Restroom Lady Went Shopping

Saw this new sign at the Indianapolis Airport . . . looks like she went shopping for a new skirt! And suddenly she has hips. If they went to this trouble couldn't they have added a swipe of hair? :)

A Day in a Dog's Mind - Part I

The following is what I imagine went through my dog Kaiya's mind in one day with me.

7:45am: Where is she? She must still be upstairs in the high soft bed on which I am not allowed. I want that bed. I will go upstairs and find her and tell her to play with me. Ooo! There's the bathroom trash can with Kleenex in it. Gotta get a few of those and shred them up. Feels so good.

7:47am: I found her putting the warm things on her body while she made weird noise with teeth clacking together. She says the word 'cold' a lot. She hasn't taught me this word. I don't care. I don't have time for this nonsense. There is a stuffed animal pheasant downstairs with my name on it. But it won't throw itself. I howl two inches from her face as she is bending down to put more warm things on her feet. She jumps. I am funny.

8:00am: She's FINALLY downstairs and now we can play. She is petting me and telling me I am a sweet, cute, furry girl. I know this. See that pheasant over there by the lamp? I got a jonesin' to see it 'flying' through the air. Let's get to it.

8:10am: Still no pheasant throwing. She has been in the kitchen making food, none of which is for me. I wait patiently in the living room, rolling on my back and kicking my feet in the air. Man that's so fun.

8:20am: Wait a minute. She's sitting down at her desk with the glowing shiny thing! What is she doing? Every time she sits down at the glowing shiny thing she is there FOREVER. She makes little clacky-clack noises with her fingers that I don't understand. I will just remind her that I haven't seen the pheasant fly yet. I bring the fat pheasant with cool noises deep inside to her and gently place it against her leg. I gently push it into her leg. I gently push it up into her lap. I push it into her stomach. I push it harder and the pheasant makes the cool noise inside. Yes! I got the noise. Let's see if I can do it again by biting it harder and pushing it into her stomach at the same time. Yes! I can't get enough of that noise.

8:24am: It worked! She came into the living room and is throwing the pheasant! She can throw it so far! Like all the way into the dining room. Oh that silly pheasant, he always thinks he can get away from me. But I always pounce on him with extreme skill.

8:34am: I am sleepy and will take a nap in the special place by the big chair. Her clacky-clack finger noises in there are keeping me awake.

10:20am: She is pounding on the window, yelling something. I will go protect her. I see through the window - the pigeons. Oh no. She hates the pigeons. I will help her. I tell her in many howls but she ignores me.

10:34am: Pigeons keep coming back. She keeps being mad. She keeps pounding on window. I will help her. I howl and tell her and I will hunt the pigeons. I am extremely skilled pigeon hunter. She doesn't listen. So I walk to back door and she lets me out.

10:48am: Pigeons fly in towards bird feeder meant for little birds, not pigeons, and I bravely scare them off with my intimidating bark/howl combination. But I can't reach them through the fence or I could have pounced on one. She should let me out to get them. I will tell her.

10:50am: Very proud of my pigeon hunting skills and believe I need a nap now. I sit by back door until she lets me in. She says word 'cold' again.

12:05pm: She said we are 'going for a walk'! She said those words! We are 'going for a walk'! Oh this is the most exciting thing all day. Even more exciting than pigeon hunting and pheasant pouncing. I will tell her with many howls how exciting this is.

Dad: Version 2010

I came across this ad in a local magazine the other day and it made me stop and read it carefully. Not because of the visually stimulating images, but because of the messaging.
The copy reads:

Dad's Guide to Cooking:
Breakfast: Pancakes
Lunch: Pancakes
Dinner: Pancakes

At least Dads have good financial Advice.


So this is how the media is still portraying the American Dad in 2010? As the helpless half of the parenting team when the Mom is not around? The parent who can't cook and resorts to frozen pizza when Mom is at a late meeting? I guess I'm just surprised to see an ad like this. I personally have a Dad in my life who is the opposite of all of the stereotypes, and I know other men that do just as much for their kids as the Mom does. I think they are becoming the norm, not remaining the joke of the parenting world.
Anyone else find the message in this ad outdated? Or are there still plenty of Dad's out there that fit this bill?

Celeb-Obsessed

Lately I have found myself really irritated with the way celebrities are elevated in our society and how centered our culture is around them. Magazines and blogs now count the dimples in a celeb's butt, speculate on pregnancies that are never there, and report on trivialities such as what they drink at Starbucks. Now I fully admit that have been sucked into the celeb magazines and even the blogs before, but decided a few months ago to try to get back to reality and stop seeing them so much. Turns out, it is not so easy.

Has anyone noticed how many female celebrities now represent brand name products? It seems like they have exploded into advertisements in the last year and I am really getting sick of seeing them in so many places.

For instance, in this month's Glamour and InStyle magazines, companies that mainly used to just feature random models now feature the following celebs (some two to three-page spreads!): Jessica Biel for Revlon; Naomi Watts for Ann Taylor; Halle Berry for Revlon; Kate Hudson for Almay; Eva Longoria for Loreal; Kate Winslet for Lancome Paris; Julianne Moore for Bulgari; Beyonce for Loreal Paris; Amanda Seyfried for Movado; Drew Barrymore for Cover Girl; and the list goes on.

Is it too much to ask that we aren't met with these celebs with every page we turn? What happened to the regular old models who used to be picked for each brand, and they were different looking and unique and - you know - people. How about some originality?

Is anyone else feeling Celeb-Overload??

Peanut Butter & Jelly Shoes

Children of the 80's: . . . . . more specifically, GIRLS of the 80's: Do you remember jelly shoes? Of course you do. I had two pairs between the ages of 7 and 9 I think. I had a light pink pair and a clear pair. My favorite place to wear them was on any hard surface upon which they would click and slap and make that wonderfully grown-up woman sound resembling a heel. So I would walk around in the kitchen in them, just to hear the sound of them on the linoleum. And then I would wear them to play hopscotch in the driveway with my friends. I felt so cool and confident as I hopped along expertly in my jellies. Until - OUCH, damnit, a rock got in there! That seemed to happen a lot with those didn't it?

So being a girl who grew into a woman who adores shoes, imagine my delight when I saw that jelly shoes are back - in adult form. Melissa is making shoes made out of jelly material in all kinds of versions including flats, heels, pumps, slingbacks, sandals, gladiators, and more. And they are designed by noteworthy fashion icons such as Vivienne Westwood. Of course, this is probably so they can jack up the price, but hey, it's the fashion world.

I first laid eyes on the Melissa shoes while visiting Las Vegas this month and shopping the incredible stores at The Wynn and Encore hotels. They were like shiny, rubbery, girly beacons of candy and rainbows glittering at me from across the store. As Garth in Wayne's World would say, I was pulled in by their tractor beam. They had huge plastic cherries on the toe! I couldn't stand it. I touched, I pulled back, I picked up, I put down, I picked up again. And I grinned. And was that something yummy I smelled? Why yes, the cheerful sales gal said - all the Melissa's are scented like bubblegum. Well, now isn't that just taking me right back to the hopscotch line?! Instead of being turned off by the blatant girliness, I was pulled even further in, and after an encouraging nod from my shopping partner Angela, (thank you Ange for not saying they were hideous, or things might have gone differently) I asked to try them on.
It was jel at first sight.
They had me at jello.

So, my silly new shoes came home with me from Vegas and might have started an obsession.

An obsession which my internet browser is not helping by grabbing my cookies and having banner ads pop up with coupons to Zappos, showing pics of the other Melissa styles. Damn you Firefox! Stop stalking me! Oooo - are those burgundy ones?

Note: The shoebox said this style was named 'Lady Drag' and when Angela I saw that we had to laugh. Great, I thought, they are associating these shoes with drag queens. But later when I searched the plethora of Melissa shoes online I saw that the name had been cut off and they are called Lady Dragon. ;)

Dust

I never got to accompany Jenny to church. She was dressed in a light blue summer dress and walking down the hallway to the front door when she stopped at a low table to pick up a stuffed dog toy lying there. It was then that I glimpsed a mirror hanging on the wall above the table. But Jenny didn’t look up enough for me to see anything but her waist and the stuffed dog in her hands. She stood silently for a moment, clutching the dog tightly and fingering the satin lining of its ears. Then, at the shrill burst of Laura’s voice from outside, demanding Jenny hurry up, she turned and ran outside. As she threw open the front door something strange happened. A burst of orange light assaulted me and I knew instantly it wasn’t the sun. The world in front of me disappeared and I heard the same whoosh of air I had heard when I left my hospital bed. The strange feeling of pressure returned and the air roared around me while the light permeated my brain. As I felt myself moving through the air and fighting against the tremendous pressure, I had one thought infiltrating the chaos: I never got to see Jenny’s face.

As I hurled through the thickness I felt nauseous and dizzy. Okay, I should be headed where I need to go now, I thought. I took a little detour and now I will be on the right road to the unearthly palace of souls. Just wait until I tell the others what happened! First person I meet in heaven will get to hear quite the story. ‘Hey, I’m Grey. Yep, yep, just arrived. Would I like a pair of angora hair slippers? Why yes I would. A Patargus Series No. 4 cigar and a tumbler of Middleton? Don’t mind if I do. And how did you end up here? Ahhh, wife killed you huh? Well I can hardly blame her what with the way you’ve let yourself go man.’ But maybe the first ‘person’ I will be talking to will be God. How would THAT go? I wasn’t ready to think about that. I was ready to get there and get on with exploring this new world. Now, I was assuming that I wouldn’t just hit a black hole and disappear. If my soul was living right now, surely there was some destination ahead. I started to get a little nervous that there wasn’t. What happened next surprised me even more than the first time. The dizzying whirl and roar abruptly ended and a scene instantly appeared before my eyes. (My eyes?) I think I took another detour. Damnit. I was looking at a huge bookshelf towering over me, filled to the edges with worn book spines lined up like siding on an old barn. My hand reached for a book two shelves above my head. Damnit, not my hand. I watched as a hand with hairy knuckles slowly pulled a two-inch thick book off the shelf carefully. My knuckles were definitely not hairy. The book came down in front of my view and I read the title before the cover was gently pulled back. Cultural Anthropological Analysis of Brazil’s Pua Tribe. Okay now I knew I must be in hell. 

No Pun Intended

I took this picture in an old building in Victor, Colorado - a small mining town close to Cripple Creek. The sign is even funnier considering that the building used to be a brothel. Things that make you go hmmmm.