Fruits and Nuts

I MIGHT have previously expounded about Lloyd’s excellent health habits. He takes fish oil, eats almonds and blueberries every day, and drinks apple cider vinegar and green tea instead of beer and coffee. I can occasionally tempt him into an alcoholic beverage but I have to put on a belly dancing outfit first, which I don’t do very often because it’s winter time and I don’t like to jingle. He’s been hounding me for AGES to improve my own substandard techniques for maintaining my health. I would totally do it, too, if he would just put on a belly dancing outfit, but that needs to stay our little secret, okay?

Whenever he offers me a cod liver oil, I get all excited thinking he has one of those beers from a microbrewery that thinks they need some clever, edgy name like Dog's Butt or Arrogant Bastard but then I realize he is actually planning to drink fluid squeezed out of a (hopefully) dead fish and I just say, ‘Awwww, shut up and bring me another beer’. You'd think I'd learn instead of getting my hopes up day after day after day. Don't you totally think Cod Liver Ale is an awesome name for a beer? You heard it here first.

He has a few years on me so it's been working out pretty well for me so far. But now, the worm has turned and its underbelly is not pretty. He’s starting get compliments on how well he’s holding up and I’m….. not. No one says, ‘Oh my, those bags under your eyes are simply radiant! What’s your secret??', now do they? Does anyone admire my pasty skin or how my reading glasses magnify my crow's feet? The answer to both of these questions and many, many more is: NO, THEY DO NOT.

This was getting on my nerves, so I thought I'd mend my ways. I started small: blueberries instead of Skittles, dry air-popped popcorn instead of my beloved sea salt and black pepper potato chips. It was getting pretty dreary, so my mind started to wander, as it tends to do. As visions of pepperoni sticks danced in my head, I realized my life would be much simpler and more pleasant if I could just drag him down to my level. So I bought him a big sack of giant beers for Christmas. High alcohol content, family-sized beers. And a double beer bong. As you can clearly see, I have high hopes for 2011. Merry Christmas, y'all!

Earthquake Readiness Clarification

Just a little clarification after receiving an excellent question in the comments on my last post.

Q: I'm confused...do I put my wine under a table or next to the couch?

A: YES! Wine should be stashed throughout your house. I also recommend a healthy supply of wine boxes in the freezer. These can be used to treat minor injuries before being ingested. Then, you can use another one to soothe your aching head if you were foolish enough to run out of Excedrin.

And, a reminder: while wine should be placed next to couches, beds, and other large objects, people and pets should always go under a sturdy desk or table or other object as soon as any shaking is felt. Drop, cover and hold on or suffer the wrath of plate tectonics.

An additional note: The Seattle Times has recently posted an excellent collection of Emergency Resource topics.

Public Service Announcement: Earthquake Preparedness

The Dead Cat family takes preparedness very, very seriously. I know you all think Lloyd is crazy. And, well, he is! Only not about that. But I want you guys to be ready, too, so you don't have to come crying to me when something happens and you've only got one day's worth of wine and no slugs in your garden to eat. I would totally share, though, so if you DO have to come crying to me, there's plenty of room. I have a trampoline in the yard that will sleep ten in a pinch, and plenty of varmints for protein rich snacks.

You might not know this, but today is the 199th anniversary of the first New Madrid (Missouri) quake in recorded U.S. history. You can read about the series of massive quakes in 1811-1812 at the USGS site here. The Mississippi River ran backwards, and reportedly, church bells rang on the East Coast. You can click here to see how likely your state is to be affected by an earthquake. Look here if you're not in the United States. As you can see, pretty much everyone has a decent chance of getting negatively impacted by a quake. And there's plenty of other disasters that can hose you over good, too.

So what do you do, besides stock up on wine? Drop, Cover and Hold On: get down on your hands and knees and get under a sturdy table or desk. Read about it, and tell everyone in your family what to do. You may have seen an email that talks about a 'Triangle of Life' and tells you, pretty convincingly, to get next to a couch or other large object instead of getting underneath something. This technique has been thoroughly debunked for most situations, and the writer is well-known in the emergency management community to be a major crackpot. You can read about the controversy here, if you want, or a quick search will give you tons of articles.

What else should you do? I don't want to bore you with a big long list of gibberish, so check out these links for what you should have and do to be ready:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/earthquakes/archive/ready.dtl

http://72hours.org/

http://www.ready.gov/america/getakit/

Maybe an emergency kit would be a super gift for some of your hard to shop for friends and family, hmmm? And here are some sites for kids:

http://www.ready.gov/kids/home.html

http://www.fema.gov/kids/

http://www.sesameworkshop.org/initiatives/emotion/ready

http://www.gobagforkids.com/

And start getting ready now for February- It's Earthquake Awareness Month! I don't know about you guys but I love an occasion when a hardhat would be a perfect gift.

Morning Madness

I know Helen is eagerly awaiting my upcoming post about why I love Public Works and diesel powered equipment, but that will have to wait for a while longer. Sorry, Helen, but here's a tantalizing hint: it's the closest you will ever get to pure, raw, unadulterated power, baby. The heavy rumble as the engines fire up, the...

Wait, where was I? Oh yeah: morning madness. As you might know, or guess, it's been quite an adjustment for all of us for me to get up and go to work every. single. day. But it's been going pretty well. The boys get up VERY early. They come in our room and shuffle around the bed for a while, and then we all get up. All except Lloyd, I mean- he is so super efficient that he doesn't need the entire morning to accomplish his chores so he stays in bed until I leave for work. The boys watch Underdog, I throw some toast at them and get ready to go, pretty much peacefully.

Today, though, we had a little snafu. The boys came into our room around 4:30, and then WENT BACK TO SLEEP. I don't know why they came in- I'm not home during the day so for all I know Lloyd puts them in hockey masks and makes them have chainsaw fights to entertain the neighbors in exchange for a little extra cash, giving them early morning nightmares. Not that the reason for this aberration matters one tiny bit, of course. I got up and killed a little time, made my lunch and had some extra coffee. That was nice and all, but eventually I had to get showered and dressed, and they STILL WEREN'T UP. This was pretty much unprecedented, and I had no idea what to do.

Decision time, people: do I go in, turn the lights on, shower and get dressed like normal, taking the risk that they'll wake up all grumpy and cross and I'll be late? Or do I creep in there quietly to get my clothes and then suffer the agony of getting ready without all my required supplies and equipment and have to get dressed in the kitchen? I went with the stealth route, hoping they would at least stay asleep until I slammed the door behind me and accidentally set off the alarm.

I took a shower in their grimy, toy-infested tub, and washed my hair with Target brand baby wash. I dried off with a pre-dampened Buzz Lightyear towel and brushed my teeth with a Hello Kitty toothbrush and Little Bear toothpaste. After that, nothing was left to do but get dressed.

Now, don't be too shocked, but I am actually pretty organized when it comes to work clothes. On Sunday afternoon, I pick out four or five outfits so I can just grab a pile each morning and not have to think about it any more. Unfortunately, when I snuck into the closet in the dark, narrowly avoiding getting beaned by a trash bag full of Christmas presents and my manual 35 mm camera with the broken flash shoe, I could not find the dark wash boot cut denims that went with the week's last pre-arranged set. I carefully backed out to pillage the clothes pile, only to be thwarted once again by Lloyd's laundry prowess. There was zilch, and I mean NOTHING, either dirty or clean.

I did the only thing I could do. I posted about it on Facebook. Then I belly crawled back into the dark, peril-ridden closet, grabbed the only pair of pants I could readily and quietly find, a slim cut black velveteen pair, and bolted out the door. Problem solved, you might think, right? That's what I thought, anyway, until I got a good look in the enormous, brightly illuminated full-length mirror in the office bathroom. The thing is, there are few outfits, if any, where a pair of denims can be appropriately replaced with velveteens. At least in my closet. To make matters worse, the replacement pants seemed to have some sort of static issue. They stuck to my boots and the absurdly mismatched jacket clung to the pants. As a result, both the pants and the jacket spent all day inching upwards, and I looked like I raided the closet of a fashion-challenged dwarf. Dopey, perhaps. Only dumpier, and without that snappy hat. I considered tucking the pants into the boots, but feared I would look like a badly-dressed dwarf on the way to ill-advised riding lessons.

And let's not even talk my face and hair and all the rest, okay? I've pretty much given up on makeup improving my appearance in any appreciable way, but let me just say that a comb and some deodorant would have been warmly welcomed, not only by me, but by everyone in my office, and perhaps some passersby on the sidewalk outside my window. I did feel a little better when I saw someone from another division wearing athletic socks with black pumps. I didn't even want to ask what his morning was like.

I don't think I've EVER been so happy to get home from work. I've spent all afternoon problem solving so this doesn't happen to me again. I have a solution involving drop caches, but it's going to require some fairly intensive shopping and there will probably be some logistical issues. Now, here's a couple of little things to cleanse your palate. For a REALLY funny and excellent story about missing pants, click here.

And, I have been in a class all week. Today one of the exercises included filling in an organizational chart for an incident response. Here are my entries:

Chief- Ben Derr

Safety Officer- Izzy Dedgette, assisted by I.C. Blood

Shelter Manager- Bill DeShack

Heavy Equipment Supervisor- Anita Phillip

And that's all I have to say about that.

Thanksgiving

Check it out, people! White Thanksgiving! We have had the craziest weather this week.

If you live in a place where it regularly snows, you would pee your pants if you saw what happens here with a little snow accumulation. Total gridlock on the roads, jackknifed buses, people stuck on the freeway for twelve hours or more, going nowhere. Seriously, it is complete pandemonium.

Lucky for me, I live about two miles from my office and didn't have any trouble commuting. Not so lucky for me, I had to take a little field trip with one of my new co-workers. Not too far, it probably normally takes about an hour. The trip there wasn't that bad; the storm was just starting. I knew how stupid it was to be heading out, too, but what are you going to do, right? The trip back was pretty brutal, though. I was almost dead certain I was going to have to kill and eat him, then pick my teeth with his beard hairs. I'm so new in the office that the people there haven't yet learned how hostile I can be when I don't get my snacks in a timely manner. If anyone from there is reading this, I like Skittles. And make it snappy, 'kay? Or you might regret it.

YES, this DOES have something to do with Thanksgiving, geez! This year I am thankful that I wasn't hauled to the pokey with bloodstains on one of my fancy new office blouses. Those things are hell to get out, you know.

Moving on, because most of you probably aren't fans of cannibalism, the snow turned to rain about mid-morning and the roads cleared quickly. We had a lovely dinner here at our house with all the fam, and Lloyd didn't even stage a surprise emergency drill, though I suspect he was SORELY tempted. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you; I hope you have had a fabulous day!

Smooth

I'm pretty sure most of you guys know my policy on ironing: just say NO. In fact, I don't even own an iron. You can read some of my previous thoughts on ironing here and here, intermingled with general ridiculousness. Truly, I can't remember the last time I ironed something, or why. I have always been unbearably pretentious about it, too: Iron, me? Oh, no, certainly not. I don't iron, whoever would do that? So bourgeois! I have MUCH more valuable things to spend MY time on, but you just go ahead and do whatever suits you, you poor unenlightened thing.

Like all the other times I've been smug, it has come back to bite me on my wrinked ass. You know I have this new job thingy, right? And it was quite the trial acquiring a suitable work wardrobe after spending six years, one month and seven days lounging around eating bon-bons and sucking down wine being lovingly devoted to providing domestic bliss for my charming family for such a long glorious time. Different outfits are required, as you might imagine. Anyway, I just ran out of new and new-to-me clothes that didn't have to be washed first. Yeah, yeah, I know all about how you're supposed to wash the clothes first, but come on! You should all know by now that I'm lazy as hell so just shut up.

And, dammit if some of my clothes didn't come out of the dryer looking like they are in need of a good smoothing, even by my sub-standards. Now what do I do? Seriously, how do people LIVE like this?!?!? And really, it's not even my fault. Lloyd is ruthlessly efficient and he churns through the laundry like the tasmanian devil on speed. Trouble is, Taz seems to be a little color blind and unable to read labels, so the silk shell goes in with the Transformer underwear and the filthy jeans with nails in the pockets.

Oh, SWEET! I feel an epiphany coming on. It feels sort of like a piercing, stabbing pain in my temple, so it's definitely either another flash of brilliance or a brain tumor. You know how steam will get the wrinkles out? They even make little steaming gadgets just for that purpose, but you can also hang stuff in the bathroom with the shower on, which gave me my great idea for wrinkle removal AND time savings in the morning: I'm going to get dressed BEFORE I get in the shower! That way, I get a few extra minutes of sleep, I'm all fresh and perky for a day at the office, and the wrinkles in my clothes are steamed into submission. I'll let you know how it goes. I hope this one's a winner because otherwise I'm going to have to rescind Lloyd's laundry privileges and I definitely don't want to do that, because I've seen enough dirty Transformer underwear to last me a lifetime.

Exercise, exercise, exercise

You guys all know Lloyd is just the teeniest bit nuts, right? What, you thought I was the crazy one all this time? Oh, you naive, sheltered little BABIES!

First off, I hope the title doesn't give any of my Osan friends PTSD. If I NEVER hear the words 'MOPP 4, Alarm Black' again, it will be too soon.

So what zaniness is Lloyd up to now, you ask? Well, as we all know, Lloyd requires a LOT of action. Because he is not flying very often and he is so efficient in managing routine household tasks, he has way too much free time on his hands. He is quite resourceful and luckily for all of us, he mostly he uses his powers for good instead of evil. Except for the puppy, of course, but that's a topic for another day.

He spends a fair amount of time tinkering in the garage, doing who knows what. I stopped going in there when I saw that he had the corpse-stashing cooler staged by the big roll-up door along with a mop and some bleach. I had no idea what was up when he came out with a grave look on his face and an announcement to share. I thought maybe he had constructed a cold fusion device or isolated the gene that causes an incessant need for continuous frenzied activity.

But no, sadly, it was neither of those things. Instead he informed us we were about to have an earthquake exercise. If you don't live in an earthquake prone area, you might think this is a little wacko, but the Pacific Northwest is earthquake country and believe you me, I don't want to be stranded with no wine and Excedrin when the big one hits.

Lloyd doesn't mess around, people. He switched off the electricity and the water, fired up the generator and cooked us dinner on his eleventy jillion dollar four burner propane camp stove. He hooked up the lights, the television, the fridge and the computer to the generator. Then, while the kids were watching the 'Magic School Bus' episode about alternative energy sources with the kinetic energy powered Ferris Wheel, he hauled in water from his simulated rain barrel, heated it up on the stove and pumped it into the sink with a battery powered shower head (EVERYONE needs one of these, for real) to do the dishes in style. He took just a short break to enjoy some high quality reading material while lounging in front of the infamous painting and then it was back to the salt mines.

It was starting to get a little chilly after dinner, so he lit a fire and shoved the couch out of the way to build the sleeping area. After the boys mined the carpet under the couch for snacks, toys and books, we read some books and hit the sack, wind-up flashlights and radios close at hand for the inevitable aftershocks.

All in all, it was a rousing success, and you guys can just head on over when your house crumples into a pile and all you have to eat is slugs and grass. I know I hardly even need to mention this, but BRING WINE.

Well.

Well. So now I have a job and I go to work every day. How I wish I could blog about it, because there is some crazy stuff going on there, people. I'm going to try to walk the line here because I don't want to get dooced. At least not yet. But who knows, in a few more weeks I might have a raging desire to go out in a blaze of glory, or to shove a freshly sharpened pencil through my eyeball. It's funny, the Place I Toil (PIT) is VERY interested in the total control of information flow. Overly so, in my opinion, and since I've been there two whole weeks now, I definitely know all about how they should do everything.

Maybe I should do a secret password protected blog, what do you guys think of that? They are kind of a pain to read because you have to sign in, but I think you can have up to 100 people invited. Let me know if you would be interested, and maybe I'll set one up.

Okay, okay, it's not THAT bad; I am actually mostly enjoying it. It is a weird change, though. It's been a little hard to transition from laying on the couch reading in my thrift store pajamas to laying in my office chair reading in my thrift store comfortably-relaxed office wear, but you know me, always up for a good tough challenge!

Let's see, what else in new? Oh yeah, one bad thing about being at work all day is that there is no competent adult at home to impose reasonable checks and balances on Lloyd's imagination, so he is puppy shopping. Yes, a puppy. Because it is too quiet and clean around here, I guess. I suppose I should be grateful he's not scheming up some way to acquire some additional small children while not interfering with my money-making prowess. And don't think he couldn't do it; he is VERY resourceful. It's kind of scary, I have to admit. I go off to work every day and I'm never quite sure what I might find when I come home. One day we had a new fence, another day it was a giant trampoline. See what I mean? He's been talking about chickens, but I'm sure he wouldn't really...... RIGHT?

Homefront

Some of you might be wondering what's going on at home while I'm at my fancy new office. It's been fumigated for the fish juice stench, so I feel okay calling it fancy, considering my frame of reference. Especially now that I have my gargoyles all set up. And don't worry, I'm getting along fine. I have figured out who to kiss up to (the secretary and the security guard) and haven't had any more pants-related issues. I'll keep you posted.

Now, moving on to the homefront: as we all know, household management is a VERY daunting task, particularly when you really just want to lay on the couch and read books all day. In addition to all the usual drudgery, we have just started homeschooling this fall.

I have to admit, I was a TINY bit concerned about leaving Lloyd in charge. He has no interest in laying on the couch reading books, but he is pretty deeply involved in some elaborate projects involving fishing lures and tackle boxes, woodpiles, boats and a rototiller. Oh, and flight instructing on the side. Also, we have completely different philosophies about.... oh, EVERYTHING. Homeschooling, for example. I am a fan of child-led learning, where you can go worksheet and curriculum free. Partly because this is how kids learn the most effectively, but also this seems to be the method that provides the most free time for laying on the couch reading. Unsurprisingly, Lloyd completely hates that approach and insists on a strictly scheduled plan with measurable metrics. He's all checklists and square meals; I'm clothes optional and snacks all day.

So how's it going, you ask? Friends, it is AWESOME! Lloyd has this place humming along like a $150 million dollar jet. After all, if the Government can trust him, maybe I can, too. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh, I crack myself up. But really, we should have done this AGES ago. Weston loves his math sheets and his gold stars, who would have guessed? Not me, that's for sure. I NEVER would have tried that. He can't wait for school to start every morning (at 9 a.m. sharp, natch) and he sits there cheerfully for well over an hour, completing his carefully selected tasks for the day. Crazy! Everything would be absolutely perfect if only I could get Lloyd to quit asking me where the book is that gives him all the guidelines for homeschooling. Oh, I just figured out how to solve that problem, yay me! Next time, I'm just going to make motorcycle hands and say, "Vroom, vroom, I can't hear you!"

Work

Today, for the first time in six years, one month and seven days, I left the house to go to work. Pretty zany, huh? I brushed my hair, put on shiny shoes and mascara and teetered out the door at O'dark thirty with a briefcase. Aren't I such a FANCYPANTS?!?!?!?!?!? I felt all smart and PROFESSIONAL, and it was FANTASTIC!

Well, until I got there. I will actually be working in a smallish office very near my house, but had to go into the main office first to fill out reams of paperwork, get my equipment issued and attend a Senior Staff meeting to meet all the muckety-mucks. I'll just skip the part about how the phone box to get through to security to get through the gate is like one of those japanese puzzle boxes with no visible means of opening it and the security guards laughed at me, shall I?

After I finally weaseled my way into the place, which is literally a huge maze-like bunker two floors deep, I was presented with a pile of paper taller than my head and a ratty ballpoint made by blind people in Wisconsin. Or somewhere like that; how the hell would they know?

Then it was time for the meeting. A little backstory might come in handy here: you might recall my recent involuntary diet, during which I dropped a significant bit of weight. This, as you might guess, caused me a significant pants problem, as in, I had none that I could wear, so for the past two weeks I have been frantically shopping for office-appropriate legwear. Desperation does not make shopping fun, friends. Finally, just this past weekend, I cobbled together some suitable attire, or so I thought. Really, you should test drive new office clothes, but pressed for time, I went with the new pants. Which are FINE, don't get me wrong, but they have one of those flat metal tab things that slides into a little catch for a fastener. This is not a secure arrangement, as it can just slide right back out, so there is also a button on the inside. Not being a fan of extraneous fastenings, I went commando on the button and paid the ultimate price while making my way to the cluster of bosspeople. Too bad I wasn't in the pen factory. Note to self: no such thing as extraneous fastenings.

After that smashingly successful meet and greet, I gathered up my equipment, including a mobile device that I'm pretty sure could simultaneously program a missile guidance system and break the Vernam Cipher. Naturally, I can't even turn it on, but I cannot possibly admit this, and am therefore now forced to capitulate and learn to.... do whatever the hell that stupid thing does. I went to the smaller office where I will be working, and got my cube. It's nice and clean, or WAS, until I spilled tea all over my desk. Normally, I would have SOMETHING to sop up spills in my office- gym clothes, paper towels, kleenex, SOMETHING, but since I had just moved in, I had nothing. Nada. Zip. Now that I'm sitting here after the fact with some wine, I realize I should have used the fancy contraption because that totally would have solved two problems at once, but since I wasn't thinking clearly, I wiped it up with my ivory colored coat. It wasn't especially absorbent, and so I just sat on the desk and squirmed around in the offending pants to soak up the excess, and to teach them a lesson. After all, I didn't want to make my new cubicle neighbors think I was WEIRD because I spilled tea, right?

With that accomplished, I set out to send emails to all my friends, find the coffee pot, and do all the other REALLY important stuff. It was going great, until I started smelling something very, very foul in my cube. I sniffed around like some demented little dog until I figured out that it was the floor. I think it's rotten tuna fish juice, and it was fine until I started spilling tea on it and rolling my chair around and walking on it. Lucky for me, I was assigned an office 'sponsor' whose duty it is to help me out. This poor sucker had no clue what he was in for, but he gamely helped me spritz the floor with some carpet cleaner and scrub it with paper towels. Then we started questioning all the folks in the cuberhood about who was there before me and what the stench might be. A little information was gleaned: the previous occupant might or might not have been named 'Don' and he may have left a few months ago to work for the state, but no one knows why. It's BECAUSE OF THE SMELL, fools!

So that's the day one report. I'll keep you posted, but right now I have to find my febreeze, and some super glue for my pants.

Halloween, Again

Wow, it's Halloween again. Last year at this time we were having a party at Hallasan Tower with our friends, and trying to perfect a treat-dispensing funnelator, because getting up to answer the door was cutting into our drinking time. This year, our friends are in Alabama, California, Virginia and Florida. Some of them have a new baby and others have one on the way. We moved halfway across the world, and oh yeah, my mother's dead. Crazy.

Funny, I thought I had a lot more to say, but I guess not so much. Happy Halloween, my friends! Eat plenty of candy, and don't trouble yourselves about poisoned treats. Just so you know, there has never been a documented case of halloween candy poisoning by a stranger. Click here to read an article about it. You should still stay away from those homemade popcorn balls, though, because those things are GROSS.

Peonies

Sorry, no cute cat pictures or videos today. I know how popular they are, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. One day you get adorable antics by Henry, the next day it's piles of dreary crap. I would feel sorry for you, but I DID warn you. It's not my fault you don't listen!

I spent the day digging out my mother's peonies, and it really sucked. It was hard, dirty work, and not the really good sweaty productive kind that I can really get behind. It was just flat-out depressing. Every time the shovel hit the dirt it was like a hateful little song in my head: There won't be any flowers here next year because your mother's dead, your mother's dead, neiner, neiner, neiner!

I kept finding the tags she used to mark them. I'm sure it's to differentiate the colors and kinds, but they just have numbers on them, and I don't know what her numbering scheme was.

I'm pretty sure I was doing it wrong, too: I kept digging through some of the tubers. I was terrified the whole time that she was going to send some big scary birds to peck my head every time I cut off a root. Oh, and she would do it, don't think she wouldn't...

So now I have a giant pile of peonies that need good homes. If you want some, let me know. My understanding is that they will grow anywhere north of Montgomery, Alabama. I did have some in Shreveport, Louisiana and they didn't do well there. You can come pick them up if you're local, or I'm happy to mail them.

Promises

I promise this isn't going to turn into a blog about my cat, ya'all, but look at him drinking out of the toilet! He watched me put fresh water in his bowl, then turned his nose up at it and went out of his way to drink out of the toilet. Then he actually licked his chops! I don't know what I was thinking; I should have gotten a girl cat.

Catsheep

You've heard of sheepdogs, right? Or even sheeppigs, like Babe? But I bet you haven't seen a cat-herding sheep yet. Henry, our new cat with the magnificent tail, is pretty interested in the sheep farm behind our house. I took this video of him having a close encounter of the sheepish kind last night.

Whatever

You want marshmallows and tortillas for breakfast? Whatever. Here, have some whipped cream on it.

The cat just hacked up a hairball on the carpet? Whatever. Oh, now there's another one and he's headed for the clean laundry basket? Whatever.

Mouse poop under the car seat? Whatever.

Three thousand for a new transmission? And you won't be home for an extra three days? Whatever.

You want to hose the house down for an hour and a half? Whatever. Just shut the door next time, all right?

That stupid clown in North Korea is up to some more of his ridiculous bullshit? Whatever.

You want to watch Rescue Heroes fourteen times in a row? Whatever. In fact, make it eighteen and we'll just run it from breakfast to bedtime. Why are those things so damn short, anyway? Why can't someone just make a show that runs all day?

What? My wine box is empty? Now we have a SERIOUS problem; I will have to drag my ass to the store. What? Safeway is out of the Badger Mountain Organic four-bottle box that only costs eighteen bucks with my dad's club card number? Really, people, how much am I expected to endure?

Calamity

I despise clams. They are disgusting, stinky, gelatinous blobs of evil. I don't care what part of them you use or what you do with them: fry them, steam them, or ruin a fabulous potato soup or a perfectly good bloody mary; they are always gross and I wouldn't eat one even if the only other source of calories on earth was light beer. Yes, they are that vile. Also, I like to live and let live and no clam has ever hurt, scared, annoyed or offended me, at least that I can remember.

So you can imagine my surprise when Shane and I found ourselves at the beach with oddly shaped shovels, attempting to scoop their

sharp-shelled sliminess out of wet, cold sand. On the bright side, it was a beautiful breezy day at the coast, and the afternoon light was absolutely fantastic for pictures. Too bad I got only this single one before my camera battery went dead. Overall, it was a semi-successful trip, if you define 'success' as 'keeping Shane from throwing himself into the frigid Pacific and coming home with minimal bivalves', which I DO. We had a nice time with Grandpa, then stayed over for a breakfast of blueberry pancakes.

When we got home, Henry had climbed up on the kitchen counter, opened the cabinet with his food in it, and knocked the bag out on the floor. He DID have food in his bowl, in case you were wondering. Oh, wait. Have I not told you about our new cat, Henry? Look at him, isn't he FANTASTIC?! We LOVE him, even if he is a bit too clever for his own good sometimes.

I think I will stop typing now. I could write a lot more- I have rodents in my car (sure to be an entertaining tale!) and Lloyd and Weston are stuck in Montana with a truck, a boat, a dog, beehives and several relatives, but to keep on would really just be boastful, don't you think? Besides, it's getting on to wine'o'clock. Smell ya later, friends.

Obituary

After a long battle with lymphoma, Carol Ann McNeely died peacefully at home on September 18^th, 2010. Carol was born on March 15^th, 1938 and grew up on her family’s homestead farm in Rainier, Oregon. She attended Oregon State University and then worked in public service for a variety of agencies in Europe and the US, retiring from the Federal Aviation Administration's Renton Office. She began her public service career with the U.S. Army in Europe’s Judge Advocate Division in Heidelberg, West Germany in 1962. Later there were stops at General Service Administration in Auburn, Washington, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Seattle. There were also brief stints at Boeing and Auburn Hospital.

She was an avid gardener and was always delighted to share her knowledge, some good compost or a few bulbs with her friends and neighbors. Her flowers regularly garner compliments from the neighbors and passersby.

One of Carol's passions, second (or perhaps not) only to her love of gardening was 'rooting' out and writing about her family history. Her accomplishments in this arena were impressive, and she spent several years painstakingly compiling a comprehensive history of her family, resulting in a 400 page book that details the Hackenberg family in Europe, their immigration to the U.S., the trip west across the Oregon Trail and their life on the homestead, which is still in the family. While she spent all her adult years in the Seattle area, the homestead farm was never far from her thoughts and she visited there with her ‘Washington’ family often.

Carol was an enthusiastic music lover and accordion player and friends and family were always prepared for an impromptu concert; sometimes they would have to sing, sometimes they got lucky. She was a country music fan and knew all the old tunes, to sing or to play.

Carol was an intrepid traveler in her early years, leaving Oregon State University and her family for a job in Germany for the U.S. Army. She visited much of Europe during this time, even touring the U.S.S.R. during the cold war, when not many Americans had been there. Her stories from this time were legendary, like when she turned the wrong way down a one-way street and found herself surrounded by about a thousand Spanish soldiers on horseback, coming down the street the proper way. In a parade. During some of these foreign travels, Carol became an early critic of the ‘Ugly American’ syndrome when she was frequently embarrassed by the behavior of her fellow tourists. Her favorite spots to visit, though, were Cannon Beach on the Oregon Coast and Vinegar Mountain, in Eastern Oregon.

She was a great baker and a bit of a health food nut. She won a prize for her sourdough rye bread, but tried to slip her kids ‘comfrey milkshakes’ consisting of comfrey, castor oil and wheat bran. She was interested in social issues and was always looking out for the underdog; she was always the first one to offer help to anyone who needed it.

Carol was devoted to her family and loved baking with her grandkids and teaching them garden tricks: the best way to kill a slug or how to propagate a rose. She was married to Cyrus ‘Mike’ on June 4^th, 1966 in church with same day receptions at the farm in Rainier, Oregon and at the family home in Renton. In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made in her name to the Oregon Historical Society (http://www.ohs.org).

The Mother of All Diets

I just thought I'd start off my Mother Loss Chronicles (MLC) with a look at the bright side. I've always been a half a loaf kind of girl, and this ML whole business is pretty dreary. I don't want to skeeve you out or anything. To catch you up if you're a little unclear on what is going on here, my mother has recently died from lymphoma. And, just so you know, if I seem to be just a little, ummmm, flippant, rest assured that my mother always thought I was HILARIOUS. Well, maybe that wouldn't be her EXACT word. A more direct quote might be, 'You are just too, too much', or 'Very funny', but I'm sure hilarious is what she meant. And since she's dead, well, what I say goes (just another fantastic little side bennie!).

And what I say is that the MOAD is by far the most effective one I've ever seen. Forget South Beach, Atkins, Weight Watchers, that stupid cabbage soup thing or whatever else you've tried. No lie, people, it's effortless. Here, let me show you what I mean:

6 a.m. Wake up with raging headache from extra wine

6:15-8 a.m. Drink pot of extra strong coffee; eat some tylenol, rhodiola and St. John's Wort

9 -11:30 a.m. Raging stomach ache

Noon Drink small glass of milk or ingest a small amount of some non-objectionable food, if available

2 p.m. Force down a lump of food to stave off increasing faintness and hostility

6 p.m. Another food lump

7:30-11:30 p.m. Drink wine while listening to mournful Uncle Kracker tunes and perusing grief websites to learn how bad it's REALLY going to get

Repeat.

See? Simple, yet effective. AWESOME, though I can't really whole-heartedly recommend it. After only 10 days I've had to put my fat pants away. A few more weeks of this oozing, sucking morass of agony and I'll be in territory I haven't seen since the mid-80's, when I could have rocked a leopard print bikini with reckless abandon, but didn't because I thought my butt was too fat. Stupid, I know; just look at Kim Kardashian. I won't make THAT mistake again, and you can take that to the bank. Normally, of course, this would be cause for great celebration, because then I would have to go thrifting for new pants. Sadly, however, I seem to have lost my taste for just about everything, including the thrift store. Damn you, MOAD!

Dead

So, my mother is dead. You probably know that. You might even know how much it sucks. I didn't, not until about a week ago. The handy websites devoted to the 'grieving process' serenely assure me that I'm in shock right now, but that in a few weeks that will wear off, leaving me in almost unbearable pain. Then, they all advise, be sure not to self-medicate, as this will ultimately make it WORSE. HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHA, MORONS! Oh, sorry: I am finding that this whole dead mother thing is really rubbing my nerves raw. EVERYTHING is annoying. Today, I hate fruit flies, the fake Duke Boys, and those multi-colored goldfish crackers, just to name a few.

Anyway, if you don't want to read the forthcoming Dead Mother Chronicles, you might want to avert your eyes for a while. It could get ugly around here.

So many inventions, so little time...

Gosh, I have been SO busy lately! New house, new job, this and that and blah, blah, BLAH. I haven't even had ONE second to work on my latest inventions. The first one on the docket is a special clock. I might have mentioned how tricky it is to know if I should be drinking coffee or wine between 6 and 8. Is it A.M. or is it P.M.? Who knows?!?! All those greek words or whatever are way too complicated. No, what I need is an easy-peasy way to tell what I should be sucking down. So here's my idea: a clock that displays a coffee cup symbol from midnight to noon, and a wine glass from noon to midnight. That's just the default setting, of course; it's totally adjustable if those don't suit you for drinking hours. You could have different symbols, too. Martini glasses at night, say, and Gatorade bottles for morning. Whatever floats your boat, I always say!

Then, when I'm done with that, I need to devise a code so Lloyd and I can discuss things in front of the boys. Weston is an accomplished little speller now, so that's out, and Lloyd inexplicably neither speaks nor understands pig latin. Atwhay ethay uckfay, right?? He sometimes tries to use the military alphabet, so 'toy' would be tango oscar yankee, but I don't have the attention span for that. Plus I can never remember all the letters, so it's a good thing I'm not trying to call in artillery support or something. As it is, I'm worried Weston is going to get a remote control can for his birthday. So if anyone has a good code, let me know because I gotta get that clock done soon. Usually it doesn't matter if I mix up my beverages, but I'm starting a new job soon, so it's pretty urgent that I get a handle on that.

Really, Pat Conroy?

I know, I'm the worst blogger EVER. It's so pathetic that Lauren with her newborn can churn out the posts while I sit here and molder like a mildewy pile of laundry. 'Course, she can't drive so I guess she doesn't have anything better to do, but still, it's sad... very, very sad. I do have plenty of good excuses: it's hard to be me, ya'all! The list of things that are suppressing my natural charm and optimistic outlook is long and epic, rendering me unable to blog, cook, clean.... Normally, my house and children would be spotless and I'd have a clever post every damn day. As it is, however, I just sit around drinking coffee or wine (depending on what the clock says; I only get confused in the hours between 6 and 8) and trying to bury my pesky consciousness in books. I'm not even kidding.

So, anywho, the other day I was all psyched when I saw 'South of Broad', Pat Conroy's latest novel, at the library. That should be good for some escapism, I thought. And his characters are always way more screwed up than me; that should be cheery! Man, what a disappointment! It's like he went to Stereotypes R Us and picked out a buggy (like that? It's my southern touch!) full of characters: arrogant white lawyer dude; plucky and smart black folks (two, please!); a couple of junior leaguers with a wild side; a coarse, rawboned mountain family with hearts of gold; and of course, the brilliant, damaged protagonist. In this book, his name is Leo King. In other, much better books, this guy's name is Ben Meacham, Tom Wingo or Will McLean. In this one, his name is.... hold on a minute, I can't remember, and I'm not even done with it yet. Oh yeah, Leo King, that's it.

He must have hired the actual writing out to someone who took a writing workshop from Danielle Steele, because the action and the dialogue is pretty much just jackhammered into your head without any hint of sublety whatsoever. It's so bad that if I didn't know better, I'd think it was Steele herself. I'd give you some examples but I can't bear to even type them. And here's the worst part so far: Leo and his shopworn collection of pals travel from Charleston to San Francisco to find one of their friends who is missing and presumed dying of A.I.D.S in the seedy part of town. They search and search, encountering all kinds of ham-handed ridiculousness, to no avail, until they meet a guy on the trolley trying to rob them. Turns out he's an ex-NFL player that they knew back in SC, fallen on hard times, and guess what? He knows where their friend is! Oh, happy day! Naturally, after they find their friend, they get this poor hapless clown into rehab and promise him a good job back home where he belongs.

Really, Pat Conroy? This is the best you can do? I don't think so. I don't know what's going on with you, but if you're tired of writing, for God's sake, do something else! As for me, I'm totally going to finish this book, that's how bad off I am. I have to go to bed now, but first thing in the morning, with my coffee. Or my wine, whichever.

The Blame Game

I used to live in Pensacola, and there is no more beautiful place than the Gulf Coast. Weston was born there, and this picture was taken in our house there on his first Christmas. We really liked it there- the beaches were gorgeous- white sands, turquoise waters and pale green sea grasses. The oil spill makes me sick, but what makes me sicker is the disingenuous placement of blame solely on BP.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending them; they are a bunch of greedy bastards for sure. This morning, though, I heard someone say that the executives should be lined up and shot, as if they exist in a vacuum created by their own selfishness, and sadly that's just not true. If it was true, we COULD prevent future spills by shooting them. But the truth is, we ALL did this. BP is just the middleman. A dirty, slimy one, obviously, but still just a middleman. BP is only drilling risky wells because there is an insatiable market for cheap oil. They're just going after the money. Gotta keep the shareholders happy, right? What's good for business is good for America, after all. And what's good for business is fast profits. And BP's not the only one: the other companies aren't any better, they just haven't been caught yet.

Yep, we all did this. Every time you take a plastic bag home from the grocery store, you might as well toss a few tar balls on the sand. When you order takeout and end up with a bag of styrofoam leftovers big enough to choke a T-Rex, it's just the same as dipping a pelican in a barrel of crude. Driving alone to work instead of carpooling or taking the bus equals hucking a few water balloons full of diesel at a sea turtle nest.

Now, if we were willing to acknowledge the obvious truth that drilling for oil is environmentally risky, and unsafe (don't forget that eleven workers died on the Deepwater Horizon), and were willing to pay the true cost of our lifestyle up front, say around $10 a gallon for gas, maybe we would have a leg to stand on when an oil conglomerate bungles and/or underfunds a cleanup, because we would have a legitimate right to expect that safety and cleanup costs had been accounted for in the pricing of the product. But to keep sucking up oil at the going rate and demanding Government subsidies to keep the prices down, then heaping blame on oil companies after the inevitable catastrophe is hypocritical in the extreme.

This kind of mess is just going to happen again and again, if we don't change our ways. And we probably won't, but that's okay too. Eventually the oil reserves will be depleted, the oceans will be wastelands and most of the people will be dead, because much of our food supply and almost all of our oxygen depends on healthy oceans. Then the survivors will have to devise alternate energy sources. Maybe they can capture the methane from all those decomposing corpses.

BIG FAT LIES

Hmph. I was just sitting here, killing some time before I go to bed, minding my own beeswax, and I came across this link to a website called Typealyzer. You plug in your blog address and it claims to analyze your personality based on your writing. I have always thought that people totally give themselves away in their writing, even when they think they are being sneaky. This is what makes Facebook so dangerous. Well, one of the things, anyway; vodka and narcissism are also right up there at the top of the list.

Because of this belief, I thought I would get an accurate result when I put my blog in there, but all I got was a bunch of BIG FAT LIES. Here, you can read it for yourself. I got the same spiel from typealyzing both this blog and Stories from Korea:

ESFP- the performer. The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don't like to plan ahead- they are always at risk of exhausting themselves.

They enjoy work that makes them able to help others in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontations- qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

Come on! Almost every part of that is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Right? Then, they showed this little graphic that says that while writing, I use the 'feeling' rear part of my brain instead of the 'logical' frontal portion. What a crock, man. One only has to read a few posts to realize that my writing is completely, totally logical at all times. Like the turban shaped bicycle helmet! You can't get any more logical than that, people! Try it on your blog and tell me what you think.... I'm starting to get a little nervous that I'll never be a highly compensated CEO, or worse, that I'll swathe myself in brightly colored silks and go around smelling sweet. Ickola.

Of Moles and Men

Hey! How's it going, everyone! Long time, no write, right? Happy Independence Day! Lots of excitement around here; yessirree, LOTS. TONS! MORE THAN ENOUGH, THANKS!

First, Lloyd had an... errr, episode with a remote controlled flying machine, resulting in a Fourth of July celebration in the ER followed by reconstructive surgery. If you're here from the FAA, it was totally not his fault, and not reportable, just so you know. Also, he has never busted a check ride, or put a scratch on airplane. And as long as we're clear on that, we can go on to the leg trap incident, in which contrary to popular belief, I am not to blame, not even the tiniest bit. Apparently, these giant rusty devices (see photos with a shoe and my dad's head for scale) are actually mole traps of some repute. Personally I think moles are kind of cute, especially those pink naked ones at the zoo, but the people who own our garage apartment have a serious vendetta against them and plastered these medieval mole torturing contraptions all over the yard. Unfortunately, they were deployed incorrectly and failed in their mission, unless their mission was actually to snare a small child. In that case, they succeeded admirably. After which they were smashed with cinder blocks and thrown over the fence. The traps, not the small child. Grateful moles can send wine. Soon would be best, and plenty of it! Otherwise, I can't guarantee protection in the future.

Anyway, the small child was fine, because the trap closed over the side of his foot where his extra large plastic yellow shoes had some excess sweatshop material. The shoe was clamped on, leaving a tiny indentation in the foot, though from the screaming you would have thought the whole thing was ripped clean off, leaving a bloody spurting stump.

And on a totally unrelated and way more cheerful note, I've been thinking again. This new idea will finally net me that Nobel prize I've been unsuccessfully angling for for so long, I'm sure of it! Check this out: Vaccuum cleaner bags for charity! Think about it, you send your full vaccuum bag to a family in a third world country. It saves space in the landfill and supplies their every need for a week or more! Popcorn, Cheerios and cheese shreds to eat, toys, dog hair to knit into clothes, fingernail clippings and sticks to fashion into tools to generate income, and when the bag is empty, they can use it to carry their baby around in, or for a home for Grandma. Then the week is over, and you send them another one! The best ideas are the simplest ones, I always say. They pay the Nobel prize in wine now, right?

There is such a thing as a free lunch

Wow, you guys. I had the freakiest nightmare. You will totally pee your pants when you hear this. I dreamt that I drank the Kool-Aid and fell for the old 'Government and Corporate America is looking out for you' trick and gave away all my best ideas to them. For FREE! I mean, how crazy is that? I don't even want to talk about it anymore; it gives me the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it. If I didn't know better I'd think they might have planted a chip in my head while I was sleeping or something. I do know better, though, because to find me they would have to scan my ID and I'm too smart to fall for THAT scam. Hold on, I have to adjust my tinfoil hat; the mind control rays are coming closer.



Okay, that's better. I hope your shield is on good; the enemy is strong today. Anyway, my sister and I were out with the kids the other day, and we went to the gym at local community center. It was getting on to lunchtime and we were just about to go fill them up with organic tofu, quinoa and broccoli nuggets and fries, when we were informed by the community center staff that they were serving free lunch! SCORE! At first we thought it was some kind of special day, but no! They do it every weekday from 12-1, AND they serve breakfast from 8-9.



The lunches were weird, no doubt about it. They came in a plastic shell, like a Lunchables box, or what I've heard Lunchables boxes might look like from someone who once bought one. You know, with little compartments and a sheet of cellophane sealed over the top. They had milk AND juice, and there were several different meals, handed out randomly. One of ours had breaded chicken balls, shaped like little drumlets, a brown roll and a pack of gummy candy. And by chicken balls, I mean round pieces of chicken, not rooster testicles, in case you were wondering. The other ones had stips of breaded chicken over a salad of lettuce, pod peas and shredded cheese along with crackers, and someone at a table next to ours had a wrap of some sort and strawberries. Oh, and each one had a strange metal colored little wafer, about the size of a rice grain, right on top. They weren't half bad, but everything was cold, and the kids didn't care for it except for the gummies and the crackers. Weston even stated fairly loudly for the record, and for the staff and the other lunchers, that 'The food here isn't very good.' The whole thing was quite puzzling, until we found out that these were Government funded meals, and they have them all summer, when school isn't in session. So I guess that's good, right? It's win-win. We get free food and the grocery outlets and animal hospitals get rid of their leftovers. We're definitely going to breakfast next time.

Huh, that's weird. I'm feeling this irresistible urge to drink some high fructose corn syrup sprinkled with MSG in a clear plastic cup and watch some network tv, then head to the mall. I'm going to need a new hat for sure. Damn you, Government wafers!

Genius, Free to Good Home

Corporate America, never bothered by grinding the downtrodden consumer deeper into the ground, or hosing over an innovator slaving away in the trenches, has done it again. Check out Pampers' latest offering: Designer Disposable Diapers. You may recall that just the other day I introduced my own DeadCatLine, which features disposables in a variety of high fashion styles. Can you believe this blatant thievery? Seriously, they didn't even try to be sneaky. Next thing you know turban helmets will be flying off the shelves at Wal-Mart and every prego in town will be wearing a DCL rip-off and they'll all be thinking how great those big box chain 'designers' are while true brilliance goes unrewarded, once again.

If you've been reading here for a while, or if you used to read Stories from Korea, you may also recall my frequent objections to many of the most disgusting practices of big business and the assistance they get from our government and legal system, or as they call it, 'business as usual'. But no more. This latest affront to my intellectual property rights has pushed me over the edge. You win, soul-sucking bastards. I hope you're happy, Supreme Court: I get it. Corporations ARE more important than people. Okay, elected representatives: It's not just okay for the laws of the land to be written by hacks funded by the very industries that require oversight; it's BETTER! Enjoy the swag! You deserve it! Thanks for doing such a great job. I don't know what I was thinking before.

I've been assimilated; what's good for the Board of Directors and the House of Representatives IS good for America! AND for the rest of the world, hallelujah! So with that in mind, I offer up all my best products and schemes , free to a good corporate home. This includes such gems as the ninja flight attendant airline commercial, the mini-beers, the fully automatic funnelator, the fully completed childrens' story/screenplay set in the near future about how the Canadians have bombed the US to smithereens, my various housekeeping breakthroughs, and my newest brainstorm: Coke with the Excedrin already in it. This one would work for Pepsi, Gatorade and coffee, too. Surefire winners, every one of them. Gold mines, I tell you. Well, except for maybe the story with those dastardly neighbors to the north. It might be a little too apocalyptic for the grade school set. It does have a stellar vomiting scene, though- it would light up the big screen. Where are you now, Disney? Dreamworks? Probably busy setting up some more of those nifty product placement deals, all for the greater good.

Take heed, food giants, pharmaceutical barons,entertainment behemoths and HFCS peddlers to us unwashed masses! It's all there for the taking. If you would do just one thing, though. Maybe you could throw a few extra bucks to those lobbyists of ya'alls to clear up that pesky labeling issue. We consumers don't need to know all that complicated chemical stuff about what's in all that stuff you make. We know you're just looking out for our best interests. Thanks, you're the best. But you knew that. And so do I.

DCL Update, and a Totally Irrelevant Aside

So, apparently, not all of you have seen these hideous new Huggies. If you REALLY want to, you can see the commercial here, or just read about them here. But don't say I didn't warn you!

And, just in case you didn't believe me about the clothies, you can look here to see just a small selection of the diaper fashion that's readily available.

I know you're really just waiting for the irrelevant aside, so here goes: C Mike's comment about the straw in the bra idea not being all that original reminded me of the first time I went to one of those dumb flying squadron parties where you're supposed to dress up in a flight suit. The unadorned, standard Air Force flight suit can be seen here, if you are unfamiliar with them. Having never been to one of these soirees before, I didn't realize the idea was to create some slu.tty get-up out of the flight suit. Instead, I racked my brain to come up with a clever 'pilot' costume, and the only thing I could think of was a pilot whale. I stuffed pillows down the suit and put an aluminum funnel on my head with a silver stocking over it. For a spout, you know. Then I put a ziploc bag filled with water in the side pocket and ran some tubing up the inside of the stocking and up the funnel. I kept my hand in my pocket and squeezed the bag to squirt water up the tube and out the spout. It was a neat party trick and everyone liked it. Then it was time for the judging and I squeezed the bag too hard and it broke in the pocket and the spout didn't work and everyone just thought I was a weird girl in a fat flight suit that wet her pants and some tan little twinkie in a revealing Hello Kitty themed flightsuit won. After that I put beer in the bag and rerouted the tubing to my mouth. I hate Hello Kitty.

Introducing the DCL

You know how I've been all dull and uninspired because my life is a living hell lately? Well, no more, my friends! I have found my muse, and it is.... ugly diapers! You guys have all seen those ridiculous disposable diapers that are supposed to look like daisy dukes, right? I was at a birthday party yesterday and got to talking about them with some brilliant friends, and we thought, why stop there? Where are the khakis? The floral capris? I know what you're thinking: JUST USE CLOTH DIAPERS, MORONS! But the sad truth is that clothies aren't for everyone. At least until all those nasty chemicals they put in disposables melt the machinery in the factories, but that will probably take YEARS.



So in the meantime, I present to you the Dead Cat Line, DCL for short. The logo will be a line drawn silhouette of a smushed cat; I'm still working the bugs out. Disposable diaper-included fashions for babies and toddlers for all occasions! Wedding finery, loungewear, athletic apparel, you name it! DCL will have it all.



And DCL is not just for babies! I've noticed a few other fashion needs around here. For just one example, we have a lot of people from India and Pakistan here and I often see large and elaborate turbans on men. The other day, I saw a turbaned guy on a bike, without a helmet and I thought, someone should make a bike helmet that looks like a turban! Well, turbaned biker, you no longer have to sacrifice safety for cultural expression; DCL is here to help you out!



The possibilities are endless! Know how when you're gigantically pregnant and you're dying for a drink but you can't have one because everyone will glare at you like you're viciously beating an adorable kitten in the street? How about a maternity dress with a discreet chest pocket with a sturdy waterproff pouch and straw system for your beer, wine, diet coke or red bull? DCL can even custom make a thermal pocket so you can drink coffee to your heart's content without suffering from society's disapproval! See what I mean? DCL is a surefire hit! Contact me at womanwithadeadcat@gmail.com to contribute your own ideas and/or start up capital! No amount too large or too small; contact me today!