I grudgingly watch South Park with Nick every now and then. Mostly, I find the show distasteful, but I would be remiss if I did not find it in equal parts funny.

I am not proud.

Last night, I was particularly amused when the townspeople of South Park awoke to no Internet. Widespread panic ensues as people cannot find out what happened to the internet because there is no internet to check! An awkward moment of silence encompasses the crowd as someone asks how they got their news before the Internet. As memory dawns, the throng breaks into a television store to turn on the news. The newscaster reports dully that their Internet is down and they have no way to get the news to report. In a deep resolve and in Grapes of Wrath style, one family decides to head out to California where it is rumored that there is still some Internet out there.

I found the satire hilarious. To equate the loss of the Internet with the Great Depression was brilliant, so sad and true. In the end, one of the little boys is sent to negotiate with The Internet (a giant router with a blinking orange light), and he makes peace with it by unplugging it, then plugging it back in. Peace (and the World Wide Web) returns to South Park, and a town meeting is held wherein the people are cautioned not to abuse web browsing, to only surf when absolutely necessary, and to view Internet pornography twice a day maximum.

And, with that distasteful note, I have dedicated an entire entry to South Park. Nick has poisoned my mind.

---

(edited to add clip:)

Madison, Wisconsin tops the national best teeth list.

Look, I know it's no secret that I more than just a little obsessive about certain things. I grew up with my role model being someone who regularly marched to her car with a Q-tip, rubbing alcohol, and sheer determination and disinfect those dashboard crannies. I am not quite that way, much to Nick's chagrin ("I thought when I started dating someone with OCD, the condo would always be spotless!"), but I have instead the compulsion to randomly wash my face, scrub my hands, and brush my teeth. Don't worry, Nick. When you started dating someone with OCD, your significant other would always be clean!

I get picked on a lot for my obsession—but today I did manage to have a rather riveting conversation in the bathroom which I did not initiate, thank you very much. I had this conversation with the very acquaintance who stumbled upon me brushing my teeth one day and sneered, "Let me guess. You ate something and now you think your teeth are scummy." A former cube neighbor, I know she sees me as competition: it is arguable whose collection of Purell is greater. She has a very sensitive nose and can often be found walking through our team asking who stinks. I always hold up my hands for vindication and she replies, "Oh, you smell like a hospital. Yuuummmy, clean hospital." Curiously, I have no qualms with double-dippers or sharing toothbrushes (except with cats) and I am fond of eating with my hands.

The moral of the story? Madison's got it right, and I'm still messed up. YAY!

Well, those of you who have known me or read this website for any length of time, you know that my right eye has quite nearly been the very bane of my existence. I have my father and brother who have the most alluring pale, Norwegian blues—pure as glaciers—and my mother who had the warmest, spiciest set of golden hazels…and I was left with a mishmash. My mother rushed me to the doctor as soon as the weirdness began to grow (thinking I had a horrible iris-eating parasite, I can only assume). Well, I've come to appreciate the odd coloration and claim it as my own. It's like a pirate who names his peg leg, you know?

Well, maybe not so much, but anyway…

(Not to stray, but does anyone find it odd that I've taken to using the HTML entity for the ellipses instead of typing "..."? Curious. Don't think I can blame it on the eye.)

Nick likes to sing to me, in his rooster-walking-across-hot-coals way, "You my—mucked-up-eyed-girl. Do you remember when we used to sing, Sha la la la la la la la la la la te da…"

---

I was finishing up on the elliptical this morning when Nick called down to look at what he paused on the television. I wobbled up, sweaty and beat, to find this staring back at me:



I hit the rewind button to see why Kate Bosworth's eye was so magnified (and yes, I knew it was her eye immediately, as my mother pointed out to me years ago that her eye was screwed up just like mine was!). To my immense relief, E! was not doing a show on grotesquest facial features, or stars that ought be quarantined for their weirdness, but that Ms. Bosworth, because of her "stormy" eye, won their award for:



I can see my life being very different from here on out. Power to the Sectoral-Heterochromia-Iridis-iots?

My aunt sent me the message that I most love to get yesterday morning. "I have bananas for you." I was especially happy yesterday morning as I suffered through the density of a yellow banana. I cried to Brenda, "I couldn't play with it with my tongue or anything!" Honestly, how do you people stomach bananas with the consistency of bamboo!?

I nearly skipped back to my desk at work, so happy was I! Debbie cautioned, "Don't eat all of those bananas at once!" and I re-tied the plastic bag to seal off the temptation.

Nick and I carpooled yesterday. I smoothed some of my new favorite banana-scented lotion (Christmas present) on my hands as I locked my computer and gathered my things. Tossing my loot into his SUV, he looked sardonically at my wrinkled plastic bag and poked it with his finger. "Bananas?" I nodded with big eyes and closed the door.

Five seconds later he wrinkled his face and exclaimed that he could smell them and couldn't we tie them to the roof or something!? "No, you're probably smelling my hand lotion," I reply, too giddy to have an instant stash of brown bananas to let his boogeriness affect me. I shoved a hand under his nose.

"No. I smell ROTTING BANANAS."

I prefer the term fermented.

Right after my first hospital stay last year, I purchased a scale. After seeing my weight fluctuate from a forty-pound gain to a forty-pound loss in six days, I was understandably concerned about such things. It is a no-frills lump of metal and plastic that mainly collects dust, but we convene from time to time. I suppose over the last several months of infrequent visits, we've grown fonder of one another.

I don't find myself challenging the scale ("You're WRONG! WRONG, I SAY!"), and in return it keeps the wisecracks to a minimum. But lately!—lately, I step on the scale and all it says is "Lo". Sure, I could step off and step back on to get a numerical reading, but I'm satisfied with the first answer, so why bother? I find this a very pleasant scale indeed, and hope we have a very long life together ahead of us.

It's been a rocky path to where I am today, fraught with poor choices and matronly zeal—Aunt Brenda was the first to show me that lace can go there. And that was in my teens. And to my mother's chagrin, I liked lace there. I am sure she didn't appreciate my aunt's assistance that her nighttime commando regime should be the reason she's never suffered from the perils of yeast, but I was a teenager ready to question everything I ever did just because my parents did it, and so I found myself ready to shun my collection of white cotton briefs (and maybe try a pair in pink instead).

Fast forward many years, many uncomfortable experiments, irritating needs to tug at oneself in public, and my first pair of low-rise jeans, and I know...I know...that God had his hand in producing that first pair of hipsters. There can be nothing better.

He came home late from work last night, which gave me plenty of them to make the bars I wanted to for work today, and clean up the kitchen both. He opened the refrigerator looking for something to eat for dinner, and picked up a storage container, holding the translucence up to the light. "It's tofu," I say.

"Tofu? TOFU!?"

"There is almost always tofu in there. I use it in the wraps I make for lunch. It's really good—" he shudders—"It tastes like whatever you marinade it in."

He says we have to have a talk, that he's not sure the tofu can stay in the house, leastwise not in the same refrigerator as the "normal" food. Goat gotten, as he had hoped, I hiss that there's also shredded broccoli, sprouts and, gasp, soy cheese in there. That last one got him.

"WE LIVE IN WISCONSIN!"

He would have liked Fred, my feline friend that we always referred to as a Ca-human due to his fondness for human fare. We often muse that he is in Heaven now, thoroughly irritating God who keeps slapping his forehead with regret that he ever thought to splice the two species. Fred was not a glutton—he wouldn't eat just ANYTHING...he didn't like ham, or anything grilled. He hated while I was staying with him to take care of Mom because I was too clean of a cook and didn't drop things like dear Aunt Debbie. Though, the one time I did drop a bit of some soy-derived product, he looked at it, licked it, and looked at me with his mouth open like, "You eat that crap!?" Brenda exorcised their refrigerator of all of that after I was back in North Carolina and I imagine Fred did a heathen dance dressed in boar's teeth and vulture feathers.

For anyone fond of the Harry Potter franchise, this is a very exciting month.

Yesterday, Nick and I decided to be smart and catch a movie at the theater from which I pre-ordered tickets for Friday's 9:30 viewing of the fifth movie in the series. Yes, I ordered tickets a month ago. (For that matter, I pre-ordered my copy of the book the day Amazon told me I could.) I spent the morning finishing my re-reading of the 6th book, and now I'm prepped to spend this coming weekend watching the movie, and the next reading the last book.

I know, I know...it seems ridiculous that I should be such a fan—it's just that I love the employ of such imagination. As we were flipping through channels last night and there some some show on dissecting the actions and behaviors of the characters, Nick started howling in disbelieving laughter—"THEY'RE CHARACTERS IN A BOOK! THEY'RE NOT REAL!" Ah, but they were written so well that at times they seem to be.

Anyway, I brought my email receipt and the card I used to purchase the tickets and they could not find my order. I told them that I knew the card had been charged and they confirmed that they had withdrawn funds for two iMax tickets, they just could not find the order. It was all very calm and polite, and I was issued two fresh tickets. We walked away, Nick saying, "Thank God this happened today and not on Friday."

Lord, can you imagine? I would have been forced to throw a tantrum.

I walked into the empty house, looked around at the scattered remains of the day's mail, breathed in the almost stale air—and smiled. Hurriedly, I drop my purse at the door and kick off my shoes. Sophie winds around my feet wanting attention. "In a minute," I croon, absently brushing my fingertips behind her ears, walking lumpishly toward the kitchen.

I open the door and let my eyes dance across the seeming ordinary and make my choice, preparing also a bowl of broccoli as big as my head. Sophie has started purring now, sitting up on her back paws and tapping my legs in a play for attention. I get my dinner started and pick up the kitten, carrying her to the couch for cuddles and wet nose kisses.

Aromas fill the air in almost no time at all, and I apologize to Sophie that I'm not having sour cream and onion Sun Chips today—and no, I am not going to prepare a special dish of them just for her. (Honestly, there are few things as amusing as watching a little animal crunch through chips. Or popcorn.) I set her aside and try not to lick my chops as the timer sounds. I reach for a plate, blanketing it first in mounds of broccoli and then squeezing in the main dish along the nooks and crannies.

I set myself a place at the table, piano instrumentals on the stereo, a vase of flowers before me, and I unfold the napkin in my lap. Reaching for the fork, I place the first taste in my mouth and almost cry. This is good stuff. Too bad Nick cannot appreciate this. I love Lean Cuisine.

Now, it happens rarely at best, but I felt like staying in bed longer this morning. Usually I'm up and about before the dawn of day, but I just didn't have the foot twitching obnoxiousness to bolt from the bed and sing, "Good mornin! Good mornin'! We've talked the whole night through! Good mornin'! Good mornin' to you!" today. (Come on! I know there have to be some Singin' in the Rain fans out there!)

But Sophie is used to our routine, and she couldn't understand why I wouldn't want to get up and play and give her morning treats. She couldn't quite get the concept of my very large vodka grapefruit the night before, or my waking to her gagging on a hairball at the end of the bed at 3:00 a.m and how I couldn't get back so sleep after I got up to clean the mess. She kept jumping to the bed—she can jump even without claws! (I really do say the most clever things with very little vodka.)—and pouncing on us, hunkering down for the surprise attack and moments later one of us would groan at the impact.

It went on for well over an hour, until Nick, who never gets out of bed before daybreak on a Saturday, purred in his husky morning voice (that I used to find attractive), "Dear? Why don't you get up. She likes it when you're downstairs."

In case you don't speak Nick, that's code for, "She won't stop until one of us gets up. I think it should be you...because I want to sleep."