eligible in two more years. Eek! (Last night's Simpsons rerun included a hilarious spoof when Marge joined the Cheery Red Tomatoes who turned out to be funding their charitable efforts via burglary.)

But I really do want that dream to come true. Model animals! Cake and coffee!

Totally OT, but of interest: There was a death threat against Knut the Cute last week! Exclamation points!

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Do take scarf pics!

I keep breaking the chain on those "Celebrate Your Wonderful Womanhood" things but I keep getting the anyway. Maybe that is actually the bad luck that I've attracted to myself

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA THUMBS UP TO THAT.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I missed you too! *beams at you*

I have a mortifying-yet-deeply-felt love for carnival food of all sorts, but even I draw the line at cotton candy in plastic bags! And yes, I'm looking forward to the chicken-fry. I'll save you a seat next to me so we can gossip and talk crafty things.

Ha! That is pretty much what I use Snopes for, too. I only wish my mother had taken to The Gospel as passionately as yours has.

Mmmm, I never had to redecorate my orthodontist's offices, because he had the most awesome offices ever -- they were made up to look like a spaceship, complete with white plastic instrument panels and gigantic wall-sized NASA murals on the walls. But I do that with public spaces I like -- There's one study room in the LSU library, for example, and this old tin-ceilinged multi-tiered bar, and a bookstore, and, well, you get the point.

I am so astounded and thrilled that there is another person on my friendslist who shares my hobby! You cannot even imagine! Or maybe, you know, you can! :D:D:D:D:D

I should have said, when talking about Christians in my original post, that only some of them wield the Bible as a weapon. I'm dreadfully sorry that I didn't. I hope I didn't offend you.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

I am not in the least offended by your disparagement of Bible thumpers. They offend me more than you ever could.

And my ortho was a very old man whose very old office was a strange warren of tiny chambers in a building from about 1915, I'd say. Hoorah for the redecorators!