Baloney Bin

A few days ago, I had the pleasure of going on a quick road trip to Las Vegas, New Mexico. My travel companions were three people who are family of the non-blood related kind – Samaria, another Sarah, and Liz – and I loved spending time with them. It was a huge trip with lots of memorable moments squeezed into not quite three days. To quote the Wayne’s World poster: we all laughed, Sarah cried, and I hurled. I really did. It was in a hotel room at 4 am, and despite the fact that I was in the bathroom with the sink faucet running and the stink fan going, my yakking woke everyone up. But that is a story for another time.

Brent and the pugs did not go on the trip and the idea of leaving them and leaving home, even for just a couple days, made me a little sad. Silly, I know, but we are a co-dependent lot. As I write this, the four of us are snuggled together on our love seat.

Perhaps it was the sorrow of losing me for a few days that caused Brent to lose his senses as I was getting ready for the trip.

He offered to let me borrow his best overnight bag.

Brent knows better than anyone that I should never be allowed to borrow anything. When in my possession, borrowed objects become the victims of acts of God. When I was 16, I borrowed my friend Lori’s sweater vest, and that night, my house burned down. A few years ago, I borrowed Teufel’s graphing calculator and it was stolen from my car. The one time I drove my mother-in-law’s car, the engine light came on and never shut off. And I also include my own carelessness in the ‘acts of God’ category. If God hadn’t wanted me to scratch up Brent’s CDs, he wouldn’t have made Brent and I have similar taste in music, right? If God hadn’t wanted me to accidentally return Teufel’s brand new Spiderman video game to Dillons grocery store along with a movie I’d rented, God wouldn’t have had Dillons do their Dollar Day promotion, where all rentals, including new releases, were just one dollar.

When I was getting ready to go to New Mexico, I couldn’t find any of my backpacks. We have suitcases, but they are currently blocked in by some giant pieces of wood in the basement. I had all my clothes and toiletries ready, but nothing to put them in. I couldn’t even find a reusable grocery bag around the house. That’s when Brent said all casually, “Why don’t you just take my Spiderman bag?”

This is the Spiderman bag. The pictures aren’t great, but isn’t it cool? Brent got it at Universal Studios, as a special (and very expensive) souvenir. Knowing my history of destroying borrowed goods, I was not eager to take the bag.

“Uh, I don’t think so. What if it gets ruined?”

He shrugged. “It’s just a bag.”

Just a bag, my butt. He’d be so annoyed with me if something happened to it. I told him thanks anyway and went looking again for my backpack, but that sucker just didn’t want to be found. So I had to take Brent’s bag. I told myself that I would be very, very careful with it. I said, “Self, you will treat this Spiderman bag as carefully as if there is a newborn baby inside of it. You will not throw the bag around in a rough manner. You will not drop it on the urine-soaked floor of a rest stop bathroom. You will honor and respect this bag. You will bring it back to Brent in pristine condition. He will say, ‘Wow, Sarah, you are so trustworthy!”

Fast-forwarding a ways, I found myself in Liz’s bathroom in Las Vegas, New Mexico. The reason we were there was to help Liz move back to Kansas and when we got there, most of her belongings were already packed in the Uhaul. In particular, her bathroom was down to the essentials: toilet paper, soap, tooth brush and tooth paste. I didn’t realize this was going to be a problem for me until I was using the bathroom.

FACT: During the trip, I was experiencing my moon’s blood. Menstruation, that is. Red gold. Texas tea.

FACT: I prefer pads to tampons.

FACT: There was no trash can in the bathroom.

FACT: There is no such thing as “tmi”.

I didn’t have a disposable bag of any sort on me, and had I asked Liz for a bag to use as bathroom trash, she would have happily supplied one. But then there would be the question of where to keep the trash. Plus, I wasn’t even sure that Liz had a spare bag, considering that everything was packed up. I didn’t want her to have to go to the trouble of emptying a bag for me to use for my pads. The idea of having my period trash hanging out in a plastic bag on the door jamb or on the bathroom floor was horrifying. My friends should not have to endure that.

I contemplated the pickle I was in and while I can write about all this now with very little shame, at the time I felt Old Testament-unclean. There was no winning in this game. Although, in retrospect, why didn’t I just ask for a trash bag? For pete’s sake, sometimes I have to wonder about myself.

After I finally decided on a course of action that seemed the most logical (it really wasn’t), I remembered a joke that Liz herself told me a long time ago. The gist is that there is a reclusive lady who never leaves her house. When it is her time of the month, she throws her used pads in a closet. One day, she has to call a plumber to her house. The pipes he needs are in the closet with the used feminine products. For some reason, the lady locks him in and he doesn’t get out until the next month, when her time comes. When she opens the closet door, out he comes and says that he never would have survived the ordeal if it hadn’t been for all the delicious cherry rolls in her closet.

“Cherry rolls,” I thought grimly as I wrapped the used pad in the wrapping paper of the new one. I made the bundle as small as possible and slipped it into…Brent’s nice Spiderman bag. By the time I got home, I had quite the collection in there.

To be honest, after that first night, we left Las Vegas and stayed in a hotel where there were opportunities for me to take out the trash if you know what I mean, but I forgot.

I felt obligated to tell Brent about this over the phone, when I was on the way home. Unsure of how he would react, I made sure to tell him it wasn’t an easy decision for me and that I was sorry events had to go down this way. I promised him I would air out the bag and that it would be as good as new. Lastly, I apologized for being so absurd. I waited for him to speak, but there was only silence. “Uh, hello? Are you mad?” I asked him. More silence. I realized my phone had dropped the call. When I was able to get through again, he picked up and immediately asked, “So what did you do with the pad?” I had to go through the end of the story again. He just laughed and said, “That’s just great. Now whenever I go out of town and use that bag, my clothes are going to smell like menstruation and I’m going to be chased by bears!”

Aesop wants me to tell you that there is a moral to this story:

Don’t misplace your backpack, ever. Just don’t, even if it means you can’t prepare for winter like that dumb fiddle fuck grasshopper. I don’t mean to come off sounding judgmental all the time but I know a lot of things. 

A few weeks ago I attended my first aerobics class.

Aerobics is still a term, right? I mean, I wasn’t wearing a shiny lavender thong leotard with matching headband to keep my feathered hair out of my face, but I went to a gym and tried to mimic the movements of a guy who reminded me of Eric from The Grind while funky hip hop music did its best to make me feel like a baller, even though I mostly felt like an old turtle who had flipped her shell and was struggling with all her might to get back on her feet. Only once did I feel Fergielicious, and that was when I exceeded expectations and did one pull up.

So how did I get there? We can thank my friend who we’ll call Cher. Cher found an excellent gym deal on Groupon, and since we are workout buddies (meaning that we went jogging together one time two months ago) we decided to go for it.

This was my first Groupon experience and since it was overwhelmingly positive – not only for me, but also for the one and only Cher – I was thinking that maybe Groupon could offer me even more relevant deals to fit my not-so-hectic lifestyle. Oh yeah, and I’m a newly minted couponeer, which means I’m into saving big. That being said, every day I have been disappointed by Groupon’s offerings. Sorry, Groupon Quality Technicans, but you are not enticing me with your wares. In fact, you have been trying to sell me some figurative head-scratchers.

If you offered literal headscratchers, I’d probably buy one. I got Brent an expandable back scratcher one year for Christmas and used it myself so much that I broke it. In general, I am an itchy person. One time I took the expandable back scratcher to work and used it to scratch a co-worker’s head. This person didn’t see me coming because his back was to me, and for some reason he was repulsed when he turned around and saw me waving my back scratcher. I hope I taught him a valuable lesson that day about not judging others: just because a person is itchy doesn’t mean that person has a contagious rash.

As a side note about headscratchers: when I was a kid, I was prone to head lice attacks. Those darn little bugs loved my head. I guess it was my thick, frizzy hair and my penchant for not bathing that made me the lice community’s equivalent of Kokomo (the lice’ll get there fast and then they’ll take it slow. That’s where they wanna go). Two things that will trigger unpleasant lice-related memories:

1. Little black combs. Otherwise known as nit combs. Possibly the grossest word in the English language, a “nit” is the egg form of a louse. The mother glues the egg-baby, a little brown pouch, to the base of your hair with some sort of bug juice. I remember sitting in the bathtub while my mom combed the bugs out of my hair, by sliding the little sack all the way up and off the strand. She had a paper towel next to her and would use it to wipe the bugs off the comb, but not before holding the comb up to the light and peering at it over the top of her glasses to make an observation about the louse. “Just an egg.” Or, “That one’s as big as a cockroach.”
2. Rit fabric dye. Which I often confuse with Rid the lice-killing shampoo. For the longest time, I thought that there was just one company that put out both products under the same name. Even now, whenever I see the Rit logo, I think about lice baths and the sinus-clearing potency of Rid until I remember that Rit has nothing to do with lice.

On a somewhat related note, I also get the Anarchist “A” symbol mixed up with the pentagram, otherwise known as the Satanic Star. In my high school, the cool bad kids wore anarchy shirts, and because this was back when I was still scandalized by Satanism, I treated these rule breakers to my most disapproving looks. I would say to myself, “Get a load of this moron advertising for the devil. I hope there’s a Hot Topic in Hell.” Meanwhile, my classmate was likely thrilled my judgmental look and was probably thinking, “Get a load of this square. She’s is all shocked by my anarchy apparel! Man, I’m so different.”

But yeah, before the lice infested this blog post, much like they used to do in my hair (note the past tense there. I don’t get lice anymore so don’t even think about ostracizing me), I was talking about Groupon and some of the strange services and goods it is trying to sell me. For example:

1. Online Bartending classes

I don’t need this, not when I have Brent to make me his “special” White Russians consisting of rum and soy milk. You see, in Brent’s reality, anything goes with a White Russian. The only bartending teacher I need is Brent. And the only bartending classroom I need is the movie Cocktail. And the movie Roadhouse. And that scene in Poltergeist 2 when Craig T. Nelson gets drunk off Tequila and drinks the worm with the old man face. Thanks, but no thanks.

2. Silk N Sense Hair Removal System

Hey Groupon, it’s a little rude to assume I need the “Silk N Sense Hair Removal System”. I’m happy that this product harnesses the power of home pulsed-light technology and is cleared by the FDA, but maybe I believe Brent when he says that he likes hairy arms on women. Of course I don’t, that’s gross, but what do you want me to do, use your product on my arms and then have to deal with five o’ clock arm shadow?

3. Helicopter ride

I’ll pass. I am prone to motion sickness, I am deathly afraid of heights, and I don’t quite trust aviation technology. Brent and I once exchanged terse words in regard to me never wanting to ride in a helicopter. We had been talking about taking an Alaskan cruise and I said that I wouldn’t want to embark on the optional day excursion to a glacier because you had to get there by helicopter. Brent was being a little scornful when he said,”You’d miss out on experiencing the majesty of a glacier because you’re afraid of helicopters?” (Brent’s Note: Hello, Brent here I would never use the word majesty to describe something that is literally majestic, I might write it but have you ever heard someone call something majestic? No, that is because you sound like a pompous dill-hole. What I did say was that the glaciers will be gone soon and you’d miss out on the last chance you’ll get to see them.) To which I replied, “Okay, Mr. Not Afraid of Anything, let’s see you go scuba diving in Loch Ness, then you can talk to me about being a chicken.” I’m not sure what Brent said after that, but it was probably along the lines of, “Oh yeah, good point  (I can’t contest this point.).”

4. Pumponator Balloon Pumping Station

Fact: I love balloons. I love balloons so much that I don’t like it when people suck the helium out to make their voices sound funny. It’s a waste of a good balloon. And with a name like The Pumponator, I would do my Ah-nold impersonation while making balloons:

• Come with me if you want to be filled with air.
• Hasta la vista, balloon.
• It’s not a tumah, it’s a balloon (there is no rule saying we have to stick to Terminator movies).

The only problem with the Pumponator is the description:

With a few squeezes of the Pumponator’s handle, balloons are properly plumped with air or water–saving lungs from excessive huffing and saliva glands from having to produce a water balloon’s worth of spit.

Say what? A water balloon filled with spit? First of all, if anyone ever threw a water balloon filled with spit at me, I would kill myself with my bare hands. Right there on the spot, wouldn’t even matter if the balloon popped or not.

I’m assuming that the writer of this description was being funny but spit is nothing to joke about.

5. Bouncy house rental

Of course I want to rent a bouncy house, am I not human? But whenever I imagine renting one, the scenario doesn’t end well for me. I have never liked jumping in bouncy houses or on trampolines with other people, so the bouncy house would be just for me. But then nosy neighbor kids would see the bouncy house and how I, a grown woman, was jumping around by myself. At first they’d want to join in but after I tell them no, they’d bully me mercilessly. I’d have to call the police on them and would probably end up murdered.

The best part about the bouncy house ad is the description. Somebody is clever.

16. Two Kathy Ireland Pillows

So you can buy Kathy Ireland’s pillows, eh? Let’s hope they are not dirty pillows.

7. Ear cleaning system and irrigator

I can’t buy this because Brent and Swoozie are working on their own ear cleaning system and they’d be mad if I gave money to the competition.

I wonder why Swoozie looks so guilty in this picture.

8. I have no idea how to describe this

Apparently, that is a sticker you can put on your wall. If that was on my wall, I would just stare at that guy’s crotch. Not in a pervy manner, but I wouldn’t be able to look away, not even with the TV going. Not even for a Golden Girls reunion show. Sometimes when you stare into the yellow crotch, the yellow crotch stares back.

Hey Groupon, I guess you are going to have to work harder to get my money. Here are some hints: dog costumes, underwater appliances, and candy jewelry. Good luck!

Like sand through the hour glass. These are the days of our lives.

Today’s post was inspired by last week’s discussion with Brent, where the topics of waterbeds and Satanic Panic reminded me that I was once in a situation involving both of these phenomena. I had mentioned my parents’ king-size waterbed, and Brent had noted that “it seemed like a lot of parents had them for about 10 years, then they vanished from the earth.”

That is exactly what happened in my house. By the time I was nine, my parents had thrown out their waterbed, but this story isn’t about their waterbed so much as it is about the waterbed’s headboard. The headboard was a beautiful piece; bold as far as headboards go with its mirrors and drawers and compartments. It boasted a rich cherry finish and the shine from the lacquer gave it a heavenly aura. This headboard was probably the nicest piece of furniture in our house, but it was useless after the waterbed was tossed. Up to the attic it went.

The headboard was made of wood so soft, it would practically leave a fingerprint if you pressed hard enough. It was begging to be carved into, same as how sometimes scabs need to be picked, even though you know the consequences might be bloody and painful. I restrained myself from carving into the headboard while it was in my parents’ bedroom, but soon after the headboard was moved to storage in the attic, I climbed the attic stairs with a Bic pen in my hand and vandalism in my heart.

Using the pen as my utensil, I carved “Natasha” in rakish cursive lettering. Although I didn’t know anyone named Natasha except for a muppet on Sesame Street, I chose the name because I thought it was beautiful and I wanted to keep the integrity of the fancy headboard intact by selecting an elegant word for the inscription. I can still recall how luxuriously pliable the wood felt under the pressure of the Bic, how I felt like I was creating art, and how I didn’t want that feeling to end. I went on to carve stars and a rocket ship around “Natasha” before I finally snapped out of my woodworking haze.

A few months later, my mom and aunt pulled me aside to have a serious talk. They were worried that my teenaged, rock ‘n roll loving cousin was on a bad path and they wanted to know if I had noticed anything “funny” in his behavior.

My cousin was thirteen years old and sported acid washed jeans, an earring in one ear only, and a bitchin’ rat tail. In other words, he was a total badass. I hadn’t noticed him acting “funny”, but then I wasn’t sure what they meant. When I asked my mom and aunt to explain, they paused and exchanged concerned glances.

I knew I was in for some sort of revelation because they were acting in the same solemn manner as when they sat me down to tell me that my stepfather was not my real father, which they seemed to do like once a week. Seriously, I had to have that talk more times than necessary. So in their most somber Paternity Voice, they told me that my cousin had carved things into the headboard upstairs. I squirmed and considered letting my cousin take the fall for my Natasha carving. They already believed that he did the carving; all I had to do was keep my mouth shut.

But they weren’t finished. “He carved something very bad into the wood,” they said. I probably looked up at them, perplexed, thinking, gosh, what do they have against the name Natasha? And they probably read my confusion as the innocence of a snowy white lamb in the midst of a filthy, corrupt world. They sighed heavily. “Honey, we don’t want to scare you, but we’re very worried. Your cousin, he…he carved the word Satan into the headboard. We think he’s worshiping the devil.”

Ah, jeez. How did they get Satan from Natasha? I mean, my teachers always gave me a “Highly Satisfactory” for my penmanship, and they never complained of satanic messages in my cursive workbook. I had to set my mom and aunt straight on this one. When I confessed that I had done the carving, they didn’t seem to believe me.

“Who’s this Natasha?” my mom asked.

“Nobody. I just think it’s a pretty name,” I said.

“Oh Sarah, why would you carve it into the headboard? If you were going to carve something, why that?”

“I don’t know. I just like the name.”

“You don’t have to protect your cousin,” my aunt said.

“Really, I did it.”

They continued to press me and when I didn’t change my story, they halfheartedly told me not to deface the furniture anymore. They seemed let down; I think they would have preferred that my cousin be a Satanist.

Epilogue 1

I called my mom tonight to make sure she was okay with me sharing this story. “Hey Mom,” I said, “remember that time I carved the word “Natasha” in the waterbed headboard and you thought Rafael* had written “Ah Satan”?

“No,” said my mother.

“Well is it okay with you if I write about it?”

She paused. “Oh…fine. Write whatever you want. But you know, Rafael did listen to that kind  of music. And why would you write “Natasha” on the headboard?”

“It’s a pretty name,” I told her.

*Not his real name

Epilogue 2

I wasn’t the only one who liked the name Natasha. A young man I didn’t know at the time named Brent also thought it was a beautiful name. When Brent was 14, his mom brought home a tiny little half-pug puppy and Brent named her Natasha. Natasha would eventually become my dog, too. She was the best little dog.

Today I have a special treat for you. Brent is joining me to discuss the 1979 horror movie, Tourist Trap.

Me: This is a special movie for me. I saw pieces of it on late night TV when I was very young and it fucked me up. I mean fucked me up. This was the time period when I considered the Rats of Nimh a scary movie because that one rat had yellow eyes. When the yellow-eyed rat would appear onscreen, I’d run out of the room.

Tourist Trap was the first scary scary movie that I had ever seen, and my placid little girl mind was blown. There was a scene in the movie where a doomed man walks into a spooky deserted store and encounters mannequins and old doll heads with mouths that flap like puppets as they laugh wickedly at him. It was the first time in my life I felt like I was in the midst of pure evil.Maybe part of that had to do with my mom in the background saying, “Sarah, change the channel! This is evil!” The terror and strangeness of that memory became something of a legend in my mind as I grew up. I didn’t always appreciate a good horror movie as I do now, but I have always been fascinated by them. I believe we can thank Tourist Trap for that.

Tourist Trap taught me that my baby dolls wanted to kill me. Tourist Trap made me realize I should be fearful of any inanimate object with eyes that watched me while I sleep. Years later, my John Stamos on a motorcycle poster would cause me turmoil because although he was fine, his eyes followed me everywhere in that creepy old doll kind of way.

Brent: I don’t know about pure evil. Seemed like a pretty cut and dry slasher to me: kill 30 year olds that are playing 20 year olds, and do it with pizzazz. The only three things that are at all different about this film are:

1. The killer/hillbilly owner (oops spoiler).

Me: You just ruined somebody’s day.

Brent: This guy looks like one of the ones who shot Peter Fonda in the end of Easy Rider (double spoiler!). He isn’t scary but then he puts on this rip-off Leatherface mask and an obviously different person dubs this killer persona’s voice and they have something intangible, an off-kilter performance that is worth some notice. Something just doesn’t feel right.  Like when you’re talking to someone and they don’t look quite normal. Then you realize they have bleached their teeth and look like they are talking through rows of Chicklets.

2. The special effects are kind of creepy, in the way dolls and ventriloquist dummies can be.

Me: Kind of creepy? Harumph!

Brent: There is only one mannequin that I believe is solely responsible for number 3.

3. This movie scared my wife and is special in the specific neurosis it caused; I mean who could be afraid of John “dreamboat” Stamos.

Me: That doll is creepy. I’m getting scared all over again. I’d like to mention that when my mom and I happened across Tourist Trap on that fateful night, we were in her bedroom, where there was a king-sized waterbed with a mirrored headboard and a red velvet bedspread. Those aren’t important details but can you imagine the love zone that must have been?

Here is where you need to pay attention: the TV was mounted close to the ceiling, in a corner diagonal from the waterbed. So your plan to mount our hypothetical bedroom TV to the ceiling which would require that we lay flat on our backs to watch it (a plan I keep vetoing) might remind me of this early childhood trauma.

Brent: The only thing it will remind you of is how bad you are at following my blueprints and that your husband is a design genius. Did waterbeds have a sexual component that I didn’t understand when I was young (or still really)? It seemed like a lot of parents had them for about 10 years, then they vanished from the earth. Like people started dying from being unable to get up in the morning, a serious concern if you’ve ever tried to get out of one, and they were banned. Where did all the waterbeds go?

Me: That’s a good question. If you were to go into a furniture store and say, “Take me to your water bed section!” they would have to politely tell you that they haven’t carried waterbeds in fifteen years. Maybe there is a waterbed section in every landfill, and that’s where the raccoons sleep. But it’s never a good night’s sleep for them because the motion of the water under the mattress is always causing their sweet furry bodies to roll around and crash into each other, not to mention that a water mattress can’t be great for their little raccoon backs.

Brent: You were saying, it was evil?

Me: Yes, and we were well-acquainted with evil. As an example, we had a pamphlet in our house that explained how to identify devil worshippers. The Satanist on the cover wore a hooded black robe, naturally.

Brent: Ah yes, the Satanic Panic. My mom got a hold of some video tape from someone at church. The front cover had different symbols of the Satanists: 666, the pentagram, the head of a goat then of course the dreaded yin yang.  This was followed shortly by a god laden push for me to tape over my Tales from the Crypt collection. I did. It was a sad day for Satan. In her defense she was really trying to deliver us from evil. I guess she was successful I didn’t turn out evil; I did however buy the entire set of TFTC on DVD in recent years (awesome!). I will not be buying Tourist Trap.

Sarah: What if she had forbidden you from enjoying horror-based entertainment altogether? Then it would have been like Footloose, but I’m picturing even more dancing. Your mom would finally realize horror movies aren’t so bad after you fall head first into a toilet and are saved from drowning by the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Disclaimer: we love you, mother dearests

The funny thing is, while this movie lingered in my mind, all I could remember of the movie was that there were old dolls who laughed. As I got older and braver, I wanted to revisit it, but I didn’t even know its name. At the age of 19, when the internet became enough of a thing for me to ask my friend Melissa to teach me about email, one of the first emails I sent out with my new account, pickingmynose_1999@yahoo.com (ugh), was to a movie website where alleged experts could help you find obscure titles. They had no idea what I was talking about. But just a couple months ago, I mentioned all this to Brent, and he knew exactly what movie I was talking about: Tourist Trap.

Brent: That website eats turds. Unlike your husband, who would have to be getting paid, and well to eat turds.

Me: How much would it take?

Brent: $50 per poo? Depends on the poo size. I might touch my tongue to one for $50.

Me: After learning the name of the movie, I had some trouble acquiring it. I found that to be spooky. It’s like some spirit out there was trying to prevent me from watching it. Never mind that it was on You Tube the entire time. When Brent and I finally sat down to watch it, I suspected that it might not scare me this time around. Isn’t that the case with most movies that scared us when we were kids?

Halloween 4 is a good example of a movie that is much less scary now that I’m an adult. Not to mention, watching the sex scene as an adult is way less uncomfortable without my stepfather and brother in the room with me.

Nightmare on Elm Street was another movie that scared me as a kid, and while I firmly maintain that out of all the supernatural horror movie villains, I wouldn’t stand a chance against Freddy Krueger, I am much less adamant now than I was when I was younger about never living on an Elm Street.

Here’s the score with Tourist Trap: I wasn’t completely disappointed. And Brent, I’m going to argue that it wasn’t as dismal as you suggest. There was real potential here. The heart of this story is the hillbilly man living all alone with his piles of dolls and mannequins that he can make move with his mind. Here’s where the filmmakers do well: they understand what it is that makes dolls so freaky. You know that ominous feeling of being in the presence of a spooky doll, where you keep glancing at it, just knowing that it’s going to start moving on its own? The filmmakers get it, they get that these husks of plastic and rubber made to imitate the human form are fucking creepy on their own, that with their glassy eyes and preserved expressions, they look more like freshly embalmed corpses than a living person. The doll scenes are all slow-boil suspense, with the camera steady on the dolls as their heads creak around on their necks. Then they wham you with, say, a doll whose jaw comes unhinged and falls off. Simple tricks, but suspenseful, disturbing (and creative) nonetheless.

There was an excellent scene where two of the thirty-year-old teens are trying to escape and they have to walk through a narrow hallway that has mannequins lined up on either side. Watching them try to squeeze past all these mannequins that might start moving at any moment made me itch.

Oh, and the end was terrific. I am sure that if I ever had to deal with animate dolls, I would instantly go insane. My mind would say, “You know what, that’s just too crazy. Let’s get out of here.” And then it would put me in a happy place, like the Golden Girls’ house.

And Brent, don’t think that you might not go insane in a situation like that. I know you’re reading this all smugly—

Brent: Yep.

Me:  —picturing yourself the hero of any scenario where we have to escape dolls and lunatics.

Brent: Uh-huh.

Me: But you never know.

Brent:  Oh, I know.

Me: Maybe you’ll be the catatonic one—

Brent: Don’t think so.

Me: —muttering in a southern accent about your many sexual exploits, while I’m the quick-thinker who gets us out of there.

Brent: More like you’ll be staring at my amazing bod while it’s drenched in the blood of mannequins and fighting off the Hillbilly with one arm and the other flexing and pointing to the exit.

Me: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And let me clarify, this is not a good movie. The movie makers had to go and build a shoddy slasher plot around those unsettling doll scenes.

Brent: It’s like they had the dummies and were like, “These are creepy. What if we made a movie where they came to life?” then the money sensible partner was all, “That’s way too expensive. If only we could make them move in a limited way so that we don’t have to spend too much on animatronics.” Then while bouncing different ideas back and forth, they were, each in turn, kicked in the head by the same mule and decided that they should make a telekinetic hillbilly.

Me: Darn that mule! I think he’s ruined a lot of potentially good movies. It also felt like they were working too hard to stretch their material into a full-length movie. We’ve seen a few scary movies like that, where they just would have worked better as short films.

Before we sign off, let me just say that I wrote the bulk of my part at night time, alone in my house. I got freaked out, thinking about those damn dolls. I kept hearing strange noises and the pugs would bark at (seemingly) nothing. I was very uneasy. Tourist Trap got me again.

Brent: Or was it the merest mention of John Stamos?

Warm weather is almost here, and you know what that means. Ticks, air conditioning, and…

Yard sales!

Brent and I love the sport of yard sales. We’re not barterers, we just like digging through other people’s weird stuff while they watch us.

Last year’s bargains?

• Nearly the entire set of Little House on the Prairie books. $2.00 a piece. Hardback. I know.
• A prospector’s bowl.
• This metal knight that Brent is fondling inappropriately:

I got the metal knight when I was yard saling with my mother-in-law, Rita. The lady selling it told me that the original owners bought this guy in Mexico on their honeymoon. After discovering that shipping was going to be a pain, they rented a convertible, put the top down, and propped the metal knight in the back seat. That is how he came to America.

A few weeks ago, we went to our first yard sales of 2013. We scored some antique taxidermy equipment including fake eyes and tongues. Yes!

The 2013 yard sale season is off to a promising start.

You may have heard some buzz about the Scavenger, the alter ego I’m working on creating -an unmasked crusader whose mission will be to watch over the dumpsters of her townhouse complex and ensure that citizens outside of the complex do not befoul her dumpsters with their garbage.

It seems that the anonymity of the dumpster attracts ne-er do wells who are trying to throw away items that have been deemed unsafe for landfills. Like bodies. When the Scavenger nabs these scofflaws in the act, she won’t use force against them, nor will she order her two hell hounds to attack; instead she will educate them on their municipal duties in regard to discarding trash.

I can see Brent encountering the Scavenger if he continually threatens to throw away my beloved Monkees t shirt or the hoodie with the holes in the elbows (note to Brent: don’t think I haven’t noticed that my purple generic Umbros are nowhere to be found).

The Scavenger will teach Brent that you can’t throw away someone else’s belongings. As he learns that valuable lesson, he will also be startled and confused by the feelings that the Scavenger stirs within his heart. Brent will start watching Jem to see how Rio deals with the conflicting emotions of loving Jericha and Jem. And if I’m lucky, Brent will dye his hair and eyebrows purple.

But enough of things to come. Today I am here to tell you some straight facts.  Last Wednesday morning, I left my house to head to work. My parking space is two spaces down from the dumpster and I saw there was a small red truck parked in front of the dumpster. I recognized the truck as belonging to the maintenance man, Burton Sprahct*.

There was a clang as something heavy was tossed into the dumpster. I cross the lawn to my car and was surprised that Burton hadn’t called out a hello to me yet. We’re friends; he  always stops to chat when he sees me and he has the best gossip about people who live in the complex. So it was natural that I pop out from between the parked cars to greet him.

He was behind the wheel of his truck at this point and I had landed right in front of him, waving vigorously. It took me a couple seconds of waving to realize that the guy  in the truck was not Burton.

The imposter was older and had white hair like Burton, but the face was all wrong. Not only that, but up close I noticed that this guy’s truck was an extended cab while poor Burton has to make do with a regular cab.

It was a strange moment because as I was standing in the stranger’s direct path, waving like a fool, we made long and intense eye contact. The entire time our gazes were locked, my expression slowly changed to reflect my ever-growing awareness of the situation. At first it was happiness at seeing Burton. Then, confusion because although he was very close to being Burton, he was somebody different. Then…suspicion. My head cocked as I appraised the stranger, trying to remember if I’d seen him or his extended cab truck around the the complex before. Did this man have any business throwing junk into the complex’s dumpster? Keep in mind I was waving this entire time, but by the end, my wave had turned mechanical.

In response to me, the stranger looked startled and nervous. He stared back at me with his mouth open, and about the time I was beginning to wonder if he was one of those trash abusers, he waved back hesitantly. Finally, I broke eye contact and ran back to my car. I was simply in a hurry because I was running late, but to Not-Burton, I may have appeared to have the purpose and determination of a hero cop who suddenly remembers that one tiny detail that pieces together all the clues from the recent crop of murders that have plagued her beat, a detail that tells me – as the cop, remember – exactly where the killer is and that I must get there immediately before the evil killer** claims his next victim.

So I might have jumped into my car a bit zealously, I don’t know, but I found myself driving through my townhouse complex behind Not-Burton (NB from here out). As we approached the entrance to the street, from where you must go either left or right, I noticed he didn’t put on his turn signal. One time, a friend told me that her father sometimes didn’t use a turn signal because he wanted to “preserve” it, and I thought that maybe this guy felt the same way. But then I wondered if he had left his turn signal off as a test to see if I was following him. Like he was waiting for me to use my turn signal, and then he would go in the opposite direction. I didn’t touch my turn signal. Let him sweat. If he did what I think he did, he was guilty of a crime. The crime of garbage fraud.

At the entrance, NB paused. There were no cars coming, no people walking, no reason for him to be willy-nilly, but willy-nilly he was. He eventually turned right. Yes! That was the direction I was headed. I pulled out quickly behind him, to really make it look like I was tailing him. Any chance I get to feel like a real private eye, I’ll take it. It was just like Chinatown. Or at least Chinatown: The Later Years, Wherein Chinatown is Actually Lawrence, Kansas. I know there are ways to follow a person in a car so that they never know they are being followed, but I don’t know those tricks. Yet.

Following NB was so much fun, and I was thinking that it was was going to be a shame when we would inevitably have to part ways. If I hadn’t had to be at work, I would have considered following him. Now, all this was going on in my mind but of course I was still aware that he was most likely not even aware that I was behind him. Then, his turn signal started blinking and he pulled into a driveway of a house where a very old guy often sits out front on a bench that faces the road, looking sad and lonely.

I stared at his truck as I drove by and then switched over to the review mirror to continue my staring. I was disappointed that he lived so close and that the tail was over. I was also wondering if he was dumping the very old man’s trash at our property. I was kind of glad the very old man had a companion, even one as dubious as NB.

I made it down the street a ways, but I was still watching NB’s truck from my rear view window. Then, something awesome happened while I was still close enough to see it: NB’s red extended cab truck pulled out of the very old man’s driveway and headed in the opposite direction, away from me.

What does that mean? Why, I’m pretty sure it means that he really did think I was following him! And he was trying to be sneaky and get me to lose my trail.

What a great morning.

*Name has been changed. Name was actually changed three times until I settled on the best fake name. Brent didn’t know about all that, but as I was finishing this up, he said that this blog should feature a character named Nicodemus Weinerburger. Somebody cue the X Files theme because Brent and I have a psychic connection!

**The killer is definitely this guy.

Sweet Crumbkins, it’s time to update this mother!

My dream goal is to post two times a week. This goal belongs to an elite family of similarly high-powered, elusive aspirations: the Goalsevelts.

Until I can break into the Goalsevelt’s inner circle, I would be pleased with myself to update once a week. Maybe then I could blog about more topical subjects like the Oscars. Which I didn’t see.

Today’s exciting news is that I’m in the midst of a snow day!*

This is our second blizzard in less than a week. I am in the position to love this weather because 1) I don’t have to drive in it and 2) I have heavy duty snow boots that make me invincible.

Last week’s snowstorm hit right around 8 am. Within an hour, the bosses decided to send everyone home. By this time, the parking lot was covered in snow and ice. People in their cars were getting stuck all over the place. My snow boots and I helped push five people to the freedom of the ice covered, barely visible road.

The first car that needed my help was a red station wagon. A fellow about my age was pushing on the back end without much luck and so I joined him. Having never met him before, I introduced myself as we attempted to move the car. He told me his name and then oddly enough, quickly mentioned that he is married.

Now why would he bring up his wife? I can only assume that he thought I was hitting on him. There we were, two strangers pushing a car with all our might, making very little progress in cold, wet weather, and I somehow gave him the impression that I wanted his bod? I guess he mistook my exuberance over the snow and being sent home early as lust for him.

Years ago at a different job, a co-worker and I were talking about a movie coming out that we  both were excited to see. He mentioned something about us going to see it together. I don’t recall exactly what he said, but I swear to criminy he asked me out. Whatever his words were, they prompted me to say, “Oh, I’m sorry, I have a boyfriend.”  I was all regretful about it too, like I was apologizing because he had to miss out on my gloriousness, the poor guy. I said it the same way a doctor might tell someone they have the clap.  “I’m sorry, you have gonorrhea. But on the bright side, it’s not cancer like you thought!”

His response, I kid you not, was, “Uh, yeah, I wasn’t asking you out.”

And because the situation wasn’t embarrassing enough, I had to say, “Oh. Are you sure?”

“Yes. I just meant that we could go see it as a group, with other people.” My would-be paramour was getting defensive. We ended the conversation soon after that and never spoke again.

It’s possible that I misunderstood him and he truly had not asked me out. In the same way I was most certainly NOT hitting on the co-worker in the snow. Getting back to that guy, I considered mentioning Brent in a suave way, such as, “Oh, I wonder if my husband knows your wife? He’s a wrestler.”

Speaking of Mr. Brent, I just asked him if he would go for a sleigh ride with me if we had a horse and sleigh. He said no. Then I said, “So you’d just let the sleigh go to waste?” And he had no response.

I don’t have a horse, but I do have two ever-hungry pugs. I think that if I hitched them up to our inner-tube sled and hooked bacon  on the end of a fishing pole and dangled it in front of them, why I do believe I’d have a working snowmobile. The main problem is figuring out what to use to secure the bacon to the fishing pole. I’m obviously not going to use a metal hook. I’d even be concerned about using a plastic hook – I wouldn’t want them to swallow it.

Speaking of those damn pugs…

Swoozie liked eating the snow. Ebby liked licking the yellow snow.

But overall, Ebby was miserable. Snow, Ebby is just not that into you.

Dang, my hands look huge in that picture. I’ve got man hands, baby!

After the snow stopped, I took the pugs on a walk.

I’m calling the picture below “Autumn and Winter Share a Kiss.”

Here is a picture of the taxidermied fox that  guards Teufel’s front door. Brent found the little guy in the the dumpster and gave him to Teufel, but not before posing him (the fox, not Teufel)  in front of our door to terrify me when I came home. He succeeded. It was nighttime and the fox’s face was illuminated by the street lamp. The rest of the fox’s body was hidden by shadows so it looked like a wild animal was leaping out at me face first.

Right where the pugs are standing, one of our  neighbors built a snowman for Teufel. So there for a while you had to navigate around a snowman and the fox to go inside Teufel’s.

In the picture below, Swoozie and Ebby do not appear to be enjoying the walk. In fact, they look like they are being abused.

Even though my town is covered in snow, there are hints of spring. Green is the prettiest color, don’t you think?

That’s all for today. Try not to let Teufel’s fox haunt your dreams.

A couple weeks ago, I set out to spiffy up my ‘contact me’ page. I searched through my pictures, specifically looking for one of me on the phone. You know, in the act of contacting. There was exactly one:

The young lady with the shocked expression is my best friend Samaria. Samaria had insisted that we needed to take some pictures because we didn’t have any recent ones of us together. We did some standard poses and a few “concept” poses like the one above. I would also like to mention that we were on a BEACH in CALIFORNIA because usually when we’re together, we’re on a sofa in Kansas.

So the other day, I was looking at this picture and thinking there was something strangely familiar about it. Maybe even a tiddlybit uncanny. Have you ever tried to remember (dramatic pause) a memory that just isn’t there?

But then it came to me. Sweet Valley High #2, Secrets. Samaria and I had unintentionally recreated the cover of this book, the second in Francine Pascal’s popular teen series from the 80s and 90s.

This made me wonder if I had other pictures that were eerily similar to Sweet Valley High covers. Turns out, life does imitate art. See for yourself.

Oh, Brent, with that facial hair, you look like Scott Daniels, the college guy who nearly date-rapes Jessica in All Night Long, Sweet Valley High #5. I am disturbed to recall that when I read this as a 12-year-old girl, I wasn’t like, “Hey Scott, Jessica’s not ready to go that far, so stop getting fresh!” as I should have been, but instead I was all, “Ooh, steamy!”

I just asked Brent if he was cool with me putting up that last picture, what with the bestiality implications. He said, “I don’t care at all what you put on your blog, as long as it’s true. And truly, I look like a pervert in this picture.”

That’s my guy. I love you to pieces, Brentleberry.

Meanwhile, my Contact page remains unjazzy. One of these days, I’ll make it look nice.

One day I stepped outside to check the mail and found myself wishing that a letter from my pen pal was waiting for me. Although I don’t have a pen pal, I could imagine her clearly: she would be a British governess, preferably living in the 19^th century. Her name would be Gert Maplethorpe. She would write letters to me by candlelight, after the children had been put to bed. The feather on her pen would be from an exotic bird that her sea captain uncle speared during a voyage to the Far East for silks and spices. She would speak each word aloud as she wrote and would sit with the most upright posture at her desk, or secretary, as she would call it. She would comment on my letters, saying things like, “How lovely that the pugs got a scrub and, yes, I agree with you that it is most peculiar that your husband insists on bathing himself while he bathes the pugs. Does he not fear typhus?”

Sadly, I do not have a Gert Maplethorpe in my life. I tried to find one online, but all Google gave me was prisonpenpals.com.

I have always wanted to be a letter writer. Thoughtful people write letters. Like the lady I dumped a plate of enchiladas on, when I was a waitress at Laura’s Mexican Patio. She was part of the Sunday church crowd and was wearing a pretty dress. Of course she was wearing nice clothes. I apologized fifty times, touched her inappropriately as I tried to scoop the food off her breasts, and told her that she must let me pay the dry cleaning bill.* I gave her my address, but instead of a bill, she sent me a kind letter. She wrote that she didn’t need a dry cleaner after all, that she was able to remove the enchilada stains with soda water. She thanked me for my concern and even made a joke about how she’ll watch out for flying plates of food from now on. Classy lady, that one.

What is it about a handwritten letter that is so special? Growing up, I lived far away from extended family. Back when long distance phone calls were a big deal, we kept in touch through mail. I can still picture all four of my aunts’ handwriting. Barbara’s artistic lettering, Sonja’s trendy bubble-like letters, Karen’s quick scrawl, Lori’s small, pretty cursive. I would read their letters multiple times and look at the pictures of cousins I barely knew.

Going out to check the mail, I always know when I’ve got a personal letter, even before I see the return address and even if the envelopment is regular white. I guess it’s something in the shape of the handwriting that clues me in. At my childhood home, we had to walk down a path to get to the mailbox. Whenever the mail brought a real letter, I would come close to tearing into it at the mailbox, but I usually restrained. Instead, I waited to read the letter until I was inside and seated comfortably.**

I’m writing all this to say that I like letters, I like the post office, and I am going to become a letter writer. My plan is to write one letter per month. And guess what, I have already written and mailed my first letter, to the Lifesavers group. It’s technically a letter of complaint, but it’s a fake complaint that contains several very real compliments for Lifesavers. And I know I just went on and on about how good it feels to get nice letters, and trust me, while my ultimate goal is to send out good vibration letters that make everyone feel loved and important, this first letter is not that. 

Oh, and because I got the bum Lifesaver at work, I wrote this letter in the voice of Ched, who is my co-worker Thad‘s alter ego that I made up for him. Upon reading this letter, Thad asked me in a weary tone why I feel the need to involve him in my stupid ideas. I’m just glad I saved that half a mint.

Transcribed:

Dear Lifesavers,

My name is Ched Smeth. I love your mints, but today I got one that was only half a mint. You might think it’s not a big deal, but it was. I work in an office where we have a communal bowl of mints. My boss Jen Henter got onto me about eating all the mints and now there is an office policy that states we can only have one mint per hour. The bowl is in the front of the room and everybody watches me closely to make sure I don’t take more than one. Needless to say, I look forward to my one mint per hour. I relish the way the famous lifesaver shape feels in my mouth. I don’t want half a lifesaver. Getting this bum lifesaver ruined my hour. Please have your factory workers be more careful when they are wrapping the mints.

Sincerely,
Ched A. Smeth

*This was a situation where I merely repeated something I’d heard on the TV, because it felt like the right thing to say. I had no idea what dry cleaning entailed or if I could even afford what I was promising. I’m still not clear on what dry cleaning is supposed to do. My mom’s dog Foxy gave birth to her puppy, Bear, on my favorite dress, and I figured that the dry cleaner, if anyone, would be able to remove the placenta stains. That was not the case, but the remaining stains came back faded in such a way that they blended with the fabric and the dress was still wearable. The dry cleaner kind of saved the day.

**I have a similar ritual for pizza. Neither Brent nor I are allowed to open the pizza until we get it home and we’re on the couch with a movie playing. As for other foods: it’s okay to snack on a few french fries on the way home, but never, ever the hamburger. Burritos – depends on the day.