So many days, so many ways...TO DIE

Yes, I really do think about these things and worry constantly about them!

 

The Odds of Dying in ...
· Motor vehicle: 1-in-84
· Motorcyle: 1-in-938
· Bicycle: 1-in-4,472
· Air travel: 1-in-5,552
· Bus: 1-in-94,242
· Train: 1-in-139,617

 

The Odds You'll ...
· Be a Victim of ID Theft: 1-in-465
· Have an adverse reaction to a prescription drug: 1-in-3,000
· Be sued by the RIAA for illegal filesharing: 1-in-4,666
· Be wrongly declared dead by a Social Security data entry mistake:
1-in-23,483
· Die from a food-borne illness this year: 1-in-33,333

The Odds of dying in a ...
· Flood: 1-in-30,000
· Tornado: 1-in-60,000
· Lightning strike: 1-in-83,930
· Earthquake: 1-in-131,890
· Asteroid impact: 1-in-200,000*
· Tsunami: 1-in-500,000

The Odds of Injury Requiring Medical Treatment From:
· Lyme's disease: 1-in-18,100
· Snake bite: 1-in-25,300
· West Nile: 1-in-68,500
· Shark attack: 1-in-6,000,000

The Odds of Being a Victim of ...
· Assault by Firearm*: 1-in-325
· Poisoning*: 1-in-1,400
· Murder this year: 1-in-16,917
· Strangulation*: 1-in-34,424

The Odds of Drowning in ...
· Natural water: 1-in-2,828
· Swimming pool: 1-in-6,031
· Bath tub: 1-in-9,377

The Odds of Dying From ...
· Heart disease: 1-in-438
· Cancer this year: 1-in-600
· Staph infection: 1-in-16,146
· Measles: 1-in-300,000,000

The Odds ...
· Your child will be involved in a school bus accident this year: 1-in-29,180
· Your baby will be delivered by
c-section this year: 1-in-3
· You cannot find Iraq on a map, if you are between age 18 to 24: 2-in-3
· You will have a car crash within the first year of driving (if you are 16 years old): 1-in-5

The Odds of Believing ...
· That it's better to be poor and thin, than rich and fat: 2-in-3*
· You are "extremely stressed": 1-in-3
· That the best way to get rich is to win the lottery: 1-in-5
· Your tattoo was a mistake**: 1-in-7
· You saw a UFO: 1-in-7

The Odds of Winning Jackpot in ...
· Slot machines: 1-in-16,777,216
· Calif. SuperLotto: 1-in-41,416,353
· Powerball: 1-in-146,107,962
· Mega Millions: 1-in-175,711,536

The Odds of ...
· Dating a millionaire: 215-to-1
· Writing NYTimes bestseller: 220-to-1
· Finding four-leaf clover on 1st try: 10,000-to-1
· Getting Rich on 'Antiques Roadshow': 60,000-to-1
· Dating a supermodel: 88,000-to-1

urgent report

I am beginning to think I should rename my blog Chicken Leg. Buy your chicken before the price skyrockets.  Evidently my dogs are eating many more chickens than I realized.

ANALYST SEES CHICKEN PRICES MOVING HIGHER
The year 2009 will enter the annals as the year of protein pricing, if Credit Suisse is proved right. The firm said that it expected to see chicken prices increase by more than 25% next year over current levels, with breast-meat pricing getting up to $2 a pound, versus current prices of about $1.40. That should help some of the bigger poultry processors, such as Pilgrim’s Pride (PPC). Pilgrim shares already made a pretty impressive move off the lows installed earlier this month, gaining nearly 40% the last three weeks alone. But before the company gets to scarf down those gaudy price increases, it’s going to suffer some steeper-than-expected losses in 2008, as it works to offset the rise in grain prices.

why I have neglected you

BECAUSE I GOT HIGH   (AKA Mary on Lots 'O Vicoden)

 

I was gonna write in my blog, until I got high
I was gonna walk the dog, But then I got high
I'm still on the couch, And I know why,

Because I got high
Because I got high
Because I got high

I was gonna feed my kids, before I got high
Was gonna clean the toilet lids, but I got high
The house is a wreck, and I know why, 
Because I got high
Because I got high,  Because I got high

Was going to physical therapy, but then I got high
Was gonna work out my knee, but I got high
Now I'm takin' dope and I know why, 

Because I got high
Because I got high  Because I got high!

 

Because I got high!

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not much

Well, the operation was 3 days ago.  I have emerged from my comatose state created by the fog of drugs, and I want all of you to know that the excrutiating pain I felt for the past 3 days is slowly subsiding.  Now it is only slightly excrutiating.  In the end, I am sure it will be worth the pain though.  Too bad I won't have my narcotic painkillers after a few more days.  Those really are sleepy pills for me.   

I would like to mention that nobody told me how bad the pain would be afterwards.  It may be good in a way, but I was NOT prepared for it!!! 

Sorry, this is not the most exciting posting, but hey, life can be boring sometimes!  Think I'll pop another codeine!!!

the big op

So tomorrow is my big knee operation.  I have been stressing about it, mostly because they had trouble waking me up in November from surgery.  I have decided that this one will not be so bad as it is my knee they are operating on rather than tunneling through my abdomen via my belly button.  GROSS. 

Today is my last day to get things done, then I cannot do anything but keep  my knee lifted and iced for a week, and I cannot even SHOWER!  GROSS again!  My record for no shower is a 5 day camping trip, so this will be much worse.  Most people who know me know I like to shower every day with hot water or I freak out.  I'll probably be too drugged to realize how disgusting I am though, so there's a fun part to it. 

The fun part for you will be the journal entries I make while I am on those drugs.  I do not expect them to make much sense, but I'm sure they will reveal a part of my mind that is usually kept under wraps.  You should be frightened, unless, of course, you are Gary.  It will be a gleeful opportunity to have some fun with words.  But I am thinking that Sue has outlawed Gary from my blog, she seems to think Gary is upsetting.  He really isn't, he's a great guy with a quick wit, and a very sick mind.  This is why I admire him!  I am sure he is bored stiff with the whole mousecapades I have been talking about, but he's a guy, guy's don't get the female-hating-bugs-and-rodents thing.  They just mock it. 

I am not allowed to shave before my operation.  They don't want any cuts.  So, I will have hairy legs for them and no cuts, unless I spaz out as usual and get a cut somehow. 

Time to shower!  Only one more after this for a whole week!  AAAAHHHHHHHH!!!

a mouse note

I did mention that nice encounter with a mouse in the closet the other day.  There was no way even the most psychic person would know what was to happen next.  While I was vacuuming up all the dog dirt and hair, I noticed a small lump in the carpet I put down in front of the sliding door with a rope poking out from the edge.  I moved the vacuum, and bent over, lifted the carpet with my hand reached out to pick up the lump of cloth or whatever it was, and IT WAS A DEAD MOUSE!  It was flattened, but it did not pop the way that one I accidentally stepped on did.  Thank God!  But still, I freaked out, screamed like a banshee, and headed for the hills.  John was home, so he got to pick it up and dispose of it.

I used to like the fact that my next door neighbor has chickens, ducks and geese, even a rooster. They are cute and all the squawking does not bother me.  But John thinks the wild mice have discovered the chicken feed on the ground and have increased in numbers due to the bountiful food around.  Angel used to grab one, maybe two mice in a spring/summer season and bring it in to play, but this is completely out of control.  I have no idea of what to do, except sneak my dogs into the neighbor's yard and let them have a huge Thanksgiving feast a few months early. 

I am afraid to walk anywhere in my house now, you never know where a mouse, dead or alive, might be.  It is SO gross!

I am listening to Boys Don't Cry right now. What an awesome song, bringing me back to the days of college which were so happy and fun. The first time I really had friends. The Cure. A great band, and the beginning of mine. Who would have guessed.

Whatever

It's only quiet because the vacuum is turned off.  I am taking a break from vacuuming.  YES, a break.  Because there is so much hair and dirt and dust that enters my house every single day that vacuuming is a non-stop chore.  It's unbelievable.  I haven't even mentioned paw prints all over the place from the dogs and cat frolicking in and out, in and out.  Sometimes I think they do it just to spite me.  I'm pretty sure they do. 

It's also quiet because I have stopped screaming, yet again, from meeting nose to nose with another mouse.  This one survived, so far.  It was on the shoulders of our jackets in the closet, and ran across my hand as I went to take out a jacket to wear to the store.  Isn't that nice?  My husband won't let me get mousetraps, he doesn't like to kill anything.  It's my opinion that any living thing in my house should be roasted to oblivion with a fire shooting torch, until is is a little black crusty charcoal that crumbles into dust.  I did nearly set my house growing up by spraying Adorn hairspray (a much wider spray than the common hairspray) into a lighter flame to kill a spider.  The spider was toast, so was my front door.  I never did mention it to my parents, though. 

I also enjoyed burning ants when I was a kid.  So, frying gross living things into dust is not just a theory with me, it's almost like my Nazi blood is screaming for a way to get out of my multi-race loving body.  I know, that is a horrible thing to say, but hey, I only want to destroy insects and rodents that enter my home.  I have no problem with most of the other stuff in life. 

 

Gary

For those of you who are not fortunate enough to have met Gary, I'd like you to know that he does have a heart.  Frankly, I think he's brillant (ok, and obnoxious sometimes) and hilarious.  Oh, and evil.  I think they modeled Dr. Evil on Austin Powers after Gary sometimes.  Either that or Mini Me.  The only thing that upset me in his email (which I have kindly provided for you here) is that Mario Battali has not lost on Iron Chef.  I bought a cookbook of his from Amazon.com, and was shocked, appalled and disgusted to find that nearly every recipe had brains, livers, kidneys, or some other grotesque organ in it.  There's only one organ that goes in my mouth, and it's still connected to my husband.  Oh, does the tongue count?  Two then.

So, that being said, I am going to have to become an avid fan of Iron Chef America to see if Mario the organ chef loses.  He is no Morimoto, trust me.  Mario, that is.  Gary, he is sort of a Morimoto of words. 

Sorry to hear about your father in law Mary. My condolences to both you and John, and please pass on our best wishes to the rest of the family. Our thoughts are with you.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Now, as for this blog thing. I’m all for stream of consciousness and Seinfeldesque  “observationalisms”. I’m very happy you got in touch with Lisa the Brit. Warmed the cockles of my heart (if that’s where cockles are…personally I’ve never seen any cockles and if women have them I’ve never noticed them). BUT… I expect you to put some meat in this thing and actually approach some issues that matter. You know, things like…What’s up with the color of Obama’s lips? Are they liver colored? Is that where the term liver lips comes from? And will the Democratic campaign degenerate into name calling with this type of exchange;

 OBAMA: Hey, what’s up? Why don’t you drop out, cankles???

HILLARY: Shut your damn mouth, liver lips!!!

 Obviously we’re approaching that now with Carville ready to crucify anyone as a Judas who dares to see that they are backing a losing horse and jumps on the magic school bus with Obama.

You don’t have to stay political. Social commentary will be acceptable. ie Will chef Batali ever lose to anyone? Is he truly the unbeatable Iron Chef? And more importantly, would someone please ask him to wear some pants? I don’t think anyone would be able to be held legally responsible for brash action taken, and I mean of the most serious nature, if they have to see his hairy elephant sized stumps clad in white socks and clogs one more time.

 These are just a couple of examples of the kind of thought provoking, brain stimulating, consciousness raising drivel that I have come to expect from you. Don’t let me down. Doing so would force me back into the arms of the walking dead commentators and bloggers that have somehow maneuvered themselves onto respectable news sites. I rely on you to remain unrespectable. It’s what I love about you, so please, no more about hearing from old pals like Lisa the Brit. I don’t even like my friends so why would I care about yours.

Charmingly yours,  Gary

Tags: Mario Battali, Morimoto, Gary, Lisa the Brit, organs

Fowl Play

I blame Anthony Spirito for the chicken problem in my life. 

Yes, I do notice that projection of blame is a habit with me, but this one is for real.  Anthony has cursed my life with the haunting of chickens.

There is a perfectly good explanation of proof, too.  For those of you who don't know, Anthony is my dear friend from college.  After graduation, while working at King World Productions, Anthony started bringing up chicken.  Not in any appropriate context, it just popped up every moment he opened his mouth.  It was completely annoying.  "Hi Anthony, what's going on?" "Chicken".  Silence from all.  What the heck was he talking about? 

After months of simply ignoring his chicken responses, I finally confronted him with the sheer idiocy of the meaningless word.  That's when I discovered that a woman he worked with was obsessed with chicken, talked about eating chicken all the time, and she had evidently infected Anthony with the chicken disease.  It popped out of his mouth at every opportunity to speak.  It confused, embarassed, and humiliated people.  But I thought it was funny.  So funny that to this day I associate anything chicken related to Anthony, much to his annoyance.  Obviously he finally got so annoyed that he visited the Vaudun VooDoo Gods and obtained a Mary doll with chicken feet.  And now the chickens are attacking ME.

Of course, I am not foolish enough to actually enter a pen of chickens and allow them to peck me to death.  But they are stalking me, every minute of every day.  My neighbor has lots of chickens, I thought they were really cute with all their clucking and squawking and strutting around the neighbor's yard.  Until one night, alone, no husband, no children, I went to let my dog Wags in the house.  Thankfully, my danger radar was working, and I bent down to look at Wags when I started to open the door, and discovered a GIANT chicken foot sticking out of my dogs mouth!  A WARNING!  The chickens were coming.  And they were DEAD!  But they would never stop, proof being that no matter how much I screamed like a banshee, Wags would not put down the clawed foot horridly sticking out of her mouth. 

After about an hour of my screaming (gee, thank you neighbors who never called the police), Wags finally, tenderly deposited the foot on the deck and waited for me to let her enter the house.  It's about 2am by now.  So, I open the door, vowing to avoid her mouth at all costs, and she daringly scoops up the chicken foot and tries to come in the door.  Alas!  I had already slammed it shut in her face, so she smacked into the glass with the chicken foot spreading disease on my sliding door!  EWWWW.

So, another 15 minutes or so of Wags waiting patiently and me screaming hoarsely now, (not a neighbor in site), and Wags finally gave in and dropped the foot.  I cracked the door and, still screaming at her, allowed her to enter.  Then, I had to deal with the dead foot outside my door.  I grabbed a dustpan and, screaming nonstop, made a few attempts to flick the foot over the railing.  I do not like dead things, especially partial dead things.  Finally, I succeeded in flicking it over the railing and into a bush.  The next day, John went to find it, and it was gone.  He thinks I made the whole thing up. 

Of course, since that time, my dogs have had many chicken dinners in our backyard.  The chickens are not very bright, and they continue to fly over the fence and become the main course.  I have found a foot in my dogs' mouths on numerous occasions, most recently during Girl Scout cookie season while a leader's small child played with Luke while I gave her mom cookies.  I called Luke over to see what they were playing with, and, of course, it was a chicken foot, leg and thigh recently ripped off a neighbor chicken.  I do not think we make very nice neighbors these days. 

The greatest danger is that we now have a dog door, and the dogs are free to enter the house when I am not looking.  I anxiously await the day when I find a dog on my bed with a dead chicken spread out all over it.  I know it's coming.  Each time I leave my house, I enter with the fear that some chicken part is lurking behind every corner.

I fully expect the chickens to learn dog language one of these days, and then they will sneak in the entire herd of chickens while I am sleeping one night.  Then the dead, headless, featherless chickens will come to life, and drag me down the entrance to Hell and I will exist amongst rotting chicken parts for all of eternity.

Ok, how weird is this, Dora the Explorer is on and they are doing the chicken dance, and my son is doing it too!!!  Oh my God the chickens are taking over the entire world!!!

Anthony, please, please burn the chicken Mary voodoo doll, the meat must be cooked!  I can't take it any more!!!

dead animals

Finally, I am listening to the radio intead of TV.  Not the main point of my words today though.  If you read Gary's response to my last entry, you will find that I completely disagree with him about other people's children.  I love that little Cindy Lou Who replica as if she was my own child.  God bless her!  I could only wish for my own children to be so thoughtless and unconcerned about a stupid little rodent. 

I never lament the thought of any rodent dying, not even the 300 pound opossum that I slammed into years ago.  Sure, I screamed non-stop, flailed my hands mindlessly in the air while hitting the brake, the gas, the brake, the gas, nearly crashing into trees in my horror-filled response to the all-out grossness of having run over a creature.  I didn't feel bad it was dead, just that I had to feel the car hitting it.  SO disgusting.  I sometimes think about that night, and wonder if I would react the same way if I hit a person.  I am afraid that I would be more grossed out than concerned.  Gary would be proud of that.

I hate to say it, but I really don't feel that upset when we have a pet that dies either.  I must be a terrible person, but I just don't feel that crying over my dog or cat is necessary.  Although I do not treat them like little kings and queens either.  I love them, but they are animals.  Not people.  Therefore, yes, I offered up my cat Angel in sacrifice to the bald eagles last year who were considering nesting in our tree.  I held her up in the air like Kunta Kente raised Kizzie to the gods, and screamed, LOOK!  FOOD!!!  BUILD A NEST!!   Sadly, it didn't work, the crows chased the eagles off and Angel is still with us.  I think it may be one reason why she occasionally takes a dump in the shower, to remind me that she is still here.  She can be a little witch.

I did cry when my miniature poodle Pepper was put to sleep (15 years or so old) and Buster the mutt (16) too.  For about 6 seconds.  I was sad, and then I accepted it and it was over.  After all, how long are all of you gonna cry when I die?  A lot, if you do the right thing and drink heavily at my end of life party.  Then you can laugh your asses off at the same time.  Really, I would be insulted if you all just cried and didn't do anything entertaining with it. 

Perhaps I would care more about the dead pets if we had a funeral, and drank a lot.  It is a good excuse to drink, isn't it?  I will let you know how it is as soon as one of my dogs or the cat bites the dust.  The only problem with the cat is there won't be anything left since the hawks, eagles, coyotes, etc. would grab her and eat her.  John likes to think they ran away and someone took them in, I prefer to think they are dead, torn apart carcasses in the stomach of some creature.  It gives me closure. 

So, the full circle here is other people's children.  I would probably cry over someone else's child dying as opposed to any animal dying.  I truly enjoy the living part of other people's kids, especially little Cindy Lou Who.  That is one smart little girl.  I might have to send her a box of Girl Scout Cookies.  She is on the right track in life.