Sam & Ella, who are they?

It's time for Salmonella Chicken, round two.  Designated Hitter thought he'd try putting another chicken on his fancy dancy smoker grill thingiemahooper.  (technical term)

He managed to not let the thing run out of hampester-shit-pellets this time.  And he didn't go away and forget about it.  However, we did get an answer to the "did he use the meat thermometer correctly" question.  Short answer: no.  Long answer: he never does.  I swear to god he stuck the probe of the thermometer into the chicken's BACK.  And like maybe a quarter inch in.

It's done!

Fuck.

I'm gonna die.

On a Wing and a Prayer

I usually like to listen to The Bob and Tom Show in the mornings.  Usually.  Somewhere around the 500th replay of the Camel Toe song (this week) it gets a bit monotonous, but for the most part I like it.  Okay so the overplay of that song was like 8 years ago, but bear with me.  (wait, I should clarify.  "I like it" meant the show, not the Camel Toe song.  fuck that)

Sometimes I get a bit huffy when they get on their high-horses about shit.  For instance, today they were talking about a story where someone (a person?  group?  I don't know) is suggesting "family sections" on airplanes.  I love this idea.  Kristi started in with the whole "NO!  You can't do that!  They can't do that.  Kids are wonderful!"  blah blah blah.  I'm in my car driving back from the grocery store and all I was getting so pissed off.  She may think that her kids are perfect and there are rainbows and unicorns and tra la la, but most kids are assholes.  (no offense if you have kids and they aren't assholes.  I'm making a sweeping generalization here)  (and for some reason I'm guessing her kids are assholes)

Front view, side view.  Two views.  Check!  No check, cash only (sorry, M*A*S*H quote there) 

Complete with Flying Cheerios in various degrees of mastication

And yes that's Designated Hitter in the first pic, reading a paper, ignoring me, with his elbow in my ribs

I hate flying

 The more I think about this, the more I like the family section idea.  And I have a way to put it into place.  Stick all the parents and kids at the back of the plane.  No wait, hear me out.  First of all, parents traveling with small children are allowed to board the plane first, right?  And when the rest of us uninteresting people board, we start at the back of the plane, right?  Well then we can kill two birds with one stone, and have the parents with the kids board the plane first and send their asses to the back.  Secondly, they'll be close to the bathroom.  There's a good plan.  Third, they're always such a pain in the ass when getting off the plane cuz they stand around forever packing up all the toys and games and crap and organizing their little anklebiters and slowing the rest of us down so if they're at the back of the plane, the rest of us can get off first while they're doing the repacking and whatnot.  And finally, the kids can just kick other kids' seats.  Or other parents (who would be completely oblivious to what their children were doing if they were sitting next to me)  

Now I realize it wouldn't block sound, so when they got to screaming we would all still hear it, but at least it would be from a bit of a distance instead of directly into my ear from point-blank range.  And maybe if bad parents were surrounded by other people's asshole children, they'd start to realize that their children are assholes too.  I doubt it, but it's worth a shot.  

I am totally in favor of family sections on airplanes.  Or maybe just don't ever make me fly anywhere again.  At least not commercial flights, my one experience on a private jet was freaking awesome.  Except that the private jet was owned by an asshole, but I tolerated him for the private flight to Cabo.  Totally worth it.  I should get my pilot's license and get a plane.  Oh if only I was independently wealthy.  *sigh* 

And I ran, I ran so far away

Dear god I just quoted A Flock of Seagulls.  *hangs head in shame*

Yep I ran away from home last night.  I am thirty... almost-damned three... years old, and I ran away from home.

As for the reason, well, it's even dumber.  I was trying to clean up the house some, because we're having company today.  I was also trying to do laundry, because I didn't want to have wet clothes hanging all over the house to dry when company was here so I had to do it yesterday.  I guess I should explain.  Designated Hitter doesn't let me dry anything except socks and underwear.  Pants, shorts, shirts, even grubby working-in-the-yard t-shirts have to be hung to dry.  Seriously.  He has this one shirt he got from a small seed company.  If I had a nickel for every time he has bitched about what a bunch of assholes this seed company was, I could move out and support myself just on the interest alone.  He wears this shirt when he gets all sweaty and muddy and grassy... and then he throws it in the washer, and then that shirt is too valuable to throw in the dryer.  It must be carefully hung up to dry.  Yanno so it doesn't shrink.  That shirt could be the cause of our divorce.

Well, since we moved to the country and got ourselves a septic system, I can't use liquid fabric softener in the washer anymore cuz it fucks up the decomposition of the shit in the septic tank (seriously, did anyone want to know that?!  I didn't) so in order to make our clothes not all stiff and wrinkly and scratchy, I've been tossing them into the dryer for about 12 minutes with a dryer sheet and then taking them out and hanging them to finish drying.  They aren't in the dryer long enough to shrink, but they do soften up and de-wrinkle in that time.

So, I'm doing laundry yesterday.  And I'm cleaning house.  First load of laundry comes out of the washer and goes into the dryer.  Kitchen timer set for 12 minutes.  I go to vacuum.  I'm off in the bedroom vacuuming when the timer goes off, I don't hear it.  Apparently timer shuts itself off after a bit, because when I turn vacuum off the house is silent.  I didn't think a think of it, went on to do some other things, and like 45 minutes later went "oh shit!"  I ran into the laundry room and yep, there was the dryer still tumbling away with a load of dark clothes inside, fully dry.  I take everything out and hang it all up and mostly I'm not too terribly worried cuz Hitter was outside and I've dried a few shirts all the way before and he's never noticed, but then I pull out a pair of blue dress pants.  *sigh*  I flipped 'em upside down and hung them up like I'm supposed to, and then compared them to two pair of khaki colored pants that were already hanging there... and they were somewhat shorter.

I panicked.

I didn't have the courage to tell Hitter what I did.  I couldn't handle the coming lecture and/or look of disappointment.  Just didn't have it in me.  He was outside mowing lawn at the time and I saw him get in the truck and drive off (I suspect he was fulfilling Gas Fairy duties) so I wrote a note that explained the vacuuming and the timer and the short pants and I apologized like 5 times and twice swore it was an accident, and I loaded Muppy up in Marvin (ooooh I haven't explained Marvin yet... that's my car) and took off.  Didn't know where I was going, just left.  Unfortunately I met Hitter in the driveway, he pulled over (one-lane-driveway) and unrolled his window to talk to me, and I didn't even look him in the eyes, just raced past and took off.

He texted me and said he wasn't mad, please come back.  I drove for a while, and then eventually texted him back and said I couldn't handle the disappointment either.  He wrote me back and said something about accidents happen, just come back.  I drove for a while longer.  Then I realized I was lost.  Okay our roads around here do NOT go straight.  I'm not originally from this state, but my parents did go to college here and their best friends are from here too (not here as in this town, here as in this state) so Designated Drinker has a lot of first-hand knowledge of what goes on around here.  And he's always said the way our DOT makes new roads is to just find the nearest hillbilly and put him in a blacktopper machine with a case of beer and tell him to drive around for a while.  If there's a tree, go around it.

I was seriously lost.  Thank goodness the sun was still up because I knew I'd left home heading west so as long as I kept the sun behind me, I should eventually end up somewhere near home.  Or in a river.  Either way, I'd know where I was then.

I'm still a little twitchy, I cried over supper last night.  Hitter gets all "but I'm trying to get better and not fly off the handle" and I tell him that I've been hurt so bad so many times that I don't trust him anymore.  The whole episode with the root beer on vacation kind of put me over the edge.  Oh crap I didn't tell that story either.  Well, short version, I accidentally sprayed root beer on one cabinet and a bit on the floor of the kitchen in the cabin his sister rents for the week.  RENTS, not owns.  B.F.D.  I wiped it up, Sis was all "no big deal", Hitter comes unglued on me like I'd burned the place down and killed half his family in the process.  Over a little root beer on the floor.  Good lord.  Everything's a catastrophe with that man.  And I'm at the end of my rope.  *sigh*

Sorry this wasn't funny and didn't have any cute pictures.  I'm not feeling very funny or cute right now but I needed to vent this shit.

Reading is FUNdamental, this title is LAME

Let's just get this out in the open right now.

Okay I feel better.  Except not really.

As previously mentioned I got all sorts of hooked on the Harry Potter series.  I am one of those kinds of dorks that can re-read a series of books over and over and over.  My all time favorite (although HP might be giving them a run for their money) is the Anne of Green Gables series and I get that set out probably once every year or two and read them all, start-to-finish.  Well I had to give the HP books back to Opie but I really didn't feel I was done reading them yet, so I bought the paperback box set.  $49.95 at amazon.com and free super saver shipping.  

I told Designated Hitter last night that I had done this (yanno, after it was not only ordered, but arrived and I'd already re-read two of them)  He rolled his eyes and laughed at me.  I told him to fuck off.

How is me buying a set of books any different than the approximately DOZEN magazines he gets every month?  Let's analyze.  He gets Beef Magazine, Successful Farming, Top Producer, Farm Industry News, Reader's Digest, Corn & Soybean Digest, a conservationist magazine, Farm Journal, National Geographic, Hay & Forage Grower, plus he gets the weekly Farmer Today paper and gets the local newspaper delivered three days a week.  I'll grant you a few of those are free publications, but still.  Seriously.  I guarantee you he spends way more than $50 a year in magazine subscriptions.  And this is the only major book purchase I've made since we got married 5.5 years ago.  I've picked up the occasional cheap paperback when we've been traveling, and he did buy me a big book for my birthday one year, but that's it.

And to top it off, earlier this summer I bought new office furniture.  We are sharing the home office, and I think we're okay on sharing the room but sharing a desk really wasn't working.  I cleaned out all the old filing cabinets and was putting stuff into the new ones... I won't go into all the details of the cringe-inducing shit I found, but the relevant-to-this-post discovery was a Reader's Digest from July of 2008 that was STILL IN THE SHRINK-WRAP!  It was two years old and he'd never read it.  At least I'm reading the books I bought.  And will re-read over time.  I mean if you could see my Anne books, they're really well worn. 

I'm just sick of people telling me I'm wrong, criticizing me for what I like, and telling me how I should feel.  I know how I should feel.  Leave me the hell alone.  And fuck off.

The Ultimate in One-Stop-Shopping

Designated Hitter and I are on vacation this week.  Fishing vacation.  Last night we went for a little drive, and I was super pissed I didn't have the camera along because I saw this sign:

That's the best Dairy Queen ever.  Food, ice cream, booze, and bait.

So get this.  We're staying in this little bitty cabin that was built in the 19-teens.  The doors and windows don't really line up with the door/window frames anymore.  I was trying to lock the door but broke the key off in the lock because of how much the door doesn't line up anymore.  When it rains we just kind of pull the windows towards the cabin but they don't actually close all the way.  Plus the glass is all warpy too.  And there's a total funhouse mirror in the bedroom.  It makes me look like a retarded midget.  I'm probably going to hell for saying "retarded midget" but that's okay with me.  Anyway, back to the cabin.  The floor slopes in a lot of different directions.  No air conditioning, no tv.  We do have electricity thank goodness.  And running water.  A real kitchen and a functional indoor bathroom and everything.  But that's kind of the end of the amenities.  Except we have wi-fi.  I love the digital age.

And a bug bit me on the foot and I'm pretty sure I'm dying.  The bite area swelled up as big around as a silver dollar, and it doesn't just itch - it hurts!  And it's turning purple.  I think I have blood poisoning.  Two nights ago I was laying in bed sweating, wondering if I was dying.  Then I remembered it was like 85 degrees out and humid and we have no air conditioning.  Hitter thinks I'm a hypochondriac.  Okay so I am, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be sympathetic when my foot turns gangrene and has to be cut off. 

Only a few more days in the north woods, then back to reality.  *sigh*

We Interrupt This Program

With apologies, we interrupt this program to bring you the following emergency Public Service Announcement:

Don't ever have a PMS-induced salt-craving binge with Salt & Vinegar Lays.  (or probably any salt and vinegar chips) 

We now return you to your regular scheduled programming.  Thank you.