Obsessed With Six Words

It’s Thursday again, and that means it’s time for Kathy’s Weekly Writer’s Workshop. Check out her blog at Mama’s Losin’ It.

There were two prompts that appealed to me. The first one was “Describe your latest obsession”.

Okay, obsession is too strong a word. Anyone who has read my blog before knows that I’m not obsessed with Ryan Lochte, the best guy swimmer in the world not named Michael Phelps. Definitely not. And, I didn’t buy the latest GQ magazine because he had a layout in it (like I was a 12 year-old buying a Teen Beat magazine). I did not!! Stop looking at me like that! GAH! Oh, you want a description? Okay… Man! He’s so pretty! Man! He’s got a yummy tummy! Man! He’s got a gorgeous smile! Man! He's a good swimmer! Crap! He’s 15 years younger than I am! Crap! This is totally inappropriate; I mean, I was getting ready to start high school when he was born! Dude! He’s hot and I don’t care that he’s 15 years younger than I am and that my whatever-it-is-that-isn’t-an-obsession is completely age-inappropriate. Not obsessed. No, definitely not. Just enjoying the pretty.

The second prompt that appealed to me was “Ask a loved one to describe you with 6 descriptive words. How well do they know you?” So, to keep it in the bloggy family, I asked my best friend Diane from Diane’s Addled Ramblings to give me those 6 words. I’ve known Diane since 1990, and it is not an exaggeration to say that we didn’t like each other at first. She thought I was a snob. I thought she was just not very nice. I don’t even know for sure how it happened that we got past that and became friends, but we did and we’ve been friends ever since.

When I asked her for the 6 words, I was a little worried because, you know, she’s Diane and she lives to tease people. So, here goes (in her words exactly as she sent them to me):

• Funny (as friggin’ HELL)
• Smart (as friggin’ HELL)
• Huge-hearted (I figure that encompasses loving, caring, sappy, etc)
• Generous
• Integrity-driven (I wanted to say moral, but that sounds sort of pompous, and integritous isn’t a word)
• Goofy - Hey, can you replace Goofy with Snarky…so…
• Snarky

Well, first of all, I’d like to thank her for thinking these things about me. And, I have to say, I think she knows me pretty well.

• Funny – See, Diane? She’s not very bright and laughs at knock-knock jokes, so yeah, she thinks I’m funny.
• Smart - I’ve got her fooled with the smart thing. It helps that she lives far away and I always have a computer handy with a Google screen open.
• Huge-hearted – Well, I thought she meant my congenital oversized heart condition at first, but apparently she meant that I’m nice. Which is good, because that would have been kind of mean to bring up my condition in front of all you people. Okay, I guess it’s true that I’m nice. Kind of. I just smile a lot, which is deceptive, and she’s really naïve so she confuses that with being nice.
• Generous – Well, sure, she’d think that since I’m using credit cards I opened in her name to buy presents for her. Wait ‘til she checks her credit report!
• Integrity-driven – She made up the word integritous for me. That’s a friend, I’ll tell ya! She thinks I don’t lie and that I’m fairly honorable. But, really, I’m just a good actress.
• Goofy, wait, no, Snarky – I don’t know where she gets that I’m snarky. I think she’s nucking futs.

Okay, here I go being all integritous and huge-hearted: Thank you Dianabelle for your kind words, and I’m awaiting the (not-so-kind) words you use to describe the obsession part of this post. Love ya! Mean it! Mwah!
Your BFFF,
Melaroni

Writer's Workshop - Dear Santa

If it's Thursday, it must be Writer's Workshop! Check out Mama's Losin' It.

Dear Santa,
Please see below for my Christmas list.

I don’t want a lot. Really. I’ve been a very good girl. Well, you know! I’m sure I’m on your Nice List. Check to make sure, but I bet my name is there. Just keep in mind when you are making arrangements for my gifts how sweet, generous, loving, and unselfish I’ve been this year. And, pretty much every year ever. I'm also very humble!

1. The ability to eat fried mozzarella sticks, chocolate cake, and Hungry Howie’s pizza without worrying about fat and/or calories.
2. A weekly visit from a hairdresser to keep my roots done, my ends trimmed, and the frizz and curls under control.
3. Someone to drive me to and from work so that I can either sleep, read, or play on the interwebs instead of hollering at other drivers and pushing my imaginary bomb and missile launch buttons when someone cuts in front of me or ticks me off.
4. An unlimited supply of candy corn, miniature Reese’s cups, Twizzlers, and Dr. Pepper.
5. No cavities.
6. Perkier boobies.
7. Matthew Rhys to whisper sweet nothings in my ear and then kiss me silly.
8. Sally Hanson to start making Beige Balance fingernail polish again. Seriously!
9. Tubs and tubs and tubs of Bath and Body Works Mega Butter. (and Matthew Rhys to rub it in)
10. A new Harry Potter book.
11. To look in a bathing suit like I did when I was 18 (see #6).
12. SPACE CAMP BABY!
13. For Charlotte to not be so all-fired steamy and humid next summer.
14. All the sweet tea and biscuits I can possibly drink and eat.
15. To be 5 or 6 inches taller.
16. For people to lose interest in who Jennifer Aniston is dating and whether or not she wants a baby, like, two years ago. So. Bored. By. Her. Anymore.
17. Friday Night Lights and Pushing Daisies to NOT be canceled next year.
18. All of my unwanted body hair to magically disappear! Poof!!
19. Those Hills kids to GTFO!!
20. And last, but not least: Him. 6 Please. Now. Thank you!

Love,

Melanie XXOO

I will never, ever stop being socially unacceptable when it comes to Ryan Lochte. NEV-AH! Okay, maybe some day, but not right now.

Writer's Workshop - Petly chaos

It’s my second attempt at writing from one of Mama’s Losin’ It’s prompts, and I chose Describe a time when your pet caused chaos.

I’m not a cat person, but when my sister Sissy broke up with her boyfriend back in the early 90’s, I agreed that we could get a cat for our apartment. She and her boyfriend had a dog together, and she missed the companionship of an animal once she was living with me. I didn’t want the responsibility of a dog when she wasn’t there, so I told her she could get a female cat. She brought home a cute little black and white kitten. The kitten’s very first night with us, Sissy and her boyfriend got back together, leaving me alone to take care of a cat I didn’t want in the first place. Sissy never even named it, and I refused to get attached to it so I wouldn’t name it either.

My sister moved out eventually and didn’t take the cat with her. When no-name went into her first heat and started howling about 9 months after Sissy brought her home, I figured I’d better get her fixed. I made an appointment and took her to the vet, where the receptionist asked me a question I couldn’t answer: What’s her name? I looked at her blankly and said, “Um, she doesn’t have one.” She insisted they had to have a name for their paperwork, so I shrugged and said, “Well, when she’s getting into trouble I call her a little monster.” So that’s how no-name got a real name: Monster. It was official. The receptionist even wrote it on a piece of tape and stuck it on the top of the cat carrier.

A few hours after I brought her home from the vet’s office, she started bleeding from her incision. It was around 9pm and my vet’s office was closed, so I had to take her to the nighttime emergency vet. I knew I had fallen for the little fuzzball (that hadn’t even had an official name the day before) when they took the carrier from me and told me she’d have to stay overnight. I sat down in the lobby and started crying because I had to leave her there.

In October 2005 I went with my friend Diane to England for 2 weeks. Monster had met Diane many, many times before, but she was getting a little old and crotchety at this point in her feline life. I think she may have been mad at Diane for taking me away, because after Diane left to go back home to Virginia, I saw that Monster had sprayed the door of the bedroom where Diane sleeps when she visits me. Marking her territory, I guess? The whole point of me telling Sissy to get a female cat in the first place was to prevent the spraying that male cats do.

A few months later, Diane and her daughter (my goddaughter) Ryan visited for a long weekend. Thinking about the spraying incident, I had closed up Monster in my 3rd bedroom, which also happens to be where my computer is. Diane went in to check her e-mail and Monster got out. Not a big deal. That is until I got a panicky call from Diane asking me when I was going to be home from work.

Apparently, when Monster got out of the computer room, she was her normal, loving self. For a while. Then she got a wild hair up her cat behind and scratched Ryan, who had made the obviously gigantic mistake of sitting down on the sofa with her. The thing is, Monster only had back claws (yes, I’m one of those horrible people who declawed her cat), so she really had to work to scratch someone. Then, she started hissing and biting at Diane and Ryan, and ended up chasing them into my downstairs bathroom. Diane realized that they could be trapped in the bathroom until I got home from work and she didn’t have any idea how long that would be. She needed her cell phone to call me, but her cell phone was in the kitchen, which would require her to leave the safety of the bathroom. When Diane would open the bathroom door, Monster was waiting there for her, like Cujo outside of that car. She armed herself with the plastic trashcan from the bathroom and performed evasive maneuvers by waving the trashcan back and forth in front of her vulnerable ankles as she scooted from the bathroom to the kitchen and back again. I received the panicky call after that daredevil mission.

On a normal night, not during rush hour, it would probably take me about 35-40 minutes to drive home. On a Friday night during rush hour, it took pretty close to an hour, if not more. When I opened my front door, Monster was sitting guard on the bottom step of my staircase. As soon as she saw it was me at the door, she ran to me and started meowing very loudly, winding herself around and around my legs. I’m sure she was trying to tell me about the horrible woman and child that had invaded our home while I wasn’t there and how she had them corralled in the bathroom to keep them from doing further harm. I picked her up and hollered to let Diane and Ryan know they could come out of the bathroom safely. Even though I was holding her, Monster still growled at them when she saw them. My cat growled.

Later Diane sent an e-mail to everyone she knows about the incident, and since Diane knows people on virtually every continent in the world, my poor, normally sweet Monster was maligned from New Zealand to New Jersey, when all she was trying to do was protect her home from the mean woman that took her mom away for two weeks the year before.

Monster's in kitty heaven now, but this is her with her head trapped in a Hecht's bag. Goofy cat.

Writer's Workshop - I Remember When...

Diane suggested a few weeks ago that I try the Writer’s Workshop prompts from Mama’s Losin’ It. Even though I’ve written down the prompts every week, I’ve never gotten around to actually writing anything from any of them. I thought I’d give it a try this week. I chose the prompt “I remember when…”

I remember when my mom told me about the facts of life. I was reading The Secret Garden in my room one Saturday when I was 9 years old. My mom came in and asked me to come with her because she “needed to talk to me.” Uh-oh! This couldn’t be good!

My mind started scrambling, trying to think of what I had done that was going to cause me to get in trouble. I was a pretty good kid, but when I did screw up, I tended to do it in a spectacular go-big-or-go-home way. But, aside from getting fussed at in ballet class when Mrs. Gravely caught me standing ON TOP of two barres where they met in the corner, getting ready to jump down (a la a wrestler in the ring), I couldn’t think of anything I had done lately that might require the dreaded talking to I was about to get. And, I didn’t think that Mrs. Gravely had told my mom about my Ric Flair impression.

The only other thing I could think of was that I had lost almost all of my earrings. I had gotten my ears pierced the year before and had gotten tons of earrings for my birthday and Christmas. Those little cards that contain about 10 different pairs in the shape of hearts, stars, and all the things little girls like? I had gotten so many of them. I could literally wear a different pair of earrings every day for 2 months or more. But, it turned out that I had very sensitive ears and no matter how much peroxide I put on my ears and on the earrings, by lunchtime everyday my ears were aching. So, I’d take my earrings off and put them in my desk. I had to leave my classroom to go to another to take a TAG math class. While I was gone, another kid came into my regular classroom to take the math class my teacher taught. That kid took my earrings every day. So, by the time my mom told me she needed to talk to me that Saturday, I only had 2 pairs of earrings left. That’s the kind of good kid that I was: I thought the worst thing I had done was accidentally have my earrings stolen because they hurt too much to wear.

I really thought I was in for it, though, as I was walking down the hall from my bedroom to the living room. I knew we were alone in the house. I knew that she had sent my little sister with my step-dad to a softball game. I was a dead girl walking.

When I came into the living room, Momma was sitting on the floor and she told me to sit down with her. She had a big box in front of her that she opened. Inside were things I’d never seen before. Then she started explaining all that I needed to know about becoming a young woman. She had ordered the box from the Kotex company and it had samples of different feminine products and a couple of little booklets that Momma said I could read and hold onto in case I had any questions about things. She had gotten me a couple of different styles of training bras too so that I could decide which one I liked better.

I’ve always been a pretty private person and I’m fairly modest. I think normally I would have been horrified that we were even having such an intimate discussion, but I hardly paid attention to what she was saying because I was just so relieved that I wasn’t in trouble over the earrings (or my ballet-wrestling)! Thank goodness for those booklets because I’m pretty sure most of the stuff that she told me that day went in one ear and out the other.

I hid my training bras in between some sweaters in a drawer because I didn’t want my little sister to know that I had them. A couple of weeks after our Big Talk, my mom, step-dad and I sat down to dinner. Momma called for my sister to join us. My back was to the hallway, but I knew when she had arrived because Momma and Dennis started laughing. I turned around to see what they were laughing about and there was my little sister, wearing my bra on her head like a hat. So much for being private and modest.