The other night I was watching Grey’s Anatomy and one of the dudes had a big ol’ hickey on his neck and it got me thinking. Do women actually give men hickeys? I mean, do YOU give your boyfriend/husband/random guy from the bar hickeys? I’m fairly certain that I’ve never given anyone a hickey before. Am I a bad person for this? Should I add “Give Cleatus a hickey” to my bucket list? Or, better yet, maybe I should add “Give Michael Weston a hickey.”

As for receiving hickeys…do you? I mean, are you galavanting around town, dropping your children off at playdates, taking your son to soccer practice, doing your grocery shopping, and mopping the floors with HICKEYS ON YOUR NECK? Or, god forbid, elsewhere on your body? Please share. I must know.

And, because I’m asking for your hickey information, I shall share mine. I have had two hickeys in my lifetime. One was while I was in high school and it was most unfortunate. I was “dating” this boy named (oh God) Lester, which meant that a.) I heard quite a few jokes about Lester the Molester and b.) something was clearly wrong with me.

Let us go off topic for a moment here while I describe Lester. Lester was what we, back then, called a scumbag. Really, I know no nicer way to put it than that. He had no money and he did not bathe and he only owned two shirts. (I’m sorry, it was high school, there was no such thing as “compassion.”) One was a Green Bay Packers t-shirt and one was a band t-shirt (I think Metallica). How do I know these were the only two shirts he owned? Because he wore those two shirts every single day. But, because it would be totally uncool to be seen wearing the same two shirts over and over he would (OH DEAR GOD) switch back and forth between wearing them right side out and inside out. And, uh, he didn’t wash them in between wearing them either. He also had rather long, greasy blond hair (and this was not a time when long hair on boys was fashionable) and once an older girl came up behind Lester and me kissing and, noticing the long hair on both of our heads, said something about how she couldn’t believe two girls were kissing in the hall. (As if high school wasn’t hard enough…) My only excuse for dating this boy is that I think I was going through some sort of bad boy phase, and I just expected this greasy kid from the wrong side of town to be a bad boy. He really wasn’t though, because I once suggested that he come over to my house while my parents were out of town for the weekend and he acted all scandalized. So, since I couldn’t find any actual bad boys in my high school, I opted for a dirty boy. Next best thing, right?

Anyway, back to the hickey. It was Christmas break and Lester was no where to be found seeing as how he lived way across town from me. I was hanging out with some neighbor boys (who, come to think of it, were actually “bad boys”) and I ended up making out with one of them the night before we went back to school. And he totally gave me a hickey. I’m pretty sure Lester saw it, but because he was actually only dirty and not bad, he never said a word about it.

I am an asshole.

My second hickey was courtesy of my soon-to-be-husband, Cleatus, and when I say “soon-to-be” I fucking mean WE WERE GOING TO GET MARRIED IN TWO DAYS. And the bastard gave me a hickey. Like it was a fucking wedding present.

The worst part is, Cleatus and I were totally just goofing around, tickling each other and play fighting when all of a sudden he said something like “Wouldn’t it be funny if I gave you a hickey right before we got married?” and I screeched something like “I will fucking kill you” and then he held me down and gave me a hickey. He swears he didn’t mean to REALLY give me one, but y’all. I had a hickey on my wedding day.

Cleatus is an asshole.

Now, spill. When did you last give/get a hickey?

Oh, hai.

It appears that I have a bit of the verbal constipation, but don’t worry. I’m forcing these words out JUST FOR YOU.

So, first off, I should probably make the big announcement. No, I’m not pregnant or getting a divorce and I didn’t save the whales. This is even bigger. This is, in fact, HUGE.

I bought an iPhone.

Whew. It feels good to get that out there. I mean, sure, waving it around in everyone’s face has been fun, but it just didn’t feel official until I announced it here.

I won’t even tell you everything I’ve had to go through to make this happen (hint: my knees have bruises) or tell you how Cleatus feels about 1. the cost of the phone (hint: Cleatus + frowny face = how he feels) or 2. the cost of the plan (hint: I didn’t actually tell him that part, because then the frowny face would turn into an angry face) or the fact that while he still has Verizon, I now have AT&T (hint: irritated. Very irritated.), so yes. Let’s just skip talking about all of that.

Excuse me for a moment, I need to go pet my iPhone, she gets lonely when I leave her all alone in my dark and dreary purse.

I’m back, but I can’t just sit here and blog all day. I have an iPhone to make sweet love to. So, I leave you with homework.

First, I need you all to go enter my contest to win a Baby Signs book and $50 gift card to Babies “R” Us. Even if you don’t have a baby, it’d make a great baby shower gift, so GO ENTER.

Second, I need you to look over there by your little scroll-y bar thing. You know, to the right. Towards the top of your page there is an orange tab that says “Suggestions.” Sweet, right? Click it and you can leave me suggestions for things to blog about, because, let’s face it, you need more Wiping Up Snot in your life.

Third, what iPhone apps can I not live without? (You see that? See how I brought it back around to the iPhone? I do that in real life too. It’s very charming. People love it.)

Assignments due immediately. Chop chop.

I went to get my hair done last week by a lady (Hi, Lynn!) that I hadn’t been to in years. Many, many years. On the drive over I was thinking about how long it had been and wondered how long my mom had been going to her for her hair. Ten years? Twenty years? One hundred years? Who knows. Either way, it reminded me of the only time my mother seriously considered disowning me.

I should mention that I was a bit of a wild child.

A friend and I got drunk at my house once and an ambulance had to be called for my friend. She drank so much that she started puking up her chinese food from dinner. (Beef and brocolli, and y’all, if the whole brocolli florets littering my toilet seat told me anything, it was that she needed to chew her food a little better.) I told her to puke a little quieter but she wouldn’t listen and my parents heard her. They came upstairs to my room to see what was going on up there, but they wouldn’t believe me when I said she had the flu and they called 911. Such jerks, my parents.

I also ran away. Twice.

And, of course, I smoked pot. Lots and lots of pot.

But, my parents? They still loved me. They never kicked me out of the house or punched me in the face or did any of those things that they probably really, really wanted to do.

And then, one day, my mom came home from the hair dresser and she beat the living crap out of me for giving her lice. Okay, so I exaggerate. What she actually did was turn on her super-disapointed voice and say “Kaaaaarly. If you let your friends use my hair brush again I will end you.” (Or something to that effect. I can’t remember the words other than the “Kaaaaarly” part. My parents were really good at summing up the big long  “I’m so dissapointed in you” lecture to just one word-my name.)  I just know that my poor mother had lice and didn’t know it until her hairdresser told her about it.

My mama was pretty embarassed.

The thing is, a few weeks prior to her hair appointment I had lice too. I KNEW I had lice in that way that you know something but refuse to admit it to yourself. My head itched like you wouldn’t believe, but there was no way in hell I was going to tell anyone I had lice. I mean, lice! Bugs! In my hair! If I admitted that they were there my life would be over. First, I was a teenage girl with dirty bugs in my hair. That’s pretty traumatic on it’s own, but when you factor in the fact that bugs are my nemesis? NOT A GOOD SITUATION. So I just pretended I didn’t know, tra la la, hey mom, mind if I borrow your brush?

The weird thing is, pretending they weren’t there worked. By the time my mom had figured out that she had lice, mine were GONE. Seriously, they were just gone. I pretended them away.

That’s probably why I have such a bad habit of just pretending things will go away now. Bills? Just pretend they aren’t there. My child’s nose picking habit? What nose picking habit? The dirty dishes in the sink? I don’t even HAVE a sink. No blog post in over a week? WHAT BLOG?

You may remember about six months ago when I was bitching about Cindy-Lu’s brand new dresser falling apart after two days of use so I duct taped it together. (Okay, so chances are you DON’T remember that, but whatever.) Well, SURPRISE, that dresser has been held together with duct tape all this time. And by “held together” I mean one of the drawers was totally useless because the front part is completely seperate from the drawer part and the other drawer had a bottom that kept randomly falling out which would then cause me to have a seizure every time I attempted to open that drawer because the bottom part was halfway in the drawer beneath it so it wouldn’t open and JESUS CHRIST ON A PIECE OF TOAST, WHY HAVE I LIVED THAT WAY FOR SIX MONTHS?

Last night I had a dream that I superglued the dresser back together.

Today I tried to superglue the dresser back together.

Luckily for the dresser, I couldn’t find any damn superglue. All I could find was that stupid craft glue that I bought when I thought maybe I was crafty so I ran out and bought eight million dollars worth of crafty stuff and then decided that nope, not actually crafty and owning all the crafty supplies isn’t going to change that!

Craft glue actually holds pretty well. But, I didn’t stop there. I didn’t want to be in the same situation a week from now, so I decided to GET TO THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM. Why was the bottom continually falling out of the drawer? What was causing this? I had to find the answer if I wanted to correct the situation, and god damn it, I wanted to correct the situation.

It was Cleatus’s fault. Obviously. When he nailed the bottom part of the drawer into the drawer part of the drawer (huh?) he COMPLETELY MISSED. The nail went through the bottom part of the drawer and up into THIN AIR. The moron. You KNOW he had to see that when it happened. And did he fix it? No. Bastard.

So, I started looking for a hammer. All I could find was a stupid ball-peen hammer and the only reason I know it is called a ball-peen hammer is because Cleatus asked me to get it for him a couple of weeks ago and I said “what the hell is a ball-peen hammer?” and then he showed me. Ball-peen hammers, in case you are wondering, do not have the little grippy things for removing nails and I really needed the grippy thing to get the nail out because I couldn’t find any other nails to use.

I got a fork. It is totally similar to the grippy things on a hammer. But it didn’t work.

I got a knife and tried using the edge of it to pry up the nail. Didn’t work.

I got a bottle opener and, honestly, I’m not sure how I thought that was going to help, but I was going to give it a shot, but then I remembered seeing a pair of pliers laying around and I got those.

I was able to pry the nail up with the knife just enough to grip the nail head with the pliers and I got the nail out. Then I used the stupid hammer and hammered it into place.

So there you go. I am a home improvement guru. I glued it and I nailed it.

I’ll let y’all know how long it lasts.

And, now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go hang some new cabinets in my kitchen. With my fork.

I know, I know. You don’t care about my dreams. I get it. I really do. I used to be greeted by my best friend at school every morning with “Ohmigod, last night I dreamt…” and it was TORTURE. Seriously, hearing about other people’s dreams makes me lose the will to live.

Having said that, I just have to tell you about my dream last night. Please don’t harm yourself.

Last night I dreamt that I sat down at my computer and started blogging. The first few sentences in my post? “I have exciting news! I just got married! To a polygamist Tyranosaurus Rex!” And the T-Rex was standing there reading over my shoulder. What the fuckity fuck? Not only did I marry a REPTILE,  but said reptile was a POLYGAMIST? Good God.

I won’t continue the torture by telling you about how later in the dream me and my new hubby came across a very pregnant Nadya Suleman begging a doctor to perform an abortion, because she was pregnant with EIGHT BABY DINOSAURS AND OH MY HOLY FUCK WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME? My subconscious is a scary place.

Alright. I feel better for having told the entire world about my dream. As payback, leave me your craziest dream in the comments and I promise to sit and read each and every one of them and not even CONSIDER slitting my wrists.

Oh. My. Gawd. I am so very, very irritated with myself right now. (Why, yes. It IS a nice change to be irritated at myself rather than at Cleatus.) Awhile back I was reading someone’s blog (Can’t remember whose.) and they mentioned that Twilight sucks, but Outlander is TEH AWESOME. So, while I completely disagreed with their assessment of Twilight (EDWARD. WANT TO DO BAD THINGS WITH EDWARD. NAUGHTY, DIRTY, SLUTTY THINGS.), I decided to check out this Outlander book.

I waited a couple of weeks and then found myself at the used bookstore in town. I, of course, had forgotten the name of the book so I wandered around willing my brain to JUST WORK, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, but it didn’t listen. Finally I went up to the guy at the cash register and asked him to help.

“Yeah, um, there’s this book? That I want to read? Someone said it was good. But I can’t remember the name. It was about some girl and she went back in time. And there was this guy. His name was Jamie, I think? And they fell in love?”

“Uh, yeah. You’re gonna want to check the paranormal romance section for that.”

“Paranormal romance? Like aliens? I don’t think this has aliens.”

“Yeah, uh, time travel. Check the paranormal romance section.”

I felt very dirty looking through those books. Very dirty, indeed. I came across a few books about aliens. Aliens! In a romance novel! Don’t worry, I’ll spare you the anal probe jokes. You’re welcome.

I didn’t’ find the book that night, but I did come back a few days later all prepared and whatnot and I bought Outlander.

And THAT explains just where the hell I’ve been for the last week or two. I’ve currently just finished book 3 in the series and I have the next 2 books sitting on my bookshelf just waiting for me. I’m kind of afraid to start the next one though, because OH MY GOD, GET A FUCKING LIFE ALREADY.

Also, I keep thinking with a Scottish accent. And that’s fucked up.

But, Jamie? I want to do bad things with Jamie. Naughty, dirty, slutty things.

I’m not much of a haiku-er. I read Leslie’s haiku every day and I read a lot of haiku every Haiku Friday and my mom even bought me a little book with haiku about picking your nose and using your head for a bowling ball and I can’t even remember what all because my son stole it from me. I don’t, however, write very much haiku. Or any, if we’re being honest. That’s all about to change my friends. Leslie is having another Haiku Buckaroo contest and THIS TIME I’m on the ball enough to enter. In fact, I misread the contest date and panicked last Friday when I thought I had missed the deadline. Thankfully Leslie emailed me to tell me to quit freaking out because I still had time. I like Leslie. She’s smart.

Without further ado, I present my haiku:

Midnight Madden sale.

My husband was first in line.

He is such a dork.

****

Bathroom wall needs art.

Too bad my nail hit a pipe.

Don’t tell Cleatus.

****

Cleatus whines because

Sex is not often enough.

Is my blinker fixed?

****

History Channel.

Why does my son love it so?

Eeyore switched at birth?

****

And finally the reason why I don’t haiku:

Angsty poems fill pages

Of a notebook now forgotten.

High school ruined me.

That’s right. I used up all of my poetic abilities in high school writing crap like (OH DEAR GOD, I CAN NOT BELIEVE I AM PUTTING THIS ON THE INTERNET) this:

“Hidden tears, unspoken fears,

Memores of her, it’s all a blur.

You love her, but she won’t.

You love me, but you don’t.

Look me in the eyes,

Tell me beautiful lies.

Walk away, pretend your fine.

You won’t hear me say I’m losing my mind.

Hold my hand, do you understand?

Did you feel my love when our hands touched?

Her love for you is dead, it’s come to an end.

Yet it’s over for me and you, your love for her is true.”

That was a poem I wrote about Cleatus when I thought he was still in love with his ex-girlfriend. The next day I wrote a poem about how he was in love with my best friend. And the next day? I wrote a poem about how we were destined to be together FOREVER. PUKE! Puke puke puke.

Ah, teenage hormones. How I miss those days.

I feel like I should post SOMETHING already, but I just don’t know what.

I could tell you about how the Long John Silver’s commercial for their new flatbread sandwiches makes me shudder in disgust. I don’t really know why, but those things are WRONG. I guess I just prefer my greasy deep fried chicken planks to be smothered in ketchup and eaten with a fork. I don’t need them dressed up with lettuce and bacon and some weird red sauce. Also? Where would they put the crunchies?

I could also tell you about how neurotic I am. Every time I get in my bed I have to pull all the blankets and pillows off and put them in a special place on the floor. How do I determine the special spot on my floor? I look around and ask myself these questions: Do you see any bugs? Could bugs be hiding anywhere nearby just waiting to crawl in my blankets? If the answer to both questions is no, then I’ve found my special spot. Then I grab my pillows (three of them, because I am a PRETTY PRETTY PRINCESS) and shake them out and then peer worriedly into the dark pillow cases to make sure I don’t see anything moving. I then shake the hell out of the sheet before I put it on the bed, and finally I shake the comforter and lay it over the sheet. And then I usually do one last (quick!) check under the sheet just to be sure some sneaky little fucker didn’t crawl in there while I was busy with the comforter. I don’t just do this before bed. I do this before I get BACK in to bed after a quick midnight pee. I do this after getting out of bed and going into my children’s bedroom to yell at them to QUIT THE FUCKING ARGUING ABOUT WHO GETS TO SLEEP ON THE TOP BUNK AND WHO HAS TO SLEEP ON THE BOTTOM BUNK OR YOU WILL BOTH BE SLEEPING IN THE GOD DAMNED STREET. (We recently got the kids bunk beds and they are now sharing a room! It’s going GREAT!) I do the bug check after I get up in the middle of the night to get a drink of water. Our bedroom isn’t even infested with bugs or anything. Its just that there COULD BE a bug in my bed and THAT WOULD BE BAD. I think the earwigs traumatized me last year. Oh, and Cleatus LOVES it when he is sleeping peacefully and I bark “BUG CHECK!” and start flinging the blankets around and jerking his pillow out from under his (big and heavy) head. I have also been known to stop Cleatus in the middle of sex and urgently whisper “We forgot to do a bug check!” It takes all the willpower I have not to push him off of me and shake out the pillows and blankets.

Another thing I could tell you about is the cereal I bought at the grocery store today. Barbie cereal. Cindy-Lu snatched it off a shelf and, in an awe-struck voice, whispered “Princess cereal!” There was no way I could turn her down after that, so I didn’t even look at the price tag because I knew it was probably twice the price of the generic “Flaked Corn and Sugar!” box that I usually buy the poor kids. I then had to let Eeyore pick out a box as well, and I bet I spent ten dollars on cereal today. I also bet that I will be going back in a few days to buy more. Those kids eat a lot of cereal.

I could also tell you that when I eat raw celery my ankles always start itching like mad.

Or I could tell you how cotton balls make me want to DIE. I can not touch them. And I most certainly can not LISTEN to them. I can’t even open new Tylenol bottles for fear of a wad of cotton lurking under the cap.

If you wanted I could tell you about the slightly embarassing thing I do when I kill bugs. Normally I would just yell “CLEATUS! BUG! IT’S A BIG ONE!” (I say it’s big even when it’s not, because I think that will make him move a little faster. It usually doesn’t work.), but Cleatus works a lot so sometimes I am forced to kill the little bastards myself. I noticed recently that whenever I squish one I do this weird grunt thing and jab my index finger in it’s general direction like WHO’S THE BOSS NOW, BITCH? I’m pretty sure that, subconsciously, I’m doing that so that if any other bugs are lurking nearby they know not to mess with me. I’m sure it works, too.

But, like I said, I don’t really know WHAT to post about, so I’ll just call it quits for today and maybe something exciting will happen tomorrow.

I often think to myself that I should have married a farmer. We would live on the farm, raise our children there, grow old and die on our farm. And, of course, be buried on our farm as well. Obviously. Who needs those new-fangled cemetries that people are using these days anyway?

Can’t you just imagine me out in my garden? I’d be hoeing the vegetables. Or the dirt. I’m not really sure what one hoes. I just know that it is a critical process in growing a garden. I’d weed and I’d hoe and I’d pick vegetables. My husband would do things. With animals. And crops of stuff. I’d can the vegetables we’d grow. He’d chop up cows and put them in neat little packages in my freezer for me. My children would ride horses and play hopscotch and go fishing in the little pond out back.

Then I snap back to reality and realize that I hate gardening, my son is scared to death of horses, and my husband would probably leave dead animal parts all over the damn place.

And, besides, have you seen my garden lately? No? That’s because YOU CAN’T SEE IT FOR ALL THE WEEDS. I do have tons of tomatoes growing, but good luck finding ‘em! I have some jalepenos that are growing like crazy, but they are also turning black and I’ve never seen a black jalapeno at the grocery store, so I’m not gonna eat them. I have watermelon vines shooting out all over the place, but I’ve been told not to expect them to actually produce watermelons. Also, there are all these bugs in the dirt and I don’t like that.

It’s times like today that I realize I would be a total failure at country living.

You see, last night I must have gotten out of bed to go pee about five times. One time I didn’t think I was going to make it, and I’ll be honest here, a little bit dribbled out before I sat on the toilet. I’m not proud of it, but it happened.

I think that I peed so much last night that now I’m a bit dehydrated.

You can understand my frustration when I woke up this morning and realized that Cleatus drank the last of our sweet tea. Sweet tea that is not made by me, because I suck at making tea. Sweet tea that I have to buy at the store.

I was also saddened to discover that our last gallon of water was nearly empty.

It was a long, hot day and, damn it, I was thirsty. I’d been rationing the water and just taking sips here and there, because I REALLY did not want to go the store again today. I drank the last bit of water around eight o’clock tonight. About five minutes later I was dying of thirst.

I started thinking about how if I lived on a farm I’d be SO SCREWED all the time. What in the world would we DRINK? Milk straight from the cow? Would I resort to collecting rain water in a bucket and guzzling that down when I was thirsty? Oh, wait! Farms have running water! AND SO DOES MY HOUSE.

Funny how one can forget that THERE IS A FAUCET THAT SPILLS OUT WATER IF YOU TURN IT ON when one is used to drinking from a gallon jug.

I very nearly perished tonight, but luckily I remembered that we had water. It just wasn’t in my refrigerator yet. I even boiled some of it up and stuck a couple of tea bags in it. I MADE TEA. WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS. My mama would be so proud of me.

And I’ve decided to continue living in the city. God only knows what would happen to me out on a farm.

Cleatus: What’s up with the fridge? Stuff doesn’t seem that cold.

Me: I know. It’s been like that a couple days. I ate a piece of warm cheese today. It was icky.

Cleatus: Great. Just great.

Opening the fridge and freezer doors, listening, touching weird parts of the fridge that I didn’t know existed…

Cleatus: The fan isn’t blowing. God damn it.

Me: Oh, thank God. This thing is so dirty. Let’s just get a new one. I hate cleaning out fridges.

Cleatus: sighing and walking away

Me: happily surfing the internet for new refrigerators