Heeelp!

Guess what! My little granddaughter is coming for Thanksgiving! She'll be here for almost a week, and I'm so excited.

However. It's been 25 years since I've had a two year old in the house, and I need to prepare.

Safety-wise, I remember how to childproof. But what about everything else? One thing I haven't forgotten is that BABIES NEED TONS OF CRAP.

Her mom will bring a car seat and a couple of her favorite books and her Grinch doll. I'll buy some more books/puzzles/toys, a booster seat, and toddler dishes/silverware/sippy cups.

Beyond that, I'm flailing.

Parents/grandparents, please help. What do you feel are essentials?

Aw!

My old friend Jann gave li'l Elise a new hairdo as a surprise. What a thoughtful thing to do!

The pain, the pain without quarter!

I keep seeing more and more of these text block tattoos, and I have to tell you, I find them utterly mortifying.

Not because I dislike tattoos. I don't. I like them. I actually have one.

But these things--I can't decide whether they make me want to laugh or cry. I mean, I realize there are plenty of regrettable flash-art images one can have permanently applied. But a rose, a heart, a thorny anklet--they're all relatively innocuous. There's something so affected, so pretentious, so laughably supercilious about a teenager INSISTING THAT PEOPLE READ HER.

Seriously. A 17 year old stumbles across some ridiculous bunch of Jonathon Livingston Seagull-style drivel, thinks it is the most profound (sob!) thing (sob!) she's ever (sob!) seen (sob!), and instead of adding it (scribbling) to her Facebook (it) profile or making (all) it into her (over) desktop wallpaper (her) or even a giant mural (Trapper) on her bedroom (Keeper) wall, ferfucksake, she HAS IT PERMANENTLY INCISED INTO HER FLESH.

Do you remember what you considered deep and profound when you were 17? I do. And I am so fucking grateful I'm not going to have to shell out thousands of dollars to have 158 little grey smudges* that used to be the lyrics to Led Zeppelin's No Quarter LASERed off my rib cage.

* Has no one explained to these kids that tattoos bleed/degrade over time?

I feel like I'm missing a hand

I'm itching to change the hairstyle on my animated Minime, but I bought a new computer a couple of weeks ago, and I no longer have Photoshop! (When I bought the new machine, I fiiinally made the leap to Leopard, and my old Adobe apps won't run.)

It'll be a couple of months before I can afford to shell out for Creative Suite, so until then, li'l Elise will just be stuck with her large Texas hair.

Psycho bitches, qu'est-ce que?

I hate this song.

For so many reasons, and on so many levels, but primarily because it wouldn't matter how badly I'd misbehaved, if anyone ever trashed my car, I'd make sure they spent at least one night in the hoosgow. Seriously. 

You know what you do to a partner who screws around? You leave him/her. And you find yourself a much better one, and you enjoy the hell out of your new relationship. The cliche really is true: Living Well Is The Best Revenge.

I've only pulled the Psycho Ex routine once in my life. My first husband got physical with me when I was seven months pregnant with our son--I beat him so hard he bled from his eyeballs, and then I packed a bag and booked a flight back to Texas. Before I left for the airport, I put a gash about an eighth of an inch deep down the side of his cream-colored 1963 Split-Window Corvette Coupe. From headlight to taillight. In some places, it went all the way through the metal*.

It's been almost 30 years, and I still feel shitty about it. I always will.

The gouge, of course. Not the beating**.

You never go wrong being the bigger person. And I don't know that you agree, but in my opinion, revenge is never actually all that sweet.

* I ran it down the metal-wrapped corner edge of a pumpkin cart in the parking lot of the Star Market. Oh, if you'd seen the horror on people's faces.

** As far as I'm concerned, if you hit someone, you'd better be prepared to get hit back. And if you hit a woman, you should probably expect some sort of leveler. Like, say, a ring full of keys wrapped around a fist.