*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.

[imkalena.livejournal.com]

I love both of your house habits. ^ Snopes IS God. I want fried chicken, now. Plant your daisies this weekend and sprinkle pre-emergent weed killing grade corn gluten around them. Stops weeds and promotes environmental sanity! New underwear is always, should you pardon the expression, a crap shoot. I've got six new pairs right now that I unfortunately don't like. :P

the story of the Internet Porn, which involves this same superintendent but is not a part of the current bullet-point narrative

I also want this story. :)

[thalia]

And HE DOES NOT BELIEVE THE WORD OF SNOPES.COM.

Heresy! Shouldn't he be burned at the stake or something?

And it's pe-CAHN. But I'm a yankee, so my vote might not count. I'll go anywhere for pecan pie.

[proteinscollide.livejournal.com]

*hugs* House drawing as stress-relief sounds like a good way of dealing to me. It doesn't hurt anyone, it's creative, and it sounds darling.

For what it's worth (from an Aussie) it's "PEE-can" to me.

And on Snopes, I only have a recent xkcd strip (http://xkcd.com/c250.html) in mind. =)

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

pe-CAHN. PEE-can is something different entirely.

I love you, by the way.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

How I've missed you! I'm so delighted to see such a substantial bullet-pointed post!

I'd really like to see a picture of cows with capped-off heads now. As drawn by Dali, perhaps. Or maybe by me.

Alpha-dog is TOTALLY a verb. These days, we're using it and many other words gleaned from dog training books and dog websites to communicate with each other. I told Brooke last night that if she didn't get ready for bed I was going to totally "alpha roll" her. She bared her fangs at me, but went. Damn good thing, too. :D

TOTAL UNQUESTIONABLE OMNISCIENCE is how I view snopes, too. I don't think I could cope with a mock flamewar that would cast any doubt upon it!

I absolutely love that you draw house plans when you're stressed out. I'm sorry to hear that you've been dealing with enough stress to draw a lot of them lately, but I think it rocks as a coping strategy. Do you ever design them with other people in mind as occupants, or are they all for you? And do you imagine different surroundings/states/countries for them, or do you not get further than the actual blueprint of the house itself? Is there furniture involved, or simply walls-n-windows? (See, you can tell from my ignorant questions that architectural stuff is as foreign to me as Greek) And do you design thrifty houses, lavish houses, or a little bit of everything? Have you ever designed a treehouse? Sorry to pepper you with questions. You can ignore me, but see, if I lived next door to you as nature intended, this is the sort of stuff I'd pester you about because it's so darned fascinating and wonderful.

Oh, dear. And now I'm out of order, bullet-point wise. But! I just wanted to throw in that I'd a thousand times rather have fried chicken than a barbecue any day of the week. I'll definitely be coming. Should I bring a side dish of some sort? All that's missing from the above menu is some nice pralines. I've never made them, but I could give it a shot. Also, I always say peCAHN if I'm talking about the nut, but PEE-cahn is it's pie. Dunno why.

And finally, all hail the paper-white leg. My sister and I have discovered some unwelcome signs that we didn't get the "good skin forever" gene, and have deemed this "The summer of the SPF 1000". Seeing as how we're generally dark as a walnut dinette set by August, this'll be quite a change.

[coco-palmolive.livejournal.com]

I know I owe you the next e-mail, which I haven't written because it will mostly be another 1500 variations on my mom is crazy/work is crazy/I have paid off $50 of my principal, wow that sucks, but you have been quiet long enough that I was starting to worry. I am glad to see you here today.

Incidentally, we've been having a conversation at work all week about various girls' pale legs, including my own. Ballsy L.M. has been christened "Casper Sticks." One presumes I am "Casper Trunks." We are convinced we look awesome. You should join us.

[friendly.livejournal.com]

It's amazing to hear how quickly these forwards work their way around the globe. I got the big dog one this week, too. And naturally doubted its accuracy. :))

I would love to see some of your stress houses.

ISN'T NEW UNDERWEAR GREAT.

[miraminx.livejournal.com]

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.

Me: *peering at friend's legs* Well, they're not exactly chalk-white.
Friend: Yeah. My legs, a sheet of typing paper, know the difference.

You just have to think of yourself as an Austen heroine with milk-white skin and it's all good.

pe-CAHN, definitely. But then, I also say ColoRAWdo (not ColorAHdo) and NevAWda (not NevAHda), so I could just be a Northern freak.

[bowdlerized.livejournal.com]

I have indeed been lectured on the profanity of eating pork. ;)

I say pe-CAHN, but whenever people are using a lame fake Southern accent they seem to say PEE-can.

[sunkentreasure.livejournal.com]

I say it rarely, but when I do, I alternate between the two. Either way though, it's more of a p'CAHN or a p'CAN than a pe-CAHN or PEE-can.