Black Wasp vs. White Jew ( or how I started this lovely September day hiding in the bathroom )

I'm sitting this morning, at my computer, drinking my usual godawful muck that is supposed to be coffee, when suddenly I start to wonder where my big guy ( my Ridgeback ) Archer is. I'd let him and Justice out for their mid-morning pee, and usually ol' reliable Archer comes right back in. ( Being old and crotchety, he's not one to linger in the yard for long any more. ) But it's been at least 10 minutes and there's no sign of Archer. I yell out the door, "Archer? Archer? Arrrrrrrrcher!!!!" But there's no response, and he's nowhere to be seen. So immediately I think, what if the gardeners left the gate open??? I start to panic, and run out into the yard, calling him. "ARRRRCHER!!!!" No answer. No Archer. Whew, I think, at least the gates are closed. But where the *@#$ is he? I look all over and finally(!) I find him, hidden behind the bushes next to the house, totally ignoring all my frantic calls. Stupid dog. Sigh. But thank god he's okay. Relieved, I walk back to the kitchen and notice that, in my panic, I'd left the door wide open. Crap. Now I'm going to have doodie flies ( you know, the kind that are fascinated with poop, the disgusting things ) flying around my kitchen. Yuck. I hate those things.

Ok. So I let the dogs in and go back to my pc and my coffee... and try to breathe and get over my ever-increasing fear of losing my old boy. Breathe Marlene. Everything's okay. Archer is fine. Breeeeeathe. Ahhhh.

( Click! )

What was that? ( Silence ) Nothing. Okay, hmmm, let's check my email. "You've got mail". Wonderful. Let's see what gem my mother-in-law has left in my mailbox today....

( Click! )

There's that sound again. What the @#$% is that??? CLICK! Huh? I start looking around, but I don't see anything. Is it the faucet dripping on something in the sink? Nope. ( Silence ) Okaaaay. Maybe it's just my nerves and I'm getting jumpy over nothing.

CLICK!!!

And then, out of the corner of my eye I see it.... this huuuuuuuuge, black, waspy, hornet-y looking thing. And I'm talking HUGE. Wasp-a-saurus. Wasp-zilla. Seriously folks. This hideosity looked like something out of a 50's horror movie. It easily had a 5 inch wingspan. And ewwww, it had these creepy, ( brrrrr ) , spiky, freaky, long black legs dangling down from it's disgusting segmented body.... and the clicking was it banging it's grotesque black head up against the glass door across from me. But now, just as my luck would have it, it had suddenly decided to give that up and fly directly at my head. Needless to say, I bolted immediately from the room and ran for the nearest cover, which is the downstairs bathroom. Whew. Safe! Okay, now what? I'm stuck in the bathroom while that Stephen King-ian flying gargoyle is zig- zagging all over my kitchen, on that bizarro flight path that only a trapped insect makes. You know. Banging into the ceiling. Low on the floor. Swoop! Sudden right. Swoop! Sudden left. Zip! Up at the ceiling again. You know what I mean. Nooooo logic at all and worse yet..... totally unpredictable.

And now I'm stuck in the bathroom. Shit.

Think Marlene. Hmmm. Maybe if I run back into the kitchen quickly, I can grab my cell phone, run back in here and send out an SOS. And then, worst case scenario, if I'm trapped in here till help comes, at least I'll be able to amuse myself by playing with my new iPhone for a while....

OMG! What am I thinking? My boys are out there and I need to get them to a safe place! Jeez.

Okay, Marlene. Think. First you need to arm yourself.... So I cover my head with the black guest towel, roll up an old New York Magazine, and slowly open the door. No sign of him. Good. The coast is clear.

Run!!!!

So I make a mad dash for the kitchen, towel-headress flappin', pink UGG slippers clompin'... through the entry hall, through the dining room, into the kitchen and make a quick grab for the phone. Silence. Where is it? Jeez. I just know it's waiting for me and is gonna dive bomb me at any second. But I've got to open the kitchen door, cuz then maybe it'll fly out. Okay quick. Throw the chair out of the way and swing that sucker open. Done. Oh Jesssssssus! There he is ..... and oh crap. He's spotted me! ( And I swear, I can almost hear his vicious little black maw laughing at me... taunting me. Bwahahaha! Foolish earthling. Now I'll get you!!!! )

So now he's coming right at me and I scream ( and btw, what a pathetic and sadly comical sound that was. I had no idea that when frightened like that, I would make a sound like something from the Three Stooges, sigh )... and I bolt for the hall, with that fiendish mutant chasing me. But this time I realise I can take cover in the den, because it has glass doors that I can close behind me!

So I quickly get in there and slam the door. Whew! Safe again.

But I forgot about the dogs and oh Jeez, here comes my shadow, Justice, following me, as always. I open the door, ( Hurry! ) and quickly usher him in, all the time watching that zig-zagging monster. And oh god. Now there's Archer. Except unlike Justice, he's taking his dear sweet time, lumbering at his usual snail's pace. Lumber. Lumber. Lumber. Stop. Strrrrrrrrrrrretch. Lumber. Lumber. Lumber. Oh come on Archer. Move it!!!! And oh noooo. It's zipping all around his stupid slow-poke head.

Oh god. Please god. Don't let it bite him. Don't make me have to go out there and confront that Mofo dragon-thing. Please. I promise. I'll never leave the kitchen door open ever again. Pleeeeeease!!!!

ARCHER MOOOOOOOOOVE!!!!!

Well god must've heard my prayers because I managed to get the old man in the den, too. But that thing is flying all around the entry hall now. And it's all over the place. Back towards the dining room, swoop, change direction, back towards me and the glass door, smacking his evil fiendish head on it.

Goddamnit. Why the @#$% aren't you going back to the kitchen???? CLICK! CLICK!

Anyway, now that me and my boys are at least safe, I can send out my distress call. I frantically start texting. Paige? Where are you? Are you nearby? Is Keith with you??? ( Because, duh, she would be no help at all, but Keith, well, Keith is a guy and you need men for this crap, lol. )

Nope. She's in NYC. I'm on my own. Sigh.

And the dogs are looking at me like I've lost my marbles. Wazzzzzup Ma? Why are we in the den with the doors closed? We're never in the den in the morning. Don't you see it's light out? Should we lie down? What's the plan here?

CLICK!!!!

CLICK!!!!

God that thing's ugly.

I walk up to the glass for a closer look. ( I can be more scientific now. Now that I'm safely behind glass, that is, lol. ) It's body has got to be at least 3 inches long, not to mention those creepy dangly black legs. ( Brrr. )

Ooh. I can use my iPhone and take a picture of it! So I press the camera app, get close, try to focus, and huh? What's this? It's flying away, the spiteful thing! Come back here! I need evidence!

But damnit, that's precisely when the sucker decides it's had enough fun for the morning and promptly does an about-face. Sigh.

So I wait for a while, to see if it will return, and when it doesn't, I slowly open the door and head out, crouching with my head practically at my knees, darting behind the staircase, hiding behind the dining room door, flat up against the wall where the dining room meets the kitchen, all the time still wearing the black terry-cloth guest towel draped over my head, like some deranged Jewish kitchen ninja.

But he's nowhere to be found. Is he gone? Is it too soon to close the backdoor? Oh god. What if he didn't go out and now he's upstairs trying on clothes and stuff....Or worse, hiding in the dark upper corner of the shower, rubbing his clicky little black hands together and gleefully waiting to ambush me just when I'm all naked, and fleshy pink and vulnerable?

So that's where I'm at. Jumping at the teeny tiniest of sounds and writing this to take my mind off all the horrific scenarios my mind is conjuring up. And I have to say, now that I've written all this down, I feel a bit better, too. Plus, now it's 5 o'clock and I haven't seen him since....

Then again, I haven't showered yet either, lol.

Pray for me. ;-)

- Marlene :-D

PS... If you care to see what today's nightmare looked like, watch this. Except trust me, mine was BIGGER. Now just try to imagine what you'd do if this horror show was coming after you!

Doin' Bad Thaaaangs... with Photoshop

Just a little video I made, for fun... showing some, errrrm, 'interesting' things you can do in photoshop.... Keeping my fingers crossed and hoping it looks decent here. I uploaded it at YouTube, in supposedly HD quality, but so far, every time I click HD at their site, it stutters. :-/ So DON'T click HD...lol. But by all means, definately hit full screen. You get to watch Jen's fangs grow, then. ;-)

-Marlene :-)

PS... when all was said and done, I think the most fun I had, of all, was making the text freak out and get all wobbly-ish. How cool is that???LOL.... Oh and if anyone knows how to change that gadawful, crappy, random thumb YouTube assigns, pleeeeeez pleez pleeze email me! :-D

PPS.. ewww. It's still a bit stuttery, and now it covers part of the entire right side of my blog. I give up. I'm going to bed, lol. Night all. Zzzzzzzzzzz |^o

Phonevite

Hey folks. Long time no see! :^)

Sorry I haven't written here in ages... It's just, well, it all started to seem rather pointless when nobody ever left a comment... kind of like talking out loud to yourself, like some looney-tune, except on a world-wide mega-speaker, lol.... but I know you're out there. You see, I can see all your tiny little orange dot bodies whenever I go to Google-analytics. Soooooo why not use your tiny little orange hands and say hi to me sometime? Huh? Huh? Huh? LOL. :^P

Anyhoozlebees, I thought I might just give this whole blog thaaaang one more try again... Sooooo let's get started, shall we? :^D

Today, little orange boys and girls, lol, I want to tell you about this neat little widgety/app/thingy I just discovered. It's called Phonevite. What Phonevite does, is let you make a voice recording, that you can share on various social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.,. You can send it in an e-mail, add it to your blog or website, or even send it to up to 25 people's cell-phones, if you like. All you have to do is make the recording on your pc or your phone. That's it. It's fast, it's easy, and best of all, it's freeee-eeee-eeee. :^P

So, enormous geek that I am, I thought, hmmmm, I'll test out that little bugger's embedding feature here on my blog... since (ahem) there's absolutely no way on god's green earth that I'd ever(!) test it on Facebook. Ho no. There's just waaaay too many chances someone I might actually know would hear it there! :-O

Ooh! Awww geez! You know what just occurred to me? I didn't write on this stupid blog for something like, what? A year? Because I felt like I was talking to myself outloud? And what's the very first thing I do when I come back??? Talk outloud. Literally!!!

Oh the irony of it all...lol.

Anyway, bla bla.... here it is.... :^)

Ohhhh.... and I want to say one more thing, in advance. Just so you can't say I didn't warn you. I KNOW I'm a geek. ( I've admitted it here like a million times already, lol ) But now all your wee orange ears, will actually get the ( choke) added "pleasure" ( gulp) of HEARING what a geek I am, lol. So if... for some reason.... you want to hold onto any misbegotten illusion that I'm anything other than the giant geek that I am.... then do not hit that arrow. I repeat. Do NOT hit the arrow. Move away from the screen, lol. Because, I promise you....once you hear this stupid recording.... there will definately be noooooooo going back.

You have been warned, lol.

-M :^D

PS... And yes, before you say it, I know I sound like some godawful infomercial on it, lol. I just didn't know what else to say. Forgive meeeeeeeeeeee. ;^) K. See yazzz!

Happy Father's Day!!!!

Wayne, without a doubt, my girl's could never have a more wonderful and loving father than you. You really are the greatest.

So to you, ( and all the proud papa's out there ) ...

Happy Father's Day!!!

XOXOXO!

Love always,
-Marlene

Bottoms Up!

To say I'm afraid of heights is a gross understatement. I am absolutely mortified by them. The second I'm a few feet off the ground, whether it's on a chair or near the edge of a roof, it's like I turn into some spineless, gelatinous mass. My legs start to wobble, my head gets all spinny, and the world seems to become more like a soup than a solid.

I tell you this, because in less than two weeks the hubs and I will be traveling to California, to celebrate our 25th anniversary. I read somewhere that the single best thing you can do to keep the 'romance' alive in your relationship, is to always do new things together. ( Evidently, falling into patterns and habits with each other is the romantic kiss-of-death. ) So, as a way of starting off the next leg of this marriage, we decided to make this trip, sort of like a 'bucket list'.

And one of the things we'll be doing is...a balloon flight over Napa Valley. 8^O

LOL...I know. It's totally nuts. But the woman that I booked this with, said they would land it in the first 10 minutes, if totally freak out...

Anyway, I mentioned this to a friend, and he told me of a balloon co. in San Diego, that actually has a special 'fear of flying' package, where they take you a foot off the ground, and go higher or lower depending on your comfort level...which I actually think is a brilliant business idea...capitalising on all us spineless acrophobes...

But how's this for a unique business idea? They also provide this... ahem... 'service':

"For those who belong to or have ever wanted to join the "Mile High" club, we offer a flight in a private balloon at a mile high (5280 feet). This is the ultimate ecstasy. We offer comfort and discretion. This flight is honored with "mile high" pins for him and her. Call today to reserve because this flight takes considerable scheduling considerations."

LMAO!!!!! Omigod......Can you imagine the folks that like to get 'high', lol, before sex? They'd probably freak out!

Hmmm....now that I think about it, they'd probably get more freaked out, when they couldn't get to any munchies afterwards, lol.

But wow....I can't believe anyone would actually do this. It doesn't make any sense! If you're lying down you won't see anything, and they say you don't even feel like you're moving in a balloon... And if you're standing up... um... well... what the heck do you lean against? Certainly not the side of the basket, lol... One overly zealous thrust and .... Whooooooooooops!!! SOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooorry!!!!!!!!!!

LOL... that would be just my luck... plummeting to my death, without my bottoms on. Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! ... Nooooooooo.... it's.... a... giant ass!

LOL. Have a great weekend everyone. ;^D

Marlene
( Y )

Mah Hero

This is a little video/montage I made for my super hubby, Wayne, for his 50th birthday.

Happy Birthday honey.

I love you.

-M :^X

PS - I was just notified by YouTube, that the copyright owner of the U2 song I used, has 'approved' my use of it, ( which I've never seen or heard of before... ) . Anyway, somehow it now has the option, at You Tube, ( and if you right click here ) to view a better quality version, which made me very happy.

But...unfortunately, it is still not that great. Soooooo, if you would like to see the full screen version...hint hint hint... lol...you can also view it *** HERE *** at my website. Once it loads, just click the show to start and then right click, and select 'full screen' .

Thank you. Have a good 'un. :^D

Thanks for the Mama-Mammaries...

Today's confession, for those who haven't figured it out already... I'm a major geek. My head is literally chock-full of tons of random, insignificant trivia. I just didn't realize how much useless crap was crammed in there, until this past Christmas, when someone gave me, 'The Book of Totally Useless Information'.

About an hour after everyone opened their gifts, someone picked it up and started to read bits of trivia from it, out loud. That's when two really sad things occurred. The first 'sad' thing being that I discovered I already knew most of it, and the second, ( and perhaps even sadder bit ), was that I then felt utterly compelled to dispute or elaborate on each and every one of them. :^/

Fortunately, thankfully, I stopped myself when I noticed the growing silence around me. And believe me, I don't think for a single minute, it was out of any kind of awe, either. I think these people were thinking exactly what I would've been, if I were them.

Wow. Why would anyone want to know all of that useless crap???!!!

But it's not like I study this stuff or anything. I swear. It just gets stuck in my head. Alright yes, I do probably look up more things on google than most people. And yes, embarrassing as it is to admit, my favorite childhood bedtime reading material was, indeed, sigh, the World Book Encyclopedia. ( I even had favorite volumes. 'B' was always a goodie, lol. )

UBER-geek!!! :^/

Sooooo, you may be wondering, if I find all of this so sad and embarrassing, why am I openly admitting it here, like this?

Sigh. Because the other day someone left that annoying, 'Useless Info' book lying around the house, and idiot-moi just couldn't help myself. I looked at it. And now, having read something absolutely inane in it, I have no one to whine to about it. ( My family, as you can probably guess, tunes me out on such things, most of the time, lol. )

So, that's where you come in. Lucky you. ;^)

Anyway, this is what that ridiculous book says , more or less: "The word 'mama' originally comes from the word 'mammary', as in the 'mammary glands'. " ( For those of you who may not know, the mammary glands are a woman's breasts. )

Puh-lease!!! If that's the case, then every baby ever born on this planet, is an even bigger geek than I am, lol. Can't you just hear all those wee babies thinking to themselves, "Hmmm. She has big mammaries. I think I'll nickname her, 'Mama'." LOL.

No, if anything, it's the other way around, and 'mammary', obviously comes from the word, 'mama'.

So, if they're wrong, ( and they are ), then where does the word, 'mama' come from?

The word, 'mama' comes from one of the first utterances made by all human infants. There's a reason that 'mama', or some variation on the 'ma' sound, represents 'mother' in almost every language on the planet. One of the first sounds a baby makes, if not the first, is the 'm' sound. It's an extremely primitive sound that occurs directly as a result of nursing or oral stimulation. Mmmmmm. The sound of pleasure. ( Even now, as adults, we still equate this sound with it. ) And for a baby, a full belly is one of the most pleasurable of all his or her experiences. Therefore, this sound is most likely to occur in it's mother's arms, during a feeding. And what happens when baby is making this sound and the mother removes the bottle, or the breast? Or if the baby is vocalising and smacking his or her lips together for more? Mah. Or more often, 'mah mah mah' in a string of syllables. This, of course, gets immediately reinforced by the delighted mother. "Baby just said, 'Mama!' ". Thus, baby learns, very quickly, uttering 'mah mah mah mah mah' , gets the mother's joyful attention and brings all the wonderful comforts that go with it. In other words, 'mah-mah' rapidly becomes the sound forever associated with the person who makes baby feel good.

And, if you've stuck with me 'til this point, I will offer this to you, as well. 'Nuh', or the 'n' sound, ( as opposed to 'm' ), is the universal sound of displeasure. Why? Because it physically breaks suction with the nipple and pushes it away, with the tongue. 'Nuh' says, at the most primal level, 'I don't want this. ' ... But, if uttering it still fails to send the signal that a feeding is definately not wanted, it is then followed by the baby's head repeatedly turning away from it... mostly moving the head from side to side...

Bet you can guess which universal word comes from that. ;^)

So there you go. My strong belief that it was babies who actually gave humankind, our very first 'words'.

Mmmmm. ;^P

I feel soooooooooooo much better now that I've gotten that off my mammaries. ;^)


-Marlene :^D