THIS IS WHAT I WROTE THURSDAY.

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE SATURDAY:
Ok ok, I'm updating. It's only 11:10 so it still counts for Saturday.

THIS IS WHAT I WROTE MONDAY:
That's what I wrote for Saturday. MAN I'm a loser. Clearly the problem is just that I need to start at the BEGINNING of the month and not in the middle of it. Clearly.

Ok, now I'm really going to update.

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THIS IS WHAT I WROTE ON WEDNESDAY:

I put the Onion widget on my google desktop because, well, I love the Onion, and ever since I did this I keep thinking the headlines it posts are real. This results in quite a few of these: "Hey baby, President Bush just took a wild tumble down the steps of the Washington Monument! Did you know?!" and "oh my gosh, a blistex employee made a fool of himself at a lip balm conference!" and "Jesus! Bush just got his arm bit off by a crocodile!" and other ridiculous outbursts that have nothing to do with real news.

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Today I will really update. I really will. My latest exploits include searching for vacations in Sun Valley Idaho for the family and blowing the lint out of my keyboard with the magic dust remover. That stuff is amazing! PS: why does the can get cold when you use it? Anyone?

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Occasionally my phone does this thing at the office where it will randomly turn the ringer back on at it's loudest possible setting. Let me tell you, when I'm expecting my phone to merely buzz harmlessly and instead a blaring rendition of my alma mater's fight song, Al Green (C's ring) Hall and Oates (Sammy's Ring) or Don't Stop Believing (Gibble's Ring) comes out of my phone unexpectedly....lets just say I've knocked a couple elbows and knees around jumping out of my seat when it happens.

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BEST OF YAHOO ANSWERS V. 3

I feel upset, so will you sing a Nickelback song to me please?

What is the best website to date teen girls in Oman ?

What will the plot of the next cat porn, starring Adam and Sophie, be?

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Anyway, I leave you with this:

NaBloPoMo

Yesterday I joined NaBloPoMo as extra incentive to update EVERY DAY. Get excited!

I'm not going to put up the November NaBloPoMo badge becauuuuse November is half over and I definitely haven't posted every day.

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In other news, November is half over!! How?!

Tomorrow it is supposed to snow in Saint Louis. GREAT. I used to really think snow was awesome, because it only happened once every ten years in South Carolina. Well, the reason for that is because snow is only awesome IF it happens once every ten years. You need at least ten years between snows to forget how much they suck. I mean, don't get me wrong, snow is pretty. If you happen to be in the country, in a quiet field surrounded by sleeping trees and with grey-blue sky stretching as far as the eye can see. If you have a snug coat and cute hat on, even better. Snowflakes will fall on your nose and eyelashes and everything and everything will shimmer with joy. Yeah.

Unfortunately when it snows on Indiana Avenue, immediately it turns grey and fills up with dirt and soot and crack needles. Oliver goes out into the yard and refuses to go further than two inches away from the porch so the snow in our yard is spotted with dog poop and pee. I consistently Soooo, not that great. Nothing magical about that.

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Speaking of Oliver, this morning when I woke up I found a present that he left me IN MY SHOWER. When he was a puppy, I understood this sort of behavior a lot better. I said to myself, why wouldn't the equivalent of a two year old child come and poop in my house? As he got older, I said "sure, the equivalent of a 15 year old person SHOULDNT be pooping in the shower, but this is oliver so maybe that fifteen year old is delayed a couple years"...if you know what I mean.

Now he is equivalent to a thirty year old human and i truly, TRULY cannot think of a good reason why a 30 year old man would drop a deuce in my shower. He's getting gray on his muzzle now, so he's got to be old enough to know that pooping in the shower is bad. I'm sure theres a wise adage about this somewhere (as you all know, my grandfather was a sailor so I know ALL ABOUT adages):

"Gray on your muzzle, don't poop in the shower."

....

I love him, but sometimes I think back on the day I picked him out. There were literally HUNDREDS of dogs there (it was a puppy farm, mistake no. 1) and I picked the dumbest one. Sure he was pretty and expensive, but he was dumb from the start. That's very classic kate behavior, by the way. Sort of like my $350 leather boots. Pretty, expensive, and a very dumb idea from the start. Of course I still love them (a lot, much like Oliver, I will cry when they bite the dust). My boots don't poop in the shower though. Not to my knowledge, anyway.

In other animal news, C just informed me that Ethan got locked in a room and was screaming bloody murder. IF there's any living thing in the house dumber than Oliver, its quite possibly Ethan. Here is a picture of him, telling me how he really feels:

Ethan is also a pooper. So is Dinah Lou, since Ethan moved in. Between the cats and Oliver, its often like the book of revelations come to life in this house.

ALSO, look how THIN I was! I guess that's what livin' off of cigarettes and adderall will do for you.




Anyway, its my lunch break now so I'm going ot watch the office.

*Insert Olympic Theme Music Here*

In case any of you hadn't already heard, C and I competed in and won the Saint Louis Beer
Olympics on Sunday. Well, C competed, I spectate-d. For those of wondering how on earth a Beer Olympics team with me on it could win, that should clear things up. I'm not really in a writing mood, so pictures will have to suffice

C holds the Beer Olympics trophy aloft, filled with Beer on Sunday.












The team drinks out of the dismantled trophy.



\






(GRIPE: blogger will NOT let me delete the following sentence without deleting the picture, so it willl have to stay:
ng mood at the moment, so some pictures should suffice)
This is me drinking out of the glory cup while simultaneously drinking a beer. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too?










C drinks out of the cup. Lookin' a little red in the face there, buddy.













Anyway, thats about it. Other than that my life is steady and happy, as usual. Go figure, makes for boring blogs.

Happy Halloween.

Tomorrow is Halloween and I just don't have the desire energy to find a costume. Also, if I remember correctly from my college days (side note: I find myself waxing nostalgic about my college days more and more, and usually I make a policy not to be nostalgic about anything unless it was at LEAST five years ago, but anyway...) Halloween if you are over the age of eight is mostly about conceiving a costume idea that is mundane and adding the word "Sexy" to it and going out to get drunk and possibly hook up. Since getting drunk is expensive and I don't need to put on a cat suit to hook up, what's the point? Maybe I just need to be shocked out of my boring-ness.

If you didn't ever indulge in this sort of ridiculousness in college (Hi, Mom and Dad!) let me tell you how many Sexy Nurses and Sexy English Teachers and Sexy Trash Ladies there are out and about on any given October 31st. The best, in my opinion, are the Sexy Animals (I myself have given into the Sexy Cat Phenomenon and once attempted the rare and difficult Sexy Peacock.*)

This year our roommate attempted to make plans with us to get dressed up and go out on the town. She's going as an (sexy) Stingray to her friend's (sexy) Crocodile Hunter. I assume these costumes will be "sexy", because she is not the kind of person who would dress herself in the actual image of a stingray, triangular fins and weird prehistoric feeding hole and all. Actually, come to think of it, I have no idea how one goes about dressing up as a stingray without employing a large amount of felt and/or construction paper and/or poster board. C and I entertained ideas of going out as Borat (because C does a mean Borat imitation) and a Gypsy (bonus! Gypsy is the cute (only to us, I presume) nickname that C has given me) and then someone suggested I go as Sarah Palin because I wear glasses and have bangs and can pull off a French twist and a blazer. Then I suggested in an Ultimate Moment of Laziness (UML) that I ressurect my Sexy Flight Attendant costume and C pull out his Sexy Airline Pilot...uniform. Hey, no one has to know he's not in costume haha! But then if he's going to do that, I might as well be a Sexy Graphic Designer for a Major Law Firm and if thats the case we should definitely stay home.

Although the above suggestions were met with minor bursts of enthusiasm, it was nothing earth shattering enough to rouse us from the couch to go plan said costumes. Thus, I assume we are Not Going Out for Halloween.

I'd like to say we would prefer to stay home and pass out candy to the eager young trick or treaters on my street, but there are no eager young anythings on our street. Sure there are young children, but I doubt their...ahem, caretakers...will be putting together a candy getting expedition for their progeny any time soon. So staying home will only result in eating all of the candy I buy myself and actively becoming LESS sexy. While I don't relish the idea of dressing up as Sexy Kate, I strongly reject the notion of becoming Fat and UnSexy Kate. So thats out.

I suspect what will end up happening is that we stay at home and turn off the porch light. Like that deterred me from coming to someone's house to get candy when I was little.

* But ended up as a Sexy Flight Attendant.

A Warm Sound

Carolina is curved
like the wing of a bird.

Our feathers intertwine;
a basket of flight,
the nest crumpling
and still my heartbeat
next to hers,
the steady mother thump
asserts that we once
fit together like two shells
before I was sent away
proclaiming the whirl of salt
on my lips,
my daughter stain,
one less babies ear on her shores.

Here are the ghosts
of everything sliding up across
the ocean swatch:
tell them I know
the warm sound of home
that assumes the shape of a birds wing,
the taste of warm fruit,
the sea trapped in a shell,
the road that disappears
to the west.

The return of the cold is dredging up memories of the last time the weather swung from hot to cold in Saint Louis, and I was here to see it. This place has started to seem more real now that I can recall four seasons living in it, that I can share my own memories of the strange flux from hot to cold in the midwest. Here is one:

Last October I was still reeling from my move, still lying in bed each morning and looking at a strangers walls. I thought then that it was, perhaps, a little histrionic to say that I was grieving, but in hindsight this is probably the truth. The process of leaving my childhood home was the same familiar sadness of losing a lover or a friend. I remember the heaviness of my body getting in and out of bed, the inconvenient gesture of getting dressed and looking presentable. The unimaginable task of befriending people and forging a life comparable to my old one.

I remember one freezing morning, driving to church choir and praying, literally speaking the words out loud in my cold car (since the window was bashed out and I was unemployed and unable to fix it, my breathing crystallized in the air despite the heater), that someone would ask me about my day. I think secretly, though I did not add this to my prayer, I wanted someone to notice my grief. To accept that I was nearly consumed with feeling like a misfit, everything from not owning any acceptably warm clothing to not being able to call someone up for lunch or coffee, and all the nuances of acceptance that lie in between. I had C, and thank god for him, but while C is good for many things (among them: coaxing me through that difficult winter), running to target to peruse the women's clothing (among other things that I yearned for) was not one of them.

Each morning at church, the members of our choir "passed the peace", and usually the passed it right over my head, stopping only cursorily to shake my hand or smile thinly in my direction. Truly, I can't blame anyone for it. I myself would also likely not offer a hug or a warm(er) handshake to the aloof, slightly sad looking girl in the back row. As such (and this is where the histrionics reared their ugly head, both now and then) , the "peace" offered me little actual peace. So much so that I can recall mentioning several times to C and my mother how I wished weekly to disappear during this perfunctory moment of togetherness .

That October morning when the peace came and I reached out my hand for its obligatory shake, I got instead a warm hug, probably the warmest most important hug of that year. Now, we're not talking a bear hug. I'm not even sure it could be labeled as anything more than a "It's great to know you, peace be with you" hug. I'm sure this person went on that day and didn't think anything more about it. But it rallied my courage. I did not miss sweet tea or the ocean or any other South Carolina cliche in that moment.

I have never told this person what that meant to me, lest I sound crazy or desperate. I promise I'm not. But, on the off chance that she reads this, I hope she knows what that meant to me.

Tally-HO.

Today is slow at work. I think deep down in my subconscious I knew it would be when I woke up. Cause pretty much the worst idea I could think of was putting on heels and nice clothes, so now here I am at work, SERIOUSLY pushing the issue of the "business casual" workplace. Are topsiders business casual? Maybe if you're someones dad, and you work in a yacht store. I'm also wearing a zip up hoodie, which is perhaps better suited to picking apples or raking leaves than it is for my conservatively dressed office. It's got toggle buttons too. I stole it from Callie who is unfortunately in France and can't defend herself from wardrobe theft. Hey, that's what happens when you leave your cute navy hoodie with toggle buttons at home instead of taking it with you to France.

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Today I thought very briefly about starting a blog about a made up life. "Wouldn't that be fun!" I asked myself, and the answer I eventually came up with was, "No, you cannot even make a blog about your own life interesting." So I abandoned this idea. But I was talking at length with a dear friend of mine who has an extremely cute and precocious baby, and it seems like she has a lot more that she could blog about that would make for cute/funny/interesting/relevant entries. In my made up life I would probably have the following attributes, which I have noticed make for great blogging from my extensive and unscientific survey of the blogging community:

• an extremely smart and sassy child
• a waaay more interesting job
• a hybrid SUV
• a polygamous relationship
• lots of money

Well, thats all I can come up with right now, so maybe I'm really NOT ready to start a blog devoted to my imaginary life. It would be very short.

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Speaking of polyamory (as one tends to do), It's come to my attention that an acquaintance from college who was...ahem...predisposed to such a lifestyle has recently given birth to a baby girl. This got me thinking about what I would do if my mother was polyamorous (SIDE NOTE: I'm assuming amorous is spelled like glamorous. Naturally) like the women in the aforementioned forum. I just hope this girl hasn't named her child Loki Xaiel Sunshine Zeus, joined a commune and started exempting gluten from her diet.

This is how I previously envisioned people who co-breastfeed their children. Now I know better after a great deal of research, and it's possible that the people next door, right on sleepy ole' Indiana Avenue. Their children might be the very same that are selling homemade apple pie on the corner and catching fireflies in the twilight. I'm kidding of course. The kids next door are probably selling crack and catching diseases in the alleyway. And not just at twilight. They're also probably a member of a polyamourous family though, but not in the hippie, free-love, slightly mysterious way. If you know what I mean.

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I had an eventful weekend, thanks for asking. On Friday in the middle of my workday, my grandfather had a (now dubbed) minor heart attack, which left me a blubbering mess at work until five when my work ethic fear of getting fired finally released me to go home with no repercussions. Then we realized he was ok but there was NO WAY I wasn't going to go see him. You just never know with these things, right? Life is too short.

I did acquiesce and allow C to play in his long awaited baseball games on Saturday. That's right, I said baseball gameS. Baseball games which took like eight hours. I mean, I like baseball as much as the next girl, and I especially like it if C is playing and lookin' all cute in his uniform that he designed, and lovingly cradling his new baseball bat (which he polished at least three times pre-game to 'remove ball marks') at the plate. It really is cute. I put up with it for eight hours (with a three hour lunch break) but only because I love him a lot. I even put up with the annoying brats at the baseball diamond that absolutely will not leave Oliver alone. SAMPLE SCRIPT OF ANNOYING BRATS:

Kid1: Hes so cute!
Kid 2: He has a long nose...
Kid 1: ...but his tail is so little!!
Kid 2: Why does he have little feet?
Kid 1: Why can't I walk him?
Kid2: Sit Oliver! Sit!
Kid1: Do you love him?
Kid2: Why is his mouth so big?

....And so on and so fourth until I want to be all "I don't know, why is YOUR mouth so damn big?!" Oliver is a pretty good sport for the most part, but secretly I know he wants to bite their faces off.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, my weekend. We eventually got to my parents house, Grandfather was released from the hospital "As right as rain". And then I bought a car. No biggie. It only took looking at about 15 bazillion different cars before I got sick of looking and just got something already found a beauty. Ok seriously, it is a really nice car, and its the best one I found for my extremely limited budget. And yes, it is an SUV. But it's a SMALL SUV, and I only drive one mile to work anyone. Ok, its more like three miles. Even so I probably should be trying to reduce my carbon footprint and not drive at all to work, but when I wake up in the morning the absolute last thing I want to do is walk three miles in business casual. We're talking dead last, like:

THINGS I WANT TO DO WHEN I WAKE UP:
1. go back to bed and/or
1.a: win a million bucks
2. snuggle with C
3. win a million bucks (addendum, see 1.a)
4. eat
5. shower
6. take the dog out
7. Actually wake up.
8. walk three miles.

See? Dead last. Plus I pay 60 bucks every damn month for parking and damned if I'm not going to damn near abuse that privilege. Why yes, we do park free for every single Cardinals game.

Anyway, the car. The car!! The dealer says it's a "light bamboo", the website says "light tundra" and mazda says "light cypress". Draw your own conclusions:












Heres a sunroof so I can soak up as much sunshine as possible since I spend most of all day locked away.











This is the big picture.











Yep, it's got buttons too. Thanks for this picture, car dealer.











A close up of the paint job so everyone can make an informed decision about the true color.










The dash board. In "deep slate".









Cup holders and such, but check out those mental hospital/nursing home grade rubber mats. Hoseable!











The storage area. Obviously I need maximum area for clutter. KIDDING! Maybe.

Additionally, check out the website for the dealership where we got it.

The Car

Make sure your sound is turned up for the porn quality music that goes with it.

"Hey baby, you wanna come over to my place, check out my 1997 lexus? Do the numbers? Yeah, you know what I mean. "

The only thing left to do is name her. I'm pretty sure it's a her. Boy cars arent "tundra", "cypress", or "bamboo".

Sassy.

This week, upon coming out of my house to check the mail on a particular beautiful, crisp and cool fall day, I discovered the following on my front stoop:
Except it was half eaten, sitting there looking bloated, pale and sad on my doorstep. At first this was alarming, because, as my most paranoid roommate informs me, there has been a rash of "people hanging out on other people's doorsteps" in our neighborhood and obviously we'd been hit.

But then I got to thinking. What do we have to fear from the mysterious lover of spicy prepackaged pickles? I won't lie, our doorstep is inviting, probably there is no more perfect place to enjoy a giant dick sized "sassy" pickle. And I mean that...on so many different levels.

I do wonder what interrupted him mid-pickle revelry and caused him to cast aside such a friendly pickle, with her sassy flower peddler hat and pink Carmen Miranda shoes. ON MY FRONT STOOP.

Seriously, the ultra-ghetto sack of douche that caused me to have to endure the stench of spicy pickle on my doorstep in the midst of the most glorious fall day of the year better not come to my door asking to shovel my snow or clean my car anytime soon. "Ding Dong! Do you need your sidewalk shoveled for $25?" "Did you eat a pickle on my doorstep this past September? Yes? Then no, I don't."

fallfallfallfallfallfallyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayFALL!

Can it be fall now? Please please please please please PLEEEEEEEEEEEASE? Today the weather is some kind of otherworldly level of gorgeous, even though its the middle of August. It's clear blue and breezy enough to feel like fall is just around the corner, even though my mind says that this is clearly some sort of matrix-like illusion and it's really 178 degrees outside. Things SHOULD be bursting into flames and turning into piles of ash on the streets and instead i feel like i should be bundling up and doing something fall-y...liiiiike carving a pumpkin or hiking or something.

SPEAKING OF FALL:
If I could instantly be transported to anywhere on earth (*edited for accuracy), here is the list of where I would go.
1. The Vatican Vaults (unfortunately, there are no pictures of said vaults so I used my graphic design powers to imagine what it might look like)












2. Outer Space: (provided I was outfitted properly)










3. Rural Great Britain:












4. Big Sky Country:








5. Annnnnnnnnnd this lodge, in Branson MO:










You don't know how much I need to be sitting on those porches and drinking some hot cocoa frolicking in the leaves. You just don't know.