I.

Just.

Can’t.

Stop.

All cats. All knitting. All the time. Run Jen Run.

Filed under: General on October 31st, 2007 | 14 Comments »

Honestly, I didn’t really have anything important to say, but it seems that the plastic surgery picture traumatized so many people that I didn’t want to leave it up over the weekend. I’m doing this for you and you alone. So instead of writing nothing, I’m writing nothing with a picture of a cat in a sweater.

Natasha, Dee-Dee and I have taken up knitting again. I’ve always wanted to learn a trade, and although I thought it would be something more like masonry, I guess knitting will have to do for now. We joined a knitting guild on Tuesday. For real. There are membership cards and everything. Okay, so we didn’t actually join the guild yet, but we met some people from the guild and they told us to join the guild. We’re like guild-pledges. Soon we will be hazed, or felted, as they call it.
We have an invitation to join a knitting guild, and I’m considering knitting a fuschia sweater for my cats. I’m not sure if this signals the end of my social life, or just the beginning of me no longer caring about my social life, but I know it signals something. So far I can only knit about ten rows, then pull them all apart and start over. I’m like the Sisyphus of the knitting world. Or that guy whose liver was eaten by crows only to grow back the next day.
One day I will not unravel those ten rows, and instead I will add ten more, and ten more, until I have a glorious fuschia scarf which will elicit many oohs and ahhs from my fellow guilders.
But for now, it’s just a picture of a cat in a sweater from someone else’s website. I did this for you and you alone.

Filed under: General on October 26th, 2007 | 17 Comments »

Me: Hey Nat, look at this picture from Cute Overload – a friend of mine told me it looks like Pickles. Don’t you think it looks just like him?


Natasha: That kitten is cute. It looks nothing like Pickles.
Me: What are you talking about? The giant head, little tail… it’s a dead ringer!
Natasha: No, Pickles is a dead ringer for that crazy plastic surgery cat lady.

[via awful plastic surgery]
Me: YOU TAKE IT BACK!
Natasha: I won’t.
Me: I SAID TAKE IT BACK!
Natasha: Nope.
Me: You and I are not on speaking terms right now.

Filed under: General on October 24th, 2007 | 17 Comments »

I told him all about women and how our bodies work, but he didn’t believe me. “That doesn’t even make sense,” he said. “You’re lying to me.” I said it was true and that my gravity pulls all women in, just you wait.
They let me cut their hair, and I kept their curls for gypsy spells.
She told me she built an orphanage in Mexico but then later twirled her mustache in a way that made me doubt her. I noticed her diamond and she said they just got engaged that night. I thought it looked like a fake, but congratulated her anyway.
They all said she was a giant, but I said no, she was just a woman.
He told me he had two brothers and two sisters, and that they never learned about the birds and the bees. “But I found a book one time. My mother’s book…,” he said, his voice trailing off. I shivered and sipped my drink.
He said root beer, but I said sarsaparilla, and we said either way it was good.
She scolded him for eating things he shouldn’t have, so he apologized and swore at her under his breath.
I told him I won, but he said it only counts if you’re playing against someone. That was the last time I won.
She said we’d rent an RV one day and drive far away from there. “On the way, we’ll stop to visit my mom, and she’ll feed us wasabi peas,” she told me. “We’ll live like rock stars with marble floors and four flat screen TV’s.”
It all sounded wonderful.

Filed under: General on October 19th, 2007 | 14 Comments »

My cat vomited on my suitcase 20 minutes before I was supposed to leave for the airport.
My cab driver had a coconut scented air-freshener that made the car smell like Caribbean sweat.
The woman ahead of me in the security line was carrying a dog in a crate and it peed all over the floor.
Traveling is sexy.

Filed under: General on October 16th, 2007 | 10 Comments »

Here’s what people are saying about TequilaCon:

“OMG! It was so much fun! I can’t believe I got to meet that one blogger – he’s so HAWT!”
– Shari, Eclectic

“I laughed so hard I peed my pants!”
– Dustin, Cotters in My Tummy

“Where are my pants?”
– Karl, Secondhand Tryptophan

“She doesn’t even drink tequila! TequilaCon is a sham!”
– Ashbloem, Ashbloemstraat

“No, I don’t have a blogsite. I don’t really read internet web blogsites. I’m just here with Jenny.”
– Dee-Dee

With testimonials like that, I know that you DO NOT want to miss out on what is certain to be the GREATEST. TEQUILACON. EVER! So that’s why I want you to save the date: May 2008. Yes, just save the entire month for right now. Or at least every Saturday in May 2008. Except Memorial Day weekend – it won’t be that one. So save the other three, won’t you?

Important and Official TequilaCon Business™ will be conducted behind closed doors next week, and with the help of an arbitrator, we expect to have a final date chosen shortly thereafter. But for now, just block off all of May.

The location has already been selected, and I’m pleased to announce that it will be in that City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia! So all those East Coast bloggers who wore fancy coats to TC06 and abandoned their blogs and created new secret blogs and then complained about not being able to make to TC07 in Portland will have absolutely no excuse.

And for those of you unfamiliar with TequilaCon, here’s how it works:
1. The official TequilaCon committee chooses a location, date and time.
2. A bunch of bloggers all meet up there. The invitation is open to everyone.
3. That same bunch of bloggers drinks and talks and laughs and takes photos, but never EVER takes videos.
4. Everyone goes home with an unsettling combination of exhilaration, tattoos and regret.

If this still hasn’t convinced you, then might I suggest reviewing highlights from the past three TequilaConses?

You don’t want to skip this event – it could will change your life!

Stay tuned for more details!

Filed under: TequilaCon on October 12th, 2007 | 20 Comments »

I had barely walked ten feet onto the fair grounds when I was approached by a man wearing a tan uniform and a suspiciously broad smile. “Well, hello there!,” he said, “You know what? We’re looking for some Junior Deputies and you look like just the kind of gal we need.”
“Why me?” I wondered. I just wanted to spend some quality time with my family at the County Fair that morning. I had never sought out a career in law enforcement, but I had also never been one to back down from a challenge. With a quick glance over my shoulder and a nod from my mother, my life took an unexpected turn.
It all happened so fast – stand in that line, go over there, sign your name here, pick up your badge by the pickle jar, smile for the camera. And there I was – a Junior Deputy. My brother had always been a man of science, and never really had the stomach for law enforcement, but my mother insisted he join me for my employee photo.
I was nervous, but all I could think of the entire time was how glad I was that I had put on my best strawberry outfit as I got ready for the fair. “Dress for success,” my father would always tell me, and he was right.
After I hopped off the chair and picked up my photo, I waited for further instructions from the Sheriff. What was my first assignment? Were the Tenuta boys running a gambling ring at the Pick-a-Duck station? Was someone filling the cream puffs with sawdust? Were shoddy gods-eyes being passed off as blue ribbon winners at the 4-H booth? Whatever it was, I was ready.
But instead of a case file, he handed me a First Community Bank lollipop, patted me on the head, and told me to enjoy the fair. As I walked out to meet my family, I looked around and saw dozens of other kids with deputy badges just like mine. I grabbed my mom’s hand and stared at the ground as we wandered out into the fair. It was all so disheartening… how could I enjoy the fair when I had just learned that my whole career was a sham?
So I went through the motions.
We went into the livestock area and I pet a baby goat. Then we went into the chicken area and I saw some chickens with fancy feathers. In the arts and crafts tent, some old lady had a bunch of watercolor paintings of barns. Then we were going to watch Robinson’s Racing Pigs but the next race wasn’t for another hour, so we got popcorn instead.
I was just about to ask my parents if we could go home, when we turned a corner and saw a huge crowd of people staring at some display. I squeezed in closer and my eyes opened wide as I saw the most amazingly disgusting thing I’d ever witnessed – it was a live cow that had some sort of observation window surgically implanted into its side, so when you looked in, you could see his organs. The cow was just casually eating straw and seemed oblivious to the portal installed in his body.
To this day, people have tried to tell me that it was the pressure of the job getting to me, that I made this up, or saw it in a movie and turned it into some kind of false implanted memory. But I know what I know, and I know what I saw.
And I saw a lot of things that day. I saw shrunken head apples with little wigs sewn on them, and cotton candy smeared kid faces, and horses with runny noses. I saw my dreams of winning a four-foot tall Sylvester the Cat get shattered when my ping-pong ball bounced off all the goldfish bowls and fell onto the ground. And I know without a shadow of a doubt that on the same day I became a Junior Deputy, I saw a live cow with a glass bubble in its stomach that let you see his organs. And no one can ever take that away from me.

Filed under: General on October 10th, 2007 | 23 Comments »

Consider this fair warning: the follow photo may contain rabbits and/or plastic cats. Management cannot be held responsible for night terrors. You know who you are.

Sometimes Rabbit makes turkey tacos and invites friends over to watch America’s Next Top Model. Pickles is still in the running.

[photo by Natasha]

Filed under: Sometimes Rabbit on October 5th, 2007 | 16 Comments »

1. There’s this thing I do every couple weeks – replace those three brown bananas with four greenish-yellow ones, toss out that almost full half gallon of expired milk and replace with some fresh skim, swap out the uneaten brownish limp lettuce for a bag of crisper looking greens, dump those unused rotten eggs and slide six new ones into their spot.
   Some people call this grocery shopping. I call it the changing of the guard.

2. What’s your beef with boxed wine, anyway? I like to think of it as the Everlasting Gobstopper of alcohol. Three liters of pure sunshine.
3. Question: What is a good indicator that your son is too old to join you in the ladies room?
   Answer: When he owns his own iPod.
   Seriously, ladies. If he’s old enough to be trusted with a $300 gadget, he’s old enough to stand at a urinal. If you’re really that worried about your tweener son getting kidnapped in the train station restrooms, you should either a) hover outside the men’s room while he pees like a man or b) buy him some Depends. Either way, get his prepubescent ass out of the ladies room, m’kay?

Filed under: General on October 2nd, 2007 | 17 Comments »