RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

 1. The other night, I woke up to find a water bug had breached our pest control line of defense and was crawling on my arm.

MY ARM. 

MY. MOTHER. EFFING. ARM.

A ruckus ensued. The bug had to be murdered and disposed of. I had to sleep with the lights on the rest of the night, and I might as well not have been sleeping at all. Every touch, every sensation, and I was flinching.

There is a place where these particular, horrible things get into my room, but I don't know where it is so that I can encase it in concrete and then have it blessed by a priest. It doesn't happen incredibly often, but it happens more than it should.

It has been raining and suddenly got stupid hot, so I get that it was just trying to get to a comfortable place, but that place should have never been my arm. I may not recover. My heebies are completely jeebied.

2. Do you remember when I said I hadn't had an oven incident since before Christmas? Well, strike that. Some corn-ribs that I put in the oven when slightly tipsy (I had other adult supervision, but not in time, apparently) leaked oil onto the bottom of the oven because I didn't have the wherewithal to put them on a baking sheet with a lip. So back to the drawing board and Easy-Off, I guess.

Don't worry, I haven't turned into a lush, it was just a miscalculation of ABV in a drink I wasn't familiar with. It made me quite sick, and I think parts of my body prolapsed in revolt. That was more than a month ago, and I'm still recovering.

3. I've been attempting to do the NY Times crossword puzzle every day. I'm not very good at it. Apparently, I don't know as many words as I thought I did! Nothing makes you feel as stupid as not knowing the capitol of a country you didn't even know existed that starts with an F and has seventeen letters! Sometimes a friend at work and I do the crossword together; she is a technical writer and she knows many words, which is humbling. Mainly I'm trying to do it so my brain doesn't turn to mush as quickly as it seems to want to.

4. Last Saturday, I went to someplace called Lexington, Alabama. Have you ever heard of it? I hadn't! I drove there to attend a Dukes of Hazzard meet and greet, because there is one more signature that is needed on the lunchbox. Almost all of the people (the ones still alive at the beginning of this particular endeavor, at least) depicted on this genuine, vintage, actually-used-for-school-lunches metal lunchbox have signed it, save for one: Sonny Shroyer, the actor who played Enos Straite. You don't see him at many of these kinds of things close to us because he is 91 years old, and he is elusive. Catherine Bach was hard enough to get a hold of, but I don't think I'd ever heard that Mr. Shroyer still did events like this. He was going to be there.

I have a confession: I had a MAD crush on Enos Straite.  Some girls liked Luke, some liked Beau, but I liked Enos. I have always been partial to sweet dorks, I guess. 

Anywho, I went solely to meet Mr. Shroyer and to get that signature. Alas, it was not meant to be.  

I paid $20 for a wristband to stand for two to three hours, in the sun, heat, and humidity, in a line that NEVER moved. The only time I got to step forward was when people ahead of me either realized they were in the wrong line or got tired of waiting and left. Apparently, there were people who paid $500 for VIP passes, a theft of huge proportions when you consider the redneck-ass-backwoods-event we were attending, and I say that knowing I drove to the outer rim of civilization myself to meet a man who played a country deputy on a TV show set in rural Georgia over 50 years ago. Those VIP ticket holders had paid for the privilege of multi-day access to the special guests and special events that the day pass holders didn't get. That didn't bother me. What DID bother me is that those VIP tickets apparently didn't include a chance to get their autographs ahead of time. What it did do was give them a chance to get in the front of any line they chose, keeping other people from going inside. Also, there was no time frame for them, so whenever they showed up, they got to go first. Because of this, and because Mr. Shroyer is 91 and can't spend all day doing grip and grins, I never moved far from my spot in that line except to go to the bathroom. We all know that when I get hot, I get mean. I don't understand it, I never mean to be, but it is the case. Also, a bug got on me. Things deteriorated after that. I didn't just hate the bugs and heat; I began to hate everyone and everything. Oddly, though, that wasn't why I left. I hadn't planned on staying all day, and the time I had allotted myself expired right along with my patience. I left before I throat punched anyone, which was fortuitous. 

Sorry this story is anticlimactic, but at least I traveled to a town I'd never been to before and no one got attacked, which is always a plus. 

5. I've learned to make homemade Pop-Tarts. A friend of mine went on a diet (?) or something called Soft 75 along with his wife, and he was struggling with all the things he wasn't allowed to have, one of which was his Pop-Tart Thursday. That's a clever name for the one pack of Pop-Tarts he allowed himself a week, on Thursday. I know that pain. Even with much less stomach than I originally had, I still want to stuff it with junk sometimes. So, I told him I'd try and find a healthier option, since it was more about avoiding overly processed food than about losing weight. However, all of the 'healthier" options were still very processed. So I learned to make them with very little sugar and jam I made myself with honey! They were surprisingly tasty, if I do say so. I brought him a half dozen, and he was so happy, which made me happy! I like doing fun things for people, even if it includes taking my life in my hands and using the oven. 

None of them burned, by the way. I can't believe you were wondering about that. Geez.

6. Not much else going on anytime soon. I'm going to do a bit more traveling next month, which is nice. If it goes well, I'll tell you about it. :)  Hope you are having the best day of your life! (So far!)