Halloween

There's nothing quite like the joy of handing out candy to children. You don't even have to be nice to them, they just come right up to your door to be frightened.

I noticed that the fifteen or so trick-or-treaters we got didn't say "Trick or Treat!" Some of them were too young to get the whole concept yet and the rest of them just stood there and looked at me until I handed out the candy. In my day we said "Trick or Treat," gosh darn it.

I did have a young girl tell me she liked my outfit. I could see in her eyes that she couldn't wait until she too was old enough to wear lingerie in public. That's what I decided on to go with my fangs, by the way. Lingerie.

Mad About You

I love this show. They are the cutest couple on earth. I want to steal their dog, Murray. I'm sure that dog is dead by now, though. Mad About You started airing in 1992, so he's got to be either dead or decrepit. He looks like a giant corgi. I love corgis.

When I was home-schooling and could sleep all day if I wanted to, I always stayed up late to watch the two episodes they showed on Lifetime in the middle of the night. That and Designing Women are the only reason I have EVER watched Lifetime. Their whiny made for TV movies are the bane of my existence

I always wanted to have a relationship just like Paul and Jamie's. Only the early years. Before they had that kid. They're best friends and have adorable fights about absolutely nothing. It's the only show I've ever watched that makes marriage look wonderful. In most shows marriages range from tragically laughable to disastrous. But the Buchmans are their own self-sufficient little world. They have friends and jobs but are happiest to be sitting at home playing a board game with their dog.

They probably seem so happy because they're an incredibly witty sitcom couple, but you know, I can dream.

Vamptastic

Plastic fangs it is...

Now what do I wear with them?

Survival of the Fittest

The population of this planet is getting out of hand. The Illuminati are falling down on the job. They're supposed to plot and carry out mass acts of population control. I am not impressed by their accomplishments. I think they could use my advice.

It's time for me to do my humble part. I hereby announce my intention to reinstate Survival of the Fittest. "I thought survival of the fittest was part of nature. When did it stop?" you may ask. Let's face it, people in developed nations these days have to try pretty hard to not survive. If you're American then you may want to look at statistics regarding what kills people like you. Chances are you will eat, drink or smoke yourself to death. That is if you don't get killed while speeding with no seat belt on or get mauled to death by the ferocious guard dog you trained to protect your big screen TV. In other words, people seem to be actively avoiding dying of old age.

The first step in my plan is to remove that seemingly innocuous recorded message you get when you call any doctor's office these days. It's the first thing you hear upon dialing to schedule your flu shot or yearly checkup.
"If this is a life-threatening emergency, please hang up and dial 911."
Really? You mean if I'm vomiting blood I shouldn't call my chiropractor for advice on what to do? This recorded message may seem to be offering helpful information, but really it's keeping stupid people alive.

I have to call at least one doctor's office every day at work. I usually call to make sure they have the correct insurance information or that the amount on the bill is correct. And every time I hear that same message. It's always a different woman, but she always sounds like she would completely understand if you chose to call your radiologist instead of 911 when having a heart attack. She's simply trying to tell you that you may want to rethink that plan.

I'm sorry (I'm really not sorry, I'm just saying that), but if you're too dumb to figure that one out, please send me your name and address so I can forward it to the Illuminati. They have quotas to meet, you know.

Ferrets are like toddlers

I share my home with 6 ferrets.

I'll let that sink in for a while.

Processed that yet? Ok, as I was saying, I have 6 ferrets in one of the bedrooms of my house. 3 boys and 3 girls. I got the first ferret around 5 years ago and have been adding them steadily ever since. Their names are: Fox, Claudia, Louis, Scully, Bella and Skeeter. They need their own room because they live in 3 separate cages and that takes up some serious space. There's a boy and a girl in each cage. The question people always ask here is whether or not I breed them. NO. They are all fixed, thank the good Lord. They also need their own room because of the smell. Ferrets produce oils that make them quite odoriferous. It takes constant vigilance to keep their bedding and cages clean and as smell-free as possible.

Next to their smell, the most well-known ferret trait is curiosity. They explore, they romp, they steal. Sometimes all at once. Ferrets are perhaps the best animals to train you for parenthood. Just like a young child, they have to be watched CONSTANTLY. You can't leave them unattended for more than 30 seconds unless you crave disaster. They're liable to eat something they shouldn't or climb a piece of furniture and fall off. They knock over glasses and carry off any item that strikes their fancy and is small enough to drag. You mustn't put any behavior past them, both for their own good and that of your belongings. In the course of my ferret owning my boyfriend and I have saved them from leaping from the suicidal height of a recliner back, disappearing into a sub woofer, tearing out a nail after getting it caught in a towel, drinking an entire glass of Mountain Dew, and escaping the house entirely.

But the ferret trait with which I'm most concerned today (and one they also share with toddlers) is their reluctance to be potty-trained. I moved into my house in May of this year and the ferrets have occupied their bedroom here since then. Ferrets are like many small animals in that they instinctively find a corner when it's time to relieve themselves. Knowing this, I put something in each corner of the room but the one I wanted them to use. I used cages and dog beds to funnel them towards the corner opposite the door where I put one of those sheets of plastic you keep under the wheels of your desk chair. They got the idea pretty quickly and started doing most of their business either there or in their cages. I let them out of their cages for about 3 hours a day to get their wiggles out. I play with them or use my laptop until it's time to put them up again. Once the cages are clean and the ferrets are bedded down in them I wipe off the plastic latrine area with paper towels and it's all set for the next day. When it gets gross, all I have to do is Windex it.

But ferrets and children, no matter how much you love and encourage them, do not always want to go potty in the right place. For three nights running, Claudia decided that the stretch of carpet between her cage and Bella and Skeeter's was as good a place as any. After the first time I explained that it was not a potty place and after cleaning the carpet, put a big plush fish in the spot to convince her. She went next to the fish after that. But ferrets, much like Fate (and like toddlers; do we see a theme here?) are fickle and she stopped after the third night.

Then, tonight as I was sitting on the futon with my trusty laptop, I watched Louis opt for the corner right by the door. Louis is my favorite. I make no secret of this fact. But Louis is also a bit "special" and it's hard to be upset with him. It's not like there was much I could do anyway. You have about as much chance of stopping the impending carpet soiling from happening as you do of getting to your cat and moving her onto the linoleum in time to save the Persian rug she's dry-heaving over.

My favorite is when I start cleaning and returning ferrets to their cages and notice that someone left me a present behind the futon. The very futon on which I've been sitting for a couple of hours. It's as if they're saying, "if you'd been watching us more closely, this never would have happened..."

Halloween Costume 2009

Halloween is mere days away and I have no costume plans. This is saddening since it's my favorite holiday. For as long as I can remember, I have waited each year for that day to roll around. I was almost born on Halloween, so maybe that's it. Or maybe it's the fact that since birth my mother has instilled in me the thrilling idea that it's a night for dressing up and wandering the neighborhood in search of candy and spine-chilling events.
Granted, it's not surprising that I haven't planned a costume yet. I think I ran out of my best ideas sometime in middle school. That's around the same time I stopped trick-or-treating, but the costume problem had nothing to do with that. I stopped because I knew I had grown out of it. Trick-or-treating is for kids. That's what makes it so special. It's one of the few privileges the under 13 set really gets.
My most original costume, as I've told a few people lately when the topic came up, was the year I was a picnic table. I got the design from a magazine. My dad took pieces of wood and made a frame for my shoulders. Then we draped a vinyl tablecloth over it with a hole cut out for my head. I took items from my extensive plastic food collection and glued them to the front. Voila. Except the people opening the door at several houses had no idea what I was. They were at a complete loss. It got so bad that I finally started saying, "Trick or treat. I'm a picnic table." whenever people answered the door.
Maybe I'll just break out the plastic fangs again this year. I made a modest investment back in middle school into two individual fangs that I molded to my teeth for a vampire costume. Ever since then, I've been a vampire for Halloween more often than not. I even pop them in just to startle people or when I need a pick-me-up. What can I say, it makes me feel good to have fangs.
This year I was hoping to talk the boyfriend into being Mulder and Scully from the X-Files, but I don't think that's going to work out. I've already been a witch, a pirate and a cat burglar and I don't really feel like repeating those this year.
Plastic fangs, here I come.