I got nothin'.

But this.

I need to find something to feign sadness and gravitas all at once so that people will think it is not allergies, but some tragedy. Yet with the GOP in a tidee-bowl death spiral I'm coming up pretty happy.

Except for the damned allergies. Screw you, ubiquitous green pollen!

If I Were a Stain

If I were a stain, I think I'd be a mustard stain.

To get rid of me, first you'd scrape me with a dull knife. (You may substitute "loofah" for knife here.*)

Then you'd sponge me with cool water.





Then you'd gently rub me with a mild detergent. (Pick one that smells expensive)













Rinse me with cool water.

























Then give me a Shout^TM out.

















Then a nice wash and air dry.


Thank you.

If you were a stain, what would you be?

*You weren't going for the falafel joke were you? WERE YOU?.

Wundrun's Kitchen Nightmares

A local radio station is having a 'kitchen nightmare' contest. The winner gets a free trip to Los Angeles and a $250.00 gift certificate for dinner at Gordon Ramsay's new restaurant. Ramsay hosts "Hells Kitchen", a show I have never watched. That would be like cheating on 'Top Chef', something I will not do.

I have a kitchen nightmare story. This morning as I listened to the contest details, I thought "Hey, I have a kitchen nightmare story, and I can write it up and win, because I am a blogger. That's what I do. I write!" Gaining considerable enthusiasm I began to think that I could be like that lady in the Prizewinner of Cala-somethin' somethin' County! I was driving my kids up to the in-laws, where they will be hiding out for the week, so I had plenty of time to compose my winning entry in my head on the drive.

Man, that was a great entry I came up with. Unfortunately, when I sat down at my computer I pretty much forgot all those pithy things I wanted to say with precision, wit, and timing. Ah, hell. Then I remembered one other thing. I don't write so good neither. But I wrote it anyway and since it was writ, I sent it in.

Here it is. (Oh, and every word of it is true. Even the longer parts I left out and the ones I forgot somewhere around Baraboo).

When I was in college my friends and I took a summer sublet apartment. It was the upper of a dubious old house. Not much worked right, to say the least. I think that we were all waitresses or bartenders. Being around restaurants and it being the summer, none of us used much in the kitchen except maybe the microwave, and obviously the refrigerator (beer, natch).

One night I thought I would impress my boyfriend by cooking him a home-made meal. At the time my specialty was spaghetti and meatballs. Boil noodles, heat can of sauce with frozen meatballs. Serve. Expanding my horizons, I also planned to make one of those frozen loaves of french bread. Pre-garlic-buttered, of course.

I started the noodles and sauce on the stove top and turned on the gas oven to preheat. Five minutes later I opened the oven door to check if it was hot enough yet. Think about how you open your oven door, when it's one of those free-standing models: You open door, bend down, look in.

That's what I did. That's why the fireball that exploded out of the oven caught me right in the face.

At the hospital they wanted to know if I'd been playing with fireworks, because it was the 5th of July. I said I hadn't. Besides, it wasn't just my face that was burned. On the back of my head were charred little balls of melted hair globs. I think my face was probably in the blue part of the flame and the orange part sort of wrapped around my head. My boyfriend - I do think I impressed him - said the flame came out about four feet. It burned off my eyebrows, my eyelashes and my bangs. You know for a white girl I was looking quite a bit like Whoopi Goldberg. Aside from a lot of unwanted hair removal - meaning I didn't want the hair removed - my skin was mostly okay. Except that my nose was one big watery blister. The doctor peeled the skin off my nose. I went home looking like a sad, ratty-wigged, alopecia-suffering Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Strangely, the expensive restaurant that I worked at didn't want me to cocktail waitress for a while. At least not until I got the skin back on my nose.

My landlord? He stopped by to tell me that I didn't really look all that bad. And since he tried to fix the oven himself we just went on not using it.

Oddly enough, the entire house burnt down eight months later. We didn't live there by then and no one was home. It was spring break.

UPDATE: Huzzah! They are going to read my entry on the air Thursday morning! I have won an apron (I need a new one. Yay) and a cookbook (Can you ever have enough? No. You cannot!). Now I have a 1 in 5 shot at winning the whole deal. The trip winner will be announced on Tuesday.

I told my mom about it and she threatened to write her own tale: A tenant in one of their apartments tried to kill himself by sticking his head in the oven. It was electric. Ha!

Cross your fingers for me. If you do, I'll send you a postcard from L.A. (Gotta go now, I'm having a little dream sequence.)

Something seems familiar...

Where have I seen this lady before?



Here?





Kinda.

Here?


Oh, crap.

The Huffington Post is there far before me pointing out the similarity between Cindy and Vicki. Just Weird.

For the record, I agree with smarter bloggers that this is not a story about an affair or sex. It is a story about how 1/5 of the Keating Five gang is still actively corrupt. Dr. Zaius is all over that.

A Torch Song for Valentine's Day

Maybe you remember that I posted a love song for 9/11 on September 11th. That is the day that I very first kissed my husband in the coatroom at my sister's wedding. (I met him the day before). Well, now that it is the international day of luuuuuv and romance, I thought I'd let you know that for me, it harbors really bad memories.

Dork that I am, I got married on Valentine's Day once. Not in hindsight but in actual fact on that day, it was one of the worst days of my life. Lots of people say they knew they were making a mistake on th day of their wedding. Count me among them.

We had a big Friday evening wedding. To me, it was a pain in the ass. There were 200 or so guests. It was lent, so half the catholics had ordered fish and somewhere along the line the most devout of the catholics were served steak. The band we hired -- I refused to have a dj -- changed their lead singer from the time we hired them to when they played. He both sucked and looked like a freak. My mother's friend decided to freestyle the decorations without me knowing about it and plastered brass cupids throughout the room. The hotel was hosting a children's group. Kids rode up and down in the glass elevator right next to the cocktail reception, pushing the buttons for each floor. My suitcases were left in my car and the best man who was supposed to bring them up to the room earlier in the day was too busy drinking at the open bar and smoking cigars to get them for me. I did it myself. Have you ever seen a bride schlepping her own luggage through her own reception? My dad bugged, ran after me and yanked the bags out of my hands taking care of the errand for me.

I remember having about thirty drinks in my hand and taking a sip out of each one, setting it down and losing it. No, I did not get drunk because there wasn't the opportunity. I think I had to dance to the electric slide, macarena and the chicken dance though the band was specifically instructed against those songs. I couldn't find my new husband when the time had come to dance with him. My friend started a fight with his sister because she thought his sister had taken his bouquet.

The two families didn't like each other, though we've known each other since I was in kindergarten. My ex-father-in-law thought giving me the finger at the altar during the rehearsal was high humor.

It was on my wedding night and during our honeymoon that I discovered my new husband had a phobia against having sex in hotel rooms. (He thinks they spy on you). In fact, the other guests at the small tropical resort where we stayed were always amused that the husband of the newlywed pair was always up late in the bar and the bride was always up early reading books on her patio.

We lasted eighteen months. I'm cool with that now. It turns out that "starter marriages" are hip. Wow, me, hip! Whodathunk?

Hey, did anybody notice this?

Apparently, Google Blogger has a new linked feature so that anyone with a Blogger account can compare the interests they listed in their profile with all other profiles and perhaps find a friend who shares said interests. Just click on each entry and it sends you to a list of all other like-minded Google Bloggers.

My first interest is Rosalind Russell films except for the one in which she plays a nun and co-stars with Hayley Mills. It is called "The Trouble With Angels". (Note to Sleestak - Hayley is kind of good in it, but Rosalind should never have starred in a vehicle that doesn't allow her character to drink martinis). In the interest of full disclosure I should add that my adopted actress, Mary Wickes, has a large supporting role in this film.

I am the only one. So lonely.

I also like dirty jokes. Only 62 of my fellow blogging brethren confess to this (I find the low number a little surprising). One of the 62 is this guy:

Interests: porn, girls, naked pictures, landscape pictures with naked girls in them, sex, sex with girls, girls who like to have sex, dirty jokes, dirty women, dirty hoes, dirty minds, and more naked pictures. ...and some other stuff.."

Uh, ok so we kind of begin and end with dirty jokes eh, compadre blogger?

I am also the only person who likes to do things involving lake water (I'm sure there are many other waterski, canoe, sail, pontoon party, swim, scuba, float, pee-in-the-water enthusiasts out there. It's just that none used my exact phrase.) And I am the only person who says she likes kid stuff. Grown men who say that could be problematic. No one else is interested in collecting antique globes. Thank you all non-collectors for leaving me the pre-WWI globes I would like to someday own. (Aside from the 1905 schoolhouse globe that I do own but which is still in storage wanting a place to be hung).

I like to knit. So does Threading Water, Blue Gal and 28,197 others. Wow, an enormous pool of potential friendsters! Let's see: "Books, cats, knitting, writing, Second Life, Church, Sunday School" Ummm. Nope.

"Knitting, scrapbooking, dance, music". Hey, that's my mother-in-law! But I already know and love her so what else?

Well there's "Zwar: WWE, footy, ultimate fighting Snodgrass: Warhammer, lego, knitting,".


You know, I think we used to have things called "bars" where we could go to meet others who had nothing in common with us. I wonder if I can find a babysitter.