Dotty Parker

in the cosmos

I had a frustrating day. I want to complain and yell and scream, but I do believe it will not change what's gone on. I thought that driving home from frustration number one and so I decided to have fun.

I put the top down on my car and took a picture a fabulous sign to appear here in the future. I stopped at a place called "Ron's Corner Store". I figured it might be cute with some food stuff and some hardware stuff and some unspeakably ugly crafts.

But no! It was, in fact, a store full of junk. One aisle of hardware junk. At the end of the aisle were some uniform-style clothes, the VFW shirt/uniform looked most interesting to me. There were old plates and pottery. A collection of salt and pepper shakers intrigued me: they were all carved and varnished wood with the name of a place painted on them.

I was most interested in the set from Puerto Rico, but the ones from the Thousand Islands were in better shape. I resisted my urge to buy them both and therefore bought none.

In the next room was lots of old furniture. It's the kind of furniture that you might buy now at inexpensive furniture store. A step up from Target, but still not so hot. It's that kind of furniture, but used and old. Cheap, though. And that can be a good thing.

I felt weird going in there and not buying anything. I wanted to buy something, but I didn't really need those salt and pepper mementos.

They had flowers outside, though. Two dollars for a six pack (that's what she called them) of annuals. So I bought two six packs of cosmos. They'll look pretty in the back yard.

lost

I went to two different jobs today. The first was forty minutes away. The second was another half hour further.

I got lost on the way home. I got very lost on the way home. But I got a little lost on the way there, too.

I've created maps of my journey. The red path is the one I took from home to cutomer numero uno. I know the way!

The blue path is from uno to dos. I had directions for coming from the other direction, so I called to get them anew. I was successful once I had my altered directions.

The green path shows my misadventures. I turned the wrong way. You may note that the blue and green paths diverge. Yeah. It makes for a longer drive home when you go the way that I did.

I had an interesting day, though. I've been to the first place before. But she had two new puppies today. They were very cute.

The second place was so far away from everything that the only thing you could see were goats (playing in the road) and llamas and horses (one horse walked in front of my car for a while--an escapee) and cows. Then by the house were a bajillion cats and kittens, two dogs, a bunch of turkeys, guinea pigs, cockateils, and rabbits. It was a damned menagerie.

The land on either side of her farm is owned by two of her daughters. They want to buy the land from their mom so that she won't sell it to someone else. I see shades of King Lear, but I think I'll keep my mouth shut about that one.

I actually worked about eight hours. If you count the time I was lost. Which I do. Because, although it took longer, it was still taking a hell of a lot of time. And I didn't get any breaks. No way. Could I possibly rationalize this more?

Well, I could, but...need I say more?

beaten with an invisible stick

Yesterday I had two classes to teach. The first one is usually a challenge, but not so bad. The second one usually has me tearing my hair out, but this one was simplified, so I thought I'd be fine.

Oh, my dear, how wrong I was.

My first class was okay. One student could have done my job, most likely. Another was a-okay as long as she stayed calm. The third, however, wanted to teach the class (which was actually fine with me about halfway through just so she'd stop interrupting me) but she didn't know what she was talking about. She had lots of tips and tricks, always good things, but when it came to the basics...she was like the woman supervising the building of a house when what she knew was how to paint the walls.

I wouldn't recommend modeling her clothes. If you stepped on the hem you'd likely be naked. rrrrrrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip!

We made it through okay, but then the hated topic of conversation came up. "What did you get that I didn't get? Did you get a better deal? Did you save more money?" So TippyTricky got in an argument with her salesperson. An hour and a half long argument.

TippyTricky didn't have it all going on upstairs. There were some electrical cords that weren't plugged in. Her husband was there and he just stayed out of the way. Just sat down, held her sewing machine on his lap and looked into the distance. Smart man. I betcha he learned by experience.

I don't think she was trying to be difficult (she said, afterwards, that she was sorry she made a fuss...a student in my next class suggested duct-taping TippyTricky's mouth closed...a fuss!). I think she was trying to make sure that she got a good deal. Which she did. But that's not the point.

It's the damned squeaky wheel. The people in class who were nice didn't get a thing. They're coming back next week. Perhaps I'll encourage them to throw a little tantrum. I might do it, too.

(There are some books I wouldn't mind having.)

And if TippyTricky doesn't give me an adequately cranky tirade, I'm going to take away her special bonus freebie she got because she's a big dummy!

In any case, the invisible stick in this title ended up hitting me. I came home feeling like someone really had physically pushed me around all day. My whole body was sore.

I think the invisible stick hit me instead of TippyTricky because she was all righteous and shouting and I was skulking about thinking that she was a big dummy. But next week she'd better watch out. I'm going to be well fed, full of energy, and my ears will be covered with selective hearing ear muffs. TippyTricky-proof earmuffs.

heh heh

You know, with an intolerant attitude like mine, it's not surprising that I got hit with the invisible stick.

rice in the fast lane

I do believe one of my middle school torturers was in line ahead of me at the grocery store today.

Let me explain why this might be so:

The express lane is made for people who can get through the check out line quickly. It is for people who have a few things, maybe an apple or an orange, but almost entirely made up of items that have scan tags on them.

I had one thing. It had a UPC symbol on it. I was right on target. The guy behind me had only chocolate milk. But the woman in front of me! Well!

People who eat a lot of fresh greens are hereby banned from using the express lane. When you buy green leaf lettuce, Boston lettuce, parsley, green grapes, red peppers, and apples, you should consider using the normal lane. It was lunch time. People were in a hurry. I wasn't in love with pokey people, and I wanted to put my stuff down!

The cashier had rung up all this stuff after having to search through the laminated book for the price code or peer through the plastic bag to find out what the hell was in the damn bag. I suppose it didn't take that long, but come on, sister, get with it. Pick veggies with their code stuck to them. Or eat meat. There are stickers on meat.

So I was practicing being all forgiving and sweet when the cashier told her how much she owed. At that point, sweet little lady opens her wallet and pulls out her card. She can't figure out how to use the stupid reader. She has a credit card. She tries like eighty times to slide it, but she hasn't pressed "Credit" yet. Why couldn't she have done debit? Debit is faster. And you don't have to juggle groceries to sign everything. (She goes to Cornell. I'm going to ask them to give a class about this. Cornell people are smart. They'll pick up on this quickly enough.)

I saw her walking back to somewhere, her groceries hidden in her backpack.

I do hope her lunch was good, but maybe she'll learn to stay the hell out of my way when I'm in the mood to be assertive and sit by myself at lunch--if she'll just let me buy my stupid food!

I didn't like her hair, either.

so so sad

I've been feeling a bit blue lately. BrilliantEditor asks me what he can do to make it better, and I honestly have no idea. Well, had no idea.

Earlier this week I started remembering times in middle school. Middle school is no barrel of laughs for anyone, but these memories were really distressing me. I'd get all teary thinking about them. I thought, "Hey, maybe being sad and these things have something to do with each other!"

Do you think so?

So what was so distressing?

1. I had to sit alone at lunch sometimes. Now it doesn't seem like a big deal, but then, whoooooooooeeeeee. Not a good thing. It's a gut-wrenching trial to find a place to sit alone at lunch in middle school. Even a pity seat is better than sitting alone. You've seen those little-ish girls at the mall, a big posse of them? I think I would have given anything to be one of them, but I wouldn't have known what to do. I would have said something weird.

2. Kids broke my stuff. I had one of those pencils that have lots of presharpened leads in it--the kind where, when the lead gets dull, you pull the dull thing out, stick it in the top, and the new, sharp one comes out? Sure you know. They broke all but one lead off of my pencil so I had to take each one out and then see it was broken and then take the next one out...they snickered. Little bastards. (It's kind of funny in concept, though. I must say.)

3. Kids hid my stuff. One of the pencil lead offenders liked to steal my purse and hide it in the bottom of the trash can. He'd tell me where it was and then yell, "Trash picker!" Well, duh. (He was occasionally laughed at for walking around with a purse. Ha ha!)

4. Teachers made fun of me. Our "home and career skills" teacher scolded me for "telling on" the trash yeller and said, "Why, Dotty, I thought you'd remember your homework, especially since you told on Dwayne!" (I still don't like her.) Then there was the gym teacher who suggested that, to improve my gym grade (we got a damned grade!) I should take aerobics. I did. I got a better grade. She sucked at aerobics.

So, sad story telling over, I've decided that my blue times have been because I've been feeling like I've been figuratively eating alone. Like I've not been invited or something. BUT! Two wonderful things come out of this:

1. I know why, or at least have attributed a reason as to why I've been feeling sad, and now I can take care of it.

2. Middle school sucks, but I actually don't care anymore. When I told BrilliantEditor about this stuff, I cried and cried. Now I think that middle school is a cruel, alternate universe. Were're not talking about Alice falling down a rabbit hole. We are, once again, talking about the Twilight Zone. (make the little doodeedoodoo sound right here)

weird

I just thought this was weird.

You will be relieved to know that the charges have been dropped as it is unclear whether or not teaching a dog a trick is illegal.

do you feel a draft?

I'm listening to Democracy Now! on NPR. Ms. Amy Goodman notified me that bringing back the draft is a distinct possibility.

Bringing back the draft? What the hell is going on around here? This is the damned Twilight Zone. I thought all the young men were already gone. It seems like a lot of them are gone. At least I hear about them being gone.

BellyRub will be turning 26 at the end of May. I think that means that he's in the clear. I think it means that he's too old to be drafted. If it doesn't mean that, as we're living in the Twilight Zone it could mean anything, then I need to find a way to keep him from being sent to assures Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

To reassure any folks with doubts as to the veracity of my claim about the draft, I will include the following quotation from the Selective Service website:

Notwithstanding recent stories in the news media and on the Internet, Selective Service is not getting ready to conduct a draft for the U.S. Armed Forces -- either with a special skills or regular draft. Rather, the Agency remains prepared to manage a draft if and when the President and the Congress so direct. This responsibility has been ongoing since 1980 and is nothing new. Further, both the President and the Secretary of Defense have stated on more than one occasion that there is no need for a draft for the War on Terrorism or any likely contingency, such as Iraq. Additionally, the Congress has not acted on any proposed legislation to reinstate a draft. Therefore, Selective Service continues to refine its plans to be prepared as is required by law, and to register young men who are ages 18 through 25.

The bold type is my added emphasis. Indeed, a likely contingency, such as Iraq.

The more I look for information, the less information I can find. Two senators introduced a bill to reintroduce the draft back in January. Other info says that the Selective Service is shooting for June 2005. Still more information indicates that everything's ready, they just need to turn the key.

Whatever the story is, I still think it's important to get the defense mechanisms into place. (ha ha, I suppose that's a little joke, defense...)

So here are my suggestions for getting out of the draft:

when you're at the recruiter's office
twitch a lot
lick the desk
hum quietly to yourself
limp
wear girl's underwear or very small underoos, preferably with Scooby Doo on them
bring your pets
keep cheese in your pocket; offer it to the man behind the desk
talk about the radio; ask what stations are their favorites

I suspect that the recruiters have seen these tricks before. So here's what I advise trying:

Find a doctor to diagnose you with a sleeping disorder.
You could, as is the old favorite, shoot yourself in the foot.
Go to a therapist and a psychiatrist. If you can't convince them that you aren't at least a little bit depressed, maybe you can get some medication for a slightly low or high thyroid.
Find a pascifist doctor. Tell him or her that you need a diagnosis to keep you out of war.
Become a Quaker. Become devout as quickly as you can.
Secede from the United States--be your own country.
Renounce your citizenship. Go to Canada or Mexico and get citizenship there.
Move away, and fast, once you get your letter.
Change your address, but don't move.
Become a conscientious objector or pascifist. Get your evidence together to "prove" it.
Take drugs that have evidence last a long time in your body. Be sure to get rid of the stuff before you go to have your drug test. Give it to someone else so that you don't have it in your possession but you do have access in case you have to go back to get retested.

If there are more tricks, perhaps that are better than these, I do suggest submitting them so I can be a clearinghouse of information.

little boxes

On Saturday, BrilliantEditor and I were walking around downtown and browsing in stores. It was the "Bake Back the White House" event so we went down to buy cookies and brownies and things. (We actually bought dogs treats and apple cider and a cookie for BE.)

In one of the stores was a small cabinet that really appealed to me. It had small drawers and some were different sizes. Oh boy! Joy joy joy! I must say that I do love things with many compartments. When I went on a cruise with BE, I probably could have spent a few days just moving things around. This drawer, that drawer, this cupboard, that slidy thing.

The I thought, "Hmm, I also like little books that people have written and drawn in. I like looking through those. Informal scapbooks, really." And whoa! There I was looking into the same interest--what might be kept in this cubby hole? What's going to happen if I turn the page? If they keep scarves in this drawer, what will they keep in that one?

So many things are predictable about the way we live. Glasses are very often by the sink. Extra toilet paper is in a cupboard or closet. If a cupboard or closet is not within reaching distance, an extra roll is generally stored nearby.

Aspirin in the medicine cabinet. Coats by the door. Pens and pencils in the top drawer of the desk. File folders in the bottom right.

So I love little drawers and little books. There is nothing dictacted. Buttons next to plastic toads next to unmatched earrings next to paper clips next to beer bottle caps hidden from your mother.

And the books! The books have confessional on one page, grocery list on the next, to do lists, then stories or a poem, little phrases that catch the mind, small doodle in the shape of curly-Qs.

I've got a little book. It has to do lists, confessionals, analytical psycho-babble-jive, inappropriate jokes, quotes from people who are extra annoying, and a drawing, in crayon, of a binary clock. (Thanks to Tex on that one.)

I need a poem or a story. Perhaps about a chicken. That seems a fine idea. Chickens are much maligned. But then again they are stupid...

I should probably write a confessional style entry about that, my harsh feelings about chickens. Some of them are pretty. But I don't know that any are smart. I think I don't need to write about the chicken thing. I need to forget about the chicken thing.

the silence of the sausage

Sprocket looks like a large, furry sausage at times. It isn't an entirely attractive look, but hey, we can't all look like me, now can we? Some people say she's so ugly she's cute, but I think she's kind of cute all on her own. Martian cute.

At any rate, two nights ago, I must have rolled over on her or something. I woke up to her screaming and staring at me after I'd turned on the light. She was screaming for so long that I had time to turn on the light and look back at her and she was still screaming. I was starting to freak out.

Nothing seemed to be wrong, but I thought maybe her collar was pinching her, so I took it off. She still screamed. She had shifted her weight though, and she started getting quieter and then she stopped. She took another look at me and crawled down the bed under the covers.

BrilliantEditor and I have been postulating as to the cause of such distress. I wondered if she had a charlie horse, you know one of those cramps that hurts like hell and then just disappears?

BE suggests that it might have been a slight dislocation. It would have hurt like crazy when it was out, but when it popped back in, it would have been fine.

I'll tell you what, though, it's scary. To hear so much distress and have no idea how to fix it. It feels really horrible.

Did you see Silence of the Lambs? In that movie the good doctor asks Clarice if the lambs are silent yet. She heard the lambs being slaughtered when she was a child and the sound of something she couldn't change stayed with her. She'd hear it in her dreams.

I'm a little bit wigged out by Sprocket's screaming. It makes me feel helpless and then rejected as she crawled off to live with the creatures at the food of the bed.

But she loved me ini the morning. And she looked at me when she was screaming--wanting me to make it better, I presume.

Perhaps I've silenced my inner sausage.

(Somehow a lamb makes for better prose.)

childhood intrigue

I got another message from BellyRub that should be intriguing to many:

BellyRub: Remember I used to like to dunk pork rinds in bath water?

Dotty: I had no idea that you dunked pork rinds in bath water. Why the hell did you have pork rinds in the bath tub?

BellyRub: You did it too. I remember it was one of the ways that Mom got me to take a bath. She let me have pork rinds in the tub. We were taking a bath together and I tried it and told you it was good. I have no idea.

That's just not one of those things I'd think of right away to get my child to take a bath. Honey! If you take a bath you can have fried pork products! And since they don't seem to get wet, you can eat them, too!

Weird.

And do you actually get clean if you're in water that has pork rind residue in it?

SirDougg and his friends in England call them pork cracklings. Do you think they stay crispy in bath water?

Yuck.

he blinded me with silence

I got this message from BellyRub today:

Remember when you wanted to try and be blind and have me lead you around, so I led you into the side of a car? That still makes me laugh, you and Dad got so mad at me...we were at Ames. Whump! HA HA HA HA!!!!

I vaguely remember it and I do remember being absolutely furious at Ames. I got absolutely furious most everywhere, really.

I wonder if my dad was laughing on the inside.

I may have been furious then, but it's almost killing me now. I think it's the "whump". It makes me think of a winter coat smacking into a car.

something for nothing

I was thinking about gardening today. I was also thinking about making money. They don't go together, really. The amount of work that would go into the whole thing is impossibly large and the income is impossibly small.

Then I thought, hmmm, I have a damp basement. I could grow mushrooms! They practically take care of themselves! We even had a mushroom grow down there. We "harvested" it to the trash can.

But I thought Morels! Everyone needs morels almost as much as they need morals (and you are welcome to interpret that in any way you want), so why not grow them in the basement and charge outrageous prices for them?!

I went to look up how to grow morels. Apparently they're quite difficult to grow. Especially indoors.

Where in hell am I going to get a sterile hood? I'll just pop over to Sears and see if they have either the HEPA model or the laminar flow variety. Furthermore, even if you worked in a lab (I did, once, long ago...) bringing in fungal spores of any kind is frowned upon.

So the morel idea is nixed for now. The wild boars might eat them, anyway. And they look gross. Like brains or something. Yuck.

where's dinner today?

Today we went to BrilliantEditor's parents' house for supper. It's called supper in the middle of the day and dinner at night, right? I think that's true.

Once again, the food was great and I'm overcome with the need to sleep.

On holidays, I begin to wish that I worked more like a machine that would get refilled only until my little food tank was full. This whole human thing with processing and converting and all that jazz, well, it's responsible for the plague of obesity in this country!

Of course, when there are times that my tummy is empty and I still have to wait to eat, then I'm not so thrilled by the machine idea. I'd be tipped over on my mechanical side with my face in some bizarre position. People would walk by me and say, "Hey, Ernie, we got another one here for scrap."

Then they'd throw me in the back of the truck and take me out to the dump and sit me inside one of the old cars that also ran out of fuel and died.

Yeah. Obesity is way better.

Forget about the machine thing.

diggin' Easter

We went to my dad's sister's house for Easter dinner today. Yes, it's a day early. We're going to BrilliantEditor's parents' house tomorrow. I will bet you ten or more bucks that we won't have as much fun there as we did today.

That might be a good thing.

We always have fun with my dad's family. After our big meal we go for a walk in the woods. We take all of the dogs, seven today, and we walk around the woods, into a pasture, by a small brook...it's all so lovely.

Today was business as usual since Spring and Lily rolled around in the pasture. Lily got covered in cow poo, as she always does on Easter. Spring rolled next to the cow poo. She, therefore, was not as disgusting as Lily, but induced the same feeling of horror and panic.

We had an exciting event in the pasture. At the top were two dead cows. The dogs found them first. As far as we could tell, they didn't nibble on them. They only licked them. I'm glad of that self-restraint. It was a pretty gross dead cow.

Speaking of things that are pretty gross, there is a long running series of jokes regarding the ability of my family to eat bizarre foods and then fart with a most disgusting potency. The favorite culprits are a combination of these three: beer, leeks, and venison.

(Just to give an idea of how revolting they are, I have a little story. The male members of the family were coming back from a fishing trip or something during which time they consumed the three offending factors. The stopped at a rest area while travelling. Another traveller entered the men's bathroom and shouted, "Oh my God! What the hell do you people eat?! Garbage?!" Do I really need to say more about the danger of these items?)

We always have beer at our events and venison shows up in the fall and winter. Leeks haven't made an appearance in years.

We were all thanking God for that.

I guess with Easter being upon us, however, God did, indeed, forsake us.

On our walk we brought trowels and plastic bags. We went for a walk down by the crick (local name of a creek or brook) and dug up leeks. For the uninitiated, leeks are wild onions. They're incredibly oniony things that look a little like scallions. They begin to smell like dirty socks, in my opinion, after a short-ish time; they're really, really strong. They are, however, quite a treat in their own way. As they're only around for part of the year and they're best in early spring, we're woodsy epicurians.

Still, despite the promise of stink and the burden of having snooty tastes, it was pretty fun to dig around in the rocks and the flat stones and pull out the leeks. Then we'd squat down by the stream, which wasn't running too much this year, and clean them off, cut off the roots with a pocket knife, and put them in a plastic grocery bag to take back up the hill to the house.

I suppose I'm happy about all this leek stuff since it will provide more fuel to the fire of venison/leek/beer jokes and commentary. We'll also have good stories about Lily and Spring in the cow poop and the other dogs sniffing the dead cow.

I decided that if I have to live off the land, I'm going to my aunt and uncle's house. They make maple syrup, can find leeks, know that they can eat fiddlehead ferns, raise bees, know how to can food, can build things, can quilt by hand and machine--these are the people to know. If I add in the rest of my dad's family, we have small engine repair, fine carpentry, medical knowledge, more sewing, community planning, and people who will provide social commentary.

When the power goes out for months and months, I'm going to their house.

awwww. cute baby grapefruit

I just called my mom and dad. I had a question, you see. I'm making those little baby blanket/towel thingies, the kind with the little hood so they stay warm when they're drying off? You know those.

Well, I finished the first one. And it is adorable. I think, however, it will be less adorable when the baby's head doesn't fit inside the little hood. I think I made it too small. But how am I supposed to know? I've not been around newborns very much and when I have I'm afraid that they'll break or squish when I touch them. I know they won't, but they might. And there you are.

The real question, though, was this: How big is a baby's head?

So I got on the phone to call my mom. My dad answered though! This was even better! He gets a bit of a catch in his throat when I say the word, "baby". When I was going to visit a boyfriend in the summer during college, he said to me, "Dotty, be careful. Do you have protection? I don't want you going down there one and coming back two."

It was both humiliating and hysterical since he was asking me about birth control (holy moly) and he was asking me while he was in bed, the lights were out, and he had his night guard in his mouth. He sounds funny when he has that in his mouth. Of course, BellyRub and I both grind our teeth, too. I'm not sure about AngerTrain. With a name like that you might think it's certain, but he's a mystery. Yes he is.

At some point in my life, I don't think it was that night but it might have been, my father said, in relation to becoming a mother before I was out of school, "I've got a lot invested in you, little filly."

Ack! A horse! My favorite horse joke: A horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, "Why the long face?"

hahahahaha

So at any rate, I say, "I'm making a baby blanket," he stops breathing, "for a friend, and I," he clears his throat and will soon laugh, "wanted to know how big a baby's head is." He laughs now. "I mean, is it the size of a grapefruit?"

He says, "Jeez, I don't know Dot. Maybe more the size of a cantaloupe. Hmm, let me ask your mother what she thinks."

There's a pause while the consultation takes place quietly in the background.

"Your mother's hedging her bets. She says large grapefruit."

So I have to say, "Or maybe a small cantaloupe? Well, either way, the hood's too small."

Then Dr.Dad says, "They usually make them out of a towel, don't they? With a tuck in the back to make a hood." This man knows everything. No wonder I call him.

I said, "I don't know. Probably. But I'm making fancy ones."

"Well, okay. Is that it?"

"Yeah, that's all I wanted, Dad. Thanks."

And we hung up.

So there we are. A fruit salad of a baby head.

Very weird.

das booted

We saw the second half of Das Boot tonight. The movie is horrifying and intense and insightful and scary as hell. I decided that it's okay for a boat to shoot another boat. But it isn't okay for a boat to shoot a boat that has people on it. Furthermore, people get hurt in these war things. It's not just hurt, but it's panic and horror and insanity and all kinds of terrible things.

War is not healthy.

And speaking of war, we went to Target tonight to play "scavenger hunt". I thought we were going to get Das Booted out of the store. A friend of mine and I went out last week to make a list of things to send to her husband in Iraq. The list was then distributed to her friends who had half an hour to decide what best fit the title we'd listed.

There was also a task, which was to be interviewed on a tape recorder so the interview could be sent with the package of goodies. It's a completely new experience to have people say things like, "Come home soon and we miss you and good luck," to a person who's thousands of miles away and we know won't come home for a year and a half. Probably two years.

I keep checking with BrilliantEditor. "When is the cut off for the draft?" We think he's okay, but there's the possibility of another year and a half. Not that they're drafting people, but who knows with this administration, anyway? They're war-mongering creeps and liars.

I've been needing to say that for a while.

Oh, and in another bit of irony, one of her friends was in the first Gulf war. She has terminal brain cancer now. She's in a wheelchair cart thing. She has six months to a year to live.

Things just don't seem right.

whoa. this has to stop.

Thinking too much. That's what I've been doing. And it's tiring me out. So it has to stop. Not all thinking, but certainly some of it.

For example, I will continue thinking about what ice cream favorites I like best (I do believe it is mint chocolate chip, but not from Breyers. No matter how natural it may be, the texture is mealy and repellant. It's called ice cream for a reason. And that reason has nothing to do with mealiness.)

I'm not sure mealiness is a word. Or maybe it should have two Ls.

There's another thought. Should I have written L's? Like when a person wants to say that he bought a CD or two and he really wants to just make CD plural, should it be CDs or CD's? I'm firmly in the "CDs" camp, but many people I respect and even like, those people use the apostrophe. What does a person make of that?

Maybe this is why I'm tired. Is that possible? There's too much wrapped up in these questions. The CD issue turned into quite a quagmire of a quandary. Should I be peeved with people for using anappropriate grammar when I'm the only one who has deemed it inappropriate? Should I do research or not? If I do research, that might mean that I'm a snooty (true), discriminatory (I'd like to think that's false), obsessive (duh) freak (in the nicest possible way). If I don't do research am I relaxed or am I just lazy? I'm not sure.

All this waffling is just too much for me. I can only have so many waffles in a day. I could check how many Eggo waffles it would take, but that would really be obsessive. But now I'm wondering, since I brought it up, should I check it out?

Whoa. This has to stop.