TToT: Sexy Storms, Appliances and The Floppy Spider of the Sea

It's been an overwhelmingly busy week. One of those "just try to get through this day" but every day kind of weeks. I'm thankful for things we have now like dishwashers, washing machines, and frozen dinners even though.....

Followed directions very carefully

This was yesterdays dinner. It kept us alive, but barely. If I were a food critic, I would call this dish
"GLUTEN for punishment" 
and really let me have it, with info about preservatives.

Thankfully, being a mom, like being a blogger is a job without a paycheck which means I CAN'T GET FIRED. Wait, am I really thankful for that? Yes, yeah ok, yes I am. And I'm super thankful that our insurance covers mental health, we started with family counseling this past week for all the teenager stress, and we'll see where it goes from there. I hope I can still post to this blog from whatever rubber room they lock me up in, we'll see how the wifi is.

I'm thankful to the moon and back Tinny, my son, started another job this week. He already quit. However, at least it means he's still actively LOOKING and APPLYING to jobs to supplement his part-time gig. This was door-to-door sales-type stuff. It sucked but he's a kid that needs to learn things for himself, so this lesson: Done. And I didn't tell him that his quitting means I blessedly have a few days where I don't have to run him to TWO JOBS, this last one never knowing when/where he had to be picked up, but he always had to be picked up AFTER the busses stopped running. Barf.

Kaley Cuoco (not sure how you pronounce that but when I heard a radio DJ talking about this article, the sounds he made trying to pronounce it sounded like whale song. I was waiting for Dory & Marlin to 'just keep swimming' by.) 

Anyhoo, the blonde from Big Bang Theory did an interview with some shiny magazine whose name escapes me, and she apparently said that her decision to get breast implants 10 years ago was quote "the best decision of her life." The DJ went on to feel sad and sorry for her for about half an hour, and I found the whole thing hilarious.

I'm sure she cares about your pity, being so busy finding banks big enough to cash her giant TELEVISION show checks, with a drive-through window for riding her unicorn. 

Second, good for her for talking about and not trying to be shady. Do whatever you have to do, gurl, get you some bewbies if that makes you a better you. I would donate mine if I could, they're a huge waste in my life. I've blogged before about needing a "Give a boob, take a boob" tray. Take mine, please.

Third, if she were an average everyday very young girl and not a Hollywood star, I might feel that she should look within to make life better using her mind, but she's in a very shallow industry in a very shallow country, and she did something quite a lot of people in that industry do, and you can't argue with the results. 

Before                                           After
Yeah, I know. Know what I can't? EVEN.
Pity need not apply. Pity can have a bus-full of seats.
from herinterestcom

I laughed my hams off when my husband told me years ago that he thinks plastic surgery and water bras are "false advertising." This is coming from a man who wears green colored contacts, ladies and gents. It's all marketing, we do what we do when we do what we do. Make-up, high heels, hair dye, hell even figure-flattering clothing, let he or she who has not used any of these cast the first Spanx. 

But they can't because the Amish don't read my blog. I'm not all about carrier pigeons or whatever. One thing at a time.

This post is part of a hop, that's more than a hop about Ten Things of Thankful. Click there to link up and tell us anything you're thankful for.

Last week one of the hostina of that blog hop, Lizzi of Considerings blog took a secret mission and wrote a story to fill in the blanks of a dream I had. I only remembered a few seconds of it, and she did SUCH a great job! I ate up the story, and it left me wanting MORE. She's a genius with fiction. Here's the link, I apologize for when you get to the bottom and you want to read more. That's what good writing does. Not my writing, where you start skimming to get to the bottom and you're exhausted and like "OH thank gods that is finally over!"

Speaking of my weird ramblings, I did a super weird post (yes, even for me) this week about my toaster.

Yeah, it's weird

Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse. That's a link if you're not easily offended by the objectification of sexy household appliances.


Last week my bloggy friend, writer of Jeneral Insanity blog, which I HIGHLY recommend, posted this video on Facebook. I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats. I'll watch it again and again. True facts about the octopus, the floppy spider of the sea.

I'm thankful for the Spring weather we finally had, two whole beautiful days of partly to mostly cloudy with no rain, which means of course now we must PAY. This weekend's forecast calls for thunderstorms, hail and "damaging winds" because as I've said before, the Midwest is Mother Nature's bastard stepchild that she secretly hates. 

Peruse this phallic weather map if you don't believe me:

This johnson brought to by Lake & McHenry County News Facebook page

We're going to get SO SCREWED the weather forecast contains a giant penis.

When Dreams Walk Among Us

SPECIAL TREAT! This is a guest post from the amazing Lizzi Rogers of Considerings blog. 
What did I do to deserve this treat? Basically I assigned it to her like a mean substitute teacher, as part of an award. 

She introduced me to the concept of the Secret Book of Rules (SBoR and/or BoSR,) which is much like the Maurader's Map from Harry Potter. If you tap your wand upon it, metaphorically and not at all pervertedly, or mayhaps just a tiny bit pervertedly, and solemnly swear you're up to no good, you can find a way around any rules in the entire Blogosphere. But you have to mean it, about the being up to no good. I'm obviously Team Captain of this concept. I took the book and ran with it.

I had a very vivid dream, that I only remembered a few seconds of. Her mission, and she chose to accept it, was to take what little I remembered and write a short story about it. For Lizzi is the Hermoine Granger of fantastic fiction. Here is her tantalizing tale of terror. (Me? Yeah, I'm the Neville Longbottom of alliteration.)

When Dreams Walk Among Us

By Lizzi Rogers

We burst out of the solicitor’s office laughing, whooping and hanging around each other’s necks, crying with happiness. We were totally immune to the stern glares of the prim secretaries, deaf to the ripple of irritated “SHH!” sounds our exuberance had triggered and were thoroughly committed to celebrating the moment.  

“Success!” she shouted, punching the air. “Finally, after all this time and heartache and panic – we’ve done it; we’ve pulled it off.” 

Radiating a joy and peace I’d not seen in her countenance for many years, she pulled me into a tight hug.  

“I couldn’t have done it without you”, she whispered into my hair “you’ve been amazing. Thank you.” 

I squeezed back, choked with emotion, before remembering something important. I pulled away suddenly, surprising her “Hey! We said when this day happened we were gonna go for...” 

“ICE CREAM!!” we squealed in unison. Prompted by the explosion of noise, the secretary jumped up and strode over to Glenys, offering a curt invitation to please remove ourselves from the office. 

Grinning, and with linked arms, we went to find the elevator down – away from this office with its memories of such trepidation and anxiety; away from this office with its revelations and its hard-won victories; away from this office for the last time – to freedom. 

Her heels clacked along the floor, the spring in her step apparent to everyone who saw us.  

Even in the elevator, she couldn’t stay still, dancing and fidgeting and still exclaiming her incredulity that it was all over – that she could move on – her gorgeous red power-shoes tracking across the metal floor, imbuing the tiny space with staccato possibility. 

The lift shuddered to an unexpected halt between floors, the light flickering. Our eyes echoed the flicker as we caught each other’s gaze, wondering whether we should panic. I reached out and grabbed her hand, hoping that the bombardment of positive emotions we’d just undergone would not turn sour. 

Before my eyes, a small hatch appeared to slide back in the metal wall of the elevator. The stench came through before the visual; a male face with a large, rounded head and overly-pointed chin, was looking through at us, his lip curled in a sneer and his blank eyes darkly infathomable.  

Glenys was fluttering around, banging the emergency button, trying to get hold of an engineer to come and sort the problem out so we could disembark. I was caught in the coaly glint of the face through the window, feeling his attitude creep in until everything was coated with the stink of fear and the loss of oxygen.  

“Andela”, his voice snickered out into the air, making me shudder “you didn’t think you’d seen the last of us, did you?” 

“I had hoped so, Kakaios, but she is safe now – it is finished. You have no further business here” 

Glenys had sunk into full-on panic-mode, sensing the need to leave this place and its stifling, crushing atmosphere. She was pressing all the buttons incoherently, the happy tears of minutes before now showing shining tracks of terror down her cheeks.  

Kakaios’ mouth stretched into a wicked grin, showing his grey lips and pointed teeth. He reached in with spidery hands and slowly, deliberately, wrapped them around the corners of the metal box, suddenly shaking it. Glenys squealed in terror, and my heart jolted, knowing that we were in a very precarious position indeed. 

“You fool” he laughed, his tortured pit voice filled with malicious glee “We will never be finished with the two of you. Not until you are finished. Which might be right now...” 

He shook the elavatror again, hard, and we began to plummet. 

Glenda was screaming, her eyes bugged out in desperation. 

The air was whistling past us, and we could feel the weight of the metal around us, and sense the floor rising up as gravity pulled us inexorably downwards, ever faster. 

I met Kakaios’ leer and evident pleasure at our predicament with burning anger and sudden, shining wings erupted from my shoulders, lifting me from the floor as I reached down to pull Glenys away from her doom. 

A world-splitting CRASH! echoed through the building as the plummeting lift met its swift and inevitable destruction against the unforgiving concrete foundations. The floor shattered and the edges buckled out, the roof smashing down on top of us, swatting us out of mid-air and into a twisted, aching heap in the corner.  

Screams and the sound of urgent movement grew closer as people rushed to help, heaving away sheets of tattered metal, finally uncovering us, not a wing to be seen, just the shaking, terrified ‘normalcy’ of two people who have just survived a crisis. 

Hands reached out to us, pulling us from the wreckage amidst exclamations of wonder at Glenys’ scrapes, cuts and total lack of terminal damage. 

Across the bustling, emergency-fuelled atrium, a man sat in a bubble of calm - Maalik - the now-ex husband. His presence simmered with barely-contained anger. He glared, pointing two cocked fingers at her, miming the pull of a trigger and the kick of a gun. Behind him, Kakaios leaned down to whisper more poison in his ear, reaching through his skull with those long, spidery fingers, to stir up dark thoughts in his mind. 

Lizzi is a Deep Thinker, Truth Teller and Seeker of Good. She works a normal job and has a secret life as the writer at Considerings. Wife to Husby and Mother to two Neverborns (and now dealing with the challenge of primary infertility) she is a frequent instigator of silliness and loves to entertain with words. 

Connect with her in all of these places:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Considerings 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LRConsiderer 

Google+:  https://plus.google.com/u/0/+LizziR/posts 

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/LizziConsiderer/ 

The Tweeting Toaster? Crazy Town

Have you heard about the Tweeting Toaster(s)?

For reasons that started to be about tracking energy consumption, and at one point Jumped The Shark to the insanity level: 'Murica, geeks are currently getting our ironic attention by connecting appliances to other appliances, and in the best (worst) case connecting a toaster to Twitter. 

Why? Obviously to brag about that glamorous toaster life, Son, and make witty toast observations. (Those are all LINKS to actual toasters on Twitter, btw.)

Given the amount of animals and other nonsense on social media, I'm sure you believe this is true, but you may be surprised by HOW MANY hits a search of "tweeting toaster" will get you. About 584,000, not counting this post because I haven't posted it yet. If this post had it's own Twitter account, it's latest tweet would read: Still typing. That's why it does not have it's own Twitter account, unlike the toaster below.

This is a REAL Twitter account, btw, with more followers than mine.

You might think: STUPID. You should be thinking that anyway. 

Who needs this? Who needs their appliances putting their feelings out there, blaming us for their bad childhood and every bad toasting decision. 

Does the world need to know how many bagels we undercook, or muffins we burn, or bakery bread we have to re-toast because of it's infernal inconsistent slicing? I'M ONLY HUMAN. 

Even my toaster, the little red Corvette of toasters, only has 4 settings:
Frozen
Bagel
2 other ones I can't read anymore

No idea what those other ones said. Or do. Anyone?

All things toasted don't fit into your four tidy little categories, you bastards! Some snacks can't be pigeon-holed. I do the best I can.

Besides, my toaster? Is way too pretty for Twitter. I know that sounds not-so-humble-braggy, but lookit, we suffered years through a bad relationship that we tried too hard, for too long, to make work with our previous toaster....ugh, that guy. Don't get me started. It was a hideous---I mean had a bad personality, it was a stubborn, old fashioned, inconsistent ole shoe of a toaster. 

It didn't start out that way. Sure our old toaster was cheap, it always worked, and at first when we took it home from the thrift shop it was sunshine in a bag, all rainbows and fuzzy caterpillars. My son Tinny and I picked it out together, it was an appliance of our very own! It did that thing where it would usually EJECT the toast high in the air! 

That's the dream. The toast dream.

animationplayhouse.com

Talk about Fun on a Bun. 

Sometimes the toast would hit the under part of the counter, sometimes Tinnny could actually CATCH IT when it popped up! 

That's a priceless trick, you can't put a price on something that provides you early morning athletics, hand-eye coordination and makes your bread warm enough to melt butter. 

Believe me, we appreciated all it did for us. It was one of the first things we showed people when they came to our place. Even if we didn't want toast! 

But like all gold things, after awhile it faded. Nothing gold can stay, Ponyboy. 

It wasn't really gold, this is a movie metaphor.

Image from fanpop.com

*pauses for tear-wiping* 

After a short time, whatever made that old boy extra springy just kind of quagged out. Sometimes it would make a noise like it was popping out, but the toast stayed in there. 

Sometimes it didn't pop out at all. 

Sometimes it just kept toasting.
And toasting.
And toasting.
Like you're trying to unravel a cable-knit sweater and someone just keeps knitting and knitting and *PeeWee voice* a-a-and KNITTING!

We lost quite a few pieces of bread, even English muffins that way. That's right: Burned to a crisp. Inedible.

Our groceries didn't deserve that. They deserved to fullfill their foodstuff destiny: To be toasted to the perfect degree, and enjoyed by the person that toasted them. After awhile, we had enough of the 2nd-hand toaster. 

We deserved better. Hell, our food deserved better. We were forced to invest in a new toaster, that probably wouldn't have an ejector option, but we both took comfort in reenacting that seen from Office Space where they beat the snot out of the printer, except this was in a parking lot, next to a dumpster, with an old toaster. Damn it felt good to be a gangster.

Enter: Red. 

I've wanted to tell her story for some time now. You see, my toaster is the sex. From the moment we saw Red, sitting there among all the plain black, white and silver boring, mousey, vanilla toasters, she shined like a red dime. It was lust at first sight. Who could resist her? 

She was new, sleek, glossy, and the all-day parallel red of a night walker's lipstick. 
Wait, red? 
No, RED.
Out in the boring, western suburbs of Chicago?
Just right there. For anyone to take that wild ride, yo.

I know, right? For your appliance Spank Bank.

Sure, we thought she might be a bit flashy for us, but we're good people. We toast plenty. Sometimes we toast stuff, for grilled cheese and whatnot, AT NIGHT! Who could give her a more exciting life than that? Why shouldn't we have a sexy toaster?  

I remember when we got her, like a lot of great love stories start, we met in the Spring. 

New life, new growth, colorful flowers and sundresses, time for new, pretty things you can rely on....and *pervy old man elbow* aren't too hard on the eyes, if ya know what I mean.

Oh relax. We respect Red for more than just her looks. Remember those FOUR setting buttons? I still use "Frozen" and occasionally even "Bagel," even though CARBS.

We grew to love Red, in all seasons. In summer.

The sunscreen is not for her.

In the mysterious, ever-changing nature of the Fall.

We have a lot of good times.

Phantom of the Counter Halloween costume. (HER idea.)

Red's favorite season is winter, she keeps us toasty.

She loves The Simpsons, especially Bart that scamp.

Through the everyday tea parties... 

See? She has PERSONALITY, too. Personality goes a long way.

...and the special occasions...

"Maid of Honor Selfie!"

I know what you're thinking when you see that:
Those SHOES! 
Was it Christmas? Because Ho Ho HO. 
Well, Judge Judy, you should probably know my husband and I were married in Vegas, so they were perfect. 

My point is, we have had many good times over the years. We celebrate her awesomeness in our own way. We don't have to tweet about it. 

She's more of an Instagram girl anway, too sexy to tweet.

Happy 4th Birthday, Red! We love you!

In my defense, this is every bit no more ridiculous then when people wish their baby "Happy Birthday" on Facebook. 
Babies hate Facebook, ask any of them. 

Red is the real deal, a Long-Term Relationship toaster, keeping a family of FIVE and all the grain things toasty, while still lookin' sexy for over TEN years now! At one point we bought a red coffeepot to match her, but she was hot whore flash-in-the-pan poser, small parts of her stopped working until she just fell apart. More of a dater player than a stand-up, stick around to raise the kids appliance. 

_____________________________
This post is dedicated to Red, one of the sexiest, stand-up toasters of all time, still toasting after all these years! Also my BFF Deb, who had a makeup kit with a lipstick whose official color was "All Day Parallel Red." I consider using that phrase in a post, after over 20 years later, one of my greatest accomplishments as a writer.