happy holidays

I have a Christmas present for all of you:

http://transmogriflaw.typepad.com/transmogriflaw/

Please update your links when you get a chance. All further posting will be done from the new site.

maybe they should filter out a few phrases

Tonight I googled the phrase 'breast milk' for undisclosed reasons.

Normal links appeared, but in the sponsored links to the right, I saw the following:

Breast milk on eBay
Large selection of new & used. aff
Buy Breast Milk and Save!

Wow. eBay is really expanding these days.

We've got plenty of used breast milk here, packaged very nicely in landfill-expanding plastic. Foolish us for paying the garbage company to take it away when we could sell it on eBay!

clarification on dog bundles

Reader chickenmagazine's initial concern that the Red Wiggly Bundle of Love was, uh, one of two bundles belonging our dog made me laugh out loud, but I see her point. I mean, I suppose that could be an accurate description of male dog genitalia, although, as she said, ewwww.

So, for the record, my dog is female and now spayed. And I call her the RWBL because that's what she is. ALL of her, I mean.

I may be able to unearth some pictures of the snockered RWBL. Not taken by me, of course. I'm a Good Dog Owner (but I may have an evil twin).

the big operation

Our dog's reproductive future, or rather the lack thereof, has been secured. The Red Wiggly Bundle of Love went under the knife this week and returned home stoned to the gills.

I mean really, really stoned. Snockered. Talking with Jerry. She was swaying on her feet from the tranquilizers they'd given her.

Luckily I am a Good Dog Owner and so I would never, ever stick a pipe-shaped piece of rawhide in her mouth and tie a tie-died bandanna around her neck and take a picture. Oh no. No stoned dog humor around here, no siree!

I mean, really. What sort of dog owner would do that?

holiday parties

On Friday evening, my friends R. and M. threw their annual Screw You, Kringle Bastard! party, which is a Machiavellian, martini-enhanced version of a white elephant party.

The gift scheming generally goes on for hours, but by 10:45 Nathaniel was sound asleep on my husband's lap and we were not far from joining him. 10:45 represents the latest we have stayed out since he was born. Hoo-boy, do we live it up these days or what?

When we left, we had secured the following gift:

- Two (2) moderately bruised bananas.
- One (1) container of Fleishmann's margarine, slightly used.
- One (1) opened six-pack of Thomas's English muffins containing three (3) English muffins.
- One (1) bag of bagel chips, unopened.

I think the three missing English muffins were eaten by the Kringle Bastard.

mining my memory and coming up empty

I often scribble notes to myself. Generally these notes make sense both at the time I scribble them and then years later when I find them crumpled in the corner of forgotten bureau drawers and boxes.

Sometimes, however, the notes defy logical explanation. For example, the following, found scribbled on notepaper I'm fairly certain dates from the time I was living in Italy:

- bug-city girls
- Marilyn Monroe
- computer - Sai come ti voglio bene
- Tosca in morning

Heck if I know what I was on about. I'm not sure I knew when I wrote it, let alone now.

it's that time of year

I gained a bit on Monday, which means those of you of a more geeky persuasion now know how old I am. La la la, time marches on and all that.

But really, the time of year that it really is, and that's the most important, not any of this bit twiddling nonsense, is EXAM time. I say it in caps because boy does it feel like a caps-worthy occasion when you are a 1L.

Best of luck to all of you exam-takers. I would say I'm nostalgic for law school exams, but I'd be lying. Law school, yes. Exams, no. The best thing about exams is that they end and then you have that glorious period of time you'll miss tremendously when you're working: winter break.

You're almost there. Really.

back home after a wander

We're back home after a jaunt around southern California. Nathaniel met his great-grandmother and uncle for the first time, as well as two members of the baby explosion.*

Nathaniel was uninterested in the older babies (one four months, the other six). His interests these days still primarily center around Lefty and Righty, though he smiles a lot at the face that hovers above Lefty and Righty and that other face that seems to be around a lot but that's attached to the useless and nonproductive chest.

The older babies, though, both girls, were fascinated with him. The younger one was discomfited when she saw her mother holding Nathaniel and spent the rest of the evening glaring at him suspiciously. The older one, having reached the stage where all new objects warrant tasting, stealthily licked his hand when they were lying next to each other.

I tried to explain to Nathaniel that in a few short years, he'd go through a lot of teen angst for that much attention from older women, particularly the mouthy one, but he completely ignored them. Maybe it's for the best. I've heard that whole hard-to-get shindig works wonders.

We had a great trip, but it's nice to be home. The dog was happy to see us. The cats, well, who knows. I think they were happy, but maybe they were just lobbying for food.

* In the past six months, the following have all produced offspring: my kindergarten seatmate, my freshman year college roommate, a friend from college who briefly dated an ex-boyfriend, two former managers from my programming days, a law school buddy, and a former housemate. Plus Julia Roberts and any other people I might have forgotten. And I'm not even getting into those who are pregnant.

on the road

My boy, my husband, and I are on road trip, complete with road tunes and for our littlest passenger, a bulging diaper bag. It's the best kind of road trip: we have no fixed itinerary and no obligations.

I'm writing this entry in lovely Atascadero, California where I am spending the night at the home of my seatmate from kindergarten. T. and I grew up together, running wild through the avocado groves of what was then rural southern California.

A few years after we shared seats in kindergarden, we attempted to sort out the facts of life with a set of highly promiscuous Barbies. We had established that some freakish interaction of human genitalia resulted in babies. However, we were quite unclear on the details. Even at that age we intuitively doubted Ken's ability to perform when it counted, so our Barbies had plastic lesbian Barbie sex, except that we didn't know what sex or lesbians were. Just to be on the safe side, however, Ken took up residence with each of the lesbian Barbie couples in turn. In hindsight, I think we created quite a Hefner-esque lifestyle for the man with the smooth plastic crotch.

Despite these early misconceptions, we eventually figured it out. Her first child is four months older than mine. We took pictures of the two of them together. The babies were almost completely uninterested in each other, but we each took about two million pictures every time their eyes wandered in the general direction of the other. I suspect that the babies were acting much more rationally than we were.