My Redneck Jungle Gym

I grew up in upstate New York. Yes, there are cows. No, that’s not all. Yes, you’re very funny with the cow reference. No no, I’m laughing on the inside. Yes, really. You slay me.

I did the vast majority of my growing up living with my mom and step-dad in the suburbs of Albany, which is not actually such a bad place to grow up. Boring as hell once you reach college age, but kind of a nice place to be a kid. And it seems to be getting better. Each time flarf and I return home (as he is also from said area), there’s at least one new store or restaurant between his parents’ house and mine that wasn’t there the last time we wandered into town. So, while I’m still not ready to go all suburban with the minivan and dogs, I at least don’t mind going there any more.

Yes, I left out my dad. You see, my dad lives in Columbia County, which is a rather rural county located between Albany and the Massachusetts border and a bit south. Yes, there are cows there. Yes, that’s about all.

Columbia county is an odd place. As far as I know, it can claim only two celebrities – Martin van Buren (yes, the president.) and Oliver North (who likes to pretend he’s from Virginia.) Once upon a time the county was pretty much all farms with the city of Hudson in the middle. Then yuppies from New York got tired of people and wanted to mingle with the cows and go antiquing, so they started building houses. Now it’s a strange place where 3-toothed pick-up driving rednecks regularly cross paths with latte-sipping LL Bean-wearing folks in Volvos.

My family has traditionally been from the former group. My great grandparents ran a dairy farm and my grandfather started a septic tank business. My father learned to drive on a tractor. No, I’m not kidding. Now he drives Mack trucks and works with concrete so don't mock him because it'd be pretty easy for him to have you disappeared.

I grew up around my grandfather’s business, now run by my dad. I had dolls and tea sets. I just played with them on a mound of dirt and would happily abandon them if one of the workers offered me a ride in the bulldozer. (Actually the bulldozer always scared me just a bit – I was afraid the treads would suck me under. But, the loader or backhoe – oh yeah!) I climbed trees, dug in the piles of dirt and rocks they used to do people’s driveways and always begged to go on deliveries with the guys so I could ride in the passenger seat of the big trucks. (The passenger’s seats didn’t have a whole lot in the way of shocks. Remember what it was like to go over a bump while sitting on the back of the school bus? Multiply it by 10 and you’ve got it. Of course, it was less fun as I, and my chest, grew bigger.)

As I got older, the company started doing less and less pumping of septic tanks (and therefore, less and less constantly smelling like poo at the dinner table) and more building them. They built the concrete kind and kept them in rows in the back, in the area called the “gravel bank” (where all the gravel for driveways was also kept, as I’m sure you sherlocked out).

For those who have never seen a concrete septic tank, which I’m sure is pretty much all of you, I shall describe. They come in different sizes, but the two kinds my dad made the most were cylinders about 3 and 6 feet tall and about 6 feet wide. (I’m sure I’m a little off, but I’m just going by a 10+ year old memory here.) They had notches all around the sides and a big hold in the top with a lid.

The notches fit 9 year old feet fantastically! I could climb right up those things and scurry all the way down the rows. They also usually left the lids off which meant if I was careful I could climb down into the 6 foot ones and have my only little secret cave (cause who cares about the 3 footers? It’s no cave if your head sticks out the top!) I was like a little wack-a-mole game on my football sized jungle gym, running about and popping in and out of the different tanks. I loved it. Of course, I learned one day when I tripped on the lid of one tank and fell just how hard and sharp concrete is. I made my own little blood fountain in my knee. But I didn’t care, I was always banged up back then, much to my prissy mother’s dismay. (She used to pick me up at my grandmothers (behind whose house the business was located) and freak out in the special way that only my mother can when she saw how dirty I was because I would have to...gasp...sit in the car that way! I would have understood the freakouts if she hadn’t been driving a 10 year old Sapporo at the time. Yeah, I never heard of that car either.)

Anyway, the point is, I had some kick-ass things to play with for a little tom-boy. I wonder if the person who bought that one septic tank noticed all the blood on it before burying it in the ground...

Knives are sharp...

And the small piece of my thumb and thumbnail that now live in the trash rather than on my hand agree.

It goes well with the scratch on my eye caused by something that got in there yesterday.

I think I will spend the rest of the day on the couch.

The Origins of Wraar

I’m sure many of you are saying to yourselves, “I wonder where she got the name ‘wraar’…It MUST be a nickname of sorts because surely no one would be that stoned when naming a child.”

Well, you are correct. While my mother DID find it amusing to name her child after a 70s TV character, she did not come up with Wraar.

The story of wraar dates all the way back to the academic year 1998/1999. During this year, I was a sophomore at GW. My friend Nicole and her roommate lived next door. Nicole often cooked food in my kitchen because I had a microwave and she did not. (Yes, our dorms had kitchens. There’s a reason GW is the 2nd most expensive school in the country. No, mommy and daddy did not pay for it. Scholarships and a pledge for my soul until I reach 40 took care of it). Anyway, I love Nicole. She’s a swell chica. However, her use of my microwave was not one of my most favorite college things. Why, you ask? Because she only cooked SMELLY food in my room. I knew that when I heard her knock I’d be smelling refried beans or powdered cheese for days.

I tell you this because wraar came about on a rare day when food was actually being cooked in NICOLE’S room and I was hanging out in the kitchen. Luckily Nicole was not cooking - she cooked smelly food in her room too. No, our friend Jamie was cooking pasta. Jamie was dating Nicole’s roommate. Out of respect for the insane, we’ll just call her “The Jersey Redhead.” Jamie spent many hours in the room cooking for the Jersey Redhead and trying to keep her from yelling at him. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes she made her Furbies attack him. (Yes, she collected Furbies.)

While chatting with Jamie and Nicole, I played with Nicole’s magnetic hangman. I created four new words – “wraar,” “gufem,” “chkp,” and “wubs.” Now, I figured the words would make people giggle and that would be the end of it. It was not to be so, however, and I must give credit for my name to Jamie. He and the Jersey Redhead took to yelling the four words at each other whenever they weren’t making out or involved in a Furby attack. I suppose the Jersey Redhead deserves credit too, but she was crazy and I like Jamie better, so she gets none! Hahahahaha! The power of the Wraar!

I choose “wraar” as a screenname for a bunch of stuff that year because it was the most name sounding and did not involve excessive numbers. I figured since no one else thought of it, I was a tad more unique than cutiepie8274082764885831134. I have kept it for everything ever since.

So, there you have it. Not all that amusing. But now you know. And I’m sure that makes you feel just a little bit better.

I AM SMRT

I passed the New York bar. So now I've passed two. And I am running out of excuses for my unemployment.

The temporary health risks of pig

When discussing my need to write about my family for humor's sake last weekend, my sister inquired as to whether I had any funny stories about her.

At the present time in her life, my sister is funny in a "Holy crap, please don't let that evil near my children" sort of way. You see, she's 15 and is a high school principal's worst nightmare. Her vocabulary when dealing with teachers and other authority figures consists almost exclusively of four letter words. And I don't mean "cute," "nice," and "frog." She makes teachers' ears bleed with shame and does a little crazy moon spasm ritual every time she gets suspended. Or at least I think she does. It could just be some scary-ass dancing, but for her sake, I'm going with spasm ritual. (I didn't have the hypen in scary-ass originally, but scary ass dancing sounds like something else entirely and something that none of you should be picturing my 15 year old sister doing - imaginatons up, please!!!)

However, once upon a time, she was an amusing little creature. She understood smiling to simply mean a facial expression in which ones bears ones teeth. We have many photos of what could either be my sister or a rabid badger. Treasured moments. Especially when she stopped gnawing on the floor.

One of my sisters more memorable quotes came when she was about two years old. Eating was an interesting time for her. She was not always the 100 pound (yeah, you heard me right - the kid's a toothpick. Damn her and her tiny butt!) Taco Bell scarfing fiend that she has grown into. As a child it took her about 36 hours to polish off a meal. Oh, the meal would be off the table in under 15 minutes - no problem. But, you see, my sister would then store the food, half-chewed, in her cheeks like a chipmunk while everyone begged her to please just swallow it so we didn't have to look at the colors seeping out of her anymore.

This, of course, would make her do nothing. Because apparently, her audio nerve was connected to her jaw muscles. We learned this one day when she was sitting in her weird-ass high chair that connected to the table. I never liked that thing. It clamped onto the table, so you didn't need a real high chair once the kid got to a certain age. But it collected food particles like nobody's business. If you wanted to see what my sister ate for the last month, unclamp the chair and look at where the clamp arms had been. And that's about as often as my mother felt the need to clean it. What a sanitary home I was raised in. It's amazing I never showed up at school with cholera.

Anyway, my sister was in her bacteria-infused clamp chair having some food. Her father then began to talk to her. With a straight face and completely serious, she looked up her dad and said, "Daddy, I can't hear you. I have ham in my mouth." What made it so funny was that she said it in a tone of voice that implied he was a complete moron for not understanding how ham affected hearing and should have known better than to speak to her at that moment.

These days she would probably just give him the finger.

If only everything worked like vodka...

The best way to rid yourself of a hangover is to drink again.

BUT, the best way to get rid of a fat ass caused by overconsumption of cookies is NOT to eat more cookies.

That hardly seems fair.

I'm not a total moron!!!

I found out yesterday that I passed the Massachusetts bar exam. I have nothing funny to say about it. I just wanted to share.

Since I have nothing funny to add because I am foggy from the champagne hangover I have, I will just share one of my favorite knock knock jokes, which is much more fun in person than in print. So imagine a man in a duck costume telling it to you. Not because the duck costume has any significance, but because I think it's funny to imagine a man in a duck costume, with or without the joke.

Anyway...
Knock knock.
Who's There?
The Interrupting Cow.
The interrupting co - MOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

hee hee.

EmPHAsis is imporTANT

Having seen a bit of America's Next Top Model the other night, I am reminded of one of my little pet peeves. It annoys the crap out of me when people put the empasis on the wrong syllable when pronouncing words.

What sent the familiar pins down the spine was one vacant girly complaining that she really couldn't breath in "that cor-SET." Now, had I not had the ability to see that she was actually referring to a rib-crushing skinny maker favored by women in days of yore, I might think Chevy had invented a new oxygen-depravation sports car. When you how a word is pronounced and it's a pretty common knowledge type of word, it just sounds so damn wrong a different way. Especially coming out of a look-at-me-I-know-I'm-pretty face when you know countless people on that set had pronounced it correctly in front of her before she filmed her little confessional interview . Makes me want to pull her CORset strings tighter until she pukes.

My mother also has a problem with this little habit. I can think of one word in particular that she never says like a normal American. She goes out for "CHI-nese food." I remember as a kid being both excited at the possibility of some shrimp lo mein for dinner and annoyed as hell that my mother could not pronounce a simple word without sounding like a dumbass. I am aware that many Chinese people do put the emphasis on the first syllable and that's fine. It's their word (well our word describing them, but they have a pretty good claim to it) and it sounds perfectly normal coming out of their mouths. Out of the mouth of the goofy suburbanite woman who birthed me, however, it sounds like a bad impression the drunk uncle does of the waiter who just brought the fortune cookies.

Now, it may seem like I pick on my mother a lot. I do. She does a lot of things that are humorous to someone outside of our little family circle. Scary inside, but humorous outside. I wonder if this is how David Sedaris feels...Besides, mocking with humor shows you care enough to pay attention. Mocking without humor means you were probably the kid who tripped the retarded boy just to hear him yell "OOPSY DAISY!!" as he fell on his helmet-protected face. You're going to hell. I'm not. Therefore, it's okay to laugh at my mom.

Anyway, the point is, LEARN TO PRONOUNCE SIMPLE WORDS BEFORE SPEAKING!!! And you shall not incur the wrath of wraar. Today.