The Big DumpTruck

It's warm out today. Too warm out. I can't think of a single person who wants to be at work today. We are all slowly edging toward the door, coming up with reasons we need to step outside. I think at least 30 or 40 people will take up smoking just to go outside for smoke breaks. No, really.

So of course, the mundane day-to-day activities are just about going to kill me. Why no, I don't feel like completing my time sheet, why do you ask? What? I won't get paid if I don't? Okay, I guess I'll do it but I won't like it.

Ya, that'll get 'em. Make sure they know you're doing something under protest. Unless they offer you a cupcake. If they offer you a cupcake, it's all good. I'd do my time sheet twice for a cupcake!

Before I forget, yo [-Irwin from Billy and Mandy], that damned baking set they sell on commercial on Cartoon Network? The one where you can secretly stick something in the middle of a cake to spice up the lives of your loved ones? Okay, you folks suggest gelatin. If I EVER cut a piece of cake and half of it is a big quivery blob of gelatin, I am NOT EATING IT. I want my cake to be full of cake, okay?

(And something that occurred to me the other day...whatever happened to those triangle sandwich makers where you can make an apple pie with a piece of Wonder Bread and a can of pie filling? Are folks still using them to make an egg sandwich complete with Bacos(tm)? (Can you even imagine? "Add some egg, some cheese and sprinkle on some Bacos. Seal up the edges of your Wonder Bread and voila, you have a white guy breakfast sandwich! I have to tell you, part of me is really happy that I can't think of the name of this product right now, but I suspect someone is going to remind me before the day is over.)

Why, yes, I did try to run an errand at lunch today. And yes, I did realize as I was in line that I'd left my ATM card back at work, why do you ask?

Grandma and Grandpa are going to take junior fishing this afternoon. Lucky kid.

[Update: Whew! Just a cyst! It might come back, and will have to be dealt with again, but it was just a cyst!!! I gotta head over to Petco and get him a big meaty bone!]

Dropped the pooch off at the vet this morning to have them remove a little cyst-like lump he has just under his skin. I am torn between thinking it's nothing horrible, just a cyst or something fluid-filled that doesn't even seem to bother him, to thinking it's something horrible. Right now we're waiting for the vet to call and give us a status update (they are keeping him for the day because it's easier for us to do it that way, but they weren't going to look at him until noon-ish because it was a non-emergency.

I don't like stuff like this at all, thank you very much. I wanted them to tell Mr Dump "Oh, THAT's why you called? Oh that's nothing." but they can't do that, now, can they? They have to be all formal and use the scary words (biopsy and surgery) because really, until they take it out/look at it, they really don't know what it is, do they?

So anyway, if I seem distracted today, that's why.

THIS IS FUN TO MAKE A BLOG ON THE COMPUTER WEBSITE

I'm shopping on Amazon for some binoculars to take with us on vacation. I'm looking for that perfect combination of great field of vision, easy focus, and not too heavy. Oh, and cheap. So I find a pair that has potential, and I scroll down to see if they've listed the weight. It says the following:

Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 3.5 x 8.2 inches ; 38.0 pounds
Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds.

Okay, so lets say that in some universe you could take product dimensions (in inches) and convert it to pounds...38 pounds seems a little heavy to me. I think after 10 seconds of viewing my arms would be aching. And let's not even talk about how much your neck would hurt after wearing them for 10 minutes. And let's not talk about how heavy it would make your luggage to carry 38 pound binoculars around.

I wanted to get night vision binoculars, but those are WAAAAAAY too expensive. I will just have to be happy with regular ones. Maybe some that are a couple of pounds lighter, though.

Mr. Dump just let me knowthat the Southbound rest area on 495 (Chelmsford?) is temprarily closed because it's poop covered. He started smelling the poop when he got off of Route 3 onto 495 South. That's a lot of poop smell.

He said there are two big tanker trucks and everything looks "wet". Oh my God, I can only imagine what it smells like.

So if you're travelling, pee before you leave, okay?

Okay, time to get all my opinions on various topics out into the open for the world to view and reflect upon. I know you've all been waiting.

Massachusetts thinking of raising the driving age to 17.5:
You know, I love my 15 year old step-son dearly, but the thought of him getting behind the wheel in another year gives me fits. I am utterly horrified at the number of fatal accidents in Massachusetts involving teens in 2006 alone. Almost every weekend there's another one. Why is it so impossible for us to get it through their heads that being stupid in a car can get them killed, or get someone else killed? Why do they continue to think "that can't happen to me" when left and right it is happening to kids who may as well BE them? The latest crash, with the 17 year old girl and her 10 year old brother? That could be Junior and his brother in exactly 2 years. And I'm not saying all kids can't handle driving carefully, obeying the traffic laws and limits, but we're talking about a bunch of kids, many of whom think the laws are for [expletive deleted]s and don't apply to them. There is no other reason to explain why a bunch of 16 year olds will pile into mom's car (against the law because a 16 year old driver isn't allowed to have passengers) and speed down an unfamiliar road until they wrap the car around a tree. My heart bleeds for the father of a local boy who put three of his friends into the ICU - one of whom still isn't breathing on her own - but really, sir, are you doing your son any favors when you blame this accident on the upkeep of a dirt road that is marked with huge "Pass at your own risk" signs? This is a road NOBODY uses, and your son was speeding on it with a car full of kids he shouldn't have been transporting. How can you possibly try to blame this on the town? That's the DEFINITION of "Pass at Your Own Risk" is it not? I feel horrible for the whole situation, but really, there is only one person to point the finger at.

It was hard enough drilling it through the kids' heads that when they are skiing and snowboarding, they have to look out for other people, not the other way around. The mountain does not belong to you, and people get killed every year - experienced people - because they are trying to avoid some kid doing something dumb or being somewhere they shouldn't be. Kids just naturally think they are more skilled than they are, and that they couldn't possibly get hurt or killed. And that applies to everything from driving a car, to rollerblading, to skiing, etc.

Housing Boom in Lunenburg:
I know I don't live in Lunenburg, but I live near it, and drive through it twice a day. All those proposed homes will hold people who need to get to work by driving through MY town. Are you people insane? There is no way your infrastructure can support all those proposed housing units. We're talking 868 in various complexes (number courtesy my adding up everything listed on this site of proposed projects, and includes some houses already completed), almost exclusively in the Whalom area. And as a Leominster resident who foresees 1500 extra cars a day driving down Main Street trying to get to Route 2? I say things that can't be printed. Those roads are overcongested as it is. How the HELL would anyone get anywhere with all those extra people?? I just cannot fathom how the people running that town can think this is all a good idea. And once they are approved and built, it's not like you can change your mind if it isn't working out.

So much for the pretty, small down Lunenburg once was if they start throwing up houses in those numbers. What's it like losing your appeal to people looking for a quiet place to live? 868 new units? Insane.

My 5-year-old niece set me straight. She told me she was signed up to take piano lessons and I asked how she could do that without a piano.

"We don't have to bring one, they have one there."

Oh. Silly me! What was I thinking.

She also told me she was going to learn to play Happy Birthday, but it's a little different.
"How?"
"It's happier!"

I love that kid.

Now that I've had a day for my new gagillionaire status to sink in, I have decide it's time to change some of the priorities in my life.

There are a few things I want to change, and I'll give you the short list here.

I think we'll need to change houses. Sure, we like our cozy cape, but a gagillionaire just can't live in a 1500sf house. It isn't "done". So I'm thinking we need to find something more like this:




I think I could very easily feel "at home" here. I've already started picking out what room I want for storing my summer shoes!

And we would give Phantom a dog house cause he doesn't have one right now. Maybe something with a European feel?




After we get the house thing squared away, it will be time to take a look at our cars. Sure, they're nice, but a gagillionaire can't be driving a 2004 Toyota Sienna. As I said earlier, it just isn't done.

I will probably look for something in this line



While Mr Dump goes for something sportier.




So many things a gagillionaire has to think about...

[UPDATE: Okay, I have to share the following email exchange I had with Mr. Dump after he viewed this post.

Him: Look – if I’m going to bother overcompensating, I’ll buy a Porsche.
Me: But is a Porsche full of wieners? I think not. Unless it's your turn to drive to lunch. "You know what's in wieners? Well, there's cow's eyes, and dog's heads, and old phone books, and, of course, *wiener flavor*.... " (From a Gavin skit on Kids in the Hall.)"]

The dog is irregular. Or maybe he isn't. It's hard to tell when he spends the day somewhere else, and she doesn't follow him around to see when he poops. (*waves at Barb*) So for a week or so now, every few days, he doesn't poop. So I have to obsess about whether or not he's got a bowel obstruction or something. He didn't poop for us last night or this morning (I know, it was about forty below zero as I stood outside last night begging "Please...please get busy!" (That's the phrase we use from the aborted clicker training we did.)) so I'm in poop alert mode again. But tonight he did a lovely one for me (a little softer than I like, considering he did it on the neighbor's lawn and I had to pick it up before anyone noticed).

So now I can focus my energy on worrying about something else. Like how nailed we are on our taxes this year. We apparently are gagillionaires. I had no idea. But we didn't do enough stuff that other gagillionaires know how to do to avoid having to pay a lot of taxes. Bill Gates hasn't returned any of my calls.

One of the worst things was that we refinanced the house at the end of 2004 to get rid of a horrid 2nd mortgage we had and to lower our interest rate. We lowered it SO MUCH that we killed our tax return. We literally paid HALF this year what we did last year. My accountant refused to believe it had dropped so much. He asked me to go home and make sure there wasn't another mortgage. I'm not sure how I would have missed paying a different mortgage, seeing that we only have one and I'm the one who pays it.

Maybe I'd rather obsess about poop.

I'm glad I'm not a politician or the President of a major corporation. Because I get mired in the mud of making simple decisions all the time. Some decisions I can make without a second thought. But when you find yourself unable to decide if you should cut your hair before vacation, you have a problem.

So here's the thing - my looks okay right now. I'm not crazy about it, but it's functional. (Heh). I love the way my current hairdresser colors it (although this last time we tried going darker and I don't like it nearly as much) but I don't think she can cut it at ALL. She is the winner of the "who can give Jody the oddest haircut ever" award for one she gave me about 3 months ago. So now I'm thinking I'll just go to her for coloring and find someone else to give me cuts. Which is, by the way, a pain in the butt for me. But anyhoo...I have an appointment with her for the weekend before we go on vacation. I should probably get a cut between now and then, but I realized that I might want to put my hair in some kind of ponytail when we're in Florida and right now it's long enough to make one (just barely). So if I cut it at all, no ponytail. And that's the current dilemma.

Do you see why you might not want to put me in charge of anything major?

Once I figure that out, I'll work on the "should I bring a video camera or not" dilemma. (Video rocks, but that's a whole extra piece of electronic equipment to keep track of, and really can only take one of them with me at a time if I don't want to suffer back and shoulder problems. I'm old now, I have to be careful about how heavy my bag/purse/backpack is.)

I am crushed and heartbroken. I don't know who I blame more for this happening - Adam or the Patriots' front office for not making him a franchise player.

[Insert angry and sad face here]

You know, I really should pay more attention to the bloody groundhog's predictions, you know? I believe "he" said there would be six more weeks of winter (i.e. no early spring). Damned if he wasn't right on the money with the one, eh? It's the first day of spring - there are only two weeks left to the month of March...and it's not even forty flippin degrees. The high is only supposed to be 34 today. thirty four. But wait, there's a wind, so it only feels like twenty one degrees.

On March 20th. The first day of Spring.

*sigh*

I know that on a Sunday afternoon, the best thing to ease you into Monday is a few pictures of our little love monkey Phantom, right?

I put a few new pictures up for you. Just click the Nose to see them.

Over the years, I watched St. Patrick's Day come and go, but never felt connected to it. I never saw myself as Irish, mostly because growing up I was told that I only had a drop of Irish in me. But on my dad's side, I was told I had a little bit of everything in me, so in my head I was half French, half this white blob of all mixed up stuff.

Since growing older and wiser and taking an interest in my own genealogy, the realization finally hit me...I have more Irish in me than most people celebrating the day...for goodness' sake, my great-grandmother was born in Ireland! When does that get translated into "a drop"? My grandmother was half Irish, half Scottish (and those folks were far easier to research, by the way. Her mom died when she was very young, and I just don't have as much background on my great grandmother, Ellen Mackay. Of course, the 1910 census has her being from Scotland, but I know that's not true. My friend Sioux confirms that in the 1900 census, an Ellie McKay was living in Clinton, and she was from Ireland. I can't verify that's her, but the dates and ages, etc. are right. Poor woman was 28 and single back then. Her family must have assumed she'd be that way forever!

Anyhoo, kiss me, my great grandmother was Irish!

[Last Night, Typed in on my SideKick]:
I'm at the Filene's in Leominster, waiting for the other blogger chicks on North Central Mass to meet me. I'm not entirely sure how this will work because I've never done this before, but it beats doing the dishes and laundry!

I got here a little too early and realized there are two doors on the side we said we'd meet. Uh oh. So I went for the one I thought Christine meant but that means I'm standing here in the Junior section. I am so conspicuous it hurts.

I wandered to the other door but you have to pass through the cosmetics section and I was terrified they were going to take one look at me and wrestle me to the ground so they can give me a makeover.

[Today]:
What fun! North Central MA blogging chix rule! Thanks to Christine, Robin and Butterstar for getting together over an Orange Julius! As an update for them - I got stuck standing outside in the wind and cold for 20 minutes waiting for the dog to poop after I got back. Again, I ask, I have a dog why?

I was just sitting here at my desk, thinking to myself "Wow, it really smells like someone stepped in dog crap."

So I do the obligatory shoe-check, even though I should have smelled it long before now. So I just immediately assume someone sitting in a cube near me stepped in it during a lunchtime walk.

But just now, I realized that the smell is coming from my trash can, and it's from the part of my lunch that I didn't finish. There is just no way to put a good spin on this. (But it didn't taste like dog crap!)

Is today the Ides of March? You know, when they say "Beware the Ides of March"? I don't know why I think it's the 15th. I don't even know what the hell it means, but I have the 15th stuck in my head.

So if it is (let's assume), what exactly am I bewaring of?

[Update: Oh, hey, I was right, the Ides of March is March 15th. In some other months the Ides is the 13th. And "Beware the Ides of March" isn't for me, it was said to Julius Caesar and made famous by Shakespeare. So I guess I have one less thing to stress about today.]

I HATE THAT. And the stupid web interface for T-Mobile doesn't show the content of the message if it was sent in HTML format, meaning the only way to see it is to click "reply" and then it displays all the HTML codes. Really wonderful.

Quote of the day:
- "I got an ice cream headache trying to do the math." - Steve Donovan, WXLO

Here are the key points for today's meeting.

• We weren't able to find a beard at the dollar store. I know you find that hard to imagine, but I guess there just wasn't enough room what with all the candles and knick-knacks and whathaveyou. We tried iParty but I'm not paying 8 bucks for my kid to pretend he's not himself at school. So we'll just have to leave this experiment on hold for now.
• Interestingly, we ate dinner at my sister's house last night and we watched Howl's Moving Castle. One of the characters, Markl, is a young boy who wears a beard when he goes out in the town, and nobody sees past his disguise. We loved this movie, and now that we've seen this one and Spirited Away I have put the rest of Hayao Miyazaki's movies in my Amazon "to buy" basket.
• On the way to work I got to wondering...if I got rear-ended by a cement mixer and all the cement came pouring out on my car, and as I got out it got all over me, my hair, etc., how long would I have before my hair and clothes because encased in cement?
• It's "Deal or No Deal" night at my house. Jen and Steve (WXLO) interviewed Howie Mandell this morning, and I was thrilled when Steve asked the question I would have asked...Howie did memorize the names of the 26 girls, but they hold the same number case EACH time, so it's easier to remember them all. I guess I hadn't paid close enough attention to know that they are always in the same spot. Prior to today, I had hoped that he was just making up names on the fly, because that would be really funny. And now I have to pay closer attention because he has OCD and one of his things is that he doesn't shake hands with anyone. Interesting problem for a game show host!
• I did go to the Leominster Filene's yesterday after getting my hair done and picked up a few things from the 80% off rack. Our store is not having a total clearance the way some of the others are. They are selling off the brands they won't carry as Macy's, but there is still a lot of regularly priced merchandise available. But I can say I got 2 pair of Lee jeans for six bucks each! Score! (I should go back and get more, eh?)

You know, most people would distance themselves from weird stuff their kid says or does. Not me. I love it. I eat it up. I want him to be a creative thinker, and if he's got a good sense of humor, better still.

So when he made the following request this evening, I didn't ask him why he thought of this, or try to dissuade him, other than to say it was too late to do it tonight.

"Mom, I was to go to the dollar store and buy a fake beard to wear to school, to see if the kids in my class will think I'm somebody else."

I was only half-listening to a radio commercial for a grocery store, and I thought I heard the guy say that haddock loins were on sale. Is a haddock really big enough that you can sell just the loins? I have to assume I misheard, but maybe I didn't. So, can anyone fill me in on the whole haddock loin conundrum? I'm not losing sleep over it, but still...

Thanks to faithful reader Anji, who is apparently good with paying attention to details, pointed out in a comment that this is the year the Dump turns 10. Good God! TEN!

Actually, I don't have the official first date, because the early pages of the site have been lost to history. I did try to find them in the web archive, but they don't exist. The earliest versions were part of Tripod, actually, back when they were one of the few sites to give away free web space (but prior to them getting all ad-happy). I cannot remember what my site's old URL was, so I don't think I'll ever find it. I'm sure it was a work of art.

The earliest file available in my archives is July 9th, 1996, but I know I had stuff before then. I actually assume the blog's birthday is in 1995. I just don't have any way to determine when the actual birthdate is. So....July 9th it is! Keep your eyes and ears peeled for more funtastic birthday excitement!

(And if anyone can find any proof/content from prior to that date, I have a big old prize waiting for you.)

Following up on yesterday's 'roid rage post, I had to call the eye doctor this morning because of lingering issues with my left eye ever since having the stupid viral infection last month. Old Lefty has periodically felt icky, or felt like there was grit or an eyelash under my eyelid. Reminiscent of the infection, really, but it would only last for about 15 minutes and then I wouldn't feel it again for a day or so. Two nights ago Lefty started experiencing a "halo" effect whenever I look at a light. I first noticed it when looking at the red light that tells you a burner is hot on the stove. Last night it was really noticeable on the drive home...annoying in fact. The right eye is fine, it's just the left one bothering me.

So I called the doctor who was taking care of me (who I love, by the way...he's wonderful, but his official title at the practice is "Clinical Director of Refractive Surgery" so I'm not sure why he got stuck dealing with me, eye infection girl) and he says it can really take weeks for the eye to heal after an infection and this is likely all part of that same infection. He also mentioned for the first time that the last time I went in and he looked at my eye, it looked like it had "hundreds of tiny pinholes on it" which would all have to heal. Oh my God, I didn't need to hear that.

So I can call him back in a few days if there's no improvement, but I'm supposed to just use some of those over the counter dry eye drops, so no repeat on my 'roid rage. But now I've got the whole pinhole thing in my head. Eyes are freaky. Cool, but freaky.

I am a little worried that someone is going to write a tell-all book that will expose my 'roid use. That's right, I've been using steroids to enhance my blogging. I mostly used them to take care of my eye infection, but I can't help it if it really beefed up my finger muscles and made the the plates in my skull shift. I don't know what that means but I'm pretty sure it happened.

Damn those steroid eye drops! Now they may pull my membership from the Blog Hall of Fame...

Hey, it's Happy Feet LaFerriere here.

Unlike some women, I don't own 400 pair of shoes (*winks at Christine*). Well, I have a lot of shoes that I never wear because they don't fit or they are old but I have this thing in the part of my brain where all the imprinting occured that prevents me from throwing out clothing. It's a sin, I think. There are naked people out there waiting for clothes from me. But because I never get around to piling it all in bags and dropping it off, it sits in the closet forever. Stuff I will never ever ever ever wear again. But it has to stay in the closet until I process it because I'm pretty sure my mom will know the moment I drop a pair of pants in the trash.

Mom: Jody?
Jody: Yes?
Mom: There was a tremor on the Bat-monitor. What did you just do?
Jody: [pause] Nothing.
Mom: Try again.
Jody: [longer pause]: Nothing.
Mom: I'm your mother. Tell me what you just did.
Jody: I threw away a pair of pants.
Mom: I'll be right there.

This is my excuse for why my house is such a mess. We can't throw anything away, ever. We either have to donate it or have a yard sale. So technically, the crap that's everywhere is just waiting for a yard sale. Ya, that's it. That's the reason.

I'm going to drag a bunch of stuff down to the sidewalk and put a sign on it that says "Free to a good home". Maybe the guy who pulls all the cans out of my recycle bin would like a Hot Wheels Speedway.

And then, there's Junior, who won't play with something for 40 years, so I decide to get rid of it, and he pulls it out and plays with it. Yesterday he amused himself with a toy I thought we'd already given away, a Power Rangers Command Center thingy. I don't even know where he got it, but suddenly my kitchen floor (which I washed Friday night, thank you very much) was covered with Power Ranger crap. Oh, and before that he took a big cardboard box and had me cut it so that he could make cubicle walls. He was pretending to work in an office. How sad is that? It was funny to listen to them talk on the phone in "business-speak". He adopted this odd accent and was referring to himself in the 3rd person. I think I'll try that at my meeting this afternoon.

So wait, where was I going with this? Oh, I picked up 2 new pair of shoes over the weekend, which is amazing for me. I have been known to wear the same shoes for years. But with my birthday money from mom, I was supposed to buy two pair (because I kept saying "I need to get a new pair of shoes). I got one, a pair of Clarks clogs. Saturday we were in Wrentham and they have a Clarks outlet store. It was all I could do to not buy the place out. I got two pair of clogs/mules and a pair of sandels, because we mustn't forget that it will be sandel weather in mere weeks. Oh, and I got my step-daughter a pair of the same sandels. Which means that I picked out something that wasn't dorky because she wanted a pair. I'm so proud of me!

We bought the Phantomnator a bone. Cause he's a dog and we've been watching cartoons our whole life. Dogs like bones. They bury them, and they dig them up. They eat them like they are potato chips. Cartoons were so great at explaining how the world works!

So we bought him this bone at Target today, to make up for the fact that we left him in the crate for a large part of yesterday. We were out and about for a chunk of the middle of the day and he's still too destructive to leave alone in the house without crating.

Anyhoo, the bone is gross and stinky. Very stinky. It smells sort of like feet. Mr. Dump said "Dead feet" and I think he's right. So I have to figure out how to get the bone away from the dog and into the trash. I fear it smells so bad that little Mr. Nose is going to know exactly what I'm up to.

Ick ick ick. If we get him another one of those, he's going to have to eat it outside.

HellOOOOOO! March? Jody here. Have you been playing with the thermostat? CUT IT OUT.

In other news, I got stuck behind two different school busses on the way to work today. This NEVER happens to me, even though I have to drive through 3 (!) elementary school zones every morning. That's right, three chances to drive 20mph per day. And don't you dare think about going faster than that in Townsend, baby, cause the police station is in the middle of the 20mph zone and if you don't think they are out there, you're insane.

Okay, so I got stuck behind busses, which I could deal with. What floored me is that both of them ended up turning off the road, and neither used turn signals. Shouldn't the drivers of school busses be extra careful? The Lunenburg school bus took a left-hand turn without signaling, and the Townsend school bus took a right. No blinkers. If they had both been from the same school district I would have picked up the phone right then and there, but something about it being one of each made me not as phone-happy. Plus I didn't note the bus numbers.

Anyway, bus drivers of the world - you are carrying our children in your big yellow death machines. Do me a favor and follow ALL the laws, not just the ones you find convenient.

My first crush, Jack Wild, died of oral cancer. He lived a long hard life, and looked every inch of it in recent years, but to me, he'll always be Jimmy, trying to get off Living Island. [insert obligatory "and now he has" comment here].

My page doesn't seem to be loading correctly, so this post is just a push to republish. Feel free to use this time to grab yourself a Poptart.

I love your stuff, really I do. And I totally understand where the name comes from. But I just think you should know that "women of size" (*cough*) are a little skittish about wearing something called a "barn coat." The "big as a" implications are a little too much for us to bear.


Thank you for your attention in this matter.