All posts by Mush

About Mush

I want to be a veterinarian because I love children.

More Rat Rod Parts!

Redneck, Rural, Rustic

Sunday morning, we got up at four AM. I know, I know! You’re right! That IS gross!

We did it so we could drive to Nebraska, meet a total stranger, and pick up a flathead motor and tranny that Brett bought off of eBay.

Four. In. The. Morning.

By the time the sun was up I was feeling pretty groggy and bitchy. I had to pee, I was STARVING, and my dearly beloved kept driving past all the exits with golden arches. By the time my situation became intense, we were in B.F.E. with no hope of a decent exit in sight. I finally got him to just pull the hell off so I could pee before I suffered permanant bladder damage, and we ended up in a town with literally nothing in it – a quaint but empty square two miles from the highway. Argh! Brett located a Casey’s before I had to pee in a ditch, and he bought himself breakfast but I got a doughnut because some lady in front of me bought the last croissant with no dead animal flesh on it. Hurumph.

Back on the freeway. We’d been driving for four hours and it wasn’t even eight in the morning yet. Fortunately, there was a McDonald’s a few exits down and I finally got something to eat. Whew. And then: I took a nap. Damn right.

By ten AM we were parked in the parking lot of a Super 8 at the predetermined exit off of I-80. Brett called the guy, the guy was running late. I ran around in the Super 8’s yard with Meathead and we played fetch with a plastic pop bottle (until he popped it – he was so startled when pop started spraying out – so cute).

The guy and his partner showed up, and they transferred this big, old, rusty looking engine/tranny from their truck to our truck. Then the three of them stood around smoking cigarettes and talkin’ parts for awhile, Brett gave the guy his money, they strapped the engine down, and the other guys drove off.

Brett was totally stoked with his new flathead. There’s a rumor the thing might actually run; wouldn’t that be cool?

Then we drove some more. By now it’s noon, I’ve been in the truck since ten to five, and if my hubby wasn’t so pleased with the world I think I would have been grumpy. As it was, I commandeered his stereo and rocked out to some iPod action for awhile – so nice to listen to soul and R&B instead of blue eyed blues and rock! Eventually, we returned to Des Moines. And Mr. Brett was Ready For Dinner.

So I called Tahmi. She answered, “Hello, this is Tahmi.”

“Tahmi! It’s Mush!”

“Hi Mush!”

“Will you be OnStar for me?”

“Sure!”

“Okay, I’m in Des Moines on the way back from Nebraska, I’ve been up since four AM, and we’re hungry. Where do we go to eat in Des Moines?”

“What are you in the mood for?”

“We don’t care. Something good. Uh, Italian.”

“Oh! Yeah! And you’re with a big eater! Go to that place, ah… I can’t remember the name. It’s family-style Italian.”

“Oh! Yeah! We ate there together once, right?”

“Yeah. Where are you at?”

I read her the upcoming exit name and she squealed, “Get off now! NOW! That’s your exit!” I relayed her urgency to Mr. Brett, who crossed two lanes in about six feet of forward motion and got us off at the exit. Such a stud. Tahmi gave us directions to ‘that Italian place past Olive Garden, on the right’ and I thanked her profusely and hung up.

“You’re gonna love this place,” I told Brett.

So we ate delicious food at Buca Di Beppo and I’ll tell ya, it made the WHOLE TRIP TOTALLY WORTH IT, even the gross getting-up-at-four part. Their food is awesome, and my beloved redhead had some kind of foodgasm when he tucked into his veal parmigiana. We ordered a second garlic bread to take home with our leftovers. Yum, yum, YUM.

I love that place. I’d only been there twice: once with Krista & Barb, and once with Tahmi, but it’s so fun there. The place is stuffed to the rafters with tchotchke, the staff is great, the food is amazing, and, well, I just really enjoyed myself. AND we had delicious left-overs to take home with us. (I had two manicottis to look forward to, Brett had more veal, and there was a whole order of garlic-cheese bread. Yes!)

Back in the truck. We drove home. By the time we got there it had taken over ten hours of driving, I’d been in the truck so long my ass was sore, and I was exhausted even though I hadn’t done anything but sit all day. We ate our leftovers around 7:30 and MAN OH MAN was the stuff delicious!

I think we were both passed out by eight o’clock.

The moral of the story is this: don’t let your husband get on eBay. Ever. But if he does, maybe you’ll get a decent meal out of the deal!

Saturday Afternoon

Love & Marriage

Right now I’m sitting at the computer catching up on my blogroll, and obsessively refreshing a hot tub forum page to see if anyone’s responded to my query about our new hot tub.

Yes, I said “new hot tub.” My adorable-but-totally-redneck husband went out and bought a spa that hasn’t worked in a couple years and which has been allowed to freeze with water in it. I don’t doubt his ability to make the thing work… just his desire to actually do it.

I find I have some form of spring fever that makes me TOTALLY AGRO LATELY whenever he brings home more junk… This is the time of year I want to be getting rid of junk! I am so horny to get the dumptruck back from whatever job site it’s parked at and FILL THAT BASTARD UP with crap and drive it off to some innocent landfill!

The shit we’ve (okay: HE’S) accumulated out here is simply astounding. ASS. TOUND. ING.

Do you know that there are (and have been for two weeks) a DEEP FREEZE and a filing cabinet in my parking space? Brett dragged ’em home one afternoon and they haven’t moved since. They’re both free, old, heavy, and rusting. And he probably won’t even acknowledge that they’re even really there until I pitch a fit of sufficient decibels that he feels some form of activity would be the best way to get me to shut the hell up. Argh!

The test to tell the difference between optimism and pessimism has always been the glass test: is it half full, or half empty? I think a better test is this: do you really think that everyone is stupid or don’t you? I’ve been spending a lot of time surfing blogs (generally by clicking something at random from Recently Updated Sites at movabletype.org and seeing where it takes me) and there are a lot of interesting humans out there. (Like this one. This kid is so funny I snorted tea on my monitor.)

I went to Tahmi’s house to play yesterday. She and the ever-gorgeous Mr J have a rescue living in one of their Broncos; he’s a less-than-a-year-old, emaciated, stunningly handsome and shy white German Shepherd. (Note: if you google “german sheppard” you get two hundred thousand hits. Can NO ONE spell?) He had some kind of food poisoning and is on meds and a four-meal-a-day weight gain regimen. If you want a really beautiful rescue, call them up – rescues are the best dogs to have IMO because they’re so abjectly grateful. (Bindu’s basically a rescue.)

Tahmi and I had a fun afternoon, talking AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE (even to the extent of leaving the bathroom door open whenever either of us went so the conversation could continue uninterrupted) and looking at fiber catalogues. And she gave me some shelves. And she told me that according to her recent feng shui class, I need to move my bed because I’ve got my head pointing a foul direction.

Oh, and I need to move my altar a quarter of a direction.

Feng shui had nothing to say though about why my cat, Buz McFuz, is a crack-head. I keep telling him, “Dude! CRACK KILLS!” and in reply he just runs up the walls and back down and attacks the kitchen rug and gallops around the stairs and then says in his little I’m-not-on-crack kitten voice, “Mew?” Damn lying stealing crack-headed cat.

My sleep schedule is all screwed up. This is not particularly relevant to anyone but me unless you want to see me during the day and I’m napping. A nap sounds good about now, actually. Hey! My husband just drove off and didn’t tell me where he was going, the stinker.

HOT TUB! Well, sort of.

Gallery

My darling DH got up this morning and ran off early to haul more crap home.

We now have a ’94 hot tub that doesn’t work, hasn’t worked for several years, and was allowed to freeze this winter with water in it! Yay!

The first thing we have to do is build something to set it on. (Like that’ll happen.) Then we have to put the tub on that something, replace the freeze-burst pipes, apply power, fill it with water, and then start troubleshooting whatever was wrong with it in the first place.

I’d be terribly excited (a hot tub! HOT TUB!!!) if I weren’t so terribly jaded – our outbuildings are stuffed to the rafters with ‘projects’ of exactly this nature. Snort!

But it could happen, and that’s the point yeah?

Miss Parker

Gallery

A few new pictures of our niece, Parker, emailed to me by her mommy and daddy. She’s three months old already!

And yes, she does appear to still be a redhead.

Is it weird that every time I think of her name, Parker, I think of Charlie Parker, which today for some odd reason reminds me of the Steely Dan song ‘Charlie Freak’? Will it stunt her growth if I start calling her Charlie Freak when she’s only three months old?

Nerd Valentine

Geek

I realize this is both stupid and quite late, but it totally cracked me up:

ROSES ARE #FF0000
VIOLETS ARE #0000FF
ALL MY BASE
ARE BELONG TO YOU

French Lunch

Blurbs

joe.jpgSo today my boyfriend Joe called me up for a lunch date. He’s a very good boyfriend that way – he maintains seperate relationships with me and Brett, and then built a whole ‘nother one for us as a couple when we got married. He’ll actually call one or the other of us – seperately – and ask us out to do things. Seperately! Most people tend to treat couples as couples, and generally only call to see both of you.

I love Joe. (This picture is old. It’s the first one I found of him in the gallery. He didn’t have quite as much hair at lunch today. Just so you know.)

Anyway, I picked him up at 1-Stop at twelve-thirty. (I gave my Prince Live at the Aladin DVD to the ever-gorgeous Mr J who ‘s gonna extract it into MP3s for me BECAUSE HE ROCKS.*) We went to Petit Paris and had some double-cream vegetable soup and spinach crepes and LARGE GLASSES OF WINE. It was freakin’ awesome and I had oodles of fun. The proprietess is adorable and beautiful, the food was yummy, the wine was brilliant, Joe made me laugh, and the chef was an adorable blue-eyed brunet boy with BRACES. So cute!

Lunch with Joe. You’re so jealous.

(*Prince. LIVE. On the iPod. Yesss.)

Dog Love

Pets

Stella developed a lump on her back, last summer sometime. It didn’t seem to bother her and wasn’t growing, plus her mom has bumps all over, so we didn’t worry about it. But a couple of weeks ago it suddenly decided to double in size, so of course Mr. B elected me to take Stella to the vet so I could be the bad guy and let strange people in a smelly place poke her with sharp things.

Er, I assume the vet’s is a smelly place – if you’re a dog. It smells fine to me, but I’m only a human.

Anyway, Stella’s appointment was Friday. She loaded up in the Jeep with me and we drove to town to see Dr. Weigert at 9:30. He asked what she was in for, and I said, “She’s got a couple of cysts. I thought you could poke her with sharp things so she’ll hate me for bringing her here.” He laughed and said, “I think we can continue that tradition,” and promptly gave her a booster shot. Stella glanced at me. Argh!

Then he gave her a general overall exam (she’s still got the best teeth ever), then checked out the big cyst. He decided he wanted to empty it out, even invited me back to surgery if I wanted to go. Having already seen one of Brett’s cysts removed, I declined. When the vet tech took Stella’s lead and tried to take her out of the exam room, Stella gave me the look that BRETT SHOULD HAVE RECEIVED: “Are you seriously letting these people take me somewhere?!?!?” My heart broke a little, but I waved my hand and said, “Go on, Stella. It’s cool.” And off she went with the the vet and the tech.

I sat in the exam room feeling somewhat guilty – she’s such a good girl, and they always do such terrible shit to her at the vet because she always has the kind of ailments that require getting poked with sharp things – I balanced my checkbook to keep myself busy. Damn Brett! He should torture his OWN damn dog and not make me do it! The last time I brought MY HUSBAND’S DOG IN was a couple of years ago after Shiva’d really fucked her up in a fight; the vet had had to flush out a bunch of really deep teeth wounds with a squeeze bottle and put her on antibiotics. She *so* did not dig it and kept looking at me like, “Get me out of here!? Like, PLEASE?!?”

The door opened and Stella half-trotted, half-wiggled her way up to me, eyes saying, “You didn’t abandon me here!” And right behind her: “She was so good!” the vet tech enthused. “Dr. Weigert wants to show you – the cyst was infected. That’s probably why it changed size all of a sudden.”

She withdrew and I petted the brave Miss Stella, who now had a bald spot and a 1-inch incision on her butt instead of a lemon-sized cyst from hell. The vet came back in and showed me a specimen cup half filled with blood and infected pus. (EEWH! What is it with my having to see the contents of CYSTS?!) “It was definitely infected,” he said, “and I’ll want to put her on a five-day course of antibiotics.”

“Of course,” I said. “That is, after all, why we come to see you. You always poke her with sharp things and put her on antibiotics.” He laughed.

So Stella’s big bump is gone and all is well. Being a dog, she’s probably already forgotten about being poked with sharp things. (Whew.)

Sunday morning when Brett went to give Stella her pill, Shiva, as usual, WENT TOTALLY NUTS. “Give me a pill! Give me a pill! Give me a pill!” He has to be physically restrained so that Brett can shove the antibiotic down Stella’s throat – he’s CONVINCED she’s getting some kind of really valuable attention.

The last time Stella was on pills Brett started shoving random stuff down Shiva’s throat too, just to make him feel loved: a balled-up slice of salami, a kibble, his fingers. The dog’s utterly silly. Brett got the idea Sunday that what Shiva REALLY needed was a mouth full of peanut butter, and he proceeded to smear peanut butter onto the roof of each of our dogs’ mouths. OH. MY. GOD! I’d forgotten how funny that is! All three dogs (just thinking about it now made me blow spit all over my monitor!!!) stumbling around trying to lick the roofs of their own mouths – it’s SO FUNNY! Brett and I laughed ourselves completely silly – if you’ve got a dog and never done it, DO IT. Take a glob of peanut butter and pack it into the top of your dog’s mouth. They LOVE peanut butter and go crazy trying to eat it. IT’S SO FUNNY!!!
——–

The Podcasts I'm Carrying

Blurbs

So I installed iPodder on CYBERACD (a fairly idle server here at LISCO that Bucket gave me pcAnywhere access to), added a few feeds to it, and synched the results onto my mini.

I’ve now got about a hundred minutes worth of podcasting in my pocket. Gawd I hope they don’t all suck.

I surfed Podcasting News, Podcast Alley, and podcast.net for stuff to listen to, and I can’t believe how many husband/wife shows there are. It’s like an epidemic. I asked Buzz, “Who the hell wants to listen to married couples talk? Is there some huge market of unmarried, desperate-to-BE-married people out there with iPods who download this stuff?” (Then later, still surfing for ‘casts, I mumbled, “With my luck I’ll become totally facinated by married podcast shows, turn into someone who listens to nothing but married couple podcasts. That’ll totally suck.”)

Anyone, anywhere, with a tiny bit of equipment and a DSL can ‘produce’ their own ‘shows’ and put them on the Internet. It’s exciting, yes. But also a little bit creepy – reading something by a stranger is one thing, but HEARING it (do I really want to listen to some random married couple cooking in their kitchen?!) is altogether more intimate.

So tonight, as I drive home, I’m gonna check out some podcasts. And again, I sure hope it doesn’t suck.