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All this freaking out about the pediatric Tylenol et al recall is making me roll my eyes. People need to calm the fuck down.

I originally posted this to Facebook last Saturday.

OMG, you guys. I just had the weirdest experience of my life, to date. And I have done some WEIRD shit.

Anyway. As you all know, I have a 4-month-old puppy. Puppies have small bladders, and thus need to pee pretty much every 14.6 minutes. I take Piper out, let her pee in the front yard (which she prefers for short trips), and bring her back in. 440 times a day.

So far, so normal, right?

This past week, I’ve been feeling pretty icky, which means I’ve been wandering out with the dog while wearing just my sweatpants and my grungy blue hoodie, with my [unwashed] hair bundled back into a haphazard ponytail. I seriously look like I’m about to be homeless.

Around 4PM, I took Piper out. My neighbor, who is an older, retired sort of guy was in his car getting ready to go somewhere. He waved at me, I waved at him, it’s what neighbors do. As soon as he pulled out, his wife comes STORMING out of the house, yelling “can you walk that dog somewhere else?”

Um, okay, fine - we were a bit close to the 2 feet of grass on the side of their driveway that borders our yard. Fine! Not a problem! I didn’t grow up with neighbors (my parents’ nearest neighbors are a quarter-mile away) so there are some neighborly sensitive things that don’t always occur to me…. but….

This is where it gets weird. She comes over and starts yelling at me. “Is your husband home?” Um, no, is there something I can help you with?

Her: I see what you’re doing. Every time my husband comes outside, you bring that dog out.
Me: Whuh? What? She’s a puppy! She’s outside ALL THE TIME.
Her: The whole neighborhood can see you running after my husband.

[note - her husband? NOT HOT. He’s at least 70 if he’s a day, and think about what Dwight Schrute will look like when he’s 70. You’re welcome.]

So.

Me: Um…. Are you serious?
Her: You stay away from my husband.
Me: No problem!
Her: I’ll get a restraining order!

At this point, Piper was done peeing and I was about to laugh, so I took her in and decided to go over there and see if there was something that could be done.

I knocked on the door and she’s all “what do you want?”
Me: Can we talk about this? I don’t understand what’s going on.
Her: I’m calling the police. I’m getting a restraining order because you are after my husband.
Me: I think you’re being ridiculous. Please come over, we’ll have coffee and figure this out.
Her: Get off my property! [grabs the phone] He’s old enough to be your grandfather!
Me: You’re crazy!
Her: No, you’re crazy!

Well, duh.

At that point, I just threw up my hands and left because she was freaking DIALING THE POLICE. I put shoes and a jacket on Jillian and we took Piper for a LONG walk around the neighborhood. I was hoping my one friend would be home, because she’s lived in the ‘hood for a long time and knows my neighbor fairly well, but she was out. So we talked to some other people on our street and they were all “yeah, that lady is nuts.”

Is there anything I can do at this point to salvage this situation? My plan is to ignore ignore ignore ignore ignore but… MY GOD. I’m half-tempted to make it worse by watching for the husband and deliberately going out with the dog when he’s outside, but I’m concerned that she’ll poison us somehow. The previous owners of our house actually accused her of trying to poison their dogs at one point, so I’m thinking it’s not a ridiculous fear to have.

What should I do? Should I do anything at all? When Freddie gets home tomorrow I will tell him this whole thing and see what he thinks - he’s a fixer so I’m sure he’ll want to go over there to see what’s up but… I’m so confused and having a whole bunch of WTF moments all at once and I feel really weird, like the world has tilted or that I’ve been drugged without my knowledge. That’s how weird this is to me.

I’m so baffled by this, I barely have words to explain it. It really does call for an interpretive dance.

I know!

I spent the rest of Saturday afternoon and all of Sunday feeling really weird and out-of-sorts. Uncomfortable. Uneasy. Discussed it with my Facebook peeps and my JGz family and between the jokes and the re-telling, I started to feel better. I even feel a bit sorry for Edna (the neighbor), not least because her name is Edna. I’m not sure how old she is, but they are the original owners of their house, which was built in 1960. So… she’s getting on in years a bit. There is doubtless something mental going on there.

I haven’t changed my behavior much since then. Well, I showered. It was necessary. And I keep Piper off of the 2-foot strip of their property, even though that is P’s most favorite place to poop in the whole wide world. The other evening, I was out with Piper for the 5234th time and Bob (the husband) was bringing his trash out to the street. We did the whole “what’s up” thing that one does to be neighborly, and that was that. So I’m even more convinced that Edna’s got some mental thing going on that has nothing to do with me. I’m 100% sure she didn’t mention the incident to Bob, even though I bet he’ll hear about it eventually because I talked to A LOT of people on our street.

For the time being, I’m going to treat this as an isolated incident. No harm, no foul. I’m thinking of planting some trees, since putting up a 15-foot razor-wire-topped fence is probably not an option. But if it happens again, we’re going to have problems. And if she calls me a whore again, we’re going to have REAL problems. I gave up being a whore over a decade ago.

Jillian, Piper, and I were at the park a few days ago. Piper was eating mulch, as is her hobby, and Jillian was climbing and singing and being three.

I was sitting on the bench, keeping an eye on The Jillian and eavesdropping on the two moms sitting next to me, who were watching their kids. One of the little boys started to sit down as if to go down the slide and the mom nearest me got up from the bench, saying “No, Evan! No slide!”

Which, okay, moms are weird sometimes, but the kid looked to be at least Jillian’s age, so I was feeling very “??”

The mom redirected poor Evan and came back down on the bench. By way of explanation, she said to the other mom “I don’t like him to get dirty because then I can’t take his clothes to the consignment. I buy him brand names only because he has to look good but I want my money back on those clothes.”

…

…

Yeah. The suburbs are a strange place.

So I’ve been processing this whole Michael Jackson thing, and other people have said it better than I could. Basically, if you were born around 1975 or earlier, Michael Jackson was IT. He was EVERYTHING in the 80’s. Yeah, he turned into something so ‘other’ that it can barely be explained, but for me, in elementary school, MJ was MUSIC.

But today Billy Mays died. To me, that’s just a huge, huge shock. Sure, MJ dying at 50 was shocking, but with the way that dude was carrying on, it was really only a matter of time. With Billy Mays, well, we expected him to be on our TVs for a good long time, hawking OxiClean and Orange Glo and Slider Station and a hundred other things. Wonder Mop (I do want one of these).

When Jillian was a tiny tiny baby and we were having marathon breastfeeding sessions, Billy Mays was there for me. He was there at 3:30AM, shouting about Orange Glo or some other thing that I just HAD to have. Even though the TV in Jillian’s nursery was hooked to the cable, we didn’t have a converter box for it so I only got about 20 channels on it. We had to watch a lot of network dreck in those days. But Billy was always there. His yelly presence was the music to which we drowsed, in those late nights/early mornings.

And now he’s gone. Limited time offer, my friends.

Farrah Fawcett’s death today was not a surprise. Everyone could see that she was on her way out, and it’s great that she’s not suffering anymore.

Michael Jackson, on the other hand… SHOCKING. Seriously shocking. Crazy! I’m going to sew sequins on all my clothes in tribute. And maybe schedule some plastic surgery.

This ‘let’s all not be a rageaholic’ thing does not make for good blog posts. There are a few things that I could go off and rant about, but what’s the point? Those things are not going to change, so I’m not about to waste my time and energy on them.

Some things just don’t matter.

In other news, my mom broke her leg last week. In true Diroll fashion, my dad sent my brother and me an email TWO DAYS LATER. Like, thanks, Dad. [eyeroll] The email was worded in such a way that we couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on. We didn’t know if she was still in the hospital or what, so we had to call and figure it out. It turns out she’s as fine as someone with a broken leg can be, but she had to cancel her annual trip to Daytona this year. It took at least 4 people to talk her out of it, though. The woman is demented.

In the next couple of months, Jillian and I will probably head out there for a couple of days. If I can convince Freddie to take some time off work, he’ll come too. Maybe I’ll put together some kind of gathering with my high-school peeps (thanks to the magic of Facebook, we are all finding each other again) and introduce him. We’ll have to see - the weather between here and there has been so uniformly awful that I don’t know how wise it would be to drive across Pennsylvania right now.

What a crazy week it’s been. Monday was just the longest day ever, watching all of the last-ditch efforts by both of the Presidential candidates and getting all keyed up and impatient to vote.

Tuesday dawned with uncertain sunlight. I had heard that it was supposed to rain and rain + expected long lines to vote = bad news, but the rain held off until early evening. Jillian and I voted around 10 AM. She kept saying “Mama. We vote? We vote for Obama! Mama vote! In the school!” When we stepped into the booth she saw all the buttons just begging to be pushed and nearly lost her mind. Luckily, I have amazing reflexes born out of Tetris championships so I was able to make my choices and hit the “Cast Vote” button without any mishaps.

After voting, we went to the grocery store, where Jillian proceeded to tell everyone “We vote! Vote for Obama!” Now, we are shiny blue dots in a VERY red town (even though our county and the rest of our state went blue… my town? Not so much), so she got some silly looks as well as a lot of high-fives and smiles.

Tuesday evening was spent flipping between CNN and that foxy Brian Williams on NBC, while refreshing CNN.com and chatting with my Girlz on the bulletin boards. Watching the initial returns come in was kind of unreal - it’s so hard to tell what’s happening early on, but once Ohio was called for Obama, I finally let myself think that it was happening. Ohio! My home state! Eh, oh, way to go, Ohio. I’m happy to say that my home county also went blue, probably due in large part to the work my Mama did on the phones. Good job, Mama.

At 11PM, NBC threw up a graphic that said “Barack Obama ELECTED 44th President of the United States.” Awesome.

McCain’s speech was excellent. If he had campaigned like that, who knows what would have happened? He spoke as himself, as a real person and not just some GOP mouthpiece, which is what he became after the GOP convention (and before). He seems like a genuine sort of guy who truly loves this country to which he gave so much, but his campaign didn’t reflect that at all.

Obama, on the other hand… wow. He’s got some flaws, sure, but he ran a hell of a campaign and it was mind-boggling to see the crowds in Grant Park (as opposed to the swanky invite-only party for McCain… see the difference??) and how they went INSANE when he stepped out on that stage. Seeing Jesse Jackson get all teary was such a great moment because although he can be a jackass sometimes, this is something he has worked for HIS ENTIRE LIFE. It’s got to be quite a feeling to see all of that blood, all of that sweat, all of those tears bring this kind of result.

So we’ve got a new President. He’s got a lot of crap to start cleaning up (thanks, George), but I think, I believe, I HOPE he can get it done.

Go vote! If you don’t vote, you should just kill yourself instead, because that’s how worthless you are. Go vote!

In the early days of November 2007, someone hanging around Rockefeller Center in NYC might have seen a woman in a tomato costume dancing around the place while people watched, took pictures, and in at least one case - video.

One might wonder just WHY a woman would do this, so I shall point them here: Tomato Nation.

That’s the website of one Ms. Sarah D. Bunting, co-founder of Television Without Pity and snarkstress extraordinaire. I’ve had a wee fangirly crush on her for YEARS, but that’s not why I’m talking about her today.

Sars and her tomato costume want to go to Washington D.C. To get her there, We The Readers need to throw a whole bunch of cash at the Donors Choose challenge she has set up. Last year, there was some puny initial goal, and as We The Readers crushed it handily, she kept raising the bar, insisting that if we managed to donate enough money, she’d dress as a tomato and do a dance outside Rockefeller Center. Not just any dance, mind you - the Angela Chase post-Jordan-kiss dance from My So-Called Life (which, incidentally, is the reason I dyed my hair that wacky shade of red in the summer of 2003. I’d been watching episodes online. Now you know).

We The Readers made that happen last year. So she set the bar REALLY high this year - $100,000. In one month. If We The Readers hit that $100K mark, Sars and her tomato costume will go to Washington D.C. and see the sights. This must happen! Extra bonus? She gives stuff away! Prizes! Who doesn’t like prizes?

The happy side-effect of making an otherwise sane-seeming woman do these things is because Donors Choose benefits schoolchildren all over the country. Teachers can write in asking for money for specific projects - they tell you what they need and why. Most, if not all, of the teachers who write in to Donors Choose are from schools that are in high-poverty areas, and these kids are in need of basic things like PENCILS. Can you imagine going to school and not even having something to write with? My mom used to get pencils with my name on them for me every year, which was nice since Stanley Calhoun stole them one time in fourth grade and denied doing it. The proof was right there! Pencil! With my name on it! Thanks, mom!

But there are thousands of kids whose parents can’t afford the crappy embossed pencils out of the Lillian Vernon catalog and their teachers can’t afford to be supplying them, either. That’s where We The Readers come in. We The Readers go to Tomato Nation. We click on the link for the Fall Contest, which takes us to the Donors Choose page. We choose a project we would like to throw money at. We then apologize for ending a sentence with ‘at’ even though it is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, despite what you may have heard (that prohibition comes from some jackasses attempting to impose the grammatical rules of Latin onto English which is Germanic and perfectly happy to have sentences end in prepositions. Still, some habits die hard). We donate. The total rises. Sars gets closer to Washington D.C. Kids get books! And pencils! And stuff!

Last year, I bought a clarinet for a school in Neptune, NJ, and they sent me a thank-you package with hand-written notes and photos that made me all weepy. And you know how much of a blackhearted bitch I am!! I know some kid is going to make horrendous noises with that clarinet I bought, and that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. I spent many years making horrendous noises with a saxophone (and then an oboe), so I know what that’s like.

I know the economy sucks and that your 401(k) is more like a 201(k) right now, but if you have $10 to spare, think about clicking over to Tomato Nation to find out how you can help some kids who need it. Kids who will need it more than ever if things keep going the way they’re going now. If you are reading these words, it’s because someone taught you how to do that. Now is your chance to help another kid get the same opportunity.

Go.

Donate.

1. If you’re getting here via Tomato Nation comments, I apologize for making you read this drivel. I have one more book to offer - just drop me a comment and we’ll hash it out.

2. Nice job, USA track & field relay teams. Dropping the baton is a great way to go.

3. Ms. Prufrock called me cool (or awesome or something else nice, I forget what it was exactly) the other day so now I feel obligated to post and post brilliantly more often. This one’s for you, Pru!

4. I have approximately four Very Important Projects to work on, so naturally I’ve been spending far too much time on Facebook. I can’t help myself - between the stalking opportunities and Pieces of Flair, it’s a perfect place for someone like myself who… ooh, shiny!

5. The Jillian is starting to speak English with a lot more fluency these days. I can’t keep up with her sometimes. Girlfriend can even count to ten! I don’t know if she knows what it means, exactly, but it sounds good.

6. She’s ‘reading’ Snow White right now. I’m a little bit grossed out by Snow White and her desire to be saved by a handsome prince and all of that. So when I read it to her, I can’t help but interject my own commentary which is usually along the lines of “… because Snow White is a NINNY.” Snow White needs to get herself a clue and take care of her ownself. And for fuck’s sake - who doesn’t learn the rule about taking candy (or apples) from strangers? Does she have no Stranger Danger instinct at all? I think Snow White is a bit touched in the head, to be quite honest.

7. If it’s not obvious, can I just tell you all how much I am dreading Jillian’s absorption into the Disney Machine? I don’t mind the old-skool Mickey Mouse stuff so much, but the Disney Princesses make me want to hurt myself. But I will gladly put up with any amount of Princess crap as long as it keeps those Bratz dolls out of my house. Those things are truly scary.

8. So, I’m a little bit ashamed to admit this but I just read “The Notebook” by Nicholas Sparks. It suuuuuuuuuuuuucked. The movie was about 12 times better, and I don’t think I have ever said that about any movie made from a book. Mr. Sparks cannot write for shit, yet he is a bestselling author. Just goes to show that we live in a culture that doesn’t give a fuck about what it’s consuming (see also Cheez Doodles, McDonald’s, MTV). My mom’s dog can write better dialogue than Sparks can.

9. I probably had a real reason to post today but I’ll be damned if I can remember what it was.

10. Because ten is a nice place to end this.