• a variety of fine pickles •

when it rains... well, you know the rest.

i wasn't sure exactly what to call this blog entry. i wanted it to be something witty and clever like "water blogged" but for some reason i just couldn't bring myself to use that as a title. it's cute, that's for certain. but i've never been able to pull off "cute" very well. i think i've been called cute twice in my life, and that was around the age of two. and it was probably by strangers.

for those of you without a television, access to the internet (and therefore reading this blog by means of magic), or a hollow log with which to give and recieve updates on the whereabouts of the neighbors and other very important local business, let me sum up what's been going on in texas:

it's been raining.

it's been raining for more than a week. not straight through, not twenty-four hours a day; we get some respite from the rain with a burst of really nice sunshine in between torrential downpours. and by "sunshine" i mean "humidity". it lasts for approximately two to three hours before the next rain shower. and by "rain shower", i mean "biblical flooding". the sun is sort of like an intermission between acts of the old testament. i think the locusts are coming next.

it's been raining so much that my birdfeeder is full of grass. not sprouts of grass - actual grass. it needs to be mowed.

speaking of mowing, my grass is so high it looks like the set of "children of the corn", but that doesn't bother me. in fact, all of my neighbors had their yards done this last weekend, but not me. sure, their lawns all looked as if they were torn from the pages of "southern living", all manicured and trimmed and edged... and then there's my yard, straight out of "trailer monthly". but when the rain started again on saturday night, i knew their lawns wouldn't be very far behind mine in the "embarrassingly tall grass" department. with all the rains lately, my entire neighborhood looks like it's ready to be harvested. and i'm leading the whole pack. I WIN! who's laughing now, bitches?

as i write this, i can hear the buzz and hum of a lawn mower somewhere, just a couple of houses down the street, and it makes me laugh. it'll be raining in just a couple of hours or so and that yard will be back to it's original, shaggy-tall splendor by nightfall. and swampy. don't forget swampy.

anybody who knows me knows the love i have for texas; with all of the geographical choices i have here in these united states, i choose to stay in my home state, and it's all for the love of texas. there is a silent debate, however, deep in the recesses of the brains of melissa, that points to a decidedly different reason that i stay here in texas: my love of complaining.

i'm a natural complainer, but i think the main reason i complain is that it's just something to do. texas, in all her glory, gives me no end of things to complain about, and it's usually meteorological. from june to march, the weather is perfect complaint fodder. after all, everything's bigger in texas, everybody knows that. from tennis ball-sized hail stones to monsoon-style flooding to heat that would cause sopping-wet wood ash to spontaneously combust, even the weather is bigger in texas.

it's feast or famine. drought or flood. black or white. there is no middle ground in texas; no gray area. mild is a word we don't understand. just ask any salsa afficianado. and by "salsa afficianado", i mean "texan".   

the forecast for today is "60% chance of thunderstorms, some possibly producing heavy rainfall." yesterday, when it rained for approximately 3 hours straight, hard enough for headstones to pop right out of the cemetery dirt and fall flat on their backs into the mud, the forecast was for 20% chance of "showers".

if that was a "shower" then a typhoon is nothing more than a nice breeze.

right now it's sunny and the birds, the poor, confused, waterlogged birds, are pecking manically at the birdfeeder, knowing that they'd better get their fill of the goods now, while the bird feeder is still a bird feeder, and not the botanical gardens.

it's so damn humid outside already that when i opened the front door long enough to take out the trash, i came back inside and couldn't help but notice that my cat had an afro. that's humid, y'all.

i'm off to get started on weeding the bird feeders before it gets out of control. who's idea was it to put sunflower seeds in commercial birdseed, anyway?

they must not be texan.

thanks to my friend and fellow texan matt armendariz at mattbites for the props on his blog, who is currently enjoying the tail-end of june gloom in los angeles. but don't call him an ex-pat. he'll always be a texan no matter where he lands. he just took a wrong turn somewhere...

when dogs get cabin fever

ICE STORM 2007 : landlocked

i officially have cabin fever. so does willie, and he is none too quiet about it.

we've all been working from home since yesterday which is fun, but MAN i want to get out of the house. much easier said than done, if you knew the predicament i have with my car. ever since someone at work hit my car and drove off, my floorboards in the back seat fill with water whenever it rains. they only hit and broke out the taillight on the passenger side, but they bent something just enough so that water is getting in. it ain't gettin' in through the trunk, either. it's been poked, prodded, looked at ad nauseum, and nobody can figure out where the water is getting in. i just need to get a new car. that's not happening today though.

at the moment, my car sits in my driveway, glazed over with a half-inch coating of ice, and two huge chunks of solid ice in the floorboards of the back seat. it rained before it sleeted or snowed here, and the night that all of this started, it really poured.

it sure is fun going to the carwash after it rains so i can vaccuum all of the water out of the back of my car! and that's just a bonus; normally, i get to spend about twenty minutes dredging the water out of my car before i schlep myself to the carwash. yes, sure is a hoot. good times. not to mention how cool it is that my car sweats from the inside. condensation on the inside of my car? you bet!

speaking of fun, willie and i are just about sick of each other. he wants to be outside in the cold, but i don't want him out there very long because i don't want him getting a cold. whatever. he is mad at me because i'm rationing his time outdoors. so needless to say, with working at home, he's vying for my time while i'm on the phone with clients. so far, thankfully, he's been doing so quietly, nudging me and nibbling at me.

i've been bored, people. i haven't left my house since SUNDAY. did i already say that? maybe it bears repeating. here are some of the fruits of my cabin fever.

now here's where i really got bored...

my first "tea for one" teapot, a gift from my downstairs neighbors when i lived in dallas.

my glassware in my glass cabinet. exciting.

my big gay tea-for-one teapot collection. yeah, i collect 'em.

and here's some rocks.

and a lady that hangs on my dining room wall.

i need out of the house.            

congrats, bob!

my friend bob sumbitted a photo to cnn.com yesterday with all of the icy weather we've been having, and they used it!

click on the photo and you see bob's photo a little better, and read what cnn.com wrote.

you can also click here and scroll through to see his photo and the rest of the photos taken by people all over the country. 

congratulations, bob! 

snow day!

we're having a snow day in texas!

well, a snow day for texas, anyway.

it's 27° and we had sleet and freezing rain overnight. snow? not so much, really. just a nice, shiny, slippery, deadly coating of ice all over everything. it sure does make crap look pretty.

   

i barely ventured outside for these pictures, just onto my side porch. it is C-O-L-D.

what's ironic is that today is martin luther king jr. day, which texas observes as a holiday. all those kids who pray for ice and bad weather so they get to stay home from school are probably piiiiiisssssssed. suckers!

it's looking like it'll be this way tomorrow too though, so those kids may catch a break after all.

willie *loves* this weather, and keeps clamoring to get outside. he frolicks and plays and jumps and barks at the icicles... it's great. he's a flash of white, otherwise i'd venture outside to take his picture. no sale. hank always hated this weather. i spent last winter's "snow days" cleaning up hank poop from the dining room floor because he refused to do his business outdoors.

maybe more pictures later. i'm still trying to defrost from having been outside for the four minutes i spent on the porch.

i needed to have a good time something awful. mary and i had some kind of fun today, that's fo sho!

it was rainy and gray today, but we managed to have a great time. as evidence of a great time had by all, here's proof. mary had gas.

we gassed up and went to mary's cardiology appointment where she was fitted with a 24 hour holter monitor, and then had an echo cardiogram. i got to see mary's heart... it was really something to see someone's heart beating; the valves opening and closing, the rushing sound of blood and the visual to go along with it. that was pretty amazing.

after the doctor's appointment we headed off to the orchid for thai food.  mary had never had thai food, so i introduced her to my favorite thai dish, shrimp padd thai. she liked it, and i just can't get enough of it. i wanted to take a photo of the padd thai when it first came out, but i was so excited that i just started chowing down and forgot to take a picture until we were nearly done.

mary's shrimp padd thai



the 3-ring binder menus at the orchid. pictures! w00t!



then we headed off to the tattoo shop where cameras and camera phones are strictly verboten, so no pictures of the actual tattoo process, but both of my tattoos only took about 10 minutes, and mary's only took about 5. that's right kids, mary got a tattoo as well! we got the same tattoo.

that's mary on the left and me on the right. i know i said i was gonna get my heart covered with a star, but i decided at the zero hour this morning at mary's house that i would get the heart fixed after all, just filled in solid black. mary called me day before yesterday and said she wanted to get the same star tattoo as me, so voila! as seen above. mary's is a smidge smaller than mine, but it's the same star. we're like sisters, mary & i.

and peek-a-boo: all those wires are from the holter monitor.

so now the grand total of tattoos: 6.



 

i kept saying "5 is enough. i'm done." 

sure.

the dimming of the day

the end of the autumn is here in texas.  a few brightly colored leaves cling steadfast to the gnarled old oak in my back yard, the rest of the leaves litter the ground; rusted reminders. the remnants of autumn.

there are scarce few leaves left on the trees, and the grackles and squirrels seem to be the only residents that remain.

merry christmas with only minor injuries

merry christmas to all! i hope today found you surrounded by family, friends and other loved ones, warm and toasty and filled with joy.

i was at work all day today. boo.

i did however enjoy an exhausting, fun-filled weekend full of all of the afore-mentioned things like family, friends and loved ones, and warmth and toastiness and joy. and a slightly sprained ankle.

i spent saturday with my entire family in dallas celebrating my grandparent's 56th wedding anniversary in high style. it was a lovely cocktail event, hosted and catered by my aunt rosie & uncle peter who flew in from hollywood for this event and for christmas. we had prawns as big as your head and lovely cocktail-sized focaccia with prosciutto, shaved parmagiano reggiano & arugala in a beautiful viniagrette. champagne (not the cheap stuff!) was served in ribbon-wrapped flutes with dried cherries bobbing up and down and floating in the tiny bubbles. and of course, my mother and i drank our champagne with a little sugar (no sugar cubes were to be found) because we're hookers and enjoy a nice champagne cocktail.

each member of the family was tasked with performing something for my grandparents, whether a poetry reading or a song, and it proved to be a very moving evening filled with tears and laughter. it was a wonderful evening and one that none of us - 29 of us in all - will ever forget.

christmas eve day was spent chatting, drinking coffee, catching up, and exchanging christmas gifts. it rained all day long, a slow, steady rain. 

at about 3pm, sara came to my grandparent's house and we drove back to her brother jon and sister-in-law laurie's house about twenty minutes away. i was so excited to see sara; it's been more than 10 years since we've seen each other! it was great!

we pulled up in front of jon & laurie's house and i opened my driver's side rear car door to get her little giftie-bag and somehow stepped directly into a hole in the yard by the curb with a sprinkler head sticking out of it. i stepped in it backwards, so that's the way i fell: right on my kiester. i busted my ass in the front yard in the rain and the mud and made quite an impressive landing.

some things never change.

i probably busted my ass the last time sara saw me, too. i don't remember, but anybody that has known me for more than 10 minutes would not find that surprising.

i had a GREAT time with sara & jon & laurie and their two (nearly grown) children, both in their teens. still one of the coolest families around. i dried my ass off by the fireplace, and we all laughed and caught up and noshed on pizza and fudge and took stupid pictures of ourselves with sara's macbook and watched something on television about clam penises or something... that part is sort of fuzzy. i got lots of pictures of the family. this one is by far my favorite.

i'm pretty sure i sprained my ankle and my left wrist when i busted my ass in the yard. i'm fine, but somewhat tender, and have some swelling and black & blue-ness on my ankle and wrist. i'll live. i've done worse. i've done worse in the last 3 or 4 weeks, as a matter of fact.

i got home late-ish last night and crawled in bed after unpacking bags and slept as hard as i could for what seemed like 20 minutes, then got up and went to my parent's house for christmas breakfast, then "worked" from noon - 9pm. i use the term "worked" in its loosest form.

i had a great holiday, and i hope all of my friends and family did too.

merry christmas to all, and to all a good night.