The Pant Parade

I'm a big grrl. I've always been a big grrl. And when I say "big", I mean...I'm 5'11" and have shoulders like the football lineman, that I was. Plus I have some pounds on me. Therapy couldn't cure a childhood of "But you have such a pretty face.", from my grandmother. Or "I worry about your health.", from my mother.

I've been pretty good about getting up at 5ish am and working-out, at least four times a week. I've built up to an hour work-out, from just 20 minutes, when I started this at the end of September.

While the scale hasn't shown it, things have been fitting different. I've been feeling a lil better about myself. Kind friends have told me, "Well, you ARE building muscle. So you shouldn't even look at the scale."

Scale or no...the true test is the "Pant Parade".

In my closet are two shelves worth of pants that I either enjoyed at one point OR never had the chance to enjoy. (cuz they just didn't fit) Since my 'ol reliable' jeans were not to be found (which, by the way, are now fitting very loose about the waist) I grabbed the flashlight and headed for the shelves of doom!

One after another.....disappointment after disappointment. This pair will come all the way up, but they won't button. This pair stops just below my bootilicious back forty. This pair come up, and buttons, but due to the back forty, are about 2 inches too short. This pair is the biggest, loosest, pair of jeans, but the waist is for a supper model.

Are they drunk when they cut these jeans???

This pair has peg leg cuffs....how long have I had these? They don't button either. This pair pulls up, buttons, but for some reason they put a size small zipper in them. I'm sure of it. This pair fits, snuggly, but I forgot I bought them with these ginormas flaired pant legs. (a trick they use for fattys: if your ankles are that big your waist will look MUCH smaller)

At the end of the parade, I'm knee deep in denim and still standing there, in my Wonder Woman underoos, with nothing to wear.

But ya know.....that one pair...last time I did this, wouldn't come up past my thighs, and now it does! And that other pair I couldn't button last time, now they do! (Even tho they don't zip. But that's a manufactures defect.)

Things don't change over night....right? You know, I'm actually looking forward to the next pant parade. Strike up the band and move off the treadmill...momma still has some marching to do!

AAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGHHHH!!!!!

"sweetie, if your going to be two-faced, at least make one of them pretty"

Drama! It's everywhere. I can't seem to get out of it. Now I love to watch drama unfold just as much as anyone. Maybe if you put yourself out there to be a spectator, you get some on ya. But JEH-ZUZ! I was knee deep and wading through a stream of it all weekend long.

My weekend kicked off when one of my co-workers decided to start yelling at us cuz we were leaving early. We have this wicked cool rule that, if we make our budget, we get out a lil early on Fridays. It's one of those things that is just an extra lil tid-bit that makes working here better! Especially when you're an office drone and there are NO benefits, other than keeping your job.

So Mr. 2-Big-4-My-Britches sales guy doesn't like this rule. He's made it very clear. He wants someone to be in the office from 8-5 every day to greet anyone that might come through the door (which there aren't any) or answer the one or two calls on a Friday (which they can forward to their cell phones).

His last steady job was working for his dad in retail, so I'm guessing he thinks he still needs to be greeting John Q. Public during store hours. Well not in this day and age sweetie! It's all portable, digital and mobil! Live and die by that crackberry, baybee.

So as he stood there, using his outside voice INSIDE the office, telling me how I should be there in the office while he, as a sales guy, spends most his time, out of the office, with the freedom to do as much personal stuff as he wants.

That clanking you hear in the background is the shackle on my ankle that is tethered to the desk. I don't get to move freely about the cabin.

The other point I tried to break through his Wisconsin fan, cheese wheel sized head of stubbornness, was that while he could work as many hours as he wanted, and get paid for the fruits of that labor, I get paid FORTY hours a week. No more. I could work 80 hours, but they are only going to pay me 40.

So those couple hours that we might earn, to get out of here early, are like gold bars, gleaming at the end of the work week tunnel. And Mr. I-sleep-on-a-mattress-stuffed-with-Franklins is yelling at me that I shouldn't get that reward.

HEY ASSHOLE......BITE ME!

And just try....TRY to get the 150% I give, every day, out of me now. You're the happy owner of 100% at 40 hours a week. And if you think you can do it all...be my guest. If you can't, put it in my in box. I'll get around to it, sometime this week.

“I don't even know him...I'm harvesting all these fantasies about some man I've never even met...who lives in Seattle.” ~Sleepless in Seattle

Fantasy

We got in a very interesting discussion at lunch. Most likely it could have gotten us all fired if the wrong person had come through the door.

Sex was definitely involved....or at least the illusion of sex.

My co-worker can't cheat on his wife in his fantasies. I was aghast! He would have to do this whole back story about how they broke up and he was driven to the arms of some starlet.

No...really!

Maybe it's cuz I'm a creative person. Imagination is my 8-5 job, with graphic design. And lord knows my other activities, being involved in groups that need to raise money, or marketing my women's pro football team, or even the lil one hour radio show, all require some form or imagination at some point.

I have NO problem thinking up a fantasy! A lil music from the iPod helps sometimes, but I can be knee deep in something torrid with Angelina or Lucy Lawless in the middle of the day at my desk, staring out the window.

Funny enough...Not one ounce of guilt that I'm cheating on my girlfriend!

My office pal's issues tumbled through my brain well after we left our brain trust and went back to our respective offices. I came up with, "the stripper theory".

Men go to strip clubs and they honestly believe that every girl, shakin' her money maker, actually wants them. That they have a chance with the strippers. It's something about the male wiring that makes them think that everyone wants them. (don't tell them that those girls could care less and really just want to get it over with so they can make their next house payment)

A seriously married guy, like my co-worker, would feel guilty cuz there is something in his DNA that he thinks his fantasy girl would really WANT him!

Myself, being a insecure female, like most women, knows that not only would I never land a young Suzanne Pleshette, from "The Birds" days, but she would NEVER be interested in someone like ME.

So imagine away, I say!

A non stop parade of brunette beauties lined up at my door, taking numbers like at a deli counter. Me, in a Hugh Hefner robe and a fist full of vitamins.

Cuz in my head, they all desire me!

They fight over me, in fact!

"Don't fight ladies! There's enough of me for everyone. Or better yet....why don't we all just come in for a drink...mmmmm??"

Thank goodness for my wonderful imagination and low self esteem. It gives me something to do around 3pm in my work day when I can't concentrate on work.

I gotta go....P!nk is on my iPod and she and I have some unfinished business to "discuss".

Rosie Colored Glasses

When I found out Rosie was going to have her own XM radio show, I put into motion the effort to get a receiver that I could actually record her show on. Lo and behold, I found a Skyfi3 on e-bay for $19.99. It was refurbished, but I took the chance, seeing as they are somewhere around $200.

I got my radio in awesome condition and then realized I needed the cradle for it. Mine in the car wouldn't fit and the new one had fancy buttons and such.

Back to e-bay!

I actually found a single cradle auction for $5.99! Plus you got the wall adaptor. Such a deal! I downloaded the instructions from online, as the refurbished receiver didn't come with anything other than JUST the receiver.

I found I needed a memory card to keep the recorded shows on.

Back to e-bay!

I found an auction for a 2 gig card...$8. When I got it, I kept getting an error message when I tried it out in the computer. After telling the seller, he sent me 2 more cards. Some mistake in the shipping request sent out more than normal, but not a problem, "enjoy". So I get 3 mem cards for the low, low price of eight smackers!

A co-worker who has Sirius informed me that his boombox he bought for his unit to play at home, worked great at work. Our building was "conducive" to getting the satellite waves. (I now pictured NASA peeping into the girls bathroom for some reason) He also said that for portable receivers like mine, there was headsets with antennas built right in!

You got it......eeeeeeeee-baaaaaaay!

Got myself a pair of headsets AND an arm band carrying case for $12. Seriously!

I ended up getting like a $300 package for under $50!! I totally ROCK and I'm totally ready for Ro!

I know...you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. This is where you want me to say that I couldn't get a signal or things didn't work. Oh but it does. Like buttah! I've been happily listening to my Rosie Radio at my desk, after I record it in my car. (one thing didn't quite work smooth...the antenna works everywhere in the building BUT at my freaking desk)

She's awesome! Free-wheeling through topics and sounding very comfortable on the air waves. I've been following her blog for sometime and trying to keep up to date. I've been a fan for a loooong time.

It's not often a woman of a certain body type gets face time on TV. When I saw Ro on VH1 I fell in love! There 'I' was; big, funny, loud mouthed girl staring back at me. I still have the collage I made of different pix of her. It hung in my apartment after I moved out from home, a shrine of sorts, that big grrls can make good.

Tucked behind that picture, still, is an email.

Way back in the day, when AOL was something you used for chat rooms and to cuss at, due to crashing all the time, I had heard Ro was a fan. She too would lurk around cyberspace way before it was the thing to do. So in my profile, my hobbies were listed thusly: Music, Movies, Art and searching for Rosie.

Profiles were a big deal back then. You could search profiles for key words, looking for folks with similar tastes. I'm guessing that's what happened when I got an email, late one night, from a yabadabad0: "Why?"

I answered back smartly..."why not?"

"No....why are you looking for Rosie?"

"Cuz she is awesome. Cuz she is funny. Cuz folks say I'm a lot like......her......"

GULP! I had also read that Ro liked to use zeros in her screen names. And while the screen name seemed like gibberish when I first saw it, it was finally dawning on me.

She had just done the Flintstones movie. HOLY CRAP!

"You would freak if you knew who I was right now." came the next email.

"Oh....I think I got it figured out."

"The things you said.....I can't tell you how happy that made me. Big smiles over here"

I mentioned something about everyone wanted me to do stand up. She mentioned that it's in your blood or don't bother. She also told me to stay in school. I had to break the news to her that I was well above school age.

And she was gone.

I went to a lecture, recently, where the speaker said to pick 5 famous people and get in contact with them. Create a goal list. Achieve that contact.

Well since that "contact" on AOL when it was but email in diapers, I've been on Ro's blog, a picture of me holding a "bring the troops home sign" in her PEACE shirt. She answered my blog request to stop by Rain Lounge the next time she's in town performing at the Turning Stone Casino.....maybe....with her new call in show, that contact is closer than I think.

Fear is nature's warning signal to get busy.

After a couple months of putting together blinking headstones and creepy cadavers, it was going to be all for nothing, as the rain came down and the wind continued to blow wet leaves down the block.

We scampered upstairs to put on our make-up and get into costume, so that we could at least be ready to great the drippy, rain soaked, trick or treaters.

As we emerged from the bathroom, with our faces ghastly green, we couldn't believe it! We could see sunlight!

We rushed to the living room, that looked like a Halloween triage unit, and started running things out to the front lawn.

Fog machines, boom boxes, corpse, coffin, misters, strobe lights...check check check!

Being on a Saturday, the lil ones came early. Including some of our littlest fans; our fauxphews. An astronaut and a mailman, as cute as can be.

"Can we come in and see spookytown?"

"Of course!" I said in my British, crone voice.

I ushered them in, with two more neighborhood kids walking up the path. They looked nervous that they would be brought into the house next.

"Oh no.....you stay out here. We have enough children for dinner tonight!"

That whites-of-the-eyes stare is priceless!

Grandpa, stuffed and chillin by the front door, kept me company as I sat on the stoop. Gourd shaker, perfect for casting voodoo spells, hidden by my side. The strobe light at my back, the kids didn't know if I was alive or not. Till I shook my Wiccan rattle and screeched, "Why do you bother the Babba Yaga? What do you want from me?"

Most froze dead in their tracks, many turned on their heel and fled, candy less.

"If you do not come to the Babba Yaga......Babba Yaga will come to YOU!"

I would rise up off the stoop, crouching, then slowly, as I advanced, I would be on my toes, close to 6 feet tall! With my gypsy skirt, it probably looked like I was levitating by the time I got to the kids.

One group of kids hit a car at the end of the drive, diving in, screaming, "DRIVE...JUST GO!!!" I made the door handle before they pulled off, pressing my face into the rolled up window. "The Babba Yaga curses you till your dying day!!!"

Ah the warm feeling in my chest, knowing when they put their heads on their pillow that night, the scene would play over and over on their eyelids.

Our neighbors, not only enjoyed the panic that ran from our house, but started "feeding" us children, "Make sure you see the witch back there....she has great candy!"

The witching hour ended. We hauled our wears back indoors. The living room, once again, looking like the backstage lot of a horror film movie. Lights out, window shut, door locked. We were alone with left over candy, left by kids to scared to reach for it. A reward for a job well done.

Another year of creating sentences like, "He came further up the driveway this year than last....there's always next year."

Yes....yes there is.

Illusion is needed to disguise the emptiness within.

I have been dressing up for Halloween for yeeeeaaars! Even now, a good dressing up is a great way to let your alter egos out. (hence my stint as a drag king for a while)

As a youth the local parks and recs would put on a very lovely Halloween festival. While it was a kick to go and see the festivities, it was my competitive self that longed for the main event!

The Costume Contest

We would take a gander at the booths with tests of skills like fishing for a ghoul goodies bag, tossing the skull bean bags through a monsters mouth, and prizes of plastic spiders and wax vampire teeth. All the while, trying to size up the competition that could be in our age group.

This is where we three sisters, with a creative mom, would excel!

Like the year we were the scarecrow family; mother, father and kid 'crows. I was, of course, the dad. My mother painted these burlap type sacks she made with cute lil scarecrow faces. Stitched on to the top of each went straw hair, braided at the sides for the kid 'crow. On top of my head, a cowboy hat that was my dad's. It had seen better days; sweat ringed on the brow, holes in the straw brim, and a shiteous, '70 styled, woven headband holding it together.

We took first place, of course.

Side Note: I was actually offered an entire bowl of mini candy bars in exchange for the hat at one house during our trick or treating. One look back at my dad lead me to believe that he wasn't open to negotiations. It's the deal that "could have been" that still hunts me to this day.

Then there was the Halloween Coloring Book year. My sister and I were a coloring book and crayon. Of course...big girl was the book. It was an enormous box, covered in contact paper and decorated with images of Halloween. My face peeked out of a hole in the front, my arms out the sides...unable to span the distance to scratch my nose.

My sister, rolled up in poster board, wore a purple dunce cap to resemble a sharpened crayon tip. Not only did she have a hard time walking, but she tripped at the top of a hill and rolled to the bottom, and couldn't get up. There she was, arms and feet flailing, unable to bend in the middle to get herself up. Her bag of candy, littered the front yard.

I peed my coloring book pages laughing so hard.

Side Note: At one house I couldn't fit down their walkway, so my sister took my candy bag and said it was for her sister. The home owner, of course, doubted her. Till they looked down the path and saw a huge green coloring book in the yard. This feeling still haunts me.

We enlisted our friend next door to round out the Marx Brothers one year. Since I already sport Groucho eyebrows, I had a lock on that character. To make my costume authentic, my dad handed me a cigar he had bought, still wrapped in it's protective cellophane.

"Do NOT take the cellophane off!", was his stern warning. Partly guilty he was handing me a real cigar, I'm sure.

We took first that year as well.

Side Note: By the time we were half way done, trick or treating I had chewed through the cellophane and was turning green. It was the first and only time I didn't eat candy on the route...cuz I thought I was going to hurl.

Fruit of the Loom got us first place again, two bunches of grapes and that sassy apple. My mother, who really should have worked in Hollywood, came up with the idea to paper mache balloons, spray painted green and purple and attached to black garbage bags. By the end of the night, I had left purple grapes all over the neighborhood.

Every year we racked up yet another win for the Gilbert Girls. With every win came a picture in the town paper. It was like we were Halloween Rock Stars! Other kids could try, but we crushed them under our boots year after year.

No store bought goods here! No sir. Take your boxed Scooby Doo and go home. Don't even try with that Strawberry Shortcake you got at Sears. Why don't you armatures come back when you can take a bedspread and make a senorita costume one year, then a pirate costume the next.

Halloween ain't for kids....it's for masters of illusion!

I'll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween.

We took this past weekend, without a activity choked schedule, to clean and put up some house decor de gore. I tried to convince Laura that dust and cobwebs added to the feel, but she insisted that they go. Sigh...it's hard being a misunderstood, visionary genius.

Up went the display for the side window. Monster head in a crystal ball, old books, purple skull goblet, crystal skull with changing LED lights.

Up went the various candle holders, stocked with fresh tea lights.

Away went my tombstones outside with a windstorm outside. (I manage to get them back and stake them into the ground again)

I cut the word "Vacancy" out of my homemade tombstone this weekend. It will have flashing red lights inside when it's all said and done.

Did you know there is such a thing as a Styrofoam cutter? It's awesome!

It's really like an electric ice pick, a thin wire sticking out of a handle with an on/off switch. The wire heats up and cuts through the Styrofoam like buttah! I can't tell you how long it took me to cut my letters out of my cemetery sign 2 years ago, OY!

Tonight I want to get the Vacancy Stone painted and the lights popped through the backer "slab". All the hard part will pretty much be done. Just some f/x painting after that.

Saturday will be the official set up day. I'll put most the yard stuff out. You never know what might happen at night, with random goblins walking up and down the street BEFORE Halloween. I don't want Lenny, my corpse, to 'walk away' before he gets to scare the kids.

I have a good idea about my costume. I've had to put away my goth vamp (like my profile pix) since the death of my white contacts. Those added sooo much to that look. I loved when the kids would come up and say trick or treat, they never looked at me. Then I would say, "Smell my feeeeeeet....???" in a deep, scary voice...trying to make them look up and finish the phrase.

Then their lil faces would turn upward, "Give...me...something...um....good to eeeeeeeeeeek!" then they would see the eyes!

It was awesome!

We'll see how the new "Look" goes this year.

Scoot. More. More More. GOOD!

I have, for the last couple days, been under the weather. I should just leave it at that, but anyone that knows me, knows I find that line of civility and take a pogo stick size jump up and over it to make everyone around me uncomfortable.

It's just the way I am.

After working in the yard I manage to get a killer allergy attack. (that's my story and I'm stickin' to it!) Then I got hit with the worst case of girly bits complications known to mankind...er...womankind.

I'm at that age, you see, where the word whispered around you is "pre-menopausal". Oh...you think you're already squeamish bracing for the details in my blog? Thank the man-in-the-sky you're not going through it.

Cycles being what they are, they should come around like clock work. But when they don't, it throws your life into a mess of doctor appointments and tests and probes and "pee in this" and "scoot just a liiiiiittle further".

The fun started this time around when I had to meet my new doctor, just as I was about to mount the stirrup table. Nice "how do you do" if'n I ever saw one. That awkward moment was punctuated by her nurse stumbling through the door, spinning in the middle of the room with one foot in the trash can and ending up spread eagle on the far wall. Speculum in hand.

My mortification continued, as I laid with nothing more than a Chernobyl sized Kleenex as a poor excuse for coverage, as they had me sit up cuz the light didn't work. Seems the genius that is the nurse forgot to plug it in. Then back down again, scooting.

Then when it came to the procedure, the doctor couldn't complete it.

AWESOME! Just FUCKIN' awesome!

"I'm soooo sorry. I can get you scheduled with a doctor in the practice that does this sort of thing all day long. She could do this blindfolded."

"Soooooo...that's it?"

"Yes. And of course, no charge for today."

"I don't even get dinner?"

Long stare......"Um....ha...yes...I mean...NO...I...uh....I really appreciate you keeping your sense of humor through this."

Lady....when you're a woman with a tissue skirt, on your back, with your heels up to god, and two people are lookin at your neither regions like a Bear's game on a 13 inch black and white.....all you got is your humor.

Can't WAIT to do this all over again for the next stranger.

Sing with me...."I loooooove....being a girl!"

A couple projects...

I've been trying my hand at a few lil projects this year for my yard haunt. I had created a ghost for last year, but she needed a lil LED help this year. So she went from this:

To this...after searching e-bay for "LED ghost eyes". (you really CAN find anything on e-bay!)

Can't wait to float her over the graveyard! Which I got the basics set up this weekend as well. I still have to add the new stone I got from Target that has a hole for the fog machine to blow smoke through a demon face etched in the stone. And I want to create a blinking "vancancy" stone to add as well.

The gates to my graveyard:

And the hardest thing...my corpse! Inspired by pumpkinrot and instructed by spookyblue, I'm finding my graphic art background challenged by the 3D medium!

This crusty creep will be peering though my ground-breaking coffin that I made 3 years ago. I've had his arm, clipped to a stake, inside the coffin reaching out for 2 years. It was time the arm had a body to cling too! I just need to age it and seal it and he'll be good to goul!

"And when they pulled the body from the wreakage...it looked like THIS!"

I've been collecting lil bits and pieces of Spooky Town for a few years now. I got the bulk of the pieces before they got kinda cheesy. They don't seem as well made anymore. I'm very selective about what I add to my lil spooky cityscape, one small item at a time, and only if something strikes me.

The center of town is a skull fountain with a mister in it. Lights and fog and water, oh my! It's the show piece of the creepy village, perched on top of a chest of drawers in the dinning room. Every year I set it up, fill up the water and pray, that when I flip the switch, it works for one more year. And lo...it does!

The other large piece is Dr. Tingles Lab. It has its own lil soundtrack that plays, haunted music with accents of flashing lighting strikes and claps of thunder. Once I power it all on and turn up the sound on Dr. Tingles, I like to just sit and enjoy. It's not an easy task to set up the 30 or so pieces and all their wires and plugs and adaptors. So sitting back, in the darkened room, to take it all is, is my moment of accomplishment.

As I was soaking in the scary....I voice blasted out of Dr. Tingles that made me come out of my chair to recover my heart which had jumped out of my chest!

"Breaker breaker rollin' up on in har wit da big trees, yazir. Got me the big ol payload of big ol trees. Come back."

WTF?!?!

It seems the frequency that Dr. Tingles operates on....also picks up truckers. Yes...truckers. Loud ass, mouthy, painfully NOT Halloweeny MF'r truckers!!

It was like a bully walked up to my haunted sandcastle and kicked down its turrets and peed in the moat. Now I would have to enjoy Spooky Town with a lil less spooky OR a lot more Smokey and the Bandit.

Sigh....we can't have nice things.