Cute or Deadly?

Geez-o-Pete, we've been busy lately!  Not only am I deep into writing test preparation essay grading hell, but we've been actually doing stuff every weekend lately.  Usually, when people ask about our weekend plans I reply, "Nothing.  Absolutely nothing."  But lately we've been doing stuff--fantastic stuff, but stuff nonetheless.

Which means that I am tired.

This weekend we drove down to Ft. Lauderdale to visit with friends, and spent about 16 or so hours in the car.  I spent about five of those hours grading essays, and exactly zero of those hours sleeping.  For the record, sleeping is much more enjoyable than grading essays.  You can quote me on that.

While we were in Ft. Lauderdale, I took pictures, but apparently only of animals that are either extremely cute, extremely deadly, or some combination of the two.

Let's start with the extremely cute.

OH MY GOD BABY DUCKS.

 If Matt would have let me, I would have taken all of these babies home with us where they would have lived in the bathtub until I built a pond in the back yard where they would swim and do other duck things until I trained them to do quacking and dance routines a la the Huxtable children.

But Matt said no.  And he said that our friends Chandler and Joey tried that once and it was way more annoying than they thought it would be.

Plus, I'm not sure the grown-up ducks (which were the opposite of cute, by the way) were too keen on my ducknapping plan.

Maybe this one tried to kill me with its ugly red poison face?  (That's what my face looked like this summer when I was a poison ivy monster.)

Moving on, look at this gross baby dinosaur I saw when I was with Tanya.  Disgustment.  I followed it around a parking lot trying to get a picture until I climbed into a tree and moved around, and I got the willies and finally ran away screaming.  That's what happens when you chase a baby dinosaur.

Then we encountered this rare creature, Tanya's pug, Daphne.  Daphne is both cute and deadly, as she demonstrated with little funny howls and her look of death.  Daphne has killed three alligators in her South Florida neighborhood, and it's even gotten her on the news a couple of times.*

Finally, I returned home to find this creature, legs a' tangled, resting in its natural habitat.

*That did not happen.

This and That

1.  I have been in a terrible mood today, and for no good reason, either.  Well, one good reason, perhaps.  I have poison ivy all over my face.  If you're thinking to yourself, "Man, Mandy sure does get poison ivy a lot," well then you'd be right.  Hey, universe, I'd like to trade in this intense poison ivy allergy for a seafood allergy.  (I don't even eat seafood.)  The only good thing about having poison ivy all over your face (okay, well two good things because I'm milking it like a sombitch--"Matt, can you get me my glass of wine? I can't because I have poison ivy all over my face.") is that I get to say multiple times a day, "I'M A MONSTER" in my best Buster Bluth voice.



2.  Matt's at bar trivia right now.  I'm not there because I was being such a miserable human being earlier this evening and I didn't think it would be nice to subject people to being around me.  Plus, I went last week and I spent the last 10 minutes (felt like ten hundred!) listening to members of Matt's trivia team (including Matt, even though he maintains that he was only in the argument because of a logical fallacy) debate another trivia team about who would win in a fight, Superman or Batman.  Seriously.  That happened.  I've never felt so cool in all my life.  Matt would like me to tell you that those discussion do not happen every week.  Uh huh.

3.  Listening to my Motown Christmas music Pandora station right this second.  I love Christmas music.  But I always give a thumbs down to anything by Chris Brown because he hits ladies.

4.  Had a dream last night that there was a drive-shooting and I thought Matt was killed except that then it was just a paintball drive-by and I got super mad and yelled at the driver and made him feel awful and then John and Sherry from Young House Love were our next-door neighbors and they came over and helped us fix up our house after the paintball attack.  They're so nice.

5.  We had a monster of a wasp in the house today.  Matt killed it with my shoe.  Well, sort of.  He split it in half and then the front half kept on living and trying to kill us for like five minutes. Then I told Matt that I couldn't even wear that poison shoe anymore and he blamed me.  He said that the wasp was a result of my evil angry mood and that I'd just opened my mouth and it flew out.

Here's to a happy, less swollen Wednesday!

Leprosy Saturday.

So, I woke up today--at noon!  ha!--and was all gung-ho to get some stuff done around the house and to be a productive member of society.  And I actually did some stuff, you know, besides finish off the Sam's club-sized box of Nilla Wafers and talk to Shecky on the phone for an hour.  Everything was going A-okay, until I went to brush my teeth and looked in the mirror and saw this staring back at me.

I totally loved Mel Gibson in the mid '90s, before I knew that he was an abusive anit-semitic asshole. 

 I loved Tom Cruise, too.  As a teenager, I was not a good judge of celebrity character.

Mmm hmmm.  I have leprosy.

For real.  No, seriously.

How does this even happen?

Well, I kind of know how it happens.  You see, I blame these two.

Because they go out in our jungle of a back yard and run around in poisonous leprosy plants, and then they come back in the house and get on the couch, and on the pillows, and I pet them and hold them, and apparently rub their fur all over my face.  My face that has, apparently, the most sensitive skin that a person can have.  I am particularly allergic to leprosy plants.

The good news is that I won't be tempted to go out to eat or go to Target today because of the humiliating leprosy, so maybe I'll actually get stuff done at home.  Like giving the dogs baths and torching the back yard and washing every single fabric thing that touches me.

Does anyone know how to cure leprosy?  Windex?

Late at Night, While You're Sleeping. . .

. . .Poison Ivy comes a creepin' around.  (And she's a bitch.)

[source]

Last Friday I thought I would keep myself busy all day without spending any money.  I was super productive around the house, and even took on a task that is supposed to be Matt's: I mowed the lawn.  Easy enough.  Just push the thing around the yard in lines.  I wore shorts and a tank top and flip-flops.  I did run over some plastic thing that shredded to bits and hit my leg and made me start to bleed, but aside from that, there seemed to be no other casualties.

After mowing the lawn, I took Mitch for a walk/jog to the park.  We didn't get far, though, because gigantic black storm clouds came rolling in, and lightning began to strike kind of close to us.  I kept having this awful vision of my little Mitchy getting struck by lightning in front of my face, so we went home before that would become reality. 

I was sweaty and gross, but then I was afraid to get into the shower because I had recently read this post by The Bloggess and I was afraid that I would get struck by lightning if I got in the shower and then Matt would come home to a fried wife and he would be sad.  So I fell asleep instead.  And then I woke up and Matt was home and we ate dinner and I drank too much wine.

[source]

There was no shower.  And what good timing, since apparently I had walked through some poison ivy during my lawn-mowing endeavor (because, regardless of how many times I look at a picture of poison ivy, I can never recognize it in real life), and had opted out of the shower on the day that my body was covered in poison ivy oil.  Fantastic.  So it spread around, and instead of just having poison ivy on my feet, for example, I would scratch the back side of my knee, thus spreading the poison.  Again, fantastic. 

So now I'm covered in little patches of itchy hell, and I'm mad about it. 

It's a good thing that I went to the beach today, so that I could have some healing salt water to help out. (I thought that was just some myth that my grandma would tell me, but today I talked to my biologist friend Jen who told me that salt water does, indeed, help out poison ivy because it's a hypertonic.  She explained what that meant, but I forgot.) 

Between today's healing salt water, and the healing dog kisses that I'm sure Mitch will be providing (since I saved his life during Friday's walk/jog), I'll be better in no time. 

I hear that margaritas have that special healing power, too.