It’s the end of March, which means it’s election time in my neck of the woods. As many of you know, St. Louis is made up of a lot of tiny municipalities, each with their own governments. This way, we can experience the delights of urban living, what with the pollution, traffic, overcrowding, noise, and crime, without giving up the cronyism and backbiting of small-town politics.

My municipality has a population just under 5000. It’s less than a square mile. And yet, every other spring it turns into a hotbed of political insanity as the councilpeople come up for election. That’s nothing compared to the years when the mayor’s up for election.

While campaign signs have been popping up for a few weeks, today marked the beginning of the real campaigning. Now, I’ve lived in several towns in my time, and this is the only one where the primary means of campaigning involves sending letters – often anonymously – to all the constituants.

Personally, I love this method of campaigning. In most towns, you have to actually get to know people in order to be privy to the gossip and dirty laundry. In my town, I can find that dirty laundry camped out in my very own mailbox. Praise Jesus for the first amendment!
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When I was a kid I dreamt of having a car covered in bumper stickers. I wanted the world to know everything about me, based on the extensive decorations on my vehicle. I wasn’t going to limit myself to the bumper. Oh no. There were so many stickers that expressed who I was as a human being that they would be plastered on every available fender and window. Obviously, I had this dream before I learned to drive and realized that 1) one has to be able to actually see out of the windows, and 2)while there may be plenty of available real estate on the sides, front, and top of the vehicle, no one can actually read what you put there, so what’s the point.

I still like bumper stickers, although I’m over the idea of covering my car with them. I like getting little glimpses into the personalities of other drivers. Besides, without bumper stickers, how would I be able to decide if the person who just cut me off did so because s/he’s rightfully preoccupied with solving the world’s problems, or if s/he’s just an asshole who hates humanity? I need bumper stickers in order to make the kinds of snap judgements that get me through a typical day on the streets.

I have a few stickers on my truck – two liberal-leaning leftovers from the 2004 election, and three small Nascar numbers. My reasons for these stickers are threefold:

1) I like to think that the combination of progressive politics and stock cars might give people pause for thought. “She’s obviously one of them liberals, but … but … but she’s an Earnhardt fan? Marge! Bring me some Goody’s! I’ve got myself a brainache trying to reconcile this sit-e-ation! I think my world just imploded.”

2)I know at least one person who uses my bumper stickers as a means of telling if I’m at a particular location. There are lots of green trucks out there, but how many have that boho-hillbilly sticker combo. Just one, my friends. Likewise, I do the same with my friends. Which reminds me … to my friend who drives a green Mitsubishi Outlander with Big Lebowski and shamrock stickers on the back window – if you were driving south through the tunnel at 12:40 this afternoon, I was behind you. If not, I hope the cops find your stolen car.

3) I’m too lazy to remove them.
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This made my day. While reading the stats for my blog, I discovered that a Chinese search engine returns a photo of my dogs if one searches for the word “idiot”.

By that token, I wonder if a search for “weird vomit” would return a photo of my cat. As you might recall, earlier this month my cat Romi performed the oddest vomiting acrobatics I’ve ever seen. She almost topped herself last night.

It all started around midnight-thirty last night. B. and I were reading in bed when Romi let out a few yowls to let us know that all’s well, nothing to worry about, she captured the intruder that was sure to kill us all in our sleep. She came sauntering in with a little black beetly-crickety thing dangling out of her mouth. Never much in the way of manners, she proceded to eat the bug in front of us, not once offering to share.

After she finished eating her prey, Romi joined us in bed, nestling into B.’s pillow. In no time at all, I caught her licking her lips, panic creeping into her eyes. Yar she blows. Bug-chunks, that is.

We ran her off the bed and she vanished, only the siren song of her bug-hacking remained, echoing through the house. So here we are, quarter til one in the morning. B.’s looking for a cat and I’m looking for puke. Both were located. The bug remains are still unaccounted for.

Have I told you about my neighbor, ’80s Lady?
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It’s taken me nearly an hour to post, and because of an gangly pinky fingernail I just deleted everything I’ve written. Fucking Windows keyboard.

• I rallied! By Saturday night I convinced myself that alcohol would destroy the germs in my body. I drank wine at the hotel with my friends, and then a little more at dinner. Just to be on the safe side, I indulged in some vodka-based goodness. While it didn’t destory the germs, I sure didn’t care as much about them by the end of the night.
• The wine and vodka also didn’t create a prophylactic barrier between my internal germs and the rest of my family. Hence, we all have The Snot.
• I slept a lot on Sunday, to no one’s surprise.
• After making a crazy amount of progress on boobie scarf #3 this weekend, I’ve decided to spend a little time quilting. You might recall The Great Quilting Frenzy of 2005, which was all Allison’s fault. During the frenzy, I bought enough clearanced cotton fabric with pretty little flowers to make enough quilts to cozy up asmall, chilly commune. Approximately 83 hours into the frenzy, I lost interest and all my fabric has collecting dust in my back room. Between loveliness located in the new Crate & Barrel catalogue, and my strong desire to not be that person, who develops a sudden interest in an activity, buys a heap of crap to participate in new interest, and then spends the rest of her life hurdling the boxes of dust-collecting crap because she lost interest in said activiy in less than a week, I decided to drag out my 947-year-old sewing machine during Snotty McSnotsalot’s naptime. Which is all well and good, except I’m still not done cutting squares. I think instead of quilting, cutting fabric in neat little squares, using the same tattered piece of a Newcastle Brown Ale case that Allison gave me as a template those many months ago is going to be my new hobby. It’s fun. Want some squares?
• Boy howdy, I do enjoy the pungent tang of toasted cumin.
• One of the local suburbs is voting on whether to allow a church to build a 99-foot cross. Why 99 feet? Because 100 would be tacky.

I’m so disappointed.

This weekend was going to be great. A friend of mine that I haven’t seen in nearly four years is in town, and last night a gaggle of us headed to the Cowboy Mouth show. I’d been feeling a little off-kilter all day, but once inside the smokey, airless club it hit me. Snot. A massive, giant headful of snot, seeping into my ears and every other available pathway out of my head. It was like the snot all showed up for some huge Lollapalooza-like festival in my head, only to find out that Yanni was the headlining act, thus leading to a mass exodus and, well, I think that’s enough of that similie.

I bailed out of the show, and what would have been a lovely night with my pals in a lovely hotel, because the snot wanted to go home, drink hot tea, and sleep. I tried to ignore it, but the snot rioted like a bunch of drunk frat boys fed up with paying $5/bottle for water.

I’m not sure where the snot-as-music-festival similies are coming from. I blame the snot. And the lack of oxygen to my brain caused by the snot. The handful of ibuprofen, multiple forms of Zicam, mentholated cough drops and mass amounts of sugared tea probably aren’t doing my coherency skills any favors, either.

I’ve been sick all winter, and I’m fed the fuck up. I’m sick of having a headful of snot. I’m sick of wiping snot off my child. I’m sick of listening to B. hork snot. And I’m really sick of typing the word snot, so I’m just going to stop. Now.

Snot.
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I have nothing of import to post. You don’t want to hear about my day. Trust me. You don’t want to hear about the hissy fit Clara Jane threw when I refused to let her listen to Wilco’s War on War for an 18th time in a row today. I mean, that’s enough to put a dent in even my deep, abiding love for all things Wilco.

You also don’t want to hear about the fit she threw because I had the audacity to first give her purple Play-Doh, and then orange Play-Doh, instead of the green Play-Doh she required to live.

And you really don’t want to hear about the screaming that occured by multiple people when she slammed two of her fingers in one of my desk drawers.

You know what makes everything better? Pictures of baby horses.
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Remember when I auctioned a really snazzy boobie-bedecked scarf a few weeks ago? Well, I’m doing it again!

The background: My cousins Wendy rocks all that is rocking and is participating in The Breast Cancer 3 Day, in which she’ll walk 60 miles in three days to raise money for The Susan G. Komen Foundation.

I’m much better at sitting on my ass than I am at walking great distances, what with my poor little flat feet. So, to do my part, I’m knitting five of Jillian Moreno’s fabuloso boobie scarves. Jillian’s also got a book coming out called Big Girl Knits that I want with every fiber of my being.

Get it? Knitting? Yarn? Fiber? Yeah, well, look at my boobies:

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After a much-too-long hiatus, you people get to read some concert-related drivel from me! It’s been three months since I last set foot in a concert venue. But you’ll hear about that later. First there’s the last bit of in-law mess to clean up.

Despite the snarky nature of these visits, I’ve never had an argument with my in-laws. They don’t argue. Ask B. He’s never seen them fight. They have two methods of dealing: 1) they pretend they don’t hear dissent, or 2) they respond to dissent as passive-aggressively as they can.

That being said, we came closer to blows on Sunday than we have ever come. We get a little closer each visit, and at the rate we’re going, we might actually have a real-life argument sometime around September of 2018.

We had a good plan for Sunday morning. A really, really good plan. Since their hotel was halfway between our house and my beloved coffeehouse, we were going to pick them up and go to breakfast. Afterwards, when we drove by the hotel, we’d drop them off. They would check out and join us at our house for the rest of the afternoon. Convenient and energy-conservative, no?

B. got in touch with them before we left the house. Slight change of plans. They wanted B. and his dad to ride in their car, while MIL would join Clara Jane and me in the truck.

That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Wasteful and completely unnecessary. Nevermind that, if left alone with my MIL, I’m bound to either say nothing at all, or say everything. I’m not ready to participate in either option.

Did I mention that this is ridiculous? All of this fuss and plan-changing for a five-minute car ride. Just get in the truck and shut the hell up.

B. did not appreciate my distaste for this idea, but as we left the house, he said he’d deal with it.
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I’m so tired. I think it’s because my brain is exhausted, both from the amount of knowledge imparted on me by my father-in-law, and from all the times I slammed my head into the hardwood floor.

The thing is, I’m an idiot. My dear, darling spouse gave me an out. You see, he’s been letting my in-laws believe that I have plans for the entire weekend, which isn’t entirely true. I’ve got plans for Sunday evening involving a Wilco concert and an attempt to wedge my head into a bottle of Ketel 1.

About a month ago, B. warned me that his parents wanted to visit sometime in March or April. We discussed that March wasn’t the best choice, since I already had non-negotiable plans during two weekends. Besides, April would give us more time to prepare, which means it would give us enough time to score enough horse tranquilizers to keep me under control during their visit.

Not two hours later, B.’s mom called, and I had the following conversation with her:

MIL: Did B. tell you that we’d like to come visit?

Me: Why yes, he did.

MIL: He said you were busy during several weekends in March. Which ones?

Me: The weekends of the 17th and the 24th.

MIL: Oh. We wanted to visit during the weekend of the 17th.

Me: Well, I’m sorry.

(Silence, in which my brain shrieked, “Why the hell can’t she just fucking say, ‘We’d like to come down the weekend of the 17th?’ Is that so damn hard? Why does everything have to be a game of 20 Questions with this woman?”)

MIL: (heaving a sigh so large that it probably knocked a foot of snow off their roof) Well, we really need to come down in March because by April our weather will be getting good and we don’t want to come to Missouri when our weather’s good … we want TO … COME … IN … MARCH … BECAUSE … WE ….*sigh* … MUSTGETOUTOFTHECOLDANDSNOWANDBLAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH…….

I don’t know what followed, because at that point, I only heard a few small, high-frequency blips. My dogs, however, started howling and running headlong into the living room wall.
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Yeah, it’s St. Pat’s. I’m not Irish, so I’m not doing anything special. It irks the hell out of me when people hijack holidays that are important to cultures and use them as an excuse to drink and be assholes. Me, I need no excuse for either activity.

The in-law countdown has begun. Not familiar with my in-laws? You can get some background here. Their last visit is documented here. Considering that I’m still enjoying my misanthropic phase, there’s a good chance I just might go off this weekend. Probably not. I might slip and tell B. “Boy, your mama sure did a number on you!” in front of them, but they’ll probably pretend they didn’t hear it, chosing to exact their revenge in a more passive-aggressive manner. Maybe they’ll take more braless, birdsnest-hair, first-thing-in-the-morning photos of me to share with all the family back in Michigan.

I’ve spent the day cooking in preparation for their visit. I stuffed some pork, which makes me feel better. How can you not feel good when you’ve been stuffing pork all afternoon? The stuffing’s green, since it’s loaded with spinach, so let’s just call that my homage to the holiday and leave it at that.

Have I mentioned that we’re awaiting a blessed arrival? My parents’ horses, Lexi and Bubba, are due to become parents any day now. My parents were hoping Lexi would foal today so they could name the baby Pattycake. I was hoping for an Ides of March colt named Julian, but that didn’t happen, obviously.

My stupid cousin insists that if the horse is born on Wednesday, they must name it after her daughter, since that’s her birthday. But I don’t think Ditzy Little Obnoxious Eighth Grader has the right ring to it. By that token, if it’s born tomorrow, we must name it Two Dolla in honor of Wendy’s birthday. And if it’s born on Sunday, we’ll name it Sunday! Or March 20th if it’s born on Monday!

All this naming fuss over a horse whose daddy’s name is Bubba. We’ve obviously been drinking too much green beer.

Beatrice is ready for her first shuffle. I promise I’ll do a shot* for every Irish artist:
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