Fine. And not.

I say 'we should' too. Monday I decided it was time to address the we-overusage and it was laughable, the conversation. He defensive, me clamming up, him trying not to be defensive, me trying to meet in the middle, resolution, then a frank discussion of everything 'we' needed to do to get ready for our trip next week. Shit. What the hell? I couldn't stop saying it.

We need to fix a thingy for the chicken coop to make it easier for the chicks to get out in the morning.
We need to call someone to feed the gerbils.
We should prepare to stain the deck when we get home.
We blah blah blaahhhbity blah blah hell junk piece of shit blahbity blah.

Okay, fine. Let's just say, sometimes 'We' can be an effective conversation starter. Sometimes it's fine to be vague about a task that needs gettin' at, but nobody wants anything to do (read: finding a new home for our noisy dirty-ever-crapping parakeets).

On another note, I sprained my LCL badly yesterday. Add this to the growing list of injuries incurred this year - injuries that can't be laughed off with a long pull at an ice-cold IPA. In fact right now I'm printing out rehab exercises that I'll have to do on vacation next week. I'm falling apart this month and it's making my stomach sour. Body, what's wrong with you? What have I not done for you lately?? Sure, I'm getting older, but the number and severity of injuries this spring and summer is Shock and Awe instead of Going Gentle into the Night. It's a real bummer, dude. But at least I have a soft baby.

Happy Father's Day

Dear Jim,

There's been a recent glut of we-usage around here lately. Notice I said 'glut,' not 'wealth.'

This is what I mean:

1. What should we have for dinner?
2. We should call the neighbor to feed the chickens this weekend.
3. What should we do with Madeleine's wet hair before bed?
4. We should check on the warranty of those windows so we can get them replaced.

That was yesterday. There's no doubt what 'we' means in each of these cases, and I don't know why I'm all het up about it, but it makes my skin crawl and I feel an uncontrollable urge to lash out with the following:

1. You make your same ol' nasty-ass quesadilla with ass-smelly sauce and a half pound of cheese. I'll have some crackers and a left-over sandwich from yesterday. The kids will ask for mac and cheese and sit at the table for five minutes before they become unbearable and we'll pull them to their rooms by their ears and they'll cry and have a bowl of pretzels before bed.

2. We've lived here for two and half years and just because you come home tired from work (but not too tired to climb for two hours) and stick your head in the ground doesn't mean it's acceptable that you don't know the neighbors' last name so that you can look it up in the phone book and call them your own damn-self and ask them to feed the chickens that I really don't care about and frankly sort of creep me out with their giant rubbery feet. So instead of calling, when you ask their adult son to relay the message to the parents, I don't feel bad that the son you asked is the one who was oxygen-deprived at birth and has no short-term memory.

3. It's fucking hair. What do think we should do, eat it? If you can tie a fly on an infinitesimally small fishing line, I think you can finagle an enormous rubber band around a blob of hair. And if you're scared and paranoid about hair dryers and brushes and scrunchies, then I'm sorry, because that's sad. Do you know what the national deficit is?

4. The fact that YOU got pissed at ME because I insisted that you fix and close your broken-down window last night because of the infestation of mosquitoes in our room indicates that 1, you have no sense and 2, you're a heartless bastard with sour blood.

My Father's Day present to you is this blog post (which you may read several weeks from now and act mysteriously upset after you get home, and I'll think that you're mad because ... I'll have no idea, actually - won't that be a fun evening?), instead of the out-loud expression of the above. I hope you're having fun on whatever that mountain is that you're climbing right now. Madeleine has been doing chin-ups all morning on your new chin-up bar, and Quinn is playing house with Transformers. You know, Sunday stuff.

I love you honey, but knock off this we-shit.


xo,
Mignon

Important Information Regarding Nookie Skills

Someone bought me a shot this weekend called The Vegas. The purchasing and consumption of the drink were unremarkable, but the ensuing game invented by two drunk girls (me and someone) has got me thinking. Can you tell if someone is good in bed by just looking at them? Yes. Of course you can. See for yourself:

Characteristics of Bad in Bed:
1) backwards hats (unless it's a pirate's hat, because how do you tell if it's backwards - plus points for being a pirate)

2) meticulous facial hair (because he wouldn't want to muss it, plus it goes without saying but I'm saying it anyway, too much time in front of the mirror means too much time spent in the bathroom, means he's been in close proximity to a toilet for too long, means he's been virtually bathing in a pool of airborne fecal matter, which, hello? UTI? that's why we wipe front to back in the first place!)

3) gay (I'm sure he'd be good in bed for someone - but I'm guessing that person would not be a hetero female, even if she can throw a football really far)

4) pants pulled up too high or hanging too low (up too high is repellent in a way that screams "I have Oedipal issues" and too low screams "check my ID" or, conversely, "can you please help me find my way back to the nursing home?" - which neither necessarily indicates bad in bed, but they may result in a) jail time or b) future dates being planned around dialysis appointments)

5) playing pool well (a guy that can cradle a cue with finesse and maneuver the balls in perfect coordination has spent WAY too much time with similarly shaped objects in his hands, or he's just a dork that avoids personal interaction by playing a meaningless bar game that is cool only when you're drunk or impressing your nephews at the Elks Club at your grandparents' 50th Wedding Anniversary)

Characteristics of Good in Bed (These are less funny, I assure you, because at this point in the evening there was only one guy that didn't fall in the categories of 1-4 above and he was):
1) With a woman

A poll.

What's your favorite book cover, or a really good book cover from a book you've read recently? Actually answer both, if you dare!

Here's one I liked recently (regardless of how I felt about the book):


Here's a classic I've always liked (and I liked the other cover, with the diagonal stripes in the corner and the plain text):

I Kissed a Girl, with a banana.

I posted this on my FB page, but for some reason the thumbnail is a tiny, illegible word verification word. I asked the internet why, and it didn't understand my question and rambled on and on. Thanks.

To catch you up.

I just got home from a hockey game and I have a big bubble in my stomach from the celebratory can of MGD I drank afterwards with, um, those 10 other people... huh. I have no idea except for Lisa and Holly. I have not had an MGD for... 15 years? I remember the last bottle, and how the liquid sat on my tongue like piss (presumably) until I finally gulped it all at once, causing a lump to form in my esophagus that felt like a Rubik's cube. I can't burp. It's a condition with a name and everything. The name means this: one who can't burp. This causes my stomach to swell to immense proportions when I eat or drink anything. That's right. Every day, swollen belly.

Moving along...

I thought I was going to be published for a couple weeks. It was really exciting, and at night when I snuggled my pillow and listened to Jim snore, I imagined what the phone call would sound like. How I would react. Whether they would need a picture and how I would smile. Or not smile. But I was wrong and I had read (WAY) too much into a mildly misleading rejection note. So that was a couple weeks ago. Now I snuggle my pillow and listen to Jim snore while thinking about White Cheddar Cheezits.

Moving along again...

Today we went to the Missoula County Something Something Farm. The field trip included pigs and sheep and a zebra hide and a tour of the metal shop. The pigs are bred for show and for breakfast, and in the center of what you might call a courtyard (if you're James Herriot), but I would actually call The Area with the Least Amount of Shit, there's a metal contraption in which a pig is confined when she's giving birth to 8 or 27 piglets. The students giving the tour were very excited to show us the latest addition to the Mildly S&M Birthing Cages, in which all the latest technologies were instituted. I asked, because I like to be on the cutting edge, and it turns out the biggest improvement in the new cage is that the bottom is not made of metal mesh. Why? So that the mom pig's nipples don't sag down into the mesh and get stuck and ripped off. So, yay for that. Welcome to 2009!

I imagine if my blog could illustrate itself, this is what it would say:

ETA: This is Madeleine's artwork. She's a nightmare when she gets home from school, and I strongly encourage her to take out her pissiness with a pen or pencil rather than screaming at Quinn when he doesn't want to pretend he's a fairy princess baby. After three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, two glasses of milk and a half hour of Arthur, she drew a picture of a fairy princess baby with a flower in its hair riding on a flying unicorn.