As a pierce-top-with-a-fork type of cook, I'm always so screwed when I get invited to a potluck.  And there has only been 100000000000000000 of them this season, which means 100000000000000000 reminders that the world is full of great chefs and I can barely be called a good can opener.   Aargh.  I'm ashamed to be on top of the food chain.

Anybody watching me would have had a good laugh.

At first, they would just have noticed me struggling to get the hose hooked up to the oscillating sprinkler. They would have been only mildly interested in the boring summertime scene.

They might have continued to watch out of curiosity to see if I was successful. Faucet turned on, then hose and sprinkler would appear intact and in working order to them. Maybe they also saw me run carefully under the water to move the oscillating sprinkler to a better location. I did not get one drop of water on me. Man, they would think, she has it together. What skill! What chutzpah!

Then they would have seen the hose pop free from the sprinkler and watch it as it snaked out of control in the air like a whirling dervish. They would see the hose turn and attack me, waving streams of water at my direction while I yell and try to get out of the way. They would start laughing as I lose a shoe and start hopping on one leg in order not to get my sock wet in the grass.

Then they would be clutching their bellies and rolling on the floor after seeing me fall, shoeless, onto soaked grass as the hose triumphantly dampens any dry spot left on me.

I'm pretty sure my toaster is going to explode in a few seconds. It is making countdown noises.

Me + toasters = hell

Can anyone pay my $500 bail?

I'm off to turn myself in for ONE unpaid ticket.

I've been getting lots of dizzy spells lately, which is usually a symptom of my low blood pressure. But lately I've been thinking a brain tumor. What do you say?

Poll #699829 Brain Tumors
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

What do you think of the brain tumor possibility?

I just drove all the way home without my lights on. I was wondering why some cars were flashing their lights at me; now I know that is the international symbol for saying "Hey dumbass, turn your lights on before some SUV turns you into road pizza".

What is scarier than that? 81 percent of surveyed professional hairstylists have fantasized at least once of stabbing a client in the back with sharp shears.

Oh well, I'm alive. I will practice my salsa moves with a broom.

Not only did I wear my shirt inside out, but backwards too. Yes, the tag right there on my front collar for all to see -- a big white strip of cloth on a solid black shirt.

All friggin day.

I'm so not a morning person.

If a microwave oven stops heating up food does that mean all the microwaves are leaking out and burning my ovaries?

Damn. I can'T heat up my Trader Joe's pot stickers. I'm going to starve. :S

I have a fairly liberal policy with adding friends. I've never been abused, stalked or flamed viciously, and thus have that Pollyanna attitude that I probably would have the fortitude to handle it if I do get stalked or flamed at the stake ...

but these guys seems weird. Not that I don't like the lithographs (or wood cuttings, whatever they are!), but who would name journals:
zzz_gobbles, zzzz_hugedongs and zz_ljabuse

Poll #659157 Weird Adders
Open to: Friends, detailed results viewable to: Friends

What should I do?

An unexpected early bday gift: My office-mate gave me a $30 gift certificate to iTunes! Tell me what you would buy ...

When I first heard The Doors "Back Door Man" I thought Jim Morrison just meant he came into the house through the backdoor, possibly to avoid nosey people.

I am still making these types of clean assumptions. Last week I learned, thanks to stokemom, that "box" is slang for "vagina" rather than merely a geometric shape (or in that case, the shape of a Porsche Boxter car). And of course there is my great Tossed Salad debacle.

Given all this, it shouldn't surprise you that I have just been embarrassed for thinking "Tang" was only the powdered orange drink my mom used whip up with a spoon and give me for a quick and easy drink (quick and easy the only way Saladbar women make ingestible items).

This is going to the top of my birthday wishlist. And this one has a place for my diet coke. Oh happiness here I come!!

New rule in my house: Socks do not have to match. I don't care if you wear stripes with solids, left foot red, right foot polka dot. I give up. I'm just too weak to keep battling in the face of such a thundering, imposing, big bad soul-controlling villian. I surrender to the superior powers of that evil genius overload, that SOCK MONSTER! May he live a bitterly restless life in someone else's home, lost and unhappy and ever seeking new socks to steal and devour and to mismatch for eternity.

I "made" this lunch yesterday. I put Trader Joe's Veggie Potstickers, Trader Joe's Meatless Meatballs, and some frozen string beans on a plate and then popped it in the microwave to nuke for 5 minutes. Afterwards I topped it off with Trader Joe's Pineapple salsa. I was quite proud of myself:



BUT!!! This is why I hate cooking. The potstickers and meatballs cooked well, but the stringbeans, even though thinner and smaller, were NOT FULLY WARM. They weren't even a little warm. WHAT DID I DO WRONG?? AAGH!

My daughter just asked for breakfast and I gave her a powerbar.

Even cereal is too much work this morning.

Is it bad luck to accidentally eat the paper fortune in a fortune cookie?

Coca-Cola Plant Workers Go on Strike: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050523/ap_on_bi_ge/coke_bottler_strike
More than 2,000 workers at plants in California and Connecticut that bottle Coca-Cola products went on strike Monday, just before the start of the summer season that is so important to the soft drink industry. "Within a day or two, you probably won't see too much Coke on the shelves."

Only I would be subjected to a random lemon hate crime. I was talking to a group of women outside of a restaurant on Solano Saturday night and the WHAM I get hit in the leg with a lemon from gawd knows where. I have a nice bruise.

I've become the butt of most jokes. I noticed this at my "other" bookclub on Friday. Things are said to make me think this. Examples: "I didn't worry about dressing up because I knew Carrie would be more casual anyway." (I bet my workout pants cost more than most jeans), "I don't worry about manners because Carrie is here" and "If you burn it feed it to Carrie.". Or worse, when I commented about some gossip with "Smart Women, Bad Choices" I was asked, "How would you know about bad choices -tee hee".

And then the next day a lemon attack. What do you think?

I just went walking downtown Berkeley to pick up a book on hold and perhaps find something eatable.

Why did I pick NOON to do this? This is the time the high school kids are let out for lunch and they descend on downtown like locusts. Although the majority is a likable lot I'm sure, every now and then I get steered off the sidewalk, or blocked, or accidentally run into by the few loud and obnoxious teens. I don't mind all my Spontaneous Freak Encounters^TM, and I've been out of high school for more years that I care to think about, but I get a sinking nerdy feeling down in my belly from all this highschool stuff.

But talking about one of my many, many residual teenage neuroses isn't the point of this post. The point is that today one of the kids yelled BITCH and I automatically turned my head. He wasn't speaking to me, of course, but my first inclination was to assume that he was talking about me.

Which got me thinking .. do I think I'm a bitch or assume others think I am? I certainly do have bitchy qualities, but I tend to leave the room before they come out. I am not a candidate for sainthood, I might even have a bus ticket to hell, but that doesn't necessarily make one the Supreme Bitchness? Maybe I've just been made to think I am one---or is that what bitches assume and thus justifying their bitchiness?

Perhaps it is that although I tried to reinvent myself since coming to California, I'm still the one most likely think slurs and remarks are meant for me. And, dammit, despite all my education and whatnots I'm still most likely the one to burn down your kitchen in some unfortunate mishap.

:(