The Gurly Life

Sexy, raspy voice

You know how every time you're sick (especially if you're a girl), someone makes the comment that at least you've got that sexy, raspy voice? I'm not sure that it's ever much of a consolation when YOU'RE FEELING LIKE SOMETHING THE CAT COUGHED UP, but at least in my case this always strikes me as funny, or simply deluded.

I may have mentioned my utter lack of sexiness in the past, and this is not the post where I suddenly go, PSYCHE! Turns out I'm sexy after all.

Yes, I have a sexy raspy voice right now, but my sexy raspy voice is usually accompanied by the old-man-with-emphysema hacking cough. That ruins the effect. The situation is made worse by the fact that cough drops make me fart. A lot.

Needless to say, I'm spending a lot of time at home.

I learned a new word today,

unfortunately.

I click on the FreeKibble.com daily, a website that donates free Kibble to shelter animals whenever you go to their website and answer a doggie or kitty trivia. Today's trivia question:

Dogs that eat poop is more of a learned habit than medical problem. The term for this is...C. Coprophagia.

There. Now you learned it too. This is what happens when you just read whatever.

The fray or not the fray?

So I'm considering getting back into the fray, i.e., the dating game. I'm bored and nauseated just thinking about it, but as Dean says, the idea of me dating in my mid-70's is kinda gross. Long story.

I might do a scorched earth type of thing, where I sign up for several different online dating services. If nothing else, it'll make for excellent blogging.

Edited to add: You know what? Plan scrapped. Oh yeah baby. The online thing is out. Done. Deirdre made an excellent point: going into it already resigned that I'm just going to be wading through bozos in the dim hope of meeting someone decent will not work. Well, it'll work if all I'm doing is looking for ridiculous people to write about, but ostensibly that would not be the reason. Actually, what Deirdre said is that an open and compassionate heart is necessary to find the right person. I think she's right. But I don't have openness and compassion for online dating, and I'm not interested in creating it.

Therefore, I'm going to follow my own advice (and Willow's): I'm going to go do the things I like to do and create being open while living my life.

The Vomit Comet

Is what I called my car today. Pixie is her name, but today she got a special moniker. Fortunately, it's an exaggeration, or rather, a worst-case-scenario name.

Oh, and heads up people, this post has a "gross" tag. Don't you be reading it and then complaining about it being gross. Cos it's gross.

Last night, courtesy of Missy the old kitty, I was woken up at 1:49 a.m. to deal with another pee incident. Once that had been handled, I started stressing about something else altogether, which (a) prevented me from falling asleep and (b) gave me a headache. My headaches are sneaky bastards - if I don't catch them right away, the next step is throwing up, and that is exactly what happened at approximately 3:35 a.m. Just as I was winding down from the pee incident and the needless but uncontrollable stressing (night is not a good time for me to think), I noticed that I was beginning to feel nauseated.

What followed was a bunch of useless regurgitations on my part. Useless because there was nothing to regurgitate. This continued until 7:15 a.m., at which time I left for court. Headache and Nausea came along for the ride.

I rode all the way to Santa Ana with a plastic bag on my lap, and tissues at hand, afraid of a repeat projectile vomiting of nothing more than spit, but projectile nonetheless. Lovely. As luck would have it, there was no further vomiting.

After court I ran a couple of errands and drove home. I was so exhausted that I had to sing loudly the entire way to avoid falling asleep on the freeway. But frankly, I could barely get anything above a whisper out until getting close to home, when my headache backed down a little, giving me a fresh burst of energy.

I slept a bit and I feel better, but still jarred by the experience. Oh and I haven't had anything to eat yet, and it's almost 5 p.m. Let's see if I can find something harmless...

A pimple

Sadly, getting older doesn't mean no pimples. Fewer, yes, but sometimes they're rudely large. I got one on the side of my left nostril that I swear looks like I'm growing an extra head. Thankfully when it turned from a large red lump to a large white lump (gross!) I was home. And don't even get me started on butt pimples!

A law school memory

During the first year of law school, it is customary to take a legal research and writing class. Trust me, it's quite necessary, though it does not seem to stick for some folks.

Anyway.

One of our first assignments was to draft a memo to client about their likelihood of winning a case. The parties' names were Ms. Pepper and Mr. Luppi. Some folks called them Ms. Lepper and Mr. Puppi.

In another case, the plaintiff's mother fell to her death in a freak (or negligent) elevator accident, where the elevator plunged uncontrollably to the bottom of the elevator shaft, killing the old broad.

As I was sharing this with Ivy and Kim in the office, Ivy told me that the firm Deloitte and Touche is affectionately referred to as Toilet and Douche.

I'm so entertained.

This week in Maliboo Kitty

Ok, so, if you do not have pets, or kids, or are squeamish for any reason, you prolly don't want to read this particular post. If you do read it, and you get all grossed out, you may not complain that you were grossed out. Deal?

Now, on with the story.

This week we have another guest appearance in our weekly cat column: Willow's cat Herbie. I was going to say he looks perfectly innocent but ... well, as you can see, he looks like trouble.

Herbie is unabashedly gross sometimes. He has be bathed occasionally because he smells bad (what cat smells bad??), and he has no manners. Willow valiantly tries to get him to behave, but mostly it's like standing in front of an open hydrant holding a paper cup.

This is what happened today: Herbie climbed up to the top of the shower curtain, about 7 feet off the ground (about 2.1m) and from atop his kingly perch proceeded to vomit. He obviously faced the bathroom, not the tub, and turned his head as he was vomiting, thusly optimizing vomit spray range. Then, he jumped down onto the toilet, and proceeded to vomit on the toilet. I think Willow may have been in the shower while this all was happening, but I have to confirm that. Needless to say, Herbie's kitty vomit is smelly.

I laughed very hard when I heard Willow's message on my voicemail. I in turn left her a (grateful) message requesting clarification regarding possible projectile vomiting, and then she called me back with the turning of the head detail. Her second message made me laugh even longer and harder, and I've been laughing while writing this post.

I think what makes this even funnier is that Herbie is completely unapologetic about it all, and as usually happens when he does something gross, once he was done vomiting all over the bathroom, he simply turned to look at Willow and then walked off to do mischief elsewhere.

The Bag of Vomit Incident

A friend threw up in my car today, fortunately into a plastic bag. We hung on to the bag of vomit until we arrived at her house, then discarded it. She felt much better afterwards, and I earned the privilege of never letting her live this down, ever. It took our friendship to a new level, as I believe all occasions in which bodily functions or fluids are shared with, or performed in the presence of, another person.

Sometimes, I amaze even myself

There is a sticky spot on my living room floor. I have walked on it with bare feet several times this evening. I have not slowed down to look at it to see what it is, nor did I get a paper towel to clean it up. By now it might be a sticky trail.

Huh.

Spring shedding is over

Does anyone else lose a bunch of hair in the spring? Or is it just me? Cos about 2 months ago I started losing hair like it was going out of style. I was getting worried that I might be entering menopause a little early (well, a lot early, actually) or that I'd been poisoned or something.

Then I vaguely remembered something similar happening last spring and possibly for several springs before, and thinking that I should remember this next year so I don't freak out. Needless to say, I remembered it after I freaked out.

I resolved to make a doctor's appointment about it after coming back from Philly, but then it turned out that it was spring shedding after all, and now I'm back to normal shedding.

What's annoying is that it's only head hair that sheds excessively, and not any other type of body hair that I actually might want to get rid of.