Ain't Too Proud To Beg

It's that time of the month again.

*sigh*


I hate that time of the month.

I'm crabby.




My back hurts.



I'm dog tired.


And not just any dog either, but one of those fugly Chinese Crested dogs.



What was that? I should keep my female problems to myself?


What are you talking...?


Oh. Where's your mind at?


I'm not talking about that!




I'm talking about Changeover Tuesday. The special level of hell reserved for Music Department Managers. Dante's editor made him cut that part out of his little poem...thought it wouldn't be exciting enough.

Let ME tell you about it.

On the first (and sometimes the second like yesterday's was) Tuesday of every month, I have to change out every promotion and display in my department. I don't mean to brag about the size of my department, but it's pretty damn skippy.




What does changeover day consist of? A lot of bending, squatting, scurrying, lifting, toting, and peeling. Like Zumba, but without the cute music and there's less ass shaking.

Picture someone untying a helium-filled balloon, and letting it go. The balloon fartily swirls around the room in an unpredictable frenzy, before coming to a sad, limp, wrinkly, deflated demise on the ground.



That's me on changeover (except I'm way less farty). For 10 hours straight. Half an inch of cheap rubber between my feet and the concrete floor. Needy customers. No coffee breaks.

What brought this on besides my penchant for complaining?

Tracy @ Gardening Obsession asked me if I was ever "not funny".

You guys know me by now, I have to crack a joke at everything. I leap at the chance to make a witty quip.

The Humour Hamster is constantly sprinting on his little wheel in my head.

On one Tuesday of every month he gets tired of my shit, quits running, packs up his little hamster-sized suitcase and tells me he's going to stay at his mother's.




For that entire day, I'm a black hole of humour. People orbit tentatively around me, for fear of being sucked into oblivion.

For example, I could totally make some immature joke about that last sentence, but it's just not in me on changeover day.

I don't like being like this. It just doesn't feel natural. What's a girl to do?

Beg. Lots of begging.

I went over to his mother's last night, and bribed Hammy with a present. He came back to me.




"I'm sorreh babeh, I'll never do it again! Come home to Mama!"


And I'm back! The sense of humour's BACK! If you listen very closely, you can hear the squeak of the wheel...



Till next month. *sigh*


I totally shouldn't be complaining. It's storming outside (finally!), and I have two days off. I'll be able to get into my garden to weed. Or nap if I want to, which is more likely.

And I have better luck than my new garden buddy Zoe @ Pearled Earth. Murphy's Law? Murph really got her good the other day. Go read that post, she's hilarious and is one of my new favourite blogs to follow.

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

Amy @ Go Away, I'm Gardening inspired this post indirectly, through a question she asked me in a comment. My answer to her made me think of telling you a recent anecdote. Not really to do with gardening, although I'm sure I could spin it that way if I really wanted to.

As many of you know, I'm the manager of a music & DVD department.

A couple of nights ago, a older woman came in carrying a DVD. She saw me and marched (I got the feeling that 'marching' was always her mode of transport) up to me at the desk.

"I want to return this."

I looked at the bag, and said, 'Do you have the receipt?'

She handed me both items. The DVD appeared to be a documentary on pregnancy of some sort. I noticed the DVD was already opened. "Ma'am, I'm sorry, I can't return this for you. It's already been opened."

She looked at me like I had two heads. "Nowhere on the back of that DVD says it's about evolution!"

Ah. I started to get the picture. This was going to turn into one of those transactions.



So I told her I would take it back for her in this instance, in exchange for something else. Because she probably would have turned me to stone with her Medusa glare if I hadn't acquiesced.

When she marched away to look around, I decided to read the synopsis on the back of the DVD.

Yeah. She was right. The word 'evolution' didn't appear on the back. But the whole synopsis MEANT 'evolution', if you have any idea what the concept is. The DVD was all about comparing the similarities of human embryos to those of other mammals, especially chimps. I had to shake my head.

She came back a little while later, carrying a DVD about something completely different. While I wordlessly started the exchange, she looked me squarely in the face and stated, 'I don't BELIEVE in evolution.'

Was this a challenge? Was Ms. Scopes Monkey Trial trying to draw me into a rumble??



Ha! Like I was going to bite. I just smiled sweetly and said, 'Would you like your original receipt back?'

Then I danced around like an orangutan and threw my own feces at her, and she totally complained. Some people can't take a joke.





I don't generally have a problem with Creationists (There are many branches of Creationism, but the one I seem to hear the most about teaches that the Earth is only roughly 6,000-10,000 years old), except for the fact I don't agree with them ('cause they're wrong). Everyone's entitled to their own opinion as long as they're peaceful about it.

Except Kirk Cameron. He gives me Growing Pains. In my ass.



My point is, if you're going to be against something, at least be able to recognize the definition of it!



I personally do believe in evolution. I've taken too many biology, anatomy and physical anthropology classes to believe otherwise. I have absolutely no problem with the idea that I'm an evolving animal.

And in fact, I'm evolving as we speak!

I'm a Cougar-In-Training.



Rwoar.





(The post title is an album by The Low Anthem)

Pardon Me Sir, Is This YOUR Inferiority Complex?

I was cruising home from work yesterday, along the small rural highway that leads to my quaint little house in the country. Sunshine was glittering on the scenic waterway as I passed over the bridge, and I was watching all the people out sailing in their beautiful yachts...

Wait. Are you getting an image of me in a gleaming white convertible, with oversized Dolce and Gabbana sunglasses on, a scarf on my head, the ends of which are glamourously blowing in the breeze behind me?



Wrong.

In reality, I'm wearily speeding home in my wheezy Toyota, work-flattened hair plastered to my sweaty forehead. The windows are tightly closed and the air-conditioner is labouring noisily in the sweltering humidity. Oh, and every time I hit a bump it sounds like my muffler is going to fall off. The people on the yachts shake their heads in disdain as I drive by, sipping martinis to wash off some of the smog I left on their rose-coloured glasses.

I'm about 3 minutes from my house, and what do I see rounding the corner?

Basically, the equivalent of this.



I don't understand this phenomenon.

Utterly baffled.

To all lifted-truck owners:

The very first thought that leaps into my frontal lobe when I see your truck is that you must have a tiny Johnson.

That's right, Condoleeza.




Miniscule. Microscopic. Molecular.


Like, "Wait right there for a second, while I go get my magnifying glass...and make sure you keep your jeans and car keys handy."



Guys must be doing this truck-lifting thing for the benefit of other guys. That's the only explanation. Maybe the equivalent of women getting their nails done? Other chicks might notice your new French manicure, but guys won't give a hairy rat's patootie.

I don't know ANY woman whose panties spontaneously combust at the sight of a lifted truck. They don't get hot at the idea of being able stand on top of your tires and not have their head touch the top of the wheel-well. They don't swoon at the fact they have to climb a ladder just to go out for a beer run.

And don't even get me started on the redneck accoutrements that can be added! Rubber...*ahem* cojones hanging off of trailer-hitches that can be purchased in many fine Jacksonville retail centers. Double Confederate flags strapped to the tailgate. Bumper stickers screaming,



For God's sake boys, it's just flash just for the sake of being flashy!



You want flash??

I got yer flash right here!!


*BAM!*



*BAM BAM!!*



*BIFF!*


*POW!!*



Men? Put a trowel or a weed-whacker in your hand. Mow my lawn shirtless. Show off those muscles and plant a big tree for me.

That's what gets ME hot and bothered. Not a ridiculous vehicle.



Guys, if you're going to 'lift' your vehicle, you'd be better off driving this.



I'd get a laugh out of it, and wouldn't be so quick to judge the size of your...Chevette. Besides, you know what they say about guys that drive small cars!

That's right.

Small egos!

ONG's "Six Degrees of Separation" Challenge

My buddy Dirt Digger @ Obsessive Neurotic Gardener threw down the eccentric challenge gauntlet.

You remember the 'Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon', don't you? "This actor was in a movie with this actor, who was in a movie with this actor,....who was in 'Footloose' with Kevin Bacon." You get six tries, before you have to end up with Mr. Bacon. This is just like that. ONG had the very quirky idea of doing 'Six Degrees of Separation' starting with his favourite sports team and with something to do with gardening as the end result.

So I am accepting the challenge, and using his template.

As with his post, a lot of the facts I'm writing about were sourced from The Bible of Wikipedia. Because I'm smart, but not that smart. But the facts were checked from other pages as well...and they're not word for word. Put that disclaimer in your pipe and smoke it :)

1st Degree
__________

My favourite sports team? The Edmonton Oilers.



Totally sucked last year. Worst team in the league. But I love 'em...they're m'Boys!



Fun Facts:

~Became an NHL team in 1979

~Oilers won the Stanley Cup on five occasions: 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990.

~My brother Kevin was on his way to becoming an NHL player in the 80's. Unfortunately he was injured and couldn't continue his career. He was briefly on the Oilers roster in 1986, during the Gretzky era.

2nd Degree
__________

Wayne Gretzky. The Great One.



Fun Facts:

~Captain of the Edmonton Oilers, until he was (allegedly) involuntarily traded to the LA Kings in 1988. This was EXTREMELY unpopular in my city, and the owner at the time, Peter Pocklington, was infamously vilified for doing it. Gretzky was our hockey royalty. No joke. But some say he wanted to go because his new wife was from LA.

~His $1M wedding to actress Janet Jones in 1988 was televised nationally in Canada. St Joseph's Basilica, the church he was married at in Edmonton, was right across the street from my dad's apartment building. I still remember watching them come out of the church from my dad's balcony, and I was only 7 years old!

~The band Goldfinger has a song entitled "Wayne Gretzky". Hilarious. It's about a heterosexual man's love for a sports legend. Listen to it, it's less than 2 minutes long. :)


~His famous number '99' jersey was retired league-wide when he retired in....1999. No one else can ever wear that number, on any team.


3rd Degree
__________

The number 99 is the atomic number for Einsteinium on the Periodic Table of Elements.



Slightly Boring Facts:

~It is a metallic synthetic element, does not occur naturally.

~Has no known uses other than for scientific research...fun for bored scientists...

"Hey guys! I just totally made an element out of plutonium! Just for shits and giggles! Check it out!!"




4th Degree
__________

Albert Einstein.



Fun (and some slightly disturbing)Facts:

~Einstein had major speech difficulties as a kid

~Einstein cheated on his first wife (who was also a scientist) through most of their marriage, finally divorcing her and marrying his mistress. It was reported that he paid his first wife off with the money he won with the Nobel Prize, but that's disputed in some circles.

~Einstein's brain was removed without his family's permission after his death, by Dr. Thomas Stolz Harvey, so the doctor could study it. He was fired from Princeton Hospital for this.

~Einstein was really into civil rights. He was even a member of the NAACP at Princeton. Einstein called racism 'America's worst disease' in 1946.

~ U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was inspired to join the nuclear arms race very quickly because of a letter written to him by Einstein urging him that he had better get on the ball. Einstein had emigrated from Germany to the US in 1933, as a result of the trepidation he felt towards the new chancellor to Austria, Adolf Hitler.

5th Degree
__________

The movie "Young Einstein".



One of my favourite movies of all time.

Quick synopsis:

Yahoo Serious (an Australian actor known for slapstick comedy) plays an alternate universe Albert Einstein. Albert's the son of Tasmanian apple farmers. Much to his parents' chagrin, he wants to be a physicist instead of an apple farmer.

Albert accidentally comes up with E=mc2 when attempting to split a beer atom in his dad's home brew shed, thus creating foamy beer (and blowing up his dad's shed in the process). His sets off for the Australian mainland patent office to patent his equation. They won't patent it unless he has an invention, so he creates the first electromagnetic guitar and inadvertantly comes up with rock and roll.

A devious enterpreneur steals his formula to make the largest bubbled beer producing machine in the world...but accidentally creates the atomic bomb instead. He doesn't realize this, and is showing it off at a large gala for scientists in Paris. Once he gets it started, he realizes what he's done. Albert knows he must diffuse this giant atomic bomb with his electromagnetic guitar, through the scientific power of rock and roll.

Effing weird, eh? I love it!!




6th Degree
__________

Apples.



Fun Facts:

~7,500 varieties of apples are grown throughout the world.

~The science of apple growing is called pomology.

~The apple tree originated in an area between the Caspian and the Black Sea.

~Apples are a member of the rose family

~In 1730, the first apple nursery in the US was opened in Flushing, New York

~It takes about 36 apples to create one gallon of apple cider


What's my favourite thing about apples?



Magner's Irish Cider, baby.

That's my 6 degrees!!!


And if you find yourself saying...



...go ask Mr. Digger (not to be confused with Mr. Diggler, I don't know him well enough for that). He came up with the idea.

I'm Working On My Purple Belt In Zumba

Actually, I think I'm working on my purple face in Zumba.



If you don't know what Zumba is, I'll tell you (if I can catch my breath).

My friend Andie invited me to her Zumba class as her guest this morning. For my first time ever. It's a new-ish exercise craze that is a cross between Latin dancing, aerobics, kickboxing, and good old fashioned calisthenics.

Actually, it's mainly ass-shaking. Mystikal style. You shake your ass....rotate your hips in a circle...shake ya ass...do some roundhouse kicks....shake ya ass....do some pelvic thrusts...shake ya ass...

You get the picture. Of my ass.



In fact...*peers over her shoulder*...I do believe it's still jiggling. Like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

What am I on about?

Well, I really should have entitled this post, 'Things I've Been Doing Instead Of Gardening".

Look at this crap. If you can even see it. Through all the weeds.



I feel like someone has stolen my garden mojo. Or at least my will to pull weeds and make my garden pretty.



It's been so hot and rainless, and I've been trying to keep up with watering...I just don't have the energy to pull the weeds.

I know, excuses, excuses. But when there hasn't been a day below 90F/32C with humidity that makes it feel much hotter for a month straight...it wears on you.

And suddenly you find other things to do. Inside things. Air conditioned things.

Things like friggin' Zumba.

Dear God, I never want to eat a cheeseburger ever again.



But I do hope someone will find my garden mojo and return it.

Amen.

Even Though You're Wearing Those Uptown High Heels...

"...I can tell from your giant step, you been walkin' through the cotton fields..."




Why is Max smiling?

He's smiling because we're getting a whole new crop planted in our back field this year!

And because he has nothing else to smile about. He's a demised feline, for goodness sake.



Every year I wait with bated breath (not baited, that would be pretty gross) to see what crop will be planted in that field.

This year, as you might have guessed from my quote, it's cotton!


Usually it's something boring like soybean. I mean really. Who cares about a tofu-field?




One year we did get corn! I felt like I was in a Stephen King movie. More than one Stephen King movie has some sort of evil field of corn in it.



Since Chuck's had this house though (which is about 7 years now), there has never been cotton. Guess it's about time in the ol' crop rotation to plant something different. Because it seems that every farmer's field in the area (probably owned by the same people) has cotton growing in it. And it seems to be doing way better in this drought than anything else is. Which is weird, because from what I understand, it usually requires a lot of water to grow.

Why do I like cotton so much? When September rolls around, it will look like a bed of snow has fallen all over the field. Like this one would have looked like if we'd waited a little while longer to take a picture of it. This one was on the way to Greenville...Chuck's hair was just growing in after the chemo. :)



I didn't even realize where cotton came from until a few years ago. Cotton growing on a plant?? Pish tosh! And I thought a Cotton Gin was a fancy drink!



No, not really. I just never really thought about where cotton came from. Being from Canada, it's weird to see something that I use to take my nail polish off with just growing on a plant outside my backyard.

Some fun facts about cotton:

~Cotton's been grown for over 5,000 years.

~The top cotton producing nation is China.

~Pesticides are heavily used with cotton. I guess to keep out these nasty little creatures, called boll weevils.


They will eat the hell out of a cotton crop. They entered from Mexico in 1892 (insert illegal immigration joke here), and caused a whole mess of destruction because they had no natural predators to take care of them. A huge effort to eradicate them came in the late 1970's, with advent of new types of pesticides.

~The English word “cotton" comes from the Arabic word qutun or kutun.

~US paper currency is 75% cotton.


~Cotton production drove the slave trade in the US (ok, so they're not all 'fun' facts). That's one of the reasons that the South was trying to hold on to slavery...they were convinced that the Southern economy would crash without slave labour to pick, gin and bale the cotton. With the invention of Eli Whitney's cotton gin in 1793 (which was really an 'improvement' and not an 'invention', there were simple cotton gin-esque implements in India about 1,500 years ago), more cotton could be refined at a faster rate. So they needed more and more slaves to meet demand. Nasty, ugly, vicious cycle. Thank goodness humanity eventually won out over money.

~Cotton is a member of the Mallow family of plants.

~The leading cotton-producing states are Texas, California, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Arizona.

~ Development of synthetic fibers (especially polyester) hurt the cotton growing industry for awhile, with high demand from consumers starting in the 1960's.

That's right! That leisure suit you bought in 1976 was keepin' cotton down!


Incidentally, the world's first polyester factory is near here, just outside of Kinston, NC. We drive past it every time Chuck needs to go to a cancer appointment in Greenville. It was opened in 1953 by the DuPont family.

While I was taking pictures of the field this morning, a fire ant stung me right beneath my toenail. You can see the poison inching it's way down my whole foot in a red and puffy manner...it hurts like a mofo! My skin reacts strongly to minor insect stings.

I really suffer for my art.



Hm....someone needs a pedicuuuuure!


My title and song quote come from an old song that was remade by Old Crow Medicine Show that's called "Down Home Girl". I saw them live in early May...even if you're not a huge fan of this type of music, they put on a rollicking good show. And if you're not a fan of this music...you're crazy.

'Cause it's awesome.

Watch this video. Mistress Kyna commands it.

Your Mother Was A Hamster, And Your Father Smelt Of Elderberries!

I like the sky.

And I know a lot of other bloggers on here do too, with their "Skywatch" meme. Joy @ GardenJoy & Winthrop has some especially nice posts. Also Shyrlene @ The Bunnies' Buffet

I'm not disciplined enough to keep a schedule. In case you haven't guessed, I'm a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants sort of girl.

The other day, however, I saw the perfect sky picture. Was just about home, and I had to screech into the driveway, race in the house, grab the camera, and run out to the backyard to snap a photo. This seems to be the manner in which all my sky pictures are taken.



I always call this sort of sky a 'God Painting'.


I stood there in quiet, reflective awe of this scene. Meditating on the powerful beauty of the world.


Then I suddenly imagine the sound of approaching coconuts in the distance, and it all morphs and swirls together into a Monty Python animation...





...and a giant foot comes down and squashes me and my camera with a "THPPPPT!"