Livin' Lanisha Loca

So, the woman who used to have my phone number is apparently a real winner. I'm always getting collection calls for her. And the texts! You guys, some of the texts I've gotten for her make me blush, and that's saying something.

I finally got fed up with up with it, so I just started pretending to be her when it happened. Not so much with the collection agents (Although when the water company called to tell her she was past due last week, I told them to go ahead and cut the water off. Oopsie!), but I've started replying to all the texts I get for her.

And you know I'm going to share them with you.

I've written them out for you verbatim, however I did censor the worst of the language.
You're welcome.

In bold are the texts I sent in response. I'm kind of sad I didn't think of this when it first started. I could have been doing this since May!

Enjoy!

July 29th, 2:37 am:
hey baby i just got inna town. wanna hook up? i missd yor fine ass.

I TOTALLY want to hook up. But this time just you and me, O.K.? I know you liked having that fat guy spread butterscotch pudding all over you, but I found it kind of weird, especially when you kept calling him mommy.

August 2nd, 1:14 am:
Lanisha girl! Where you at? We waitin on you.

Sorry! I had to have some hemorrhoids removed today, and I'm just wiped out. I totally fell asleep! I'll be there soon.

August 4th, 12:22 am
Yo baby. I'm at Deondre's place. I need a f***.

I'm really busy playing Scrabble with my grandma right now, but I bet Deondre will be happy to help you. He told me last week that he thinks you're totally hot.

August 10th, 11:54 pm:
going to be in clarksville this weekend. want to get dinner? my treat. wear those red high heels i like. they make me hot.

Can we go to Red Lobster? I LOVE Red Lobster. I can't wear the red shoes, though. I had a raging case of foot fungus so I had to get rid of them. Sorry! BTW, the clinic said my Chlamydia is FINALLY all cleared up. YAY!

August 18, 1:02 pm:
baby i need u to come rub your t***ies in my face. ill be home @ 6.

Sorry, didn't anyone tell you? I'm Lance now. I had gender reassignment surgery. I had my t***ies removed last month. On the bright side, I now have a penis! I can come rub that in your face if you like. Call me!

Mullet Monday! Tuesday Edition.

This week's mullet was spotted on our trip to Mammoth Cave National park on Saturday. It was so spectacular that I heard no less than four other groups discussing this mullet over the course of the day.

Behold!


Unfortunately this angle doesn't really show the height she had in her bangs. It would have made Jon Bon Jovi circa 1987 very proud. I don't know how she fit them through some of the passages in the cave.

That time Elvis died and ruined my birthday forever.

(I have an awesome mullet for Mullet Monday, but the picture is in Will's camera, which I can't find, and he's not answering my texts or calls. So, we'll have Mullet Tuesday instead.)

So, my grandmother was a huge Elvis fan. Not, "Oh, I like Elvis!" We're talking fanatic. She sewed a king sized quilt back in the early eighties on which she hand stitched hundreds of guitars and hand wrote on it every song he ever released, along with the date it came out. She took a ceramics class once and painted a near life-sized bust of him and proudly displayed it in her living room. There were so many pictures of Elvis in her house that I thought he was a relative until I was probably 8 or 9. I was also about that age when I finally realized that Priscilla Presley's full name was not Thatbitchpriscilla.

So, rewind to August 16th, 1977. Just three days shy of my 2nd birthday. There I am, an unsuspecting little moppet with innocent blue eyes and curly hair, and the vague idea that Elvis might be my grandfather.

And what happens? That bastard dies on the crapper. Three days before my birthday! And to make it worse, the funeral ended up being on my birthday.

I don't have any memory of that year, but I've heard that my grandmother cried for, like, six months. And while I don't remember that birthday, I certainly remember many, many subsequent birthdays. Birthdays with the shadow of Elvis' death hanging over them. Birthdays where inevitably my grandmother would sigh in sadness and say, "Yup...Elvis was buried [however many] years ago today. He died three days before your 2nd birthday." Birthdays where my birthday cake was sometimes accompanied by a black cake in honor of his death.

And even now, 33 years later, I can't think of my birthday without somehow feeling responsible for his death and ruining my grandmother's life. I have Elvis guilt.

So, the moral of this story, internets? Don't take barbiturates. They will slow your heart rate down and constipate you, and one day you'll be on the toilet trying to go and you'll vagal out, and because the 'ludes have already slowed your heart rate to a dangerously low level, your heart will stop altogether and you'll die*--on the toilet with impacted poop, let me just add--which in turn might ruin someone's birthday forever. Just say no!


*For real, this is how Elvis died. When I took physiology in college, the professor entitled the section on the function of the vagus nerve "Viva Las Vagus" and taught us its whole purpose using Elvis' death. I may have forgotten everything else I learned in that class, but I remember everything about the vagus nerve. Oh, and not to use a certain type of spermicide because he and his wife tried it and it adhered to their nether regions and burned like an S.O.B. He was a very liberal professor...

Mammoth Cave

So, I tried to come up with a more clever title, but they all sounded dirty. I mean, it's the biggest, deepest, darkest hole in the world. And umm, it's wet, too. See? Dirty.

Anyway, we live about two hours away from Mammoth Cave National Park. It's the longest, largest cave (at least that's been discovered so far) in the world. About 400 miles of the cave have been explored, and they estimate that there's at least that much that has yet to be explored. So, it's big. And deep. And wet. (Sorry, I couldn't help myself).

We did two tours. The first was just a short, self guided tour in the original (historic) entrance. There's evidence that man has been using that part of the cave for over 4000 years. Then we did a two hour, 3/4 mile tour that starts in the new entrance (new, as in discovered in 1921 rather than 2000 BC). That one was pretty awesome. You start out by dropping 250 feet down a vertical shaft on a very narrow, twisty, turny, staircase. Some areas you have to turn sideways or lean way to one side just to get through. Honestly, I don't think I could have done the tour when I was 300 pounds.

(Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, I need you to settle something for me. Do you pronounce tour "tore" or "too-er?" Because I pronounce it "tore." I mean, you don't pronounce pour "poo-er" and you don't pronounce four "foo-er," but Will insists that you should pronounce tour "too-er." But then again he was raised in a place where they say AY-pricot and thee-AY-ter and crick and words like real and deal are pronounced rill and dill, so...)

Anyway, the tour (TORE!) was great. It's really hard to describe just how huge (And long. And wet.) this cave is. I mean, we only saw about a mile total and there are at least 400 miles of it. It's kind of hard to fathom.

At the end of the tour you pass through a section of the cave called Frozen Niagra. It's an area where the stalactites and stalagmites are abundant, and it looks like a frozen waterfall. It was beautiful. But I must say that Luray Caverns in Virginia has much better formations.

So, this is where I'd bombard you with awesome pictures of the cave, except very few came out at all. They're all really blurry. But here are a few.

Tiny stalactites.

Tiny stalactits.

The prettiest formation we saw. Except that it's hanging directly over your head like a thousand daggers about to fall on you and turn you into coleslaw.

Inappropriate stalagmite.

The best picture by far, though, will have to wait until tomorrow. Trust me, you do not want to miss it.

Thursday Morning Confessions

So, it's been a long time since I broke out the Thursday Morning Confessions.

1. I've started getting up at 5:15 every morning so that I can have 45 minutes of quiet, alone time to drink my protein shake, read the news and e-mails and get dressed before I have to wake the kids up. And I love it. It's worth the loss of sleep.

2. There's a kid across the street who has hit/pinched/kicked/bitten Liam every day on the bus since school started last week. The bus driver sent a note home to his mother, but it's still happening. I've been thinking all day about how to appropriately threaten a 7 year old if it happens again today. I'm guessing that pulling him aside and saying "If you touch my kid again I'll kick your little ass so hard that you'll have to poop through your ears" will likely land me in jail. Or something.

3. I get a twisted sort of satisfaction when I work out with someone and they end up really, really sore because I got them to work things they don't usually work. (Sorry Stephanie).

4. I've gained enough weight (about 15 pounds) since the tummy tuck that I'm in official freak out mode. I've dropped 5 of the 15 over the past couple of weeks, but I'll be really glad when Amelia starts school every day in a couple of weeks and I can get back to the gym on a daily basis.

5. I'm annoyed with the army this week. Will has to deploy to Afghanistan for a year in about 5 months. We knew that, we expected that. I don't like it, obviously, but we knew to plan for it long before we got here. The kids have a week long break from school in October. Since it's just a couple of months before Will leaves, I thought it would be a good chance for a little family vacation. But, no. Will has to go to Texas for training for almost the entire month of October. So, not only does that rule out a family vacation, but it also means I'll have to deal with my kids on my own for the whole week that they're on vacation, and knowing that I'll have a whole year of that coming up very, very soon just makes that week seem unbearable.

6. I took Amelia's pacifier away at a year because I didn't want her to be one of those four year olds still using one (if your four year old still uses one, let me just fill you in: it looks ridiculous and people are talking about it behind your back). Anyway, my plan backfired because she started sucking on her blankie instead. And it's really started to give her bucked teeth. Soooo....while she was at school on Tuesday, "someone" came and "stole" all her blankies. Honestly, she was so distraught and heartbroken that I nearly gave them back. But, she hasn't sucked on anything for three days now. And if she needs therapy later on as a result of this, hopefully she'll be old enough that I won't have to pay for it.

7. I freakin' love America's Next Top Model, and I have no explanation as to why.

8. Butterflies can be vicious when they gang up with all their butterfly friends. They may not bite or sting, but when you have 10 of them bomb diving your face all at once, it's very disturbing.

9. I've been baking my own bread instead of buying it, and my kids think I'm the best ever because of it. But secretly I hate having to make it and I kind of want to just start buying it again.

10. I get a lot of texts for the person who used to have my number. Lately I've been replying to them as if I'm her. Or more accurately, like her if she had severe mental illness.

I'll vote for him if he can fix my internet.

So, if my laptop were a person, it would be an STD ridden hooker.

The virus that ate my laptop last week came back. And pretty much the only option was to erase the hard drive and start over. (So, I guess now it's an STD ridden hooker with amnesia?)

And of course now it won't connect to our secured internet connection (like when we first tried hooking it up last month). (So make that an STD ridden hooker with amnesia who refuses to use a condom.)

So, anyway, broken technology has kept me away, internets. Which is probably for the best because I didn't have much to write about and you would have been forced to read about my "wart of sin" from back in 1995 or something.

Anyway, to be honest I still don't have anything to write about, so I'll just leave you with this. This is real. And he got votes. Thousands of votes. And he's a sheriff. Suddenly Georgia is looking classy and well educated.



And here's one more. It's his official campaign video. Watch it.

If I cried, it was out of SHEER JOY.

So, first of all, let me apologize for disappearing for a few days. My laptop got eaten by a virus. A nasty one. One of those that tries to force you to buy their "security software" to get rid of it, and in the meantime infiltrates everything.

And this is the second time I've gotten one in the past year.

Will now calls me Typhoid Mary.

It's not like I'm looking at porn or downloading things illegally or anything. I'm checking e-mail, reading blogs and paying bills. That's it!

Will is always on shady websites (no, not porn usually) (I'm kidding!) and he's never gotten one.

Anyway, the other computers in our house don't have my stuff. They don't have my bookmarks or pictures, and they're set up differently. (I know. Cry me a river.) So, I took a few days off from the internet. Sorry.

Anyway.

Today was the first day of school. Technically.

It's Friday. And it was only a half day. And there's no school Monday. And Amelia doesn't start school full time until the 23rd. So it didn't feel like the first day for me.

I had to go in with Amelia for her first day of kindergarten. You wouldn't believe all the sobbing mothers in the classroom. C'mon, ladies, it's just kindergarten! It's not like you're sending them off to Iraq for a year.

Maybe I'm heartless, but I've never felt the slightest bit weepy when my kids have started school. I've always felt like, "Yes! One more out of the house for 7 hours a day!" And you can bet when the 23rd rolls around I'll being singing gleefully from the rooftops because all three will be gone all day. I can do things! Alone!

So anyway, here are the obligatory first day of school pictures, which I know you don't care about, but my family will want to see:

Ben, doing the angry tween bit.

Liam and Amelia, who were beyond wound up.
Amelia was up and fully dressed at 6:30 this morning.
By the way, those pants that Amelia's wearing? They're size 24 months.
And they're a little big.

I couldn't get one of all three together because now that Ben is in middle school (yes, I'm old), he has to leave a full hour before Liam and Amelia. So, I get to do the morning routine twice a day. And let me tell you, sullen eleven year old boys are not pleasant when they're forced to wake up at 6:00 so they can catch the bus at 6:45.

So, anyway, that's what I've been up to. I know. I go away for days and I come back with a lame back to school post. I should have just told you about how I ended up covered in biting red ants or about my new, awesome Muslim neighbor (she wears bell bottoms and Chuck Taylors under her abaya), or about how I lured a small child I didn't know into my home.

Maybe tomorrow.