OK, kids, time for housecleaning, which means I clean out the lint-trap of my brain and ramble a bit more randomly rather than my usual obsessively on-topic m.o.

I will be beset by the Kalifornia relative ass-wads in exactly one month, which means that I'll be having my pyramid at the same time. Oh, joy. Asshole west-coast liberals, constant in-law social obligations with no me-time, period and its concomitant mud-butt(thank you, Dave Chapelle): JOY!

I have begun spring gardening to get the flowerbeds all gussied up in anticipation of lots of company in April. Spent a grueling day gardening yesterday - but a labor of love, it is. Got some new lavender, and loads of African daisies, ultra-vivid ultra-blue lobelia(favorite!), some heart-breakingly intense dahlias, and sundry other little deadlies for the garden. I also got a wonderful array of shade-lovers for the front-entry garden area. That should be fun. I would be out planting again today, but I need to give the aching body a rest, and I'll hit it again on my off day tomorrow. I noticed today that my big pot of cactus has the tell-tale signs of buds. Here to refresh your memory are blossoms from last spring. Looking forward to more of same. Got this in Yuma, Arizona 2 years ago February, and the cactus and pot weighed about 60 pounds at that time. Now it's probably double that. I'll try to get a current photo soon. What's odd, is the arms of the cactus now are all kind of hunkered together, but when it was blooming, they all spread out and reached in different directions. Maybe it's a winter/spring thing.

I went and grabbed some Popeye's fried chicken for lunch, which I don't do very often because it's difficult to eat fried chicken with my braces, these days. A word on phlegmmy's fried chicken pedagogy: spicy or mild, an important part of your fried chicken experience is proper application of the jalapeno. (We recommend dark meat, btw, and opine that chickens should be available in all-dark only, but we'll take this up with the responsible party at a later date. ) Nibble off the tip of your pickled jalapeno, and dribble its juice over the crust of your fried chicken. Hawtdamn, but that's good. Doglet and I sat at the table poolside and she got the little crummy bits and the occasional hunk of chicken, and lots of the biscuit. Now, storebought fried is different from home-fried - home-fried is too good to sully with garnishes of any kind, and must be eaten with the fingers. (big propers to God, for making me Southern, btw)

One more thing about fried chicken - if you are single and want to hook up permanently with a romantic partner, perfect the art of frying chicken and you will have them lined up at the door. But be careful who you share your goodies with - make sure someone is worthy of your fried chicken before you force them to fall in love with your recipe- for such a conquest is not easily divested once won. Any person worth having will fall in love with you based solely on your mad chicken-frying skills, and you can take that to the bank.

My sister is going to dip her toe in the pool of roller-derby soon, and I'll go along for moral support. Husband asked me if I was going to do that too. Seriously. He seriously asked me that. Now, I'm ENOUGH of a ball-buster to do roller derby, but I don't like looking that mussed in public, and trust me, with 12+ years of hausfrau rage, I would get seriously ugly on they ass. Sis can represent the whole clan ably, I believe, because she's a hot sexy gal, and is so mean she makes me look like a little lamb, heh heh. Look out, roller-bitches!

OK, not the best photos, but you get the idea. This is my first quilt, which I finished piecing last year, and the top measures 71"x53". I'm going to do the quilting by hand after my next jewelry show in April. Yeah, not fancy or difficult, and in places even quite sloppy, but I loved the colors of reds, pinks, orange and yellows together, and you know how much I love making things. I plan to do more quilts in future, but I want to make more free-form art-quilt designs. The Dallas quilt show is in 2 weeks at the Market Hall on Stemmons. That should be fun, if you like that sort of thing. It's always amazing to see the elaborate art quilts, and all the handwork. It's a gorgeous tradition.

Exactly two years ago husband and I drove my sister and her chillins out to see our beloved Grandmother in Arizona. The day we left for Dallas, it was difficult to leave her, and we lingered until late in the afternoon. Nephew was 1 and niece was 7, and we knew they'd go to sleep soon after the sun was down. We sped along the highway meeting few cars and seeing fewer still traveling in our direction. Through southeastern Arizona the sweep of our lights illuminated the majestic Saguaro along the roadside, the desert sentinels standing and beckoning through time across the span of 6 human lives. The Cure's Disintegration looped in the cd player, a brilliant counterpoint to the profusion of stars across the darkening velvet sky, the lush layers of guitar arabesques reflecting the brittle desolate beauty of the desert and its indomitability. Then into New Mexico, the outlines of mountains closer. Everything about that night is as palpable as ever, and I can reach out and remember that feeling, the beauty and the heartbreak as we made our way home.

Someone brilliant recently said "bathroom emergencies are why God gave us Super Big Gulp™ cups." Ok. It was me. I said it and I stand by that statement.

Or the big yellow cups from Dickey's Barbecue - you locals know what I'm talking about. Once husband and I were on the road in his Suburban, and nature called me rather insistently. There were three options: I could either sully the nice upholstery and render his road hog an olfactory nightmare for the remainder of the trip, stop somewhere miles up the road, or pee in a handy Dickey's barbecue cup. Guess what I chose? Damned skippy I peed in the cup. It was a suburban, for heaven's sake, and I relished the engineering challenge. Actually, at that point I was beyond all reasoning. Mission accomplished, we laughed and laughed, and all the while I'm holding the ickily warm yellow cuppa as merrily we rolled along. We turned from the highway onto a smaller road, and I thought that was my chance to discreetly pour the urine out the window, yeah? I know - musta been full of beer not to think that one through. Of course, not only was the side of the suburban inevitably going to be given a golden shower, I gave no thought to the rate at which we were traveling, and I held the cup out, upright, and before I could tip it in either direction, the wind ripped it out of my hands. Ruh roh raggy!

We'll never know if the car behind us got a bit of blow-back or if they were just outraged that I let fly a plastic product in the wilds of nature, but some scowling people drove by shaking their fist at me from their environmentalist be-stickered auto. Meddlesome hall-monitor-assed bitches!

Uh, husband just read this post and said it was a Wendy's Biggie cup. Well, at least I got the yellow part right. Dickey's sounded more fun, though, dinnit?

States I've visited. Um, you can kind of tell I'm a road trip kind of gal, can't you? Husband and I are taking a road trip in November, in fact, and maybe I can add some states to my list. Before hitting the road, I like to check out the route against the oddities listed in Roadside America. After all, it would be a pity to drive within miles of the world's largest olive sculpture or a two-headed calf pickled in brine and miss out on it, wouldn't it? Most excitingly, RA features a comprehensive map of all the Muffler Men left in America. Here is a Muffler Man from my own fair city. If you're a little off-kilter, like myself, here's the muy fabuloso page at RA on Muffler Men and this big butch icon of American commerce, long may she wave. No need to thank me, really, I'm happy to help!

create your own visited states map

Wow. I like to imagine there is someplace on earth where the summers are like today is in Dallas. It's about 80 degrees, the air is dry, and there is a nice breeze. I have to make some beads on torch in a bit, but I took my book outside and sat by the pool with the dog. I didn't read a word. I donned a straw cowboy hat to shade my eyes, and I leaned back and drifted in a half-dreaming state. Glorious.

OK, on Tuesday I was on SUCH a tear, it was ungodly. I think after days like this I must at last acknowledge the existence of PMS or the forces of evil or somesuch.

Normally I'm chipper and accommodating of everyone who comes in the office, but today I slept through 45 minutes of my alarm and I could either be very late and immaculately coiffed, or I could skip the hair mojo and just take a shower. I chose curtain number 2, and as a result I felt rather grumpy today. I was logged into our website and attempting to update some information when the bloody flipping phone rang for the millionth time and as I answered I noticed a group of geezers wandering the property to salivate over a gazillion $$ deal they are working with my company. These types wanna be Donald Trump, which is muy unappealing to moi. Well, in the middle of an attempt to focus on updating text on our site, they sashayed into my office and demanded to see the head of the company. I said, "sure, he's in there" and pointed toward his office. Golly, where did that come from? No leaping up to show them to the conference room? No offering coffee or other earthly delights? Dramatic reenactments from the Song of Solomon, perhaps? These are powerful men, unaccustomed to anything but the warm welcoming smiles from women that come with a tacit offer of pleasures licit and otherwise. Anyway - one of the guys said "I need to talk to you out here" to the other guys, and they stepped outdoors for a minute. I'll bet they went out and said that they'll make firing me a condition of the deal. *tee hee*

Seriously, I didn't lift a finger to bow and scrape, although I would have been more eager to be helpful if they'd been the slightest bit courteous. Trust me, I can be as diplomatic as the next person, but I had been working so hard to focus on my task and it all happened in a heartbeat. I'll bet if I go to the website and look at the text I was working on I'll find I broke off mid-sentence somewhere along the way. In truth, what I do for the company is not even related to that big deal end of things, and I'm a little out of the loop on that process, happily. Mind the nails, chaps. That blood's fresh.

Stories from the ancient history of me...

Once upon a time, boys and girls... I lived in a fantastic loft near downtown on Harwood next to what was then Austin Steel Mill from 1988-1994. We had hookers in front of our building but that was ok, because they were interesting to watch from the roof. We would hang on the roof, smoke and drink, and a good time was had by all. It was beautiful and quiet, and close enough to downtown for a spectacular view. Time seemed quite charmed, then.

There were 13 lofts in the building, and the neighbors were the best. Gradually I've lost touch with all of them, but I hold fond memories of one New Year's eve when we all dropped acid and listened to local rockabilly god Reverend Horton Heat. You haven't lived until you've heard his meisterstrück Marijuana or Psychobilly Freakout completely trashed. But I digress.

Great neighbors came and went, but among them were Thom, who now runs (or ran) the Texas Embassy restaurant in London, Tom & Peggy (photographer & makeup artist who moved to open a gallery in Oregon), Richard and Ashley, (he, photographer, she - jewelry designer), artists Jeff & Cindy, and sundry others.

I know you're dying to know how that garishly colored cake fits in, and you're probably guessing it's some sort of memorial to Selena or something. Nope. Fat Tuesday 1993, we gathered in Richard & Ashley's loft for a king cake, which is a New Orleans Mardi Gras tradition. The cake is sliced up and doled out to everyone, and whoever ends up with the piece with the little plastic baby Jesus inside will have a very fortunate year.

As hostess, Ashley wielded a huge knife and cut into the cake then drew the knife out with the little plastic doll partially dismembered and stuck to the knife. She found the king, but this was a rather auspicious way to come upon it. Later that year, Ashley and Richard divorced, I met husband and moved to a conventional neighborhood, and we all scattered to the winds. Ashley moved to Houston where I assume she still lives. She made some incredible jewelry which I and my sister still wear. I heard that Richard moved to San Francisco with some other artists. Since I don't plan to abstain from any amusements, Fat Tuesday can come and go for all I care. I do relish the memory of that one time, though. It's a sweetly melancholic remembrance this time each year: scattered friends.

OK. Time for housecleaning again. When the golden niece was about 3, we began having "girly day", and I would pick her up early in the morning every Wednesday, and we'd go to breakfast and make a list of all the fun stuff we would do. We went to tour the now departed Mrs. Baird's factory once, and we nearly always stopped by their discount bread store and took bags of bread to the ducks at a local lake. We had lots of creative projects going, and we liked to go to the marvelous Froggies five & dime on Knox, which is a great Christmas stocking-stuffer store, by the way.

So the beloved nephew is now 3 and we had our first auntie-nephew day recently. We went Downtown so he could see all the cranes working, which thrills him. There was fencing at one corner of this site and we stood there and watched a concrete hopper filled from a cement truck, and then they hooked it up to the crane and lifted it over to fill in a wall. This was very exciting for nephew, and the job foreman even took note of him and came over to talk to us. He looked quite the little man in his hard hat. Then we went and shopped for his first piggy bank, and he found an adorable doggie bank he really likes. I bought him a Bob the Builder set last night with a backhoe tractor thingie. He likes to see how things are put together, and I think he has the mind of an engineer. We'll see. In any case, our first outing together was a success. Here for your enjoyment are some of his first job-site photos.

Niece is 9 and planning to become a veterinarian. My cat-obsessed sister said "great, then I can have my cattery and you can treat all my cats for free." Golden niece said "oh no, you'll pay just like every one else." I have trained her well, I believe. You should have seen our power shopping binge at Nordstrom Rack the day before Christmas. In about 25 minutes, we found gifts for the last 8 people on my list, and spent about $200. I'm teaching her my power-shopping ways. Good thing she's aspiring to a well-paying field. Then again, she's going to be tall, lean and leggy, and she won't need a high dollar wardrobe to look like a million... No one cares what a pretty girl is wearing, yeah?

So, morbid curiosity got the better of me and I had to take a gander at Lisa Loeb's reality show called #1 Single. I've always thought of her as not the type to do that sort of thing, rather less mainstream than to do something so personally exposing. (Wouldn't you think so, Liz??? I mean, you went to high school with her, didn't you?) I'm chalking it up to the pressure from her Jewish mother who's constantly talking about babies and being a grandmother. Maybe it's her way of saying "Look mom, I'm really trying here." That's some evil pressure, I would think. And then to top it off, she's looking for a man in New York City??? Puh -leeze! The guys she keeps going out with are SO unmanly. Yuck. No wonder everyone there is trying to boink the firemen - the rest are just girls with dicks. Yuck. (The amazing Zelda had an excellent post on dealing with a highly-feminized man recently). This one jerk kept taking phone calls during their dates and then left her at the zoo after getting a phone call. I'm thinking either NYC women are stupid about men, or our Lisa has some self-esteem issues. Phlegmmy would have been on the curb hailing an effing cab before his rude ass got off the phone THE FIRST TIME.

When I met husband, the second time he came to pick me up for a date, I heard someone at the door, which was ajar so my dog could come and go as she pleased, and I went around the corner, and there he was with a screwdriver, tightening my doorknob. I thought "I'm going to marry him." He unflinchingly kills bugs with his bare palm. He can fix anything that is wrong with my vehicles, or at least duct-tape them together ably enough that we can get it to my pa's garage, and he does plumbing and electrical. AND he has a great brain - he's a computer engineer thingie - great problem solver. Very talented, technically minded rugged dude. When I think of choosing a mate in the Darwinian fashion, a physically capable and rugged computer dude is pretty much the ideal for me.

But GAw!!! Those New York City guys. Ick. I'm amazed the population isn't shrinking in that town.

Anyhoo - that's my Monday mornign ramble. Y'all have a great week.

I've been sitting on this subject for a while, and it's about time I pop the pimple and let fly with some pent-up angst. I've a fair bit of ire stoked here, so I hope you will forgive me if this turns into a convoluted harangue. So long as you agree with me 100% by the end of this post, I don't care how unhinged I may seem in the process.

About 2 years ago my husband's brother married a girl from the San Francisco area, where he has lived and worked for the past 8 years or so.

SisterInLaw is a nutritionist, and self-proclaimed health nut (passive-aggressive princess), and BrotherIL is just the sort of moldable, eager-to-please male women like that crave. He always wanted to get away from Texas, and I have no doubt there is a wee bit of self-loathing in his stripe of liberal feministic mindset. She claims to have him on a very strict dietary regimen, and in fact, the time he came to Dallas before the wedding, he said the crap food he was eating here had so bound him up that he was stuck in his hotel room most of the visit, and went home days early. Well, fine. Whatever.

So, since no one but my husband and his brother are allowed in their parents' house (I'm not kidding - they live 5 miles from us in Dallas, and after 12 years of marriage, I have never been in their home) BIL & SIL stayed with us when they came to Texas in Oct 2004. I was delighted they were coming, and having been aware of the digestive, er, difficulties BIL had the previous visit, I spared no expense stocking the kitchen with the very finest (read, expensive) organic produce and anything in the store that looked healthyish. I let them know that when they arrived there would be fresh fruit, cheese, and sandwich stuff at our house. So we waited for them to come from the airport. And we waited. They were 2 hours late when they finally showed up, but they said they had to drive around for a while until they found a Jason's Deli to eat. OK. Fair enough. They're tired, traveling and hungry, maybe they want predictable fare. The next meal, they wanted to go to Chili's (?!) and got some fajita-type product. Subsequent meals out only confirmed my belief that they were not at all picky about what they ate. They didn't eat a single banana, orange, apple or any other fruit I provided the entire week they were here. The day before they left, we were driving around, and SIL said "we need to stop at the store and buy some fruit" and I suspect husband's quick response was in hopes that I wouldn't let fly on they ass, as my fingers were digging into the automobile upholstery. He said "there is lots of great fruit at the house already." Most inexplicably to me - they don't believe in eating beef until it's cooked into an inanely gray and tasteless state. My philosophy is that if God didn't intend us to eat raw beef, then it wouldn't taste so good raw. For my steaks, just knock the horns off and wipe its ass, slap it on my plate and I'm one happy phlegmmy.

Before their arrival, I decked out their bedroom/bathroom with everything I could think of to make the space welcoming and comfortable for them. The only thing I could have added would have been a mini bar, but I knew I didn't care THAT much about impressing them.

Despite all this obvious effort on my part, little was said of the welcoming cordiality of my preparations. Again, fine. Whatever.

However, it was not long into the visit that I started hearing about how a place should be more diverse, and that SIL was thankful she grew up in San Francisco where she didn't just see white republicans everywhere. OK. No longer fine here. This was election season, and every other house on our street had a Vote Democrat! sign in their lawn, and no Repulican signs to be seen. My hackles are rearing their ugly heads at this point. The smug superiority was absolutely insufferable, and pretty much culminated in a heated discussion (I'd held my tongue long enough) the night before they left. The condescension was too much to endure another minute. I was delighted to see the back of them, to say the least.

Husband's parents have just completed construction of a palatial new home in one of Dallas' toniest suburbs, and BIL & SIL are coming to visit during the first week of April. Here's the amazing part: they are going to stay at the in-laws' new house with them. (Glory to the day of my deliverance.) Oh, to be a fly on the wall and see how sick of each other they all get. Fortunately, I have a large family gathering in Arkansas the following weekend, and I may just have to leave town early to go visit some art gallery spaces in Arkansas and Memphis to see if they would carry my work. Thank God for legitimate excuses!

I'll don my best cotillion voice and purr how I'm so disappointed I won't get to spend more time with them while they're in Texas. Actually, I'd like to take them to a rot-gut true blue Mexican joint that serves the best Chicken mole in town (my favorite). I should take them to places to let them see that Dallas isn't all white. I'll bet they'd shit themselves. We could go for Dim Sum in the Asian Gangland area of Garland. Go for a Sunday outing at the every-color trash playground of Traders Village. (The incense guy has 3' long joss rods with designer fragrances as well as "new car" and "pussy." I know. I know.)

So, that's my rant of the day. I'm sure my bullshit detector will be pegging over the next five weeks in anticipation of the hallowed visit of the anointed ones, so no doubt there will be miles more ranting to be done. All I know is, if your head is so far up the ass of political correctness and multi-culturalism, you should at least be sensitive enought not to criticize the homeplace of people who are graciously hosting your worthless ass. Thanks for letting me vent.

Sex Pistols tell Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to stuff it...

In their note declining the invitation to attend the ceremony marking Sex Pistols' induction into the R&R H o' Fame, Sex Pistols derided the fatuous self-adulatory ceremony which is ridiculously expensive to attend and therefore exclusive domain of industry insiders.

By the way - John Lydon's Rotten Television was a great show - too great to last. Hollywood freaks out when confronted with straight-talkers. And by straight talkers, I'm not referring to Sean Penn or that useless Clooney or Sarandon/Robbins-bot. The truth is often not pretty, and John doesn't mind not looking like a loved-up himbo or celebutante, God love him!

I saw the John's Public Image Ltd @ the Bronco Bowl in Dallas, all those years ago. He came out in white suit covered in fluourescents and bathed in black light- and every body was Happy.

In Arkansas, we call this grinning like a possum.

Blind gossip item from the UK's 3AM girls revealed:

WICKED
WHISHPER 22 February
2006 WHICH
actress left organisers in chaos when she pulled out of accepting
her award with
hours to spare? The A-lister decided she didn't want to fly
to the UK, so a
fellow star was drafted in at the last second.

Wow. I wouldn't have thought Reese Witherspoon would do that, but I watched the BAFTA ceremony on BBC America (much truncated for American audiences, I expect) and Christina Ricci said a terse Thank You for the Best Actress award for Reese. Rather tacky, actually. I expected she was more genteel than to bail on such a high-profile event last-minute, especially when she was taking top honors.

Yes, hide! Hide your face in shame, Reese! Come to think of it, with that period attire you may want to use a fan to cover up that gummy possum grin of yours. And those nails! Sheesh!

Recently my sister got out her guitar and her John Denver songbook, with which she's been serenading the family for years. This is generally pleasant as long as she doesn't venture into JD's repertoire with a very broad tessitura. Indeed, challenged beyond an octave, my sister's sense of tonality borders on the pathological. One such song is "The Eagle," which all and sundry in the family beg her to stop singing within 2 bars. *shudder* (Incidentally, I trained as an opera singer in college, so I don't know whose baby we brought home from the hospital all those years ago). Coyotes have been moving into her neighborhood in record numbers. I have a theory why...

Anyway, my niece is quite familiar with John Denver's body of musical work. She asked my sister how he died, and she explained he shuffled off this mortal coil while flying an experimental plane off the coast of California. Niece looked puzzled and said "Isn't that weird? Didn't he write that leaving on a jet plane song?" Yes. Sister giggled herself silly over that one. Me too. Clever girl.

Back to the pimp-o-lympics™. Rocky (racquel) had to go and invoke the ultimate horror of the image of these medals snuggling into unruly thatches of Italian chest hair. I would point out the Italian ladies are by now no doubt familiar with 21st century depilatory methods, so let us not be catty.

Of course, I'm always saying how I like funky off-beat sorts of things, but this donut/cd/wtf-is-it medal design for the 2006 Italian winter Olympics is taking that liberty a bit too far. See exhibit A - Mark Spitz with his big swinging deck of medals and tell me what's more impressive? When people hold up their medals for the money shot after the medal ceremony - they always look like they're about to take a bite out of them, conjuring wooden nickel bite-tests of a bygone era. I think considering that Italy is one of the most innovative design centers of the world, they could have come up with something remarkable and fresh without making such a bizarre departure from standard medal design. But that's just me. Certainly, no one will ever confuse these with the medals awarded at any other Olympics, will they? If that was their goal, they certainly succeeded.