Dark humor kicks ass

Perhaps it should also go without saying that my birthday party theme involves swine flu -- be there, or be bacon.

Bipolar brainworms.

My crazy-girl brain has a thing for songs. Specifically, songs that can get stuck in my head for a minimum of 18 hours at time. It's just how I roll. Er, yo.

But today's dueling songs are enough to drive a girl to drink. (Pauses. Sips chardonnay. Sighs happily. Refills glass.)

Ready? How's this for eff'd up?

Right Round, by Flo Rida. (Yes, "rida." I know.) And, By Way of Sorrow, by Dar Williams, as part of Cry Cry Cry.

I can't embed the video for the first one, but you can listen to the second here:





In fact, I like the second one so much, I'm hoping to learn how to play it on the fiddle. Want to hear another version? Here you go.

Mawhahaha. Happy Earth Day.

Thanks go to Someecards.com for this and my lovely pal who sent this to me, noting that we're both doing our part to help the save planet.

Happy Earth Day!

Contest, baby.

Inspired by my lengthy haikus, I thought I'd host a teeny contest. Best original haiku* on the original post (or on this one), gets a lovely special prize handmade by yours truly.

Deadline to enter is midnight CT Wednesday. Oh, and I reserve the right to use the random number generator thingy to pick a winner if they're too good for me to pick on my own.

Ready? Set? Go!

Five, Seven, Five.

Remiss in blogging,
So, instead, haikus for you.
My life in April:

Cold in Chicago.
Oh, right! No surprise there. Sigh.
That's why we need booze.

April showers, huh?
Who knew that included snow?
Why do I live here?

Fuck you, Midwest. Grrr.
I bet flowers are blooming
in Atlanta right now.

Behold! A nice spring
day. Surely this won't last. Ha.
Mother Nature. Mean.

Tax Day came and went.
I miss my refund. It ran
straight to Visa card.

Boy got last of stuff.
Breakups still suck, months later.
Why are eyes leaking?

Baking treats with friends
reminds me how fortunate
I am to be loved.

Easter morning church.
Sunrise service at the lake.
Woot! New beginnings.

Bike versus taxi.
Guess who won? Sounds worse than you
would think. Am badass cyclist.

Sewing for my quilt.
Bride friends need sewing help, too.
One woman thread fiend.

Friends came to visit.
YAY! But too much stress to clean.
Next time: maid service.

Four people in my
small 700-square-foot
condo. Friends, or die.

We saw Ira Glass!!
This American Life! LIVE!
Am NPR nerd.

Jay taught mutt to heel
in a block at a half. Huh?
Me? Four years. No luck.

No luck at making
birds for friend's wedding cake top.
They look like monsters.

Am murderer of
plants. Accidental, of course.
No green thumb for me.

Crashing book club in
Milwaukee next month. We are
reading Lolita.

My pants still won't fit.
Whatever. Time to kick this
funk in the ass. POW!

Saw flowers blooming.
That must mean there is still hope.
Spring's eternal, right?

Like haikus a lot?
Leave me one below. Best one
might just win a prize.

ADDENDUM:
Contest is on. Best haiku posted by Wednesday at midnight CT wins a crafty surprise.

Tylenol PM 1, Noodles O

I take my sleep seriously. My friends know I become progressively less pleasant (some might even say a twee bit bitchy) after 10 p.m. I live and die by 300-thread count Egyptian cotton. And I have, on more than one occasion, excused myself from a social gathering so I could take a nap. (What? Like you haven't?)

My coworker and I were emphatically discussing our mutual love of sleep so deep and sound _ the kind where you find yourself in one of those hit-the-pillow-and-don't-move a muscle-for-HOURS states _ that I said if we substituted sex for sleep, some people might get turned on listening to us.

All of this is background to establish the fact that when I'm not sleeping well, I'll do almost anything -- ANYTHING -- in my power to return to my happy sleep place. This includes, but is not limited to, the magnificence that is a hefty dose of Tylenol PM.

Which brings me to last night, around 11:30 p.m., roughly two hours after I first crawled into my lovely new, crisp covers. (Btw, my new sheets are the absolute and total bomb.)

There I am, (possibly snoring) when I hear it. Someone is talking and says: "Oh my god."

I jerk awake and open my eyes to see there, standing by my bed is ... HOLY BEJESUS ... a person.

My sleepy, Tylenol PM-addled brain rapidly begins to process this situation as my heart starts beating in overdrive.

Who is it? Duh. Obviously it's someone that's there to kill me and murder me in my sleep. This someone, appears to be unusually skinny and sort of short. And, why are they speaking? Shouldn't they be taking care of business? Are they as distraught about the chaos of exploded clothes in my bedroom as I am? Is that why they said "Oh my god?" Or are they just some weird sleep-watcher, you know, like Edward in Twilight? Do they want to rob me of my oh-so-valuable collection of Amy Butler fabrics? What if they're here to dognap Macy?

Blink. Blink.

I try to focus my very blind eyes at this mysterious, unmoving figure, while laying VERY VERY STILL so they don't know I'm awake.

Blink. Blink.

Something doesn't make sense. Why would a stranger be standing by my bedroom doorway? Much less judge me on my volume of dirty laundry?

Blink. Blink.

Maybe it's not a person.

Blink. Blink.

Maybe it's ... the dressing table? The door? Whatever. Furniture can't speak.

At this point, I'm as wide awake as a tweeked-out-on Tylenol PM person can be, which doesn't say much, although does explain why I have not done the very logical thing of turning on the lights to see who, in fact, this mass murderer is and what they want with cute little me. (OMG, maybe it's a prince who's come to whisk me away to someplace where I can live with the tiara I so rightly deserve... Maybe it's Publishers Clearinghouse?! EEP?! Is there such thing as a Cheese Fairy? A girl can dream...)

Instead, I do what any other dog-loving, lives alone, single girl would do. I look for the mutt.

Who, at the moment, happens to be spooning with me. Snoring.

Blink. Er... blink?

And only then, as my eyes start to focus on what is, in fact, just my dressing table in the moonlight, do I realize that there can't, realistically, be a crazed, psychopathic killer standing at my bedside wielding a cleaver dripping with blood. Or, even a minor European royal who has come at an inopportune time to bring me gifts of brie and gouda. Because, if there was, my dog _ who can't let someone go up or down the condo building stairs without becoming apoplectic _ would have most assuredly thought to bark.

And that voice? The one that woke me up in the first place? Um, yeah. It sort of sounds like me.

Fuuuuuuck.

And with that, I went back to sleep.

Moral of the story: Tylenol PM may or may not produce night-talking and shadow-fueled delusions. But damn, if it isn't worth it for some Grade A shut eye.

Dreams become reality.

You'd think that given the Hallmarkish title of this blog post, I'd be writing about great achievements and hardwork and, like, puppies and sunshine and babies and eep!!

Ha.

If you do, then you do not, apparently, know me or my deeply honed sense of sarcasm very well.

Let's rewind, if you will, to Saturday night when one passed-out-from-exhaustion Noodles collapses in bed. And so begins my night of weird dreams. There was one about being on an airliner that crash landed onto an interstate, but then we kept taxi-ing along the highway along with traffic and no one would listen when I demanded to be LET OFF THE PLANE! RIGHT! NOW! There was something work related and equally as traumatic. And then there was the weird dream that the mutt was puking on my covers.

Oddly, the dog vomit wasn't the most vivid of the trio. But it was definitely one that I remember, right down to seeing her move over the side of the bed where The (Ex) Boy used to sleep (good girl, btw, Macy) and seeing her tail bounce as she heaved.

In the words of the young prince of Denmark, according to Mr. Shakespeare, "To die. To sleep. To sleep: perchance to dream."

I wake up the next morning thinking, hum, weird night. Then my something hits my nose. Weird smell.

You can probably see where this is going. Plane crash? Work drama? Both slumbery, subconscious visions. Macy vomit? Not so much.

Sigh, indeed.

"Newspapers are like blogs. That leave ink on your hands."

Ah, Mr. Colbert. Touche.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm /