1.  Take daily vitamins. I started out taking gummy vitamins but realized quickly that I just don’t like candy that much. So now I swallow them. Guess what? Turns out I don’t like swallowing vitamins the size of time capsules all that much, either – but I’m doing it anyway.

2. Go to bed when sleepy. (Please see ‘Ambien is Bullshit‘.) I realize that it’s ridiculous that I act like a 5 year old and fight sleep. I know this. But the world just becomes more interesting to me after midnight. Probably because all the lame early-sleepers are not up to dilute the fun.

3. Not a single cigarette. I’m not really a smoker. I couldn’t tell you the exactly last time I smoked a cigarette (it has been months). But I also could not tell you the last time I went a full 12 months without a single cigarette.

4. Be more like Lisbeth Salander. That is: Don’t put up with bullshit.

Happy New Year, everyone.

Little Filthy sleeping on his paws (ab0ve)

PEACH YOGURT – DELICIOUS.

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Black cherry yogurt? ALSO DELICIOUS.

I like to snap picture of the lake when I snag a cab home.

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Dinner party at my sister’s – figs, gorgonzola, honey.

Little Filthy had an upset stomach here. He ate grapes off a table. Thought he might be toxic but the little boy pulled through and was back to himself in about a week. Scary!

There was a lot of travel at the end of the year. Little Filthy disapproves.

Legs got Little Filthy a pumpkin shirt.

Dinner one night.

Unfortunately, Little Filthy has learned that he just needs to climb over the back of the couch to look out the windows. *sigh*

Eggs lined up. These are from the restaurant Next. I was at the Food and Wine magazine event at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Playing LEGOS with my nephew.

Dinner at the loft.

First snow fall.

Passed out.

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I had a cold for a few days this month. I picked up some of these cough drops – Halls Refresh.

Then I looked at the package. What the hell, exactly, is “Advanced Moisture Action” and why do I want it? It just sounds…. off putting.

The best part, however, is the little letters right above the picture of the cough drop.

It says “ENLARGED.”

You know, in case you thought the cough drop was an actual inch across.

I have too much time on my hands when I have a cold.

2. For three nights in a row, I had dreams about real estate. In one, I purchased a home and then found out that it used to be a whore house.

I’m not really sure what to make of that.

3.  I got this for my niece and nephew for Christmas. I will put it together and show it to them tomorrow. I expect some hell to break loose.

4.  Apologies for my silence – I feel a writing streak coming on.

5. I’m mailing Little Filthy to the highest bidder. He’s packed and ready to go.

Then the earthquake hit.

And then I figured I should probably go home.

2.  Speaking of said earthquake: We were enjoying a beer in the sunshine when our chairs started to shake and then the earth… rippled. It felt like we were suddenly afloat on a raft and bobbing along to small waves.  The people seated around us had gone silent. Once the shaking had ended, the chatter about an earthquake began.

Natural disaster? BOOM. DONE.

3.  I came home to a little chunky monkey. My parents had somehow mistakenly fed Little Filthy TWICE as much as his normal amount. I can picture Little Filthy watching my mother fill his bowl, thinking, “That’s right…keep going, lady…keep it comin’.”

4.  Nosy Neighbor and I crossed paths this morning. She said, “I saw you almost every day for two weeks and then nothing for almost three weeks!” And I blurted out where I was, my employer, and what I was doing. She looked so satisfied, I thought she might light a cigarette.

5.  While at the airline counter waiting for a seat change, I had my hand resting on the counter-top. I reached up and rubbed my eye unconsciously. And right then, I pictured myself on a security tape being played in front of a classroom of people – an instructor in front pausing the tape right as my fingers approached my eye. She says, “Annnnnnnnnnnnnd that is how you get pink eye.”

6.  Thank you to all of you who left comments on my last entry. I can’t tell you how nice it was to read the words of encouragement during what was a particularly dark and difficult week.

7.  Despite all predictions to the contrary, I did not end up at the bottom of the Hudson river during my trip. This pleases me.

8.  I must now cut this entry short as the Little Filthy Chunky Monkey is about to drop his blob at the mention of going to the park.

9. And, obviously, I missed QTMama and her two-car vagina so very much. Mainly because it doubles as a poncho in the rain.

I mean, generally, I like gravy – but there are some things that shouldn’t smell like gravy. And one of them is people.  Actually, the only thing that should smell like gravy is gravy. I wouldn’t even want Little Filthy to smell like gravy.

Usually, though, things that are nice generally smell nice and things that are gross generally smell gross. Probably this means that, for the most part, the assignment of smells to certain objects if a fairly orderly affair. But then you have that odd flower that smells like rotting flesh. And, really, if you smell cheese and did not know it was cheese, you might be grossed out. And then, of course, there are those people who smell like gravy.

You know what? I’ve talked myself right out of enjoying gravy.

I’m going to now call is sauce. It’s just sauce.

Some people smell like sauce.

“Who is playing?”

“Butler? Seriously? they named a school after a manservant? Well, I can’t say that that makes any sense to me at all. Who are they playing?”

“The Huskies? Isn’t that, like, a clothing line or size for chubby boys? So it’s the servants versus the chubby kids?”

“I gotta go with the servants. The huskies will probably tire by half time or take a break for cookies and juice.”

2. My uncle’s e-mail was hijacked and the entire family received an e-mail from ‘him’ stating that he was stuck in another country and would we mind sending him some money?

My uncle realized what happened and sent a follow up e-mail that said, “Ignore that last e-mail from the hacker. If you want to send money, send it to <his real address.>”

My cousin replied, “The joke is on the hacker. He thought we would send money if you were stuck in another country.”

Welcome to the family.

3.  As my condo buying deal is damn near finalized, I thought it was time for me to break the news to the boy. He’s grown up here and has never lived someplace else.  We sat down at dinner and I told him I had news for him. I then explained that we’d be walking in a new neighborhood, sleeping in a new room, terrorizing a whole new park full of dogs. And then I showed him a picture of the new place.

And you know what? He just couldn’t care less.

I asked my friend – her nickname here is Piggy. Not because she’s anything like a pig. In fact, she’s thin and pretty. But her sister likes to say to her, “Eat up, piggy.” when she eats. I realize this sounds remarkably rude but, in fact, it is remarkably funny.  Anyway, I decided to ask Piggy what she thought about the animal balls issue.

RE: Do you think it hurts an animal to get kicked in the balls like it hurts a human?

Piggy: <Pause> It seems like the kind of thing you could figure out pretty easily…like, just see how many nerve endings are in a human penis compared to an animal penis.

RE: Really? That’s how you’d do it? Because I was going to suggest just kicking an animal in the balls.

Piggy: You could never do that! You wouldn’t kick an animal in the balls.

RE: Okay, fine, I wouldn’t kick an animal in the balls. Maybe just like bump them in the balls.

Piggy: How do you just bump an animal’s balls?? they are like, down there. You can’t just bump some balls.

RE: I bet on a farm somewhere, someone has bumped an animal’s balls. Like, maybe they were milking away and their hand just jerked out and hit some balls.  Wait… that doesn’t make any sense.  I just need to find someone with a farm.

Piggy: You think you’re going to find someone on a farm who is going to remember when they once bumped into an animal’s balls and will remember its reaction??

RE: I’m telling you…I’d remember if I bumped into an animal’s balls.  I just need to find someone on a farm! This reminds me of another question I had for farmers. Are extra large chickens laying extra large eggs? Or do they all come from the same size chicken?

Piggy: It depends, like,…the color and size of the eggs depend on their feed and the quality of their diet.

RE: Why is there only Large and Extra Large? Do eggs come in Small or Medium?

Piggy: Yeah… Isn’t there also a Jumbo?

RE: Seriously? It’s like the Starbucks of eggs with these sizes. Large, Extra Large and JUMBO.

Piggy: There are a lot of different types of eggs. Omega-3 eggs…

RE: Those are like…those fatty acid eggs – so, where the hell do those things come from? What kind of chicken is laying those?

Piggy: Those chickens are fed a special diet, rich in Omega-3 fatty acids.

RE: <pause> How do you know this?! Are you on a farm right now?!

Piggy: I’m not on a farm! I wrote an article about it once!

RE: Ah ha!! So you know people who have farms!

Piggy: I don’t know anyone who has a farm!

RE: Oh. <pause> Damn.  I was going to ask you to do a favor for me.

Wikipedia is useless.

Yes, I’m serious.

The Italian responded, “I don’t know but I know where to find it.”

I told him to tell his son that it was a woman’s Staples Easy Button.

2. I went to lunch with Instigator and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Okay, so that’s not entirely how that shit went down – but more or less how it happened. We went to lunch and I told her about an awesome loft I had seen the day before but that someone had already made an offer on it. She said, “let’s just drive by!” We drove by. Next thing you know, I called my realtor and we put in an offer. Then a third party made an offer and suddenly, I was in a bidding war.

I got the loft. And it’s kickass and awesome and perfect.

But maybe next time, I will just meet Instigator for coffee.

3. The other day, Besos and I were in the living room and Little Filthy was no where to be found. It was quiet. Too quiet. We found Little Filthy in the bedroom with a tube of Chapstick between his paws, the top chewed off and half the actual Chapstick clearly eaten.

*sigh*

4. I have train rage lately. To avoid my train rage, 1) don’t put stuff on the seat next to you when there are people standing, 2) let me off the train before you try to get on, 3) stand the hell up and give your seat to pregnant women, 4) don’t ask me for money – for any reason, and 5) on the escalators leaving the station, stand to the right, walk on the left. Is this too much to ask, people?

5. I jerked awake the other night after a nightmare. In it, I was on an upstairs balcony of a home, in a hall that overlooked the living room. A nanny was there, watching a baby crawl. The baby stopped crawling and sat down with his back toward the railing. I asked the nanny, “Can the baby fit through the rails?” She said no. And then I watched as the baby leaned back and his head slipped right between the rails, his legs shot out to get balance and he slowly began to fall back between the rails. I yelled and lept forward to reach for him. That’s when I jerked awake.

What the bloody hell.

I was eating a corndog from Trader Joe’s. Turns out it is actually made from soy but it occurred to me that it had been so long since I’d eaten an actual hot dog that I don’t even really remember what the hell they taste like.  This made me think of hot dogs at the ball park. Then I thought of Ball Park Franks.  Then I thought of Oscar Mayer and that weiner song:

“Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer wiener; that is what I’d truly like to be. Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener, everyone would be in love with me.”

And I thought about it… can you imagine what it would be like if everyone was in love with you? What a sordid, dirty mess.

That’s when I decided that my life would be complicated if I were an Oscar Mayer wiener.

2.  As I walked through a parking lot today, I saw an orange on the ground. My first thought was that I wanted to throw it. It was about the size of a baseball and I wondered if I could throw it all the way across the parking lot. This made me imagine playing catch in a parking lot and I wondered if someone would say that was stupid because there could be a wild throw that ended up with a baseball busting through a car window. But that didn’t seem as likely with an orange. Unless, of course, it was the middle of winter and the orange was frozen solid.

I left the orange alone.

3.  Little Filthy had some bumps on the back of his neck, on the skin – flaky bumps. When I tried to look at them, he would jump if I touched them. So he went to the vet today. He got a full check-up, routine shots, etc. They did a fungal and bacterial check on the bumps… both negative. But he got an antibacterial shot and some shampoo and if it isn’t better in a week, he goes back for a skin biopsy. He got home exhausted after the day at the vet and I gave him some wet food. This pleased him. Then I gave him a bath.  This displeased him. Then when I made him sit on a chair and covered him with some pink blankets?  Then he was downright pissed.