beyond the pale

MB emerges from the downstairs bathroom. I am just sitting there, bored, so I demand, all shrill:

“All right. So …. where is this headed?? What do you see happening between us??”

“Oh, you know. A little of this. A little of that. No big whup.”

There are hand gestures involved on “this” and “that,” but not the ones you might expect.
I explode in laughter and he just says what we always say when one of us trumps the other, “Annnnnnd ….. scene.”

He walks upstairs and leaves me sitting there, defeated.

Drat him, anyway.

Okay. I’m feeling really assy about the post below. I’ll leave it up, but I should have thought better of it. I’m being a big ol’ baby and, in the end, it’s none of my business. Sorry, everyone. Weak moment.

Time for another round of Rank ‘Em! We did this a while back with American Idol winners.

This time, your favorite Christmas carols. The ones that really get you in the mood or tap into fond memories or whatever. Just your favs, you know. So 2 lists: One secular; the other, well, more nativity themed. Religious, if you will, ‘tho I don’t like that word.

Okay. Here’s mine. I had a very hard time putting this together and I’m still ready to change it with my very next breath. Hard to choose, peeps! Just try it!

Tracey’s Top Five Secular Christmas Carols:

1. Christmastime is Here (from Charlie Brown Christmas)
2. Winter Wonderland
3. Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
4. Sleigh Ride
5. You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch

Tracey’s Top Five Nativity-Themed Christmas Carols:

1. O Holy Night
2. Silent Night
3. Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
4. O Little Town of Bethlehem
5. In the Bleak Midwinter

Oh, I don’t know! I keep wanting to change it! Oh, well. I’ll just leave this as it is. (AGHH! Did I mention this was hard?)

All right. Now … how about you guys? Your turn.

Ready? Rank ’em!

Uhm, you know, just talked on the phone to him .

That I can’t stop laughing. I watched it over and over up at the in-laws’. I tried to introduce my MIL to the joys of Pearl, The Landlord — thinking that Pearl would bond us forever in a special way and that, if nothing else, we could always remember the moment we shared together laughing at Pearl, her rage, her swearing, her drunken antics. I was so sure that our shared experience of Pearl would make her finally say to everyone, “Since Pearl The Landlord came along, I actually like Tracey and/or find her tolerable” but, you know, she didn’t laugh. Not once. Not a peep. A sound. Didn’t even crack a smile. She just frowned. A lot. Said it wasn’t particularly funny. Then I went outside in the cold dark middle of nowhere and slit my wrists.

But I have recovered miraculously through the healing powers of stupidity by watching this over and over and over! It embiggens my heart and makes me want to live again!

So if your heart is shriveled and you have recently slit your wrists and your mother-in-law hates you, watch this and BE HEALED!!

God bless stupid.

So last year around this time I did this colon cleanse because I was feeling somewhat, uhm, impacted, you know? Plus, it made all these promises that I would lose 20 pounds in 10 minutes and be ten years younger in 1 minute and go on to become America’s Next Top Model and cool stuff like that that I actually believed. I would say it did NOT do that, although the “cleanse” part of the title was very accurate. It did that; it did that well, and it did that with very little to-do. Which I appreciated. Really.

Mostly though — let’s be honest — the product skerred me bad and traumatized me forever and caused me to whip out my credit card immediately once I got a gander at the endless photos of horrible aliens that were most likely having a huge raucous hoo-dang in my intestines right this very minute. They told me that death lived inside me and the photos sure as hell looked like that. I did not want death living inside me, you know? He needed to be evicted — and pronto!!

So why am I telling you all this? Well, because I’m doing a shortened version of the cleanse right now.

Also — hey — who wants to do it with me??

Mostly, uhm — BE FOREWARNED IF YOU ARE FAINT OF HEART OR STOMACH OR EYEBALLS — I just really have to share these photos because my theory of horror is that horror must be shared in order to lessen the horror of the horror.

I just can’t be alone with them anymore, okay??

So.

Carry on.

Or not.

Sheila, here they are! Cool diffuser thingies from Pottery Barn!

This one comes in three scents: Orange Blossom, Chocolate Truffle, or Neroli Spice(??) $34. (Uhm, what is Neroli and what does it smell like?)


This one comes in Lavendar or Grapefruit. $26.99

Mmmmmmmm. I like the sound of the Orange Blossom and Grapefruit ones.

It’s raging rain out here today. Good. We need it. On our way last week up to the deep dark middle of nowhere, we drove past just a portion of the fire devastation in Rancho Bernardo. I mean, it was right alongside the freeway — at one point, had obviously jumped the freeway. Nothing but char just yards away as we whizzed by. Black earth completely surrounding a random untouched house. Vast sections of rolling hillside orange groves burnt to a sad dead russet color.

But today, the earth gets refreshed and renewed and I feel the same way.

I’m always happy to hear rain; it’s my favorite type of weather. Stormy, blustery greyness that allows you to be grouchy if you need to be. Grey grace, I guess. It’s just my thing. When it rains, I feel understood. Why I loved Seattle so. But today, even more — even though I’m listening to the annoying ching-ching-chingling of the neighbor’s windchimes — I’m grateful for that sound, for all the raging rainy sounds.