Tuesday the 22nd
2005-02-22, 3:59 p.m.

February 22, 2005. You know, it occurs to me that I could write stuff in here, you know, some stuff, on an almost daily basis just to keep track of the goings on in my life, rather than waiting for something interesting to show up that I want to hash out in writing. The normal stuff, not just the stuff that rattles around in my head until I get it out on paper.

So, my friend Lisa has breast cancer. That�s my second friend Lisa in less than a year. Coincidence? I think not. Honestly, what is going on here? These are women who are in their mid-late 30�s, early 40�s. My peers, my peeps. My homekitties. I�m Dominique Dunne standing in the middle of the street at the end of Poltergeist, screaming �WHAT�S HAPPENING???� Sans hickies. Not that any of this is normal. I did not mean to imply that. This concludes the non-normal part of our program.

I took an online quiz on dog obedience, and The Dog From Hell scored a 158. That may sound like a score right out in the stratosphere, and it is in a way, but not in the way you would want it to be. An F was in the 140-200 range, so she is a solid, good old-fashioned F. She does everything wrong, except she doesn�t bite us, and she�s not aggressive toward us or other animals. Plays too rough? Check. Tries to escape? Check. Barks at everything or nothing at all? Check. Runs through doorways and through the house ahead of us? Check. Steals off the countertops and table? Check. Pulls on her leash? Check. Pees in the house? Check. Ruins furniture? Check. Eats trash? Check.

But on the other hand, has soft velvety ears? Check. Moans with delight when you rub her ears just right? Check. Sits all rolled back on her tailbone so that her hind feet stick up and wave uselessly in the air? Check. Scares the bejesus out of potential burglars and home invaders? Check. Lies on her back in the middle of the floor with a manic grin on her face? Check.

Here�s something funny, while we�re talking about escaping (we were, trust me). She has never ever ever ever ever ever escaped from the yard, and goodness knows she could jump that fence in a moment. But if you leave a door open, she will bolt right out of the house and will RUN. She RUNS and doesn�t turn around. The only, and I mean only way to get her back is to get in the car, drive to her � and this can be challenging in the dark, as she�s dark like the night � open the car door, and let her jump in. Works like a charm. It�s like she was just waiting for you � where have you been? But then once you get home, she won�t get out of the car. Not for food, not for treats, not for her stuffed 3-legged skunk. She gets over in the driver seat and just looks at you with total distrust in her eyes. Not getting out of the car and you can�t trick her into it.

I spent the morning helping my beloved DishWasher finish up the insulation at the house, which henceforth shall be called �insultation�. Because that is so much more appropriate. So I drove Lil Guy into town to school, and made a big loop back to the homesite. There, I commenced to picking up the insultation scraps and bagging them. I thought I was bagging them in order to throw them in the dumpster, but no, we had a communication breakdown. I was to bag them, and then take them upstairs and FLING them into the attic. Why, you might ask? Why, to enhance the r-ness of the already-installed attic insultation. So on top of our nice, neatly installed fiberglass batts in the attic, there are now piles of dirty, dusty, disorderly scraps. Scraps. Flung about. After I had flung the scraps (I will never tire of saying that), I picked up all the beer bottles and cans, and then I swept and cleaned the entire 3000 square feet of house.

After 4 hours of manual labor, I went home, showered the fiberglass off my tender body, and beat a path here to the office, where I have accomplished exactly 3 things, one of which was eating too much lunch at my desk. Me so tired. I could TOTALLY do manual labor for a living, as long as I had some numbers to crunch after hours. It�s a good tired. It�s the tired that comes from accomplishment, not just from stress.

Oh! Speaking of crunching numbers, I took another quiz for myself yesterday. I don�t just take dog quizzes. It was a quiz on what things are important to me. What will make me happy in life. Here are my priorities, in no particular order: learning (at first I typed �leaning�, and yes, leaning is somewhat important to me), order�ORDER!, physical fitness (not that I do all that much about it), honor, social stuff (friends and talking to people and stuff � yes, this surprised me, too), family, and to round it all off: eating. Yep, in my top 7 priorities and sources of happiness in life, eating ranks right up there. But y�aaaalllll, it does. It does. I like it. Very much.

I did 100 crunches this morning, and 20 pushups. I was going to go for a little jogging walk, but nature called, and I spent some time in the bathroom with the newspaper instead. And then picked up and flung scraps and swept for 4 hours. I think I may have earned my Arby�s beefin� cheddar and curly fries. Or maybe not, but I was huuuuuuunnnnnnggry. Hungry.

My little radio that sits on my desktop (because that�s the only place it gets any kind of decent reception, not because it�s pretty or unobtrusive) has one of those nice, long antennae that has to be wound around and repositioned occasionally as satellites pass overhead, or the sun spews out solar flares or whatever. Right now, the only way I can get my dose of talk radio is for the antenna to be soaring out into space, and hovering right over my head. It keeps catching my peripheral vision (I almost wrote peripheral bidness, which is a whole nuther post) and making me giggle nervously. Hee. Hee hee. See?

See how when I�m not recounting a specific event, I tend to just run and ramble all over the place? You do? Okay then.