Fuckety fuck fuck FUCK!

Some weeks, I think we are just not meant to get out of bed. I mean, it would be so much easier if I was a bear and could just hibernate.

Among other things, I went dress shopping for an event we have at work.

Foolishly, I tried on a babydoll dress (do those look good on anyone?) and my boobs didn't fit into the boob section. Complaining to a friend, she looked at me point blank and said, "You're surprised?"

I sent out a somewhat bitchy e-mail to one person - and it accidentally went to the entire Yahoo group. Fuck.

Oh yeah - about that event - it's a formal luncheon for about 300. An RSVP was required. I have given the numbers to the caterer and they have ordered the food.

Does this stop me from getting the following questions? (I'll give you three guesses.)

"But I meant to RSVP." (Too fucking bad.)

"Can't I just stand in the back and not eat?" (No, because of fire code.)
"Really?" (No, I just made that up to piss you off.)

"But isn't there anything else you can do?" (Yes, but I didn't want to tell you during these last five minutes, I just wanted to hear you whine.)

And no, the lolcat has nothing to do with this post...I just thought it was funny.

RIP Geraldine Ferraro

Those who are talented and brave enough to be first in any arena can expect to have their share of personal attacks, and Geraldine Ferraro was no exception.

While I was too young (7 most of the year) to fully appreciate the significance of her VP spot on the presidential ticket, I have been in awe of her my entire adult life. Thus I was sad to read of her death from blood cancer, which was the same kind of cancer that killed my uncle back in 1987.

I called on my dad, the first feminist I ever met, to sum up some thoughts about what it meant at the time to have Ferraro front and center in that election:

It was 1984 and while Orwell’s novel had not come to pass, having Ronald Reagan occupying the Oval Office seemed close enough. And he was running for re-election. Surely the Democrats could find someone to neutralize the Gipper’s charm, but no, they were prepared to nominate bland Walter Mondale, after Reagan had made peanut butter out of bland Jimmy Carter four years before.

Then something astonishing happened. Newly minted candidate Mondale selected Geraldine Ferraro of New York to be his vice presidential running mate. And she was not bland! She was smart, articulate, humorous, and holy s—t, she was a woman!
Well, I just had to see her in person. I went to a small Sons of Italy Club here in Silicon Valley, California, where I also found out that Ms. Ferraro was Italian. And what a rally it was. Her stump speech was rip roaring hot and if Reagan had been anywhere within a thousand miles he wouldn’t be riding his horse in Santa Barbara for awhile. The crowd sang, danced, cheered, and Geraldine Ferraro seemed to love it all, do it all, and carried it off with effortless class. In one of the few events I ever attended that featured a woman as the center of attention, before or after, there were as many men as women there, and all of witnessing Ferraro’s triumph believed that America was on the verge of finally awakening to FemPower.
Alas, Ms. Ferraro and Mr. Mondale did not manage to beat the Reagan juggernaut in the fall of 1984, but Geraldine remained a forceful and highly watchable figure in American politics for a long time after.

Now she is gone, and I would guess, so are many of the people who saw her that day years ago in San Jose. She is gone but not forgotten, and with a bit of luck maybe she’s partying right now up in the Sainted Sons of Italy Club as we remember her here with fondness and respect.

Frontier SUCKS

They bought Verizon last summer, and it's been sucking ever since, and not in a good way.

I just got internet back at our house after 48 hours of outage. Why was there an outage? They won't say. There was no storm, no major disaster, no transformer blew up. In short, they just suck.

So I am thrilled to be posting from home!

And just so I won't disappoint any of you, here is my perverted story of the day.

Four of us were going out to lunch in a friend's small car.

"Now I know it's small, but you'll get used to it and it will work fine," she said.

I replied, "I've heard that one before."

The three of them looked at me like I was out of my mind. Perhaps...or I was just the only pervert.

Can I sue Mother Nature for false advertising?

Today is supposed to be the first day of spring. Ha.

When I think of spring, I think of:

Flowers
Leaves on trees
Sunshine
the Easter bunny
and all of that good stuff.


What we have:
Flowers at the store
Bare trees
Frost in the mornings
Hail
Cadbury eggs.

It's about this time of year, after months of rain and brr (ok, not as brr as you in the Midwest, but you get the point), that I start to seriously question 1) my sanity and 2) why the hell I live here in the Pacific Northwest.

At least Mr. RK has more stories to make me laugh.

Last week at work, this really annoying, self-righteous woman started complaining about how her husband didn't like it when she went out to clubs and danced with/hung out with other guys.

Trying to drum up support for being a slut, I suppose, she asked Mr. RK, "Well, you got to clubs, right?"

Mr. RK: "No, not really."
Her: "And you drink, right?"
Mr. RK: "No, not really."
Her: "Well, have you ever?"
Mr. RK: "I quit all of that when I left the porn industry."

Silence...did I mention that this person is also really gullible?

And then she didn't talk to him for the rest of the day.

Things I have learned this week

I'm stealing Lynn's idea for Random Photo Thursday and morphing it into Three Thoughts Thursday, which is the number of ideas my brain has room for at the moment.

1. I get more many comments on posts that involve dick size than ones that are truly introspective.

2. Just about everyone I meet (myself included) is partly Irish. Did everyone hop the fence?

3. Mr. RK got annoyed at work when one of his co-workers kept calling him Robert (which is not his name.) So he started calling her Steve.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Plagiarized from Joey's Pad

My friend Joe wrote a very insightful post, and I'm stealing a quote he posted that made me think.

"Nothing is hopeless - if you can't choose what happens to you, you can chose how to react."

- Sarah Brown

I have grappled with this over the years, going from a spunky kid (from birth) to an anxious kid (after my parents got divorced and I moved too many times) to an angry young woman (after I realized not everyone in the world was nice or truthful), and now (I hope) finally to someone who is learning to be calmer and not react by assuming the worst.

My friend Darth Weasel put it this way a few years ago, when we were both having a difficult time at work: "I ask myself, 'Will you care about this tomorrow?'"

My buddy Claire's blog has a picture up saying, "Be calm and drink more tea." I wrote her that I tend to be antsy and drink more coffee!

I have had such a hard time wrapping my mind around the tragedy in Japan, questioning God and the universe...in addition to a week of family drama. But Joey's post made me rethink that in many ways, too. I can't prevent bad things from happening - to my loved ones, or to strangers far away - but I can choose how I react. I can choose to help.

Versatile

Thanks to Marnie, I have a topic to write about!

I've been sick (ill, not perverse) and not thinking super clearly, hence the absence from writing.

Marnie nominated all of her blog buddies for the Versatile blogger award. Thanks!

So this involves thanking the blogger who nominated you (check), passing it on, and sharing seven "fun" facts.

I forget who already has done this post, so I pass this on to any of my blog buddies who would like to post.

Speaking of fun...I don't know how "fun" these facts are, but they're all true.

1. People ask me when I decided that I did not want children...I knew from birth. I remember having an argument at age 5 with someone who kept telling me I'd change my mind. "No, I won't!" And I didn't.

2. Before I met Mr. RK, I totally wanted to go out on a date with Michael Palin.

3. If the world ran out of cheese enchiladas, I'd probably fall down and cry.

4. As a kid, I preferred action figures to dolls. I still do.

5. I have moved nearly 30 times in my life.

6. I hate makeup.

7. My great-grandfather organized the Milwaukee Railroad and also captured Baby Face Nelson when he was a volunteer deputy sheriff in Iowa.

There you have it!

Kissing the turtle

I'm happy to report that I am not the only member of this family making faux pas.

On Friday, Mr. RK said a group of Filipina ladies at his work were discussing the fact that one of them had just gotten a pet turtle.

"I don't know why I got it," she said. "It doesn't do anything. It just sits there or crawls around the aquarium."

Mr. RK left to do a task in another part of the office and came back a couple of minutes later. The turtle owner said, "So I just picked it up and kissed it."

He said, "You kissed the turtle?"

And the entire group of women started laughing so hard they had to hold their sides and cry.

Mr. RK: "What?"

One of his Filipina co-workers explained that while the turtle's owner was indeed talking about giving her new pet a smooch, "kissing the turtle" in the Philippines was slang for giving oral sex.

Mr. RK turned about five shades of red and said, "It's a good thing I'm not here right now!"

Lucky in bed

What did you think I meant, you perverts?

TGIF!

Wisdom from our family

"I'm just like you. I was sleeping beautifully, and then - KABOOM! - I had to wake up."
- From my little sister, age 10, after waking up for school in the morning

Me to a driver who almost hit our car: "Hey, fucker!"
My 15-year-old brother's reply: "Yes?"

"My cat wouldn't respond to the name they gave her at the shelter. So I renamed her Kitty, Kitty, and now she responds."
- My grandfather, in a conversation with my dad

"I'm actually willing to take it all off. Should I do that?"
- Me, to a bewildered TSA agent at the San Jose airport