The Lisa Life

Excuses

I have been hating the state of my house for some time now because let's face it, Martin and I are slobs.  He is a slob because his mother is British and you know, British women have to have the house immaculate at all times.  You just never know when the Queen will be dropping by for tea.  Also, his mom used to clean houses for money and damn, she was good and made a bundle.  Me, I'm a slob these  days because I used to be a bit OCD about it (got that from my mom, who used to clean with the cleaning lady she paid and then they would sit and drink coffee and gossip.)  And my ex-husband, well, he was just never around much so it wasn't hard to keep my house clean.  I also realized there are things more important that having a super clean house.  Like sanity and a good night's sleep and mindless reading of the Star Magazine.  (LINDSEY!  STEP AWAY FROM THE COCAINE AND GO GET A QUIZNO'S, OKAY HONEY?)

Give me a choice of a good book (or even a boring one) and a mop and that mop is going straight back in the linen closet.

I decided to get serious and really do the Fly Lady cleaning and get myself organized once and for all.  So I bought about $100 worth of cleaning products (yes Martin, almost $100 but that included your beer so back down Mr. I Need A New Glass For Every Glass Of Juice I Drink.)

I am in the midst of cleaning right now while I type.  Really.  You see, we have a well.  I have rusty water and I bought Super Iron Out, the only thing on earth that gets the rust out of your sink, tub and toilet and it's like nuclear waste or something.  If I don't want to asphyxiate myself, I need to stay out of the bathroom for about ten minutes.

So here I am.  It's been a lot longer than ten minutes, hasn't it, because I've had half a glass of wine and two cigarettes with my wooden kitchen matches.

Pissy

I'm a bit pissy today.  I had very little sleep on Sunday night, about two hours, and last night I think I was so overtired, I couldn't relax enough to get to sleep because I was so busy worrying about how tired I was, how much I was going to hate dragging my ass out of bed and through another stifling hot day. 

I also kept obsessing about putting gas in my car since it was going to be an Ozone Action Day and what if I was the reason the ozone just finally blew up after all?

Note to self:  Get more magic blue pills.

I have also managed to lose my lighter, which really annoys me.  Of course we have no extras in the house or stashed under a car seat or anything.  I am reduced either schlepping over to Martin every time I want a light, which I'm just far too lazy to do, or using these stupid wooden kitchen matches I had crammed in the drawer.

The wooden kitchen matches are left over from the olden days, when I used to actually light my candles and not just display them as art since toddlers love open flames.  The box has a warning on it:  Caution: Close Box Before Striking Match.  Well, yeah, ya think?  My luck, I would set the entire box of them and myself on fire.

The matches are also about 3 inches long so I have enough kindling in the ashtray to burn down a small village.

My house must be cleaned by the week-end. 

I must find my recipe for Gorgonzola dressing so I can make a salad for the thing we're going to over the Fourth.  I'm trying to slip in another party on Monday in Royal Oak, but I don't know if that will fly.  My yard is sadly neglected, it's just been too damn hot and the week-end is supposed to be milder.

Happy images of cosmos are dancing through my head for the week-end.

Balloon Fest 2005 Part II

Mia was absolutely thrilled about the balloons and even learned a new word: fly.

This picture is courtesy of Ann Arbor Lisa since my stupid camera decided to stop taking pictures without telling me.

Stone Cold Guilty

Stone Cold Guilty, The People v. Scott Lee Peterson, by Loretta Dillon.

I followed the Peterson case from the time Laci Peterson went missing on Christmas Eve through the trial to the death sentence her husband Scott received.  Nowhere else on the Internet or on the cable stations did I find such intelligent discussion and accurate reporting of the case as I found at www.misfitting.com, the blog the author, Loretta, writes. 

Stone Cold Guilty is a fast paced read that details all the events of the case.  Especially fascinating is the chapter dealing with the sonar scans for Laci's body.  Although it was never really used in court, that evidence alone is damning to the notion of Peterson's innocence. 

The book is thoroughly researched, erudite and not heavy handed as some true crime tomes tend to be. 

If you've been a Peterson crime buff from day one or if you never heard much of anything about the case, Stone Cold Guilty is the definitive work that any Peterson groupie or apologist will find difficult to dispute. 

I read it entirely in about 2 days.  Although I have been known to eat small paperbacks for lunch, this was very much a page turner and a no holds barred, straightforward synopsis of the case.

I give it two thumbs up.

Balloon Fest 2005

This week-end was the 21st annual Michigan Challenge Balloon Fest.  I love the Balloon Fest.  I was very disappointed last year because the balloons didn't go up, it was too windy.

We sure didn't have that problem today.  It was incredibly hot today without a hint of a breeze. 

I have to apologize that I don't have any pictures of all the balloons in the air, which is a beautiful sight.  I thought I was taking pictures, but my ancient digital camera, well, it chuckled weakly in the heat and stopped taking pictures without telling me.

Lisa met us at the car park and went with us.   It was nice to see Lisa again and I hope she got some better pictures than I did.   And what do you know, she did.  Check out her Flickr account. 

Scared

I sent out a resume today for a job I am more than qualified for.  The ad was looking for an office manager for a local (smaller) fairly new in town  car dealership just over the county line.

I could so do this in my sleep and have still have fun with it and enjoy it and make more money.

I'm nervous.  I checked my voice mail on my cell phone at least six times today.  I only sent my resume over this morning and I was hoping some nameless someone (who will be my future co-worker) would pull it off the fax machine and while dancing through the showroom at the dealership, clicking their heels together like some deranged Munchkin while singing, "This is our new employee!  SHE is IT!"  would then call me and leave me voice mails and send me  emails until I finally succumbed and said, "All right, I'll come for an interview in my shorts and boots, just don't judge me on my outfit okay?  Because I know I am going to love you, too."

The job market here is terrible.  We have the second highest rate of unemployment in the country, second only to Washington, D.C. 

Do you think I would look really bad if I called them tomorrow and asked if I can schedule an interview or should I be a bit more coy and give them another day?

I am seriously geeked about this job, I think I could be great at it.  (NOTE:  All this speculation is based upon a five line help wanted ad in the local paper.  I am insane, I know this.  I just function at a very high level.)

Also, I am going to have to scrape to come up with an appropriate interview outfit.  It's been a long time.  I've done a lot of purging of clothes, especially when I went into my, "I will never have to wear a fucking pantsuit or skirt or nice slacks again"  jump about squeal with glee mode and donated a lot of my former "work" clothes.

I'm way over that, by the way.  I am sick of wearing work boots and jeans.  Once in a while, I'd like to look like I am going to work, rather than going to wash my truck in inclement weather.

I'm scared because I know, I am going to call these people and if necessary, grovel.

Killer

When Martin mowed the lawn today, he ran over a nest of bunnies.  Only one escaped intact (the mother bunny was nowhere to be seen).  The surviving bunny was so scared and so freaked out, I just held it close to my heart and then let it snuggle near my feet, which it very much liked. 

Martin is a bunny killer.  Even if by accident. 

We have the survivor installed in the former fish tank, filled with grass with a dish of water.  Poor little creature.  So scared.  I was able to calm it down enough so that it wasn't trembling.  It actually seems quite  content now.

Yes, my husband is a heartless bunny killer. 

Go Fug Myself

Click on picture to enlarge it.

Lisa Lisa Lisa. (Where is the Cult Jam, anyways? ) You are almost 39 years old.  What the hell are you thinking?  You have on your Paris Hilton/Gretchen Wilson jeans.  You have on a velvet tank top and did we meniton?  STEP AWAY FROM THE TANNING BED!  And what is up with that lipstick?  Did some bag lady once tell you that color looked good on you? 

We're not even going to talk about the sad shoes and the two year old summer bag from the Liz Claiborne outlet.

Lisa, go fug yourself.

Gourmet Gardens

Martin and Sam and I went out to dinner tonight at Gourmet Gardens in Brighton.  Miss Mia is spending the night at Gran's and Grandpa's so we threw all caution to the wind and had an adult evening.  We sat in the smoking section and smoked and Sam and I shared a Scorpion drink.

We also had some great food.  Martin had the orange beef, which I sampled.

I had the Honeymooner's dinner special, shrimp in chili sacue and pork in black bean sauce.  It was spicy and filled with different textures and it was wonderful.

Sam had the beef and broccoli and I had some bites of it and it was wonderful, as well.

Martin really enjoyed the saki.  Personally, I hate saki.  It smells like dead sweat socks to me. 

That scorpion was so good.  And so was the food.  Oh my. 

Miss Mia

True confessions of a dark and dangerous mind.  My daughter is so darn cute, I'm going to enter her in the Howell Melon Fest Prince and Princess contest.  This is not a beauty pageant per se, which Hello, I'm not Patsy Ramsey, but it's a contest that raises money for children's charities.  And Mia is cute enough and personable enough and she would so love to ride in a convertible in the parade and wave to her serfs. And wouldn't this just prove how goddamn diverse and tolerant Howell really is?  I'm not sure she'd be too hip to wearing the crown, though, since she runs shrieking whenever I try to get her to wear her tiara. YES, I BOUGHT MY DAUGHTER A TIARA AT CLAIRE'S, OKAY?

Yeah, I know the storm door is swinging in the breeze and there is a bag of trash on the porch that I was taking out to the dumpster when I snapped this picture, shut up, ok?  We all have trash, and someone has to take it out and that would be me.  I was more concerned with getting a good shot of Mia to send in  for the Melon contest (this is not going to be it) but she's cute and she has a rose and look at that tummy.  See what too many goldfish do to you?