A Quick Political Post

The other night he who shall not be blogged about discovered some new information about his beloved 1960s age of revolution online. "Hey mom!" he called, "Check this out! Here's this guy who blew up a CIA building with a home made bomb in 1969 and guess what happened to him?"
"No idea," I said, fully planning to ignore this.
"He got 39 months in prison," said my son, "What do you think would happen if somebody did that nowadays?"
Well. What do YOU think would happen, gentle reader? I think probably that bomb building university student would go off to Gitmo where his legs would be "pulpified" and then, likely, if he was poor he would just disappear and die, and if he was rich he might make it back to the States where he would be in jail for the rest of his miserable life. Unless he got the death penalty.
And I ask you, where the fuck did we go so wrong?

Fair Planet

fair planet
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

Because I just can't stop making tiny planets. Created with the help of the tutorial found here, where they also have all kind of other nifty and cool stuff. I am madly in love with that site, so look for more weird photo mods coming soon. Here's another planet, and another (I think they look best big) - and there are more. I know, I'm getting a bit carried away, but seriously, even if you don't like mine, these planets rock. I did a series of paintings of little planets with giant trees on them years ago, a la Little Prince, but this is just so much quicker and easier; it's fabulous. In other art news, I'm making a table for the New French Bar, which should be fun and I have all kind of weird ideas for it, and I'm building a monster in the front yard, or possibly a pagan god: he's not done yet. Either way my neighbors will be horrified and one hopes that the patrons of the New French Bar will be moved - into buying something.

My Children Are Demons

It has come to my attention that my kids are demonspawn. I had kind of thought this before but now I think we have empirical proof. I like to think of myself as an easygoing and tolerant person. I think I'm openminded and friendly with all ethnic groups, even those originating in other dimensions, but I have a slight problem with this. That problem would be origins - whence came this demonic tendency? Usually, when my kids demonstrate some failing that might be genetic, I happily blame it on their fathers, and so far in their lives, this has worked admirably, since their failings tend to be dissimilar and thus easily blameable on the defective DNA contributed by dads one and two. This time though. . . this time they're acting alike and even I must see the truth: the cursed apple doesn't fall far from the twisted boughs of Yggdrasil, after all.

How do I know they're demonspawn? Well, first they hatched a plan to take all of M's disciplinary referrals, those dreaded sheets of paper the school sends home wheny your kid does something truly unspeakable, and make a lovely display of them. "I"m going to have a 9th grade wall, a 10th grade wall, an 11th grade wall and a 12th grade wall," said M, falling over himself with his own wit. "And I'm going to highlight the best ones so they really stand out and I can show them to people and reminisce." "Aaaarghhhh." I said, and then the kids cheerfully informed me of their plans for the day.

They're going to the gun show at the Civic Center. Not only are they going to the gun show, they're stopping at McDonalds first, and they made up a little song and dance number about the gun show which they have just performed in the living room to great hilarity. The words go something like this: "The gun show, the gun show! We're going to the gun show! To look at guns because we like them! We want to shoot things! The gun show! We'll eat Big Macs and go to the gun show!"

This is it. This is probably finally the time when I completely lose the last shreds of my hippie mom cred and get ridden out of Asheville on a rail, tarred and feathered by an irate crowd of yoga teaching vegan astral healers and their peaceful Indigo children. I knew it was coming. You just can't fight genetics.

Things Were Great and Then

fogandwires
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

I was in a good mood this morning when I walked Theo in the fog and took a bunch of foggy pictures and even when I went off to work I still felt pretty cheerful despite a bit of a hangover and so on. And then all hell broke loose and he who shall not be blogged about got into some fairly serious trouble and she who loves to be blogged about's car finally gave up the ghost and just died on the edge of Fairview. That's two bad things and so now I'm anxiously waiting for the third shoe to drop which is a rotten, rotten feeling. Argh.

I have been all cheerful for the past couple of weeks and in fact on Monday my Zen therapist and I called it quits because, you see, I am just so sane and stuff and there I was, smugly enjoying my life and feeling gratitude and so on and now, fuck, it's all gone to shit again.

So A says to me that the problem with M is that he needs a very strict and unvarying routine and I said, "That is impossible. We don't live on Camazotz." which is true, and I guess I am glad we don't but sheesh. Sometimes an all knowing brain taking care of all these pesky details would be nice, you know? And when you ground a kid you essentially ground yourself, so if you're wondering where I am, I'm at home, being grounded.

In a complete nonsequitur, I just googled Camazotz, which as you probably know is the evil totalitarian planet of A Wrinkle in Time, which I in my 12 year old wisdom always assumed was a thinly veiled reference to Soviet Russia - in Soviet Russia, brain thinks you! - but it turns out that Camazotz is a Mayan bat god. Cool.

Homework: A Warning to Prospective Parents

I know how it is. There’s childhood, adolescence, college and finally, thank the gods, adulthood. It’s a bit angsty at first, but then you get the hang of it. You go along , enjoying being an adult, having all kind of adult fun (particularly that one particular adult activity that adults, you know, enjoy) and one day you wake up and say: “Hey! This life is awesome, but you know what would make it better? A rug rat or two!” And then you go ahead and propagate. Or possibly you don’t put quite that much thought into it and it kind of happens (our political message for the day: wouldn’t it be a better world if the human default was set on NOT getting pregnant rather than the reverse? Imagine. Discuss.) or maybe you put tons more thought into it and work very hard for a miracle child.

Mistake. It was a tragic mistake, sorry. There is one thing you haven’t thought about, and that’s true even if you are one of the people who worked for years to have a child. Sure, now you have a baby, and it’s really cute and stuff, and it drools and crawls and you can dress it in utterly adorable little suits or checked dresses with smocking and ducks and, holy shit, there are baby docs! And there is nothing more adorable in this world than baby docs. But it doesn’t matter, because the only trouble you have in those years is sleep deprivation and actually that’s a bonus, because honestly, if you weren’t that sleep depped, would you seriously ever think that the $150 yellow plastic thing that speaks in 100 equally intolerable electronic versions when you smack it is cute, or, gods forbid, necessary for your child to grow up literate?

What hasn’t entered into your fuzzy equation of love and ducks and bunnies and babies is the single, simple horrible and eternal truth: homework. Specifically, algebra homework. Say you have three kids. All three kids are going to have to take algebra and that means that you, yes, you, the person who thought that algebra was gone forever from her life, is going to have to take algebra not just once more, not just twice, but THREE more times. Ha, you say. This is the 21st century! Surely they cannot have algebra anymore. Oh no. They still have it, and it’s gotten worse. It’s gotten harder, meaner, leaner, toned for the new century and far more evil. And you will have to do it every. Single. Night. For. The. Rest. Of. Your. Life. Or until your kids graduate, which, given the evil of algebra, may be more or less the same equation. X=misery; Y=puzzlement; Z=the test is tomorrow Mom!

And this is not even to mention Harriet Tubman and Helen Keller, for although you may have fondly thought that they were phantoms of your past, you were wrong. Every American schoolchild must write at least one paper or make one diorama (you pick which is more traumatic; they’re both pretty goddamn bad) on Harriet Tubman and Helen Keller. It’s unfortunate that they can’t do them simultaneously and get it over with but alas, these are separate assignments. As is the algebra. Every night, the algebra. And then, there’s geography. Tigris and Euphrates rivers, holy shit, do you know where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers are? And if so could you call me? Because we have a map due tomorrow.

The Five Hour Haircut, or, Other Tales of Slightly Surreal Weekend

Yesterday, I got my hair cut. Well, let's put that another way: I got my hair FIXED, which involved highlights, lowlights, trimming, consultations, a spell under a rotating space age dryer thingie and FIVE HOURS of work by several dedicated professionals. Also the going price for a small condo in Manhattan, but we won't go into that because, you know, who needs to buy heating oil or food when she is beautiful? The reasoning behind this extravaganza was that it will allow my hair to grow out into it's long neglected natural color (tactfully referred to as "dark blonde with some red" or, more accurately, brown) and let the gray go ahead and do it's thing, thus enabling me to, gulp, "age gracefully" without too much awful trauma in there and meanwhile maintaining a glamourous yet professional appearance. One hopes. Sheesh. The upshot of all this was that I sat for a long long time (do you know how long, boys and girls? Yes, that's right! FIVE hours!) in front of a mirror. I don't think I've ever contemplated my own visage for so long, not even when I was in the throes of adolescent zits and melancholy. It's hard to look at yourself for a protracted period of time when you're as old as I am: you keep hearing The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald playing in the background. Either that, or, if you share with me the tragic glory that is the Celtic heritage, you realize that you're starting to look like an early documentary photograph of some fun event like the potato famine or a weeping mother from the Gangs of New York era. I look like I should be clutching my worldly goods on a cart while the British beat my family with sticks and let the cattle graze over my cottage. Yes, my cheekbones are getting more Irish by the moment, as are my giant eyebrows and, thanks Dad, sideburns. Ah the joy that is sideburns. The hairdresser was sympathetic but firm: there's nothing you can do except put pomade on them and hope for the best. Prayer, perhaps. To St. Brigid of the bushy eyebrows and gray sideburns that make us Irish women of a certain age so resemble muppets.

I reeled out into the daylight to discover that I had fabulous hair and a whole bunch of guests from Baltimore waiting impatiently for me at home. There were people here I hadn't seen for many many years; one in particular since she was seven, and now she's thirteen and looks like a particularly stunning twenty two. I commiserated with her mother. All these young teenage children seem to have more self possession, maturity, good looks and fashion sense than I ever have had or ever will, and I include my own son in this daunting category, even if he does spend hours standing in front of the open refrigerator door whining about the lack of food therein. So we all went off to the Brew N' View, which, as I have mentioned I think about a thousand times, is where I always take out of towners. We let the kids pick the table, which meant that we sat next to the Dance Dance Revolution machine, which is why there are approximately a thousand blurry photos of the Dance Dance Revolution machine on my Flickr photostream. Including MOI, since I got up there and, I thought, did not too badly for being a)elderly, b) somewhat intoxicated, c) fat and d) unable to read instructions in Japanese. I got up to Level 2 and the other adults thought that was great but the kids shook their heads pityingly and gently escorted me back to my seat. I'll probably die of some mysterious disease now anyway: I was barefoot at Asheville Pizza. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

It was great to see everyone if somewhat disconcerting to discover that they were not, after all, frozen in time six years ago but have kept right on growing up. A & her boyfriend and I drove up to Bat Cave this morning with muffins for the crew and then slowly made our way home through the apple corridor that is 64, stopping to ooh and ahh over chainsaw bears, a chainsaw wizard and even a remarkably wonderful chainsaw rhinocerous. Yes, a rhinocerous, a beautiful carved thing who was light years better than your usual run of the mill chainsaw bears, raccoons holding signs that say Howdy, and, inexplicably, a life size chainsaw cowboy with two guns drawn. Alas I had forgotten my camera. We bought dusty apples from a creepy old farmstand that had decaying possum and raccoon hides stapled all over it (turns out old WNC hasn't completely disappeared just yet) and somewhat nicer apples from a bright and shiny farmstand that apparently laces their cider with sugar. It's been a nice weekend. And I look fabulous. Right? Right?

The Yellow Jacket

Today I went out of the office to smoke a cigarette at around 3:00 pm, as is my wont, whatever the fuck a wont is. Certainly it's my habit, and thank god, really, that I smoke, because otherwise whole weather systems would pass me by, locked in hundreds of feet of solid concrete and mineral specimens as I am. I mean, Armageddon may have come and gone by the time I emerge from the office: I'll never know. So I spend a lot of time in the Rhino courtyard, smoking alone, feeling every inch the social pariah and getting on first name terms with the cardinal family and the mysterious worms that mysteriously emerge from solid pavement every time it rains and then, of course, not mysteriously at all, die horrible deaths at the hands of the cardinal family. Nature: it is a mystery. Mmmmm hmmm.

And today it was even more of a mystery than usual, because I smoked my 3:00 cigarette, bid a wistful goodbye to daylight and the sky, and went back inside to chop membership forms at which point I became hideously aware that something large and angry was buzzing around in my hair. "help!" I called softly from the kitchen, as I tried to brush it out. "Help! HELP!!" and my coworker finally heard my pleas and ran out to help me. Sure enough, yellow jacket. She got it out of my hair without either of us being stung, utterly amazingly, and proceeded to stamp it into oblivion with extreme prejudice while I waxed eloquent equally with thanks and with the still bitter memory of the yellow jacket in a soda can who stung me on the upper lip in 7th grade. That sting, positioned directly in the center of my lip, caused it to swell up to National Geographic proportions. For several days. In which my unfeeling mother forced me to go to school.

That was horribly cruel and I'd never do such a thing to my own kids, unless, of course, they were really getting on my nerves. Heh. But I'm over it though. Really. I mean, seriously, I'm so over it.

Waaaaaaaaaaahhhhh! Poems of Self Pity

RAIN
I thought my umbrella was in the car
Resting
But no,
It was already in my office so I
Got wet
Because
I am too cool to wear a raincoat.

DINNER
I forgot I had said I would
Go out to dinner tonight
And now I can't
But not for fun reasons
Because I have to go see my mother
Because I have to help my son write an English paper
And because, god help me, I have to go to a large
and evil store
to buy sweatpants made by depressed Chinese children
Wednesdays suck.

CLOTHES
All my clothes today
Came from LL Bean
And they look it.
I used to be hip
But alas, no longer.

Comfort Clothes

I just got home from work and a couple of post work birthday beers for a friend and then, ah, I got home and pulled off my work clothes and put on lovely, lovely sweatpants and giant ancient purple T-shirt and cozy hoodie. Ahhhhhhhh. There is nothing better than comfort clothes. I like my job, which makes me lucky and one of the few, even if after a month the novelty is beginning to wear off and I'm kind of back to that "working for a living sucks; jobs, meh" thing. Probably, though, I'd still be totally enthusiastic if it wasn't for the bra factor. When you work, if you are female, you must wear a bra. This is the law, and if you don't obey it the bra police will come and take you away to bra jail, or your kids will taunt you and frankly I'm not sure which is worse. At any rate, I went through a joyous braless year of unemployment, during which I sometimes looked at my laundromat pile of sweat pants and giant hideous antique T-shirts and thought "Uh oh. I have kind of let things go, haven't I?" but nonetheless kept right on wearing my lovely, cozy, repulsively grotesque clothing because, you know, what the fuck? I wasn't working and the special torture which is the brassiere is reserved for the gainfully employed - just a little thorn in their sides, bless their hearts.

Now, though, I'm back in that 9-5 world about which Dolly Parton and Loni Anderson in their glory have sung and acted so eloquently. (Huh. According to IMDB I'm misremembering Loni Anderson as having anything to do with the 9 - 5 franchise. Well, go figure. I had this large breasted vision in my head - kind of terrifying, actually.) Now, Dolly needs a bra; I grant you that. I could see where support might be vital there. But I, who am artistically under endowed, as once semi-affectionately explained by my evil ex: "You know. Artist tits. All you artsy intellectual girls got them tiny titties," I, unlike Dolly, do not in actual fact need a bra for anything but camouflage. Yet I must wear one, because you just have to when you work, or else it's wrong, and against the American way, or something evil whose depths I have never plumbed, because I give in and put the damn thing on every fucking morning. And it's the fastest thing to leave my body as soon as I get home again.

Ah The Joy

The joy of having M living back at home and attending public school is just too great for words, because it only took him three or four weeks of school to bring home a particularly virulent cold and now we're all sniffing about miserably. I went to get the cold medicine out of the bathroom for my darling boy, who rarely gets sick, but tends to go all the way when he does succumb and discovered that it had all expired in 2004 and 2005 - when he went away to school and took his horrible kid germs with him. He is back. So are the germs. They may have had a point, in grade school, when they said boys had cooties and germs. Ah choo!

And then there's the joy of the laundry, and finding the neatly folded jeans from last laundry day underneath the dirty crumpled jeans that have to be washed, like, immediately please Mom because I have nothing to wear to school, is a joy that is hard to communicate. It's one of those joys that involves a lot of cuss words. Ah well. At least the worst things I'm finding in his pockets are world history notes, candy wrappers and the occasional dollar, which I keep as my rightful due.

I'm Still Alive

And I know, I haven't been blogging. Let's see, what have I been doing?

Well, I've been taking and posting a ton of pictures. And I've been working a lot - on Friday night alone I managed to cover myself and most of the office in copy machine toner, so you know I've been accomplishing simply tons of useful work. I went to Drinking Liberally last Thursday - there are pictures. I went to the Flying Frog on Friday evening, which was nice and then I had my tarot cards read today at the Lexington Avenue Arts Fair. The tarot card lady told me basically the same stuff that my therapist keeps telling me, which is either awesome or scary (you pick) and then, last weekend, in a most blog worthy but as yet unblogged episode, I had the everliving shit scared out of me by a balloon, so you know, life goes on.

I got the balloon at the Hendersonville Apple Festival; it was a standard issue blue helium balloon that said True Blue Democrat in white letters on the side. Very nice. I had it tied around my wrist, which made me feel about six, but you know, whatever: we Democrats are so full of childlike glee and stuff. I brought the ballooon home and let it go in the dining room and forgot all about it. I went to bed and then, about 3 in the morning or so, I woke up in total darkness to this weird and terrifying FWAP FWAP FWAP noise. I opened both my myopic eyes wide, already freaking out a bit, and a blue orb swooped down directly at my face at superhuman speed.

I stopped screaming eventually, having lost several years off my life, to realize that the accursed Democratic balloon had somehow mysteriously made its merry way into my bedroom where it had gotten stuck in the ceiling fan (hence the FWAPping) which managed to propel it into my eyes just as I opened them. Well, either that or the spirits of Democrats past were having a nasty joke at my expense, or possibly the almost certainly Republican resident ghost was moved to political commentary. Maybe my poltergeist is actually Lyndon LaRouche. One may never know, but from now on all balloons in this house, particularly political ones, must be kept safely under lock and key.

In other breaking news this evening, M has a cold and is miserable; A is working all the time and I never see her and Theo is moping because he doesn't get walked enough. Same old, same old around here. Go look at the pictures.

The Fair is Back

the state mammal is a box turtle
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

S and I went to the fair last night. No, it hasn't started yet - I was doing my yearly volunteer stint as Mountain State Fair Art Handler In Chief and Wise All Knowing if Somewhat Snarky Judge. S was there because she's still new enough in town not to quail in despair when someone smilingly suggests a volunteer gig. Thank the gods she was naive enough to come, too, because this year the fair crew, in their ultimate wisdom, decided to cover the white pegboard walls we usually hang the art on with black burlap. It looked much better - it was awful to work with. If you think hanging a bazillion terrible pencil drawings on pegboard with these sort of hook-y pegboard things is hard, you should try doing it through one and sometimes two layers of black burlap. It took four people the same amount of time to hang less art than two people with twice the art last year. Or something like that. I recognize that that sentence was, in fact, unreadable, but it's been a long day.

Hanging the fair art is great fun in a weird way, particularly while drinking Yuengling in plastic root beer bottles so as not to epater the proletariat. It's also fun because when, like me, you hang the adult art (not adult like that, you fool. Adult enough to do 3 detailed pencil drawings of Johnny Depp and pay for them to be triple matted and framed.) you can be all mean and rotten about it and make hilarious comments at the expense of the entrant who decided that it would be a good idea to do an oil painting replica of the cover of a box of Sleepytime herbal tea. You can be mean without fear of karmic repercussion because, you see, you're there hanging the art as a volunteer and the good karma cancels out the bad! It's a beautiful balance. There are always some serious winners at the fair - and then there are the people who do the landscapes from the TV shows on how to paint. And then, there's Heather, whoever she is, bless her heart: she's apparently unhappy in these mountains: she paints lurid seascapes with wildly waving ferns and pirate ships under full sail. Heather rocks.

Everyone rocks, actually, for all that I double over in convulsions of laughter at the earnest soul who painted two giant and rather owlish sparrows fluttering madly around a green snake crawling up their birdhouse and then decoupaged in the words to a hymn (God Is Watching Every Sparrow, I think - yeah, judging by the painting he may be watching but he's not planning on helping much) there's something endearing and sweet about the art at the fair. These people take it very seriously, and they work their hearts out, get their work framed and take it in to be judged amidst the jars of pickles and vegetables shaped like Richard Nixon, the llamas and the sheep, the kids' diorama contest, the chainsaw bears and the man with the live bees. So I take it seriously too. Or kind of seriously in that I give points for ineptitude and dedication, and none for polished shininess.

And this turtle? This turtle is the state mammal of North Carolina, man! This turtle is on display with the kids' diorama contest, where the theme apparently is either NC's various state totems or pig racing, it was unclear. Dude! This turtle is AWESOME.

Mice, Again

The mice are back; they love the change of seasons. Even though it isn't really fall yet and the weather is still hot, still their tiny mouse brains and their even tinier little mouse day planners tell them that it's time to come into my kitchen and curl up snugly for the winter among my canned beans and oven insulation. Bastards. I hates them. One died some time back in the cabinet and was recently discovered: so that's what that smell was. A called me at work last week to tell me about the dead mouse - you know, breaking news, my daughter the anchorperson, coming to Mom live from the kitchen with a complaint about the dead mouse. So I cleaned out all his horrible decayed mouse corpse detritus and put down some more traps, lavishly baited with peanut butter.

Evil little bastards ate the peanut butter and didn't spring the traps. Naturally. At least, I guess that's what happened, unless it evaporated into thin air and I don't think peanut butter does that. Rum apparently does: I had a big old gallon bottle that I bought for my party in early August, that I figured would last me until Christmas, since I rarely drink liquor. Alas, no, even though it was all sealed up, it's mostly disappeared: just evaporated, I guess. Gone. Vanished. I haven't heard any sounds of mousy revelry coming from the walls (well, no more than usual this time of year) so I doubt the mice removed the cap, constructed a siphon and drained the rum. Perhaps we have Borrowers (she said sarcastically, with an evil glance towards her oldest child.) I wouldn't even have known it was almost gone if it hadn't been for the mouse, so I guess he did do me one favor: without him, I wouldn't have had a chance to rant and rave and holler at the kids and loudly mark the bottle level with a sharpie.

In other breaking news, I went out to lunch today with my mother and my friend S at Fig Bistro and it was lovely. There's something about a really nice lunch and a glass of wine that just makes one feel all civilized like - civilized and ready for a nap. While we were there we saw this lovely creature out the window: truly one of the biggest praying mantises I've ever seen and he posed so graciously for the camera. I keep on trying to take pictures of the orb weavers at work at night on my back porch, because their webs are astounding but alas, my photographic skills are not up for it. The spiders also get exasperated quickly and I have found in my long years of life that it is not wise, oh my children, to exasperate a spider. Or a praying mantis, or a mouse, actually, now that I think about it.

Holy Trivia, Batman!

I've been invited to go to Atlanta to audition for Jeopardy!! OH MY GOD! I am so incredibly excited! I took an online Jeopardy test (that I found out about on Metafilter, naturally) a couple of months ago and, since I didn't hear anything back, forgot all about it, figuring that I had blown the test on the Dreyfus Affair question, which I had completely blanked on. Oh well, sure I have always wanted to be on Jeopardy, but you know, whatever: it hasn't been a high priority in my life, not really even up there with such goals as owning a llama or a pygmy fainting goat and well behind marrying Nicolas Cage. BUT NOW, OMG, I AM GOING TO GO TO ATLANTA AND TRY OUT FOR JEOPARDY BECAUSE I GOT A SPECIAL EMAIL INVITATION, HOLY FUCK, CAN NICOLAS CAGE BE FAR BEHIND? Perhaps I will win a pygmy fainting goat! Help, I will have to lose a ton of weight and get my eyebrows waxed! Yipes!

This is what the email said:
Congratulations! You have been selected for a follow-up appointment at an upcoming Jeopardy! contestant search for the Atlanta area, exclusively for those who successfully passed the online test. This is the next step in becoming a Jeopardy! contestant. We have reserved the following appointment for you:

When: Wednesday, October 11th Time: 9:30am
Where: Atlanta, GA

You must RSVP within two business days of receipt of this email to secure your place in the audition. When you RSVP via email, please provide the following:

1) Date and time of your invite
2) Your name
3) Your City & State
4) Your Phone Number

Due to overwhelming demand we can only hold your spot for two business days. If you respond after that period of time, and if we still have space, we will be happy to provide you with an appointment.

Your appointment is non-transferable, and only those who receive this invitation directly from Jeopardy! may RSVP to book an appointment. Each RSVP will be matched against an invite list and forwarded invitations will not be honored.

The auditions will last about 2 hours.

Once you RSVP, we will email you a letter of confirmation within five business days that will give you the exact location and other information regarding trying out. Should you have a major conflict with the time and date provided, you may respond to this email to explain the nature of the situation. Again, please provide your name, city and phone number. If you do not receive a response in three business days, please contact us by phone.

Appointments are very limited, so please be sure you can join us before you RSVP.

So of course I immediately emailed them back and said, oh yes, I WILL be there, although it would be nice if I could come later, like around noon, so I don't have to leave Asheville at 5 in the morning, but if I have to, I will. So here we go: I am already nervous. I better go to the library and read the encyclopedia or something, holy shit, how does one prep for a Jeopardy tryout? How will I cope with the shame if I don't cut it at the auditions? Or, possibly even more frightening, what if I do cut it at the auditions and I have to get on a plane (I'm terrified of flying) and go to California, a distant and foreign land? Eeeep! I am scared! I am afraid! I am nervous! I am excited and jubilant! Wheee! And so, here is a picture of cloggers from the Apple Festival which I went to yesterday to calm us all down. ;-)

M Won't Let Me Take His Picture

kids 4
Originally uploaded by mygothlaundry.

M, lately, hates hates hates me taking pictures of him. He refuses to let me take a picture, which is a drag, since he's a cute adorable boy and I would like to put his picture up in my office so I could point to it proudly. When I tried last night to take his picture with his sister thus proving that he is now at least 6' tall, he took off to his room while A, who adores having her picture taken, tried to drag him back out and I snapped away. Serve him right for being a pain about a simple thing like pictures: now his blurry self is on the internets.