Everyone Pees.

I've had a cold/flu/misery for a few days now. This always leads to weird sleeping patterns and restless body-ness, especially as I start to recover. Last night I couldn't sleep, no matter what I tried.

I was lying in bed, listening to Mr. Zoom snore. Suddenly I remembered a happy hour I attended in 2001, where I managed to chase a grown man from our table using the word Pee. And it hadn't been on purpose. But it was damn funny - now.

Back then I was about a year away from meeting Mr. Zoom. I was spending a lot of time with various friends, and I lived on my own. We were all in our 30s at the time. One of my closest friends happens to work with many of her very own closest friends at the same company. They were all meeting for a happy hour one Thursday night, and she had asked me to meet them there. This would not be the first time I'd met up with this particular group of people, but I didn't know them all that well yet.

I always worked late, so I drove myself over. Because I was driving, I didn't have any alcohol. I was and still am a Half Can Sam and knew I'd never be able to drive even on one drink. I routinely ordered a diet coke or pepsi, and was happy with that. I got a lot of grief about this. Mostly from people who were just trying to make small talk or didn't know that I really couldn't handle my booze at all.

At this particular happy hour was a guy who knew my close friend and her friends very well. We had met once before at a previous happy hour. We'll call him Mr. Fitful Disguised as Mr. Sense of Humor. Mr. Fitful for short.

I finished my harmless beverage and Mr. Fitful offered to buy me a beer. I politely declined, and told him I was driving, so no booze for me. Then he offered to get me another soda. Again, I politely declined because I was honestly not going to have any more. The caffeine would have kept me up all night and of course I said to him "besides, if I have too many of those, I'll have to keep getting up to pee."

Because when I feel like I'm being cornered, I start to talk. And it's never good. This, by comparison to other situations, felt like a 1 on the awkwardness Richter scale. Mr. Fitful looks me dead in the eyes and says "Please, do not ever speak of pee in front of me again."

I mistook this for a very dry sense of humor and a bit of a gauntlet at my feet. So I spent the next 10 minutes referencing pee as often as I could. Not just to him, but the whole table. Like most groups of fairly close friends, there's not a lot you can't say in front of them. And while I didn't know everyone - by the standards of my pal that was there and previous outings, we were all being VERY mild.

Mr. Fitful pounded his fists on the table, looked at me and said "I TOLD YOU never to say that word in front of me!!" With that, he got up and walked away from the table. Leaving his jacket behind.

Being the spectacular judge of character that I am, I STILL thought this was a joke - although at this point I felt it had gone into uncomfortable territory. The table was quiet for about 3 seconds before laughing and talking resumed. About a half hour later, Mr. Fitful had not returned to the table. His friends and co-workers started asking questions and they started searching for him in the bar. Finally, someone reached him on his cell phone. They reported that he had LEFT left, and gone home. Angry. At me.

Because I said Pee. Too many times.

I was dumbfounded. And then I was embarrassed. I had just chased a grown man from a happy hour table in a bar, who worked with and spent time with a close friend of mine. What was WRONG with me?? People kept trying to tell me not to worry about Mr. Fitful, that he was a little "odd" and they had all become accustomed to it.

I had read Mr. Fitful so well, I was sure that these people were simply doing what I was incapable of doing - being polite. I made up a very flimsy excuse to leave and drove home immediately. I'm pretty sure I ate an entire quart of ice cream that night. Even though I'm lactose intolerant.

Months and months later, my pal eventually convinced me that Mr. Fitful was known for erratic behavior like that, and nobody at that table thought I'd been rude or done anything wrong. In fact, I think I recall my friend reporting that he left the company they all worked at under less than gentle circumstances.

Years later, those people at that table are probably as close to me as my own family. I can say pee in front of them as many times as I want, and nobody will go home angry. That's not to say I won't say the wrong thing most of the time, but the difference now is that they all know me well enough to know that I'm just a harmless nervous talker.

And that I shouldn't be taken out to important corporate events.

I'm Employed and Slow To Respond

To those who follow me on Twitter. And even to those who may read this blog.

Hi. I can't believe people follow me on purpose.

You'll need to know that during the work week, I sometimes just pop in long enough to run my text hole a few times and then I have to pop back out. I've got one of those jobs where I'm out in the open, in a cubicle with low barriers. Even before being employed was not something you took for granted, I could not always spend a lot of time reading twitter. I'm lucky, I love my job. Not saying I wouldn't welcome being able to cease working, but as long as I have to work, I'd like to keep the job that I love.

The result is that I sometimes have to put off catching up with your posts until the weekends. Some week nights I'm able to do a little catching up too - but mostly it is the weekends. Replies, Follow Friday, stuff like that? I end up missing it/them and I feel terrible when someone has taken the time to say something to me and it looks like I'm ignoring them.

Comments on this blog are the same way, although to be completely honest, Twitter has stolen my attention because it fits so well into the short burst of consciousness I thrive on. And pancakes. Twitter is very pancakes. I appreciate anyone commenting, replying, DMing, etc. and apologize for not getting back to you.

I don't keep track of who follows/unfollows/throws spit-balls at me. I'm on Twitter for fun and that's it. I don't have anything to sell. I used to add as a return follow every person who followed me. I can't really do that anymore, because as the numbers increase, I find that I can't do anyone justice by following so many. I've found some very talented and just plain awesome people to read. I know there are probably thousands more out there and it saddens me that I'll have to miss out on them for now.

So if you are a relatively new follower, and I haven't return followed you - please know it is nothing personal. It's just that I don't have the time to give you the proper attention you deserve. As people drop off/out of my stream, I'm going to try and add new people. I am currently trying to figure out a "good" number of people to do this with.

That is all. Carry on.

Time Machine Needed. Unironically.

I can't thank the inventors of DVR enough. When your husband has this ability to recognize faces he's seen for merely a second, even 20 + years ago (famous and civilian), watching anything becomes more of a test of patience than a free flowing experience.

The fact that I can pause everything while he blurts out "Do you know who that is?" has saved us both. It's like knock knock jokes between us. "Do you know who that is?" "No, who is it. What T.V., Movie, commercial, street corner did you see that person on?" And then he answers.

We were watching Scrubs a few weeks ago and the familiar rumblings began. Apparently some kid in a movie called Little Giants is now grown up and acting on Scrubs. Which triggered my husban's OCD. He even rememberd one of the lines. I haven't looked the movie up on IMDB, but we think it was about 20 years ago that it came out.

I paused the show, let him do his thing and then sat there with my mouth haninging open when he knew an actual line from the movie THAT HE SAID HE NEVER EVEN SAW THE WHOLE WAY THROUGH. Because I sometimes feel competitive, I squealed "Nanerpuss!"

"Would you stop it with the Nanerpuss?" "Oh, I see. You can quote a random line from a film from 20 years ago, but I can't sing a song from a Superbowl Commercial. From LAST WEEK?"

He does this with the Cosby show too. I'll skim past Nickelodeon or something and Cosby will be running. He'll start saying the lines before the t.v. does and I start trying to figure out how I can sell him to a reality show.

So here's what I need. I need someone to create a time machine and go back to the 80s. I need them to incorporate a message to Mr. Zoom that I love him, so very much. And that I'm allergic to dairy products. And please, if I provide a list of movies we have seen together, maybe he will stop confusing me with his ex girlfriends and/or telling me about films/events we saw together?

I'd settle for just the I Love Him part. Because he might not be able to tell when I'm rolling my eyes and screaming "You are Monkey Throwing Shit Crazy" at him here in the 2000s.

Please Don't Eat My Face Off

It's a butt cold Tuesday morning. Mr. Zoom and I are going through our morning routines trying to get ready for work. I'm in the bathroom and casually glance out of the teeny vent window that now has a perfect view of our neighbor's second story. They just added it in the last year or so, and as you will see, the house is still under a bit of construction.


So I look out and expect to see the usual. Plaster, wood, a tree branch or two, and sometimes a construction crew that we've been dodging for a lot of the time since now anyone on the neighbor's roof has a perfect line of sight into our bathroom. The room known as Where the Bad Naked Happens.


This is what I see:

DUDE. The Mothman just landed on our neighbor's roof and he brought his entire family.




That right there is a flock of Turkey Vultures, and they have this charming Horror Movie dance they do - where they stand up with their wings fully spread for many many minutes - absorbing the sun. I am convinced that this is also their satellite dish for collecting the souls of the naked and innocent people TRYING TO GET READY FOR WORK ON TIME FOR ONCE.


These pictures aren't going to give you any idea just how huge these things are. About the only scale for size you will have is the fact that the window seen on the house they are sitting on, that's a full size window. It's not a little bathroom one.


I saw one do this only one other time. And he was far on top of a telephone pole. When I saw him standing up there with his wings spread and holding it - I nearly drove off the road because all I knew of huge creepy birds with giant claws is what I've seen in scary movies.


I can't even begin to tell you how very creepy this scene is, especially when their bubbly red turkey heads are turning toward you and then angling with their giant eyeballs with every scream you make. I am positive they could carry off a poodle or wandering kitty cat. Probably both at the same time.

I ran for the camera after demanding that Mr. Zoom drop everything and "come here and look at this we are going down it's the apocalypse they are going to fly in here and eat my face off."

In my defense, the birds at the coffee shop attack me so often that I have to carry a stick with me when I go in there. If I don't have the stick, they fly at my head, sometimes land, and actually peck at my poor little helmet-less head while I scream and flail like a cartoon character. Those are just magpies. At most the size of a foot long subway sammich wing span.

Turkey Vultures are novelty 100 foot long party sandwiches with giant claws and wings that block out the sun when they fly at your head.

So then I did the only thing I could do. I went outside to try and get some better shots.

I came back inside and kept telling Mr. Zoom he should save himself. I could throw myself out there and while they attacked my head, he could get to the garage, his car, and drive away safely to work. He was watching the Nanerpuss Denny's commercial so he didn't hear anything I said.

About 5 minutes later the Mothman and his family flew back to West Virginia and we Zooms were able to get to the car.

Mr. Zoom, Magician. Almost.

Normally I would not watch the Superbowl. I'm not a football fan, even a little bit. But watching Mr. Zoom scream like a little girl is fantastic. So I parked on the couch to watch him watch the game.

You know, for a sport that is by all definitions "tackle", there's a hell of a lot of game stoppage for touching. But whatever.

At one point Mr. Zoom parked himself directly in front of me and I couldn't see the t.v. He sat right on the 3 inches of couch I wasn't occupying with his back to me. He has never done this. Ever. And it made no sense to me. I asked him "What in the frigging world are you doing?" He said "Just came over to tell you I love you." I replied "I thought you were coming over to fart on me." Because I'm the best wife in the world, I repay kindness like that.

He jumped up and said "WHAT?? I'd never do that to you. When was the last time I farted on you?" He seemed so genuinely hurt, I didn't have the heart to say "Oh, ok. So we have to count the times you were actually awake - which would be zero. But asleep...well, that's a whole different number system."

We decided that at half time he'd run out and grab some dinner for us. Because I didn't want him to lug drinks back with food, I looked over at my diet coke and decided to re-cap it and put it back in the fridge for later. And that's when I noticed something odd.

My diet coke was even more full after I had taken a few tugs on it than it would have been had I opened a brand new one. I got up and went to the fridge to compare to an unopened bottle just to be sure. AHA. Someone in the house was up to something, and it was Mr. Zoom. Caught diet cola handed.

I have a thing. Well, several things. One of them is that once I've abandoned a drink, I can't finish it. I don't have a strict rule or timeline or anything I can point to that lets even me know that I will be abandoning a drink, but it happens quite a bit. I'm not proud of it, but I figure there are worse habits out there. Mr. Zoom is the complete opposite. He can finish a soda he started days ago, simply re-capping it and storing it in the fridge.

Apparently Mr. Zoom had taken one of my abandoned drinks and kept it in the fridge. I had seen it, and giggled to myself because I think it's so cute that he thinks I'll ever finish an abandoned drink. Generally after 3 days or so I empty and toss it.

What he'd done was pour the abandoned diet coke into my new diet coke so that after I'd finished it, he could say "AHA! See? You didn't know the difference." And it might have worked, if I hadn't bothered to try and save that very drink for consumption later.

"Did you pour that old diet coke into the one on the table?" He raised his eyebrows and looked away. Guilty! "When did you do that? When? I didn't even notice!" He said he'd done it when he sat in front of me so that I couldn't see what he was doing. And it had worked. I laughed. I laughed some more and then said "SO, you wouldn't fart on me (consciously), but you'll try to trick me into drinking an abandoned diet coke?" "Yes" he said. What could I do but laugh some more.

And this is how I know I've married the right person. I already knew it, but things like this remind me again. I love that he won't let me have my crazy without a playful fight. I love that when I get him back, he will laugh at that too.

I Am Where MeMes Go To Die

Seven Things You May Not Know About Me.

I got the tagging by @EntropyAS, who also has a blog http://entropyas.blogspot.com/ My life lately has been such that anything I could write here would have to do with work and I'm not comfortable throwing things going on in that area out in the public at the moment.

We Zooms are fine for now. It's not really our lives being directly affected. But we're feeling it, all the same.

Way to turn something fun into a downer, eh?

1. In elementary school, I signed up for and played both the violin and trumpet. First it was violin, then it was trumpet. Not entirely sure how either of those happened, but they did. They both lasted approximately one year. Both instruments were rented. Sure, I loved and still love music - but I do not have the urge to play any musical instrument, besides my husband.

2. I was a "death rocker" in the 80s. Today it may still be called "goth". I fell in love with dark, moody, punky gothy music in high school. I desperately wanted a mohawk, but my parents wouldn't let me do it. And I was actually afraid of authority, so I sucked at both punk and death rock life. I did manage to shave the sides of my head one summer and dodged my parents for about a week before they finally saw it and grounded me for the rest of that summer. Through college I wanted pink and purple hair so bad. But I had a job and couldn't get away with it. All that remains now of this time of my life is a huge iTunes collection that makes my husband laugh and a bunch of vinyl records I can't bear to part with. Even though I own no turntable. Oh, and my Doc Martins with skeleton laces. LOVE THOSE. Still wear them.

3. I dread the day the printed book no longer gets made. I love technology, but I love actual books even more. I suppose I collect books, but that is only because I purchase them, read them, and want to keep all of them. But I don't keep them all pristine. I drag books with me everywhere, so they get a tad beat up in the process. So my "collection" isn't what I'd consider a collector's collection. I dog ear pages with quotes I love. References to other books or movies I might want to follow up on. Recently, I discovered post-it flags and now my books have rainbows of colored post it flags waving from their pages. Seriously, if anything happened to our home, [and as long as people I love were alive and safe], I'd probably miss my books the most. Mr. Zoom would immediately dance in all the extra space.

4. I am unreasonably defiant in the face of white chocolate. I don't understand it, I don't like it, and I can't shut up about that when in the presence of it.

5. I can't keep from giving gifts early. This is a serious impulse control problem. I can't buy things before birthdays or Christmas without giving them to the person right away. It honestly makes me squeak if I have to hold it for more than 5 minutes after I next see the intended gift recipient. My friends and family think this is hilarious.

6. I love scary movies, but if a particularly disturbing one gets to me, I have to sleep with a light on that night, sometimes more. Mr. Zoom will wake up and find me in the guest room zonked out with the hall light on. I've found the best way to watch them is at home on a very sunny day. And even then I have to have a blanket to cover my head and create a peep hole. No watching those suckers at night or in a movie theater.

7. I have this weird reverence for expiration dates. I know that a thing does not have a tiny little clock inside of it that ticks down and goes boom when the expiration date arrives. I know that. But I can't seem to use certain things after that date. I can use certain medications a few months after the date, but it gets really hinky after that. With food I can't even let it go for like a week. I just can't. This drives Mr. Zoom crazy. er. He can use an item that expired in 1987. I point, shriek and run away.

Those are my things. I believe I'm supposed to tag people. 7 of them. I'm going to do that annoying "tag yourself if you'd like to participate" thing. Think of it like a hidden track on a cd. The 8th thing you may not know about me is that I can't bring myself to tag people.

Glitter Isn't Always the Answer

We got our tree late this year. We always get a small, lonely tree - a Charlie Brown tree. It is Mr. Zoom's favorite thing about Christmas. We were so late this year that we had only one tree to choose from in our size and price range. Only problem was, it was flocked. I hate flocking. Why would you cover a real tree in fake snow?

And it was flocked with gray sparklie stuff. GRAY. It looked like this tree had been rolled around in some one's attic, and then they threw glitter on it for laughs.

We asked if they could hose it off. They laughed at us. We asked if there was any way to de-flock it. There was. But we'd have to pull it off ourselves.

And that's exactly what we did. We pulled up a trash can and went to work on the little insulation strangled tree. Mr. Zoom had negotiated a price reduction and the guy working the counter was apparently so amused at our de-flocking ritual that he gave us a stand for free. We didn't get all of it off, but enough that you wouldn't know it was previously flocked unless you got real close to it.

As is customary, Mr. Zoom did all of the setting up, decorating and placement of the tree. I worked hard at watching t.v. and napping.

By the way, everyone who gave us candy/cookies/toffe/nom nom nom for Christmas totally owes me new pants 2 sizes bigger than before Christmas. Thanks.