It's a 4-way Finale on DWTS this season

I watched the premiere of Dancing with the Stars last night.  Don't judge me - it's mesmerizing and you know it.  If you don't watch it, then you're watching some Real Housewives, or Jersey Shore, or The Bachelor.  And you're not learning anything from those train wrecks, whereas I now know... Well, I don't feel dirty after the show is over, and you should, if you don't.  So shut the front door.

Now that I am an aficionado of couch-ballroom-dancing-judging - this is my third season, after all - I am prepared to make my predictions for who will be participating in the 3-person finale.  You gasp!  It's only been one show - I know, but I'm that good.  It's actually going to be a 4-way finale: Karate Kid - football player - Kirstie Alley - and Kirstie Alley's shapewear.  I am not being catty - I am so impressed with her style, and her groove - she's 60 for f**k's sake!  She might even bag Maks if her season lasts long enough, and I will be totes jealous if she does!  And that might be an even better prize than the mirror ball trophy, because a man who can move his hips like that, well, you know what they say about dancing...

What?  You don't know what they say about dancing?  You're philistines.  "Dancing is the vertical expression of a horizontal emotion."  That's what they say.

I'm going to put an asterisk on my prediction, because this is a physically grueling sport, all sequins aside, and Kirstie's knees/back/neck might not hold up.  In which case, the 3rd person will be: the Disney nymphette whose claim to fame is that she kissed Joe Jonas on screen.  Chelsea? 

You're welcome.  If you have any spare cash, you should make that bet with your bookie right now.  And the winner?  well, America loves a comeback, a weight-loss success story, and a good backstory.  So on all three counts, it's: Kirstie!  Start taking your glucosamine/chondroitin, girlfriend!

What's on Your Emergency Evacuation List?

I'm waiting for Japan to implode and overflow with nuclear effluvia that will fly into the atmosphere and head straight to San Diego.  It's possible that I have been watching too much TV, but in all seriousness, this is a real, god-awful crisis composed of NUCLEAR ATOMS.  IN AEROSOL FORM.  So, for once, I'm only about 25% overreacting.
Which got me thinking - of course - about what I would take with me when if I had to evacuate in a hurry. What I would take with me as I fled, in my IKEA bag, since the rats ate my Samsonites?  I mean, I want to be thoroughly prepared to join the giant traffic jam on the 805.  So here's my list in the order they occurred to me, not in order of importance:

• My migraine meds
• Toby's flea pills and heartworm meds
• my bras
• cash
• Tori & Woogie (who are cremated and in lovely cedar keepsake boxes)
• my hypoallergenic pillows

And then several hours later (!)

• my laptop + external hard drives, ipod, ereader, plus charger cables for all of it
• there's probably some irreplaceable papers around here I'll need for, oh, the rest of my life
• my expensive prescription reading glasses
• jewelry?
• CLOTHING - like, clean underwear, anyone?  what are you going to wear those bras under, dipshit?

So, I'm not sure if I'm delightfully unmaterialistic, or if my brain is irretrievably broken.  I will be working on this list, but in the meantime, what's on your list?

Tori's Big Adventure, Or How The Big Red Dope Locked Me Out

[Tori dictated today's blog]: So, The Big Red Dope propped the front door open this afternoon when she got home from somewhere.  We let her leave the house once a day - if we don't, she gets a little cranky.  So instead of the yard, I decided to use the place that smells AWESOME where all the other dogs pee, and left the apartment.  I'm 15 years old - I don't need to sign any log book when I leave the house!  I took my time sniffing around the stairs and shrubs in the big square with walls.
 
When I got back to the front door, it was closed!  I could hear talking inside, so I barked.  And then I scratched.  Nothing.  I waited 5 minutes.  I scratched again.  I heard the Dope open the sliding glass door to the yard - where I was not - and I heard her slide the door shut.  I barked again.  She is not very bright, and doesn't speak Dog, but you don't need to be a genius to understand 'HEY' in any language, do you?  I waited 5 more minutes, and I barked again. 

And finally the Big Red Dope opened the front door, and said, like it was a big shocker, "Oh my god, you're outside!  What are you doing out here?"  She was still on the phone, and I didn't want to embarrass her, so I wasn't gonna say anything, but then she says to me, "You can't just wander outside without telling anyone!  I didn't know where you were!"
 
Well, I knew where I was, sister!  I was standing outside the front door!

I Didn't Win the MegaMillions, or any other lottery, in the last 24 hours

I wonder if I should leave the house again today.  There seems to be a limit to the number of items I can remember to bring with me when I walk out the front door, and the keys aren't always one of those items.  I am quite dizzy today, a rising 7, and this morning, when I still wanted to take the dogs out for their walk, these were the prevailing conditions:

• Sunny day  = hat AND sunglasses required
• 2 barking, gyrating dogs = leashes AND poop bags
• Cold weather (for San Diego) = jacket or sweatshirt
• Outside = shoes 

So I walked out the front door with my sunglasses, sun hat, sweatshirt, and sneakers on, with the dogs on leash and poop bags in my pocket, and pulled the door firmly shut behind us.  Extra items in bold.

No keys.

I had to ask Frank the Fighter Pilot next door if I could climb over his wall to let myself in my own back door.  He keeps barstools on his patio (!), so it wasn't too tough a climb.  But the patio door was locked, so I had to lift my own weight over the cinder block wall into my grass backyard to go in the impossible-to-lock doggie-door to let the dogs in the apartment.  I'm pretty impressed that I managed it with only a Home Depot bucket to stand on - max height maybe 15 inches.  The cinder block wall is 6 feet high - I know this because I measured it for the grid.

Would a true gentleman have offered to climb over the wall himself and spared me the possibly ankle-spraining effort?

Should I sew a spare key pocket into the crown of my sun hat?  Or maybe duct tape one to the casing of the dogs' retractable leashes.  That would make a total of 5 spare keys to the apartment in and around San Diego: Lisa's house, Jennifer's house, the glove compartment of my car, and the keychain with the mailbox key.  I don't think Alzheimer's patients have that many spare keys to their homes hidden in case of forgetfulness.

I'm ready to get my brain back.

Let's Pretend 2009 Didn't Happen...

Someone asked me today if they could see my blog, and I said, uh, sure. My blog. I still have that, don't I? If pressed, I would have been sure that I hadn't posted here since June 22, 2009 - 'the day' the twerp stood still. I would have guessed that I hadn't posted more than once in 2009, since I had been so busy, and also so dizzy, during those 6 months. But I would not have said that the last post was dated September 22, 2008. On September 22, 2008, I still worked at Eventful, Nana was still alive, Shrub was still President, and [personal fact here that I'm just not going to share with you, even though we're close. We're just not that close; don't be upset about it, no one is that close, OK?]. I posted a lot while I worked at Eventful, because political events were eventuating, as Caribou Barbie might have said, and maybe did say, and Mom and Dad and I were emailing one another at a furious pace, and I was posting some of it. I was waiting for the avalanche of support to come in from the google group that my posts go to, along the lines of, wow your parents are old-school, good thing they have you to set them straight, and keep fighting the good fight. Somehow, the avalanche got lost in the mail, but I will have to pursue that line of thought another day.

Because a couple of days after the last post before this very post, Dad called to say that Nana was not recovering from her visit to the hospital the way she had from every previous visit to the hospital, and that he didn't think she was going to recover this time at all. This was difficult to swallow, the way it must be difficult for Woogie to swallow when I open his mouth with one hand, and put his pills all the way down his throat with the other, then close his mouth, and rub the outside of his throat with my other hand. His front paws come off the ground, and he pries with both of them at the hand that's holding his snout closed, not hard enough to scratch, but hard enough to let me know that he's really uncomfortable, that he would really have preferred another pill delivery method, and that I'm surely the meanest mother in America. I would love to work together on this medication problem, but he always finds the pills no matter how they're disguised - in the soft cookie, in the gooey pill case, in the pumpkin mash - and he always spits them out. And he needs the medication - so I do what every mother has to do, which is force pills down her child's throat even though it hurts, and it's sad, and surely there's a better way to do it.

I flew to New York on September 30th and said goodbye to Nana, and when she died the next day, Mom lost her best friend. Although they were best friends in the same way that Frodo and the ring were best friends, and we all miss her, Mom misses her most of all.

There's more to 2008, and a lot more to 2009, but I'm not sure I want to cover it all, and I know I don't want to cover it all here. A la Oprah, there's one thing I know for sure that I learned in 2009, and then I will close the curtain, only opening it again at my whim: I don't have a brain tumor.

Time to re-direct some energy

I received a knitting newsletter this morning that I always skim for new things to start to knit, and then abandon halfway through. (Starting a project involves buying yarn, while finishing a project takes time and work. Duh.) This newsletter featured a charity founded by knitters who were sending, among other things, handmade blankets to veterans hospitals and the military hospital in Germany where evacuated casualties go first.
I encourage you to follow the link to Soldier's Angels and join me in registering to adopt a soldier. Even if you don't knit, they have many other options you can choose to contribute - care packages of food, hygiene, reading material, phone cards, etc etc. I realized as I was browsing the site that all my angst and frustration wasn't making much of a difference to anyone, least of all the people I was haranguing. But I can and will put my superlative shopping skills to work on behalf of a deployed or wounded soldier. And no matter what we think about political parties, individual candidates, and ideology, there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers who would love to just come home.
If you'd like to join me in adopting a soldier, let me know, and maybe we can join our efforts. You don't have to knit - check out the site and you'll see that there are other things that take time and not much money.
Don't worry, I'm still full of piss and vinegar, as the saying goes - or wait, is that as offensive as lipstick on a pig?
Love,
Boppie

This is so wrong, it's right...nope, still wrong

First reply with the correct number of gratuitous full-splits in this video gets a signed photo of Woogie au naturel.

Courtesy of my new favorite website, dooce.com:

OH MY GOD. The following video is exactly why Al Gore invented the Internet. I AM MESMERIZED: