jeenyus jabber

A few of the pearls I have cast before the swine of my mind of late:

1. If we didn't have nosehairs, would bad smells stick around as long? Perhaps there's a fella out there who's trimmed his nostrillicles* and can weigh in on this?

2. I was at the gym recently and a staff guy I haven't seen in months was working the front desk. He said, "Hey sweetie! I haven't seen you in so long I almost forgot how almost pretty you almost are!"

I almost replied with "thanks, jerkface!" but instead gave him the look that people frequently give me -- one meant to convey disdain, insanity and superiority all in one glance.

It almost worked.

3. Fernando and I were discussing the age of one of our million-year-old secretaries lately and he guessed blithely, "oh, probably late fifties."

I said, "Nando, my mom is over sixty. This woman HAS to be in her early seventies."

Nando started to nod, and then a bomb dropped on his head. "I've met your mom! She's over sixty?" he said. "Your mama's saucy. That no-neck man** should thank his lucky stars!"

4. Ave's birthday was yesterday and she had an awesome party last night (from which I didn't return home until 3am. Incidentally, when I told a married friend that I was at a birthday party at 3am, she was very surprised. "It started at 3 am?" she asked, fascinated. "No, no, that's when I got home." "Oh," she said, relieved, "I thought this was a new thing that single people were doing. You miss so much when you have kids...") Anyway, I made Ave this cake, because I love her very much.

She showed it around the bar, and when she got to the bachelorette party in the corner, when she tipped the box for them to see, both boobs fell off. "Give her a boob job!" one of the bridesmaids shouted. So Avery ate a boob cupcake. (I don't think that's quite what they had in mind.)

5. Ok, this section just got shockingly weird as I wrote it. Many of you know of my vom-a-phobia, which is just my fear of people barfing. Well, it turns out that there's a real fear of barfing ("emetophobia") and there's a website devoted to sufferers of that fear.

They have a list of strange behaviors people with this fear engage in. I have, in my life, demonstrated more than a few of them. (Oddly enough, I'm not afraid of my own barf, just other people's barf.) Some of these include:

• avoiding ANY KIND of eating/drinking contest, even if you're just watching them
• becoming very nervous whenever someone has a coughing fit...
• Closing my eyes and covering my ears during movies with scences where someone is ill.
• When I brave a public restroom, I check the stalls to see if they are empty. I also check to see which direction the feet are pointed in. Towards the toilet, see you later, I am out of there.
• Doing anything to avoid places where someone may be sick or faint

And then there are the others, which even I can't understand:

• When out at restraunts you order your food and take one bite but can't finish because you might get sick and then you go to the bathroom and calm yourself because if you do throw up you are already there.
• Airing out out apartment everyday rain, snow, sleet or hail. Even if it is 20 below I have all the windows open to kill the germs that may make one sick.
• NEVER drying my hands or wiping wet utensils etc on a TEA TOWEL, but using kitchen towel instead. TEA TOWELs are full of germs.
• Never smiling before I go to sleep.
• Memorizing the exact date that I've vomited and then considering the number of that day to be bad luck.

It's nice to know I'm crazy, but not as far off the deep end as I thought I was.

This section simply started off with a funny photo sent to me by earl.

It got weird when I googled "vomiting phobia."

*not actually a word. but it's what you'd get if you crossed nostrils and follicles.

** there's a running joke in my family that my father has no neck. this is born from the fact that he takes a shocking number of pictures in which it looks like it's actually true. it's an odd phenomenon, and one that I desperately hope isn't genetic.