Real Girl Power

In the last six months, I've heard a lot of debate about whether the PussyCat Dolls and the Suicide Girls are empowering, and I still haven't made up my mind. I do know that Saving Jane has some of the best lyrics out there, along with some damn fine music.

My idea of real "Girl Power" :

"One Girl Revolution"

Raise your hand if you don’t care
What those platinum girls wear
Raise your hand if you’re just here
To have a good time

Raise your hand if your lipstick
Doesn’t make you a dumb chick
Raise your hand if the shape of your hips don’t compare
To the shape of your mind

You don’t even stand a chance
I’m not taking off my pants

I’m here to start a one girl revolution
I’m not a barbie doll, shopping mall, silicone substitution
I thought I told ya, I’m a soldier
And I ain’t leavin’ til the battle’s over
One girl revolution.

Raise your hand if you’re smart, girls
More than pushups and pearls
Let em stare at our pictures, baby
While we take over the world

Raise your hand if you’re not another carbon copy
Wannabe like everybody else
Raise up your hand if you got something more to say

I’m here to start a one girl revolution
I’m not a perfect ten, paper thin, Hollywood illusion
I thought I told ya, I’m a soldier
And I ain’t leavin’ til the party’s over
One girl revolution.

What are we sellin?
Our brains or our belly buttons?
What are you buyin?
Don’t you know that they’re lying?
What are you cryin about, don’t just sit there and wait
While they’re selling us out!

You don’t even stand a chance
I’m not taking off my pants

I’m here to start a one girl revolution
I’m not the Girl Next Door anymore, baby I’m an institution
I thought I told ya, don’t wanna know ya
Pack your bags baby cause this army’s takin’ over
I’m here to start a one girl revolution

I’m the kinda chick that leaves you cryin’ for your mother
Keep on lookin if your lookin for a cookie cutter
I’m here to start a revolution

Spoken: No thanks, I can loosen up my own buttons.

©2007 Tosha Music

"Imperfection"

My hair's a wreck
Mascara runs
My feet get dirty and my skin burns in the sun

My lips, they bleed
But I still sing my songs
Takes me a minute to admit it when I'm wrong

Pretty is as pretty does, but pretty's not my thing...

This is what you get
This is who I am
Take me now or leave me
Any way you can
Sometimes I trip and fall
But I know where I stand
And if you're thinking about changing my direction...
Don't mess with Imperfection.

My back is weak
But my will is true
Got good intentions but I never follow through
I say too much
Don't know when to leave
In case you're looking that's my heart there on my sleeve

Ego trips and stupid slipups, I'm a mess but..

Chorus

Scratched and bruised, a little used,
But baby, I work fine.
You might call me damaged goods,
But I'm one of a kind.

My hair's a wreck
Mascara runs
No, I'm not perfect, but I'm not the only one...

Chorus

The If Bunny Grows

For an admirable explanation of what an If Bunny is, see Sherri's comment.

My own particular If Bunny is the possibility of a job as a publishing assistant. Back when I went to the Lushie meet-up, Maresche said that she works for a firm which does law books, and I half-jokingly asked her to let me know if there were any openings. Less than a week later, she e-mailed me and told me they were hiring. I put in an application on June 8th, and yesterday I went to their Cleveland office for a number of tests. I must have passed, because when I got home tonight, there was a message on my answering machine to call them Monday to set up an interview.

I'm excited but very nervous.

It's not cardio, but it still counts...

Making 208 copies is not a big deal. Making 208 copies in small batches and then not losing track of which exhibits you've copied and then re-arranging them in the four stacks needed for a hearing while you're running back and forth from the copier to the conference room to the telephone to the boss' desk is good exercise, even if it doesn't get your heart rate up. I swear I can feel it in my calves.

And of course, the point is not to give the administrative assistant her exercise, but for Bosstopus to be able to say whatever the legalese equivalent of "Oh yeah? See here! And so's yer mama!" when opposing counsel comes in with all guns blazing over the things his client has alleged about our client. HA!

Whoa

A big IfBunny just landed on me. I'll probably be running around chasing my tail for a few weeks...

Spring Snobservations

While standing in line at the Grand Opening of Lush Beachwood and eavesdropping:

Thought 1 about the lady in front of me:

Beeyotch, you can't pass yourself off as an expert Lushie if you keep saying things like "The Olive Vine" and "Witchy Muscles."

Thought 2 about the lady in front of me:

Oh, good gods, you're SORRY they disconned Red Rooster? You need to be forced to wear a muzzle lest you share your views any further. And you should probably be sterilized immediately for the good of humanity.

Thought about the SA helping me:

Oh dear. She's so sweet and helpful, and they're all working flat-out as hard as they can but eeeeeek she needs a Tic-Tac, stat.

Thought about the young woman stomping out of the mall:

Yes, there's a line. It's a small store and they advertised the Grand Opening. They also said it was going to start at 5 p.m. and there was a line at 5:15 when I got here. If you stay in line, you get a Lush cookie and a limited edition Grand Opening ballistic, just for waiting in line. If you spend $45, you get a goodie bag.

However, if you stand in line for a few minutes, find that the line isn't moving fast enough for you and storm out like a dinosaur on steroids exclaiming at the top of your lungs about how ridiculous it is to wait in line and how you're only ordering online and how you're never setting foot in the store blah blah blah, not only do you not get any of the freebies, nor do you get to snuggle your Lush from the minute you get it, but you also set yourself up to pay shipping fees and you made people watching you sad, because nobody would take a line that personally and make that big a fuss if there weren't something else terribly wrong in their life. I almost followed you and gave you my goodie bag, I felt so awful for you.

Thoughts while driving:

To the dude on the motorcycle:

Tuck your damn t-shirt in when you're going to be doing 60 mph. It's orange, it's flapping like a flag in a hurricane, and nobody wants to see that much flabby white flesh.

To the cute blonde chick in the cute little Toyota:

That really is a cute little car--why did you have to put the decal on the back window that is supposed to make us think someone threw a soccer ball at your car and it broke the window and got stuck halfway through? It's dumb and it ruins the car.

Final thought:

Do I hoard my LE ballistic like the treasure that it is? Perhaps sleep on it the way a dragon does gold? Or do I use it and see if it has the magical $100 gift card inside? Or do I start a poll on the Lush forum to see what I should do with it?

Sulky puppy

There's some semi-gross dog information contained in this post, so two of my five readers may wish to simply look at the pretty garden pictures and then exit without reading the text.













Bigfoot is having his annual springtime allergy attack (not to be confused with his annual autumn allergy attack, which is identical but occurs at a different time of year). He's very itchy, and last night, he managed to chew his tail until the tip was positively flowing with blood. I scrubbed the bald raw spot down with Nolvasan, spritzed on a bit of Cortaid, called the vet for an appointment for a steroid shot, and stuck an ankle sock on Bigfoot's tail and put a ponytail holder over that to hold the sock in place.

His temporary new hobby is taking the sock off, then coming to lean on me to see if I still love him despite the fact that I am mistreating him. Once I find the sock and put it back on, he pads off to lie down and sigh heavily to indicate how miserable, humiliated and unloved he is.

Just wait until I clean out his ears later.

Auntie Social

This has been an unusually social weekend for me, and I'm actually glad it rained enough to prevent Josh & Amy from coming over to do the lawn.

Saturday morning started with some last-minute cleaning and then a shower before MaryMargrt from the Lush message board got here. We talked and traded sniffables for a while (she brought me the sweetest basket full of discontinued Lush, new Lush not available here yet and stuff from other etailers) then headed over to her parents' house, where there was some more talking, and a lot of petting of the two German Shepards (who are utterly adorable). After that, we went up to Beachwood to the brand-new Cleveland Lush store, YAAAAAY!

I managed to stay pretty close to my budget. It helped that I won a bubble bar and a bath bomb for answering two trivia questions correctly, and that there were goodie bags and free ballistics for those who spent over $40. I got a Fresh-Faced starter kit for combination skin, three French Kisses, a Golden Slumbers and a free Sugar Rush ballistic. The store had samples of the discontinued items to sniff, but I'm going to have to sniff some of the stuff over again when I go to the Grand Opening on Thursday night, as my nose burned out halfway through and I couldn't smell anything from any of the shower gels. I am definitely going to order lots of Ice Hotel and Flowertub bubble bars, if nothing else.

While we were there, we met KellyGirl, Carla, Maresche, Meabh and HeyLookAMidget from the board, and when everyone had done their shopping, everyone except Carla headed over to the Cheesecake Factory for lunch. Everybody is exactly like their forum personalities, only moreso, which is a very good thing. MaryMargret is thoughtful, sweet and open; Midgie looks exactly like her avatar, and is a sweet and funny girl with a secret addiction to carnival food; KellyGirl is a smart & sassy blonde with an engaging smile and an infectious laugh, Maresche is the perfect advertisement for Lush henna and a charming lunch companion and Meabh started out shy but warmed up and started getting silly with us pretty quickly. Midgie brought out a giant enabler's bag and passed it around twice, saying she didn't want to take anything home, and we talked and joked and it was as if we were meeting for the zillionth time rather than the first. MaryMargrt has to go back to NJ, but I think the rest of us will be there for the Grand Opening.

This morning, MaryMargrt came over for a bit and we made her custom strawberry Wet Willy and yakked about everything under the sun while it hardened. Sunday morning is usually my cleaning time, so it was a real treat to have the cleaning already done and just be able to sit around and chat. However, I have to admit that this weekend was a lot more in-person contact than I usually have, and so I was rather glad to be alone when she left at noon. So if I owe you a phone call or a Yahoo chat, please forgive me for hiding a little bit longer to recharge my sociability batteries.

Some pics from yesterday's meetup:












Back row, left to right: Me, MaryMargrt, KellyGirl, Maresche
Front row, left to right: Meabh, HeyLookAMidget

Progress has been made

I feel a little better, now that I've compiled a list of all of my plants

I've got:

In the large circular bed in the front yard:

Pink allium
Pink & white daffodils
White grape hyacinths
Pink & white striped creeping phlox
White foxglove
Pink bellflowers
A shepherd's hook with two baskets of pink flowered ivy geraniums

In the bed along the front walk:
White lamium
Pink, purple and white gladiolus
1 Josephine clematis
2 Black Knight butterfly bushes

In the bed against the front of the house:
4 pink azaleas
5 white lamium
3 lamb's ears
1 Crystal Fountain clematis
10 Dusty Miller

In the bed along the driveway:
Hidcote, Munstead & Lavender Lady lavender
5 baby lilac trees
Grape hyacinths
1 Black Knight butterfly bush

In the bed next to the street:
White gladiolus
1 baby Buckeye tree
3 baby Witch Hazel trees
1 Pam's Choice foxglove
Hanging planter with geranium, purple & pink petunias and silvery helichrysum

In pots:

1 Early Girl tomato
2 Big Beef tomato
1 huge spider plant
5 or 6 mock orange plants
4 sweet basil
1 English Ivy
1 burgundy Oxalis
2 green Oxalis
2 cyclamen
Lots of geraniums
2 jade plants
1 aloe plant

In the bed next to the turnaround and leading to the garage:

2 dill
1 Sweet Woodruff
2 Ajuga
1 white creeping phlox
8 Casablanca lilies
1 Josephine clematis
3 pink lamium

Along the back wall of the house:
Purple gladiolus
Bluebells
Morning glories
1 mock orange vine

In the bed in the middle of the back yard:
80 white gladiolus
18 blue & purple gladiolus
1 lavender tall phlox
1 Blue Light clematis
Daffodils
9 blue creeping phlox
1 iris
3 white butterfly bushes
1 Blue Muffin viburnum
1 Blue Billow hydrangea
1 pussywillow, standard
1 pussywillow with pink catkins
28 Dusty Miller
Daffodils
2 PeeGee hydrangea
2 dinner plate hibiscus in pink & white

In the bed in the way back:
Daffodils
7 lilies-of-the-valley
8 astilbe
English Ivy

In the bed on the side of the garage:
2 giant hostas
1 heuchera
1 japonica
1 Annabelle hydrangea

*whew*

I think I got everything listed! Bolded items are new this year. Dinner is going to be fresh mozzarella & grape tomatoes, wrapped up in giant basil leaves just picked from my plants.

I'm also feeling good because tonight I had a close look at a newly-fledged baby robin, trying to hide from me because he can't quite fly yet. Pictures soon.

*sigh*

Even though I used up fifty-four bags of mulch this month, I didn't get everything done that I wanted to. I didn't buy enough pea gravel, for one thing. Twenty-five fourteen pound bags sounds like a great deal, but it only covered one small area--I didn't get any of the pathways I wanted to create done. Three of my new lavender plants either didn't like my soil or just didn't like me and they've died. Stormy keeps piddling on one of the new lamium in the back, and it's not going to live much longer with that kind of treatment. The house is disgusting because I've spent all of my free time outside, and I'm roasting right now because I have a pact with myself not to turn the air-conditioning on until June.

Perhaps on a better day I will feel as if I accomplished a lot this weekend. Right now, I am just tired and sad about all that I didn't get done.

Bird brain

Robins have nested in the weeping cherry tree at the front of my house. It's a perfect nesting spot, as I've not trimmed the tree and you can't see inside it at all.

However, the male keeps seeing his reflection in the living room picture window and throwing himself at the glass to attack "the other robin." I spend my mornings listening to bonking noises as he hits the glass, falls to the ground and launches himself up to do it again.

You can see why "bird brain" isn't a compliment.

Moar mulch plz

I don't often speak in KSL, particularly not here, but that was the sentence that came to mind as I worked this morning. Of the forty bags of mulch I bought two weeks ago, I have used twenty-three, and have plans for another forty-two.

It's nice to look at the back yard and have a plan for what I want to do, and it's equally nice to be sure I am going to live long enough to do it. Some of it I should even have done this year, hopefully in time for JammiesFest. If I don't have all the plants I want, I will at least have the beds laid out for them.

Josh is going to kill me for making it impossible for him to do the back yard in straight lines, though. *impish grin*

Josh and the groundhog

The Queen's most recent blog entry reminded me of my friend Amy's husband Josh, he who cuts my grass. The first time I told Josh & Amy I had a resident groundhog, Josh told a story about one that was doing immense amounts of damage to his grandfather's plantings & plumbing. Josh apparently shot & killed the groundhog for his grandfather (NOT a course of action I will ever take, and Rooter is just fine).

The first time Josh told the story, the groundhog was twenty-five pounds, which is on the hefty side, but not totally unbelievable. Through successive re-tellings of the story, the groundhog grew to 40 pounds, then sixty, and two weeks ago, the groundhog was EIGHTY-FIVE pounds. Bigfoot, a malamute/German shepherd mix, is eighty-two pounds.

So yeah, I don't believe Josh's estimates much anymore. *grin*

Happy Saturday

My neighbors got the fallen tree chopped up & removed, I cleaned out the birdbath, planted two lamium, eight lavender, ten Dusty Miller, two dill, four sweet basil and one sweet woodruff and got the old wood off the Annabel hydrangea. Josh came over and did the lawn, and now it is raining softly, which all of my new plants needed.

Now that the tree is gone, I've no excuse to avoid getting mulch back into the farthest corner of the yard and creating the bed I've planned for back there. Most of the lilies-of-the-valley have come up, and I need to clean out all the weeds and get the mulch down. I keep telling myself that if I could use up fourteen bags of mulch and still make it to Mom's for lunch last Sunday, six bags of mulch and making it out there for dinner should be easy-peasy.

Dad's cousin and his wife are in town, and I love getting the chance to talk to them. Larry works for Associated Press and Ann for the Committee to Protect Journalists, and conversations with them range all over the place. They're both extremely bright, up on current events, and funny as all get out. Unfortunately, I don't get to see them more than once a year. I'm going to make sure everything I need to do here is done so that I can stay as late as possible.

Lucky me!

On Wednesday, I went out to take some pics of my lamium, just to make The Queen jealous. What I got was instant karma for being smug about my plants. One of my neighbor's trees had come crashing down into my yard and was resting on the corner of the garage.













I'm lucky because the tree didn't do any damage to the garage and because my neighbor is being very nice about the whole thing. He's coming over tomorrow morning with a friend and a chainsaw and they're going to get the tree out of my way. I might have lost a japonica bush, but I won't know until the tree is gone. It could have been much worse.

I did take some pictures of the lamium and some other garden pics:

I'm Carrot.

You scored as Carrot Ironfounderson.

You are Captain Carrot Ironfounderson of the City Watch in the greatest city on the Disc, Ankh-Morpork! A truly good natured, honest guy, who knows everyone, and is liked by all. Technically a dwarf, but only by adoption. You'd rather not be reminded that you are the true heir to the throne, but that does explain why people naturally follow your orders¦

Gytha (Nanny) Ogg 75%
Carrot Ironfounderson 75%
Esmerelda (Granny) Weatherwax 63%
Lord Havelock Vetinari 56%
Cohen The Barbarian 50%
Commander Samuel Vimes 50%
The Librarian 31%
Greebo 31%
Death 31%
Rincewind 19%


Which Discworld Character Are You?

Happy Mother's Day!

After two hours in the garden this morning, I got cleaned up and went out to my parents' house. For Mother's Day, my mom cooked me lunch and gave me flowers.

Of course, I also took her a present--a pretty little metal flowerpot painted white and filled with Skindecent Blackberry Freesia goodies. I also took her a little hot pink azalea I'd rescued from the bargain basket at Marc's for twenty-five cents. She lost several plants to last winter's big storm, so I knew she was looking for azaleas, and I felt terrible for this little one where it had been left with no water at Eastertime. I got it on the road to recovery, and told it that it was going to azalea heaven, where Mom will take really good care of it. Hopefully, it will get all big and strong and survive next winter.

As I mentioned, Mom made lunch, and while we were all eating our quiche, I told Dad the story of last week's epic buying spree. Being my father, he had to make a comment about how putting the mulch (in bags, mind you) in the garage wasn't a good idea because it can attract rats. Eep. Hopefully, I'll use it up much too quickly for that to happen. I used four bags yesterday refreshing two of the beds in the front and fourteen in the middle back today. Yesterday, I planted three spotted lamium with pale pink flowers and two bugleweeds, then trucked all of the mulch for this morning out to the back. I believe I can use the rest up next weekend, before any rats find their way into the garage.

After lunch, Mom & I went out to her back yard and planted the azalea and dug up some lamium. I have lamium with purple flowers (Beacon Silver) in one spot in my yard, the new stuff with pink flowers (Pink Pewter) in another, but I have not been able to find the white-flowered plants anywhere. Fortunately, Mom's cranesbill hasn't quite forced out the lamium, so she dug up a bunch of healthy plants and I put them in the very front flowerbed as soon as I got home. After Mom had opened her present, we'd had lunch and dug up flowers, I admired everything in her garden and we actually sat down for ten minutes, as Mom said, "pretending we are ladies of leisure." The weather cooperated perfectly today, and it wound up being a wonderful Mother's Day.

If you listen...

you can hear the dainty hoofbeats as the Drama Llama makes his way around the internet.

It's not a full moon, so I'm a loss to explain The Drama that has arisen on not one but three message boards I frequent. One forum even has two separate dramas. People calling each other names, some apologizing, some not, people complaining about moderators doing or not doing their "jobs." Ack. Thank goodness I have my silly threads and my gardening and that I'm not floundering in drama llama poo.

Oof!

Today was a high-octane day. I had a 10% off coupon for Home Depot, so I made a list of everything I need for the summer season and headed off to the car with $300 and the coupon in my pocket. I bought 30 retaining wall stones, 5 bags of drainage rocks for the wet spots in the back yard, 25 bags of pea gravel for walkways, 2 ginormous bags of potting soil, mosquito dunkers, a white creeping phlox, 4 tomatoes, a concrete birdbath & pedestal, a light fixture for the kitchen and one for the hallway.

I had to make two trips in the car because the birdbath and the retaining wall stones were so heavy. I just pitched the stones into the front yard, unloaded the birdbath, light fixtures, plants and potting soil and went back for the pea gravel & drainage stones. After lunch, when I set the retaining stones around the bed in the front yard, I discovered I needed forty instead of thirty. The bed will look nice, but right now it looks unfinished.

Tonight, I was going to go out and use the little mower to get a couple of spots Josh keeps missing with the tractor, but I couldn't get the thing started. I don't know if it was all the work today or the fact that I haven't really exercised my upper arms since last summer, but I was pretty ticked at myself for not being able to start the thing.

Just as I had given up and retreated to the breezeway, Josh & Amy showed up. Apparently, it's supposed to rain tomorrow, so Josh wanted to do the lawn tonight. While he cut the grass, Amy & I went to Marc's and I bought forty bags of mulch. We had to make two trips, and the guy who helped us load the car said I won the prize for the most mulch purchased in one trip. The cashier's eyes about bugged out when I said I wanted forty bags. *grin*

So Amy and I got the mulch in the garage, which will motivate me to use it up so I can park my car in there again. We talked a bit, I paid Josh for the lawn and Amy for the help with the mulch, gave Amy some bath stuff from Skindecent, and they left.

Tomorrow, I've got to hit the ground running to get the cleaning done before I have lunch with my dragon buddy, Dranoel. I'm also organizing a surprise box for someone on the Lush forum who was the victim of a hate crime, and I haven't checked my personal messages there in a while.

I'm not doing that tonight, though. I just had a marvelous strawberry lemonade bath, and while I've got lots of new bruises and I'm sure I will creak in the morning, today was absolutely worth all the bother.

Happy moment

The incomparable Marliss at Skindecent has not only added my scent combo to the list of available scents, she has named it after me!

BOTANICAL

Treefrog Jammies (NEW)

(Medium Intensity) A special blend of fresh green notes balanced by relaxing lavender

Six degrees

This morning, I realized I'd forgotten the Wikipedia link for Edwards AFB in my earlier post. Since Bosstopus is at a meeting, I get to spend my lunchtime playing on the interwebbinet, and I figured I'd just edit the entry and add the link.

Howevah, when I read the whole Wiki entry, I realized there's something in there that links me to Sherri (and to Scott and Severina, but they're probably less willing than Sherri to admit it).

To make a long story short, my birthplace is also the birthplace of "Murphy's Law."