A sign that you're getting older

You go to Vegas for your bachelorette party. It's Saturday night, you're footloose and fancy-free. What do you do?

Eat a huge meal of meat (www.pampasusa.com) at a Brazilian churrascaria - seriously, they had like fifteen different kinds on skewers that they kept bringing by - then go to bed by midnight. To top it off, the people next door came in drunk and singing 80s pop tunes shortly after we went to bed, so we called security on them. Heh.

It was a wonderful weekend - everyone there I'd known since at least the third grade. Considering how that was cough*decades*cough ago, it's nice that we all can still stand each other. And because my parents were able to make it, and my sister Dustbunny and her husband Roadrunner live in Vegas, we were able to have a mini-family reunion.

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In other news, BIG excitement in San Antonio: the giant mulch fire's out! Yes, our own Springfield Tire Fire, which burned for 90 days straight and released god knows what into our water supply, is finally out. At a cost of $5.5 million, I might add. What really galls me is that "Mulchie," as it became fondly known in cyberspace, as 1,727 friends on its MySpace page. How can a pile of shit have more friends than me? Or, more accurately, what does it state that a pile of shit is the most popular entity I know?

A clarification and a helpful hint

I realize that the PS to the last post may have been somewhat misleading. I know that there are magazines missing from the reading room of San Antonio's fertility clinic because they are showing up, address labels intact, at my gym. I realize that that little piece of information is kind of crucial to the story. Apologies for any confusion. Just to be clear: no bun in my oven, none planned for the near future (KNOCK WOOD). We are getting married in less than two months* and are spending way too much money for me to be limited to watching others enjoy the open bar.

Now, to make up for the unclear post, a hint for you cat owners. If no other punitive measures work on the little fuckers, this will: compressed air in a can. You know, the kind you use to clean out your keyboard? Shrapnel responds to that like nobody's business. We don't aim it at his face or anything, but a few squirts at his ass and he has learned to run every time the can gets picked up. You're welcome.

* While I didn't think I was stressed about wedding planning - we've spaced everything out nicely and are pretty much just filling in the blanks now - for the past week or so I have been hit with a weird form of insomnia where I can fall asleep without any problem but wake up for at least a couple of hours every night. Last night I got to sleep in...until 4:30AM. That was a good night's sleep compared to some nights. Whine whine whine. Could be worse, I guess: my sister started grinding her teeth in her sleep before her wedding.

A letter to one who's moved on

Dear Whoever It Was That Brought Trashy Magazines To The Gym,

I miss you. Where have you gone, and why did you take your never-ending supply of US Weekly and InTouch with you? Ever since you left, all that there are some year-old copies of Redbook - ick - and a very sad issue of People magazine that was printed in the short period between when James Kim's family was found and when they determined that he was dead. Those are both equally depressing but for entirely different reasons.

I realize that bringing my old Economists to the gym just makes me part of the problem, and not the solution. So here's the deal: you come back and allow me to get caught up on my celebrity gossip and I will put a six-month moratorium on my Economists, okay? I even brought in the special double issue of People showing off gowns at the Oscars and Patrick Dempsey's news twins as a good faith measure. Don't let me down.

Crossing my fingers that you'll be back in my life in time for Britney's next public appearance,

Her Ladyship

PS: You can tell your compatriot, Whoever's Been Stealing Magazines from San Antonio's Fertility Clinic, to knock it the fuck off, too. Fertility clinics are not fun places under the best of circumstances - no need to add to the misery by depriving their waiting rooms of some decent reads.

Sometimes cliches do come true

Yesterday, the dog was acting strange all day. Remember reading stories of how the animals all knew that the tsunami was coming in 2004? And I grew up hearing that animals could predict earthquakes, something of great interest to many Angelenos. So when the dog acted weird, it set off alarm bells in my head.

Then the sky turned greenish, the wind picked up, and I truly started to freak the fuck out. I live in a trailer park and all I could think of was, I am NOT going to die in a trailer park courtesy of tornado.* We were under tornado watch until the early morning, which meant a whole lot of waiting. I chose to deal with the fear in a healthy, mature manner: I started throwing cheese down my throat, washing it down with bourbon, and didn't stop until the wee hours of the morning. I figured if I had to spend the next couple of days in a Red Cross shelter, I should at least start off well-fed. And liquored up.

I even left instructions with The Texan as to how I wanted him to take Shrapnel to safety in case I was capacitated in some way. As if The Texan wouldn't take this opportunity to give Shrapnel the freedom he so dearly seeks.**

We managed to avoid the twisters, or to be more accurate, the twisters avoided us. Instead, we got some truly cracking thunderstorms which made me nervous but did not create the type of terror that the threat of a tornado did.

I know this, because I was up until 4:30 AM. I learned that my body does not take kindly to consuming 1000 calories' worth of cheese in one sitting.

* The way I figure it, I'll go one of two ways (KNOCK WOOD): 1) Choking on a piece of beef shiskabob that I greedily took too big of a bite out of. I already did this once at a kabob shop in northern Virginia. Nothing like having a piece of meat wedge itself in your throat to scare the living shit out of you. And to encourage smaller bites in the future. 2) Insouciantly jay-walking. Living in DC taught me to be an agressive pedestrian, which is helpful in some situations but in others, really not so much. Human beings cannot go toe to toe with moving vehicles and expect to come out the victor.

** Shrapnel has taken to making a run for it whenever the front door is open. Usually, nothing comes of it, as the dog has been trained to narc the cat out wherever he's hiding in the yard. But the other day, Shrapnel managed to clear the fence, forcing us to ask the guys at the auto shop next door if they could lure the cat over to us and lob him over the fence. They were very nice and said sure, they'd be happy to help out our pregnant cat. Um, Shrapnel's a HE, and as far as I know, he's not pregnant. He's just bigboned, I say.

Learning to let go

You know, sometimes, your heart just won't accept what your head knows all too well. Maybe this time, it'll be different, you think. It's my fault - I bet if I put a little more effort into it, it'll work out. Hope springs eternal and you search the internet, certain that if you can just phrase your question right, you'll find the answer you need.

And then you decide the hell with it, homemade butternut squash is not worth all this heartache, and you open up a can of Campbell's.

Seriously - I have made like four different versions of it. I love butternut squash, I love soup, it's always being listed as a healthy meal in all those stupid fitness magazines at the gym, it features prominently in any collection of easy vegetarian recipes. Perfect lunchtime meal that I can just whip up at home, right?

Wrong. Every batch I make is worse than the one before it. What is up with that?

This I vow: I have ruined my last butternut squash. I don't care how much betacarotene the damn things have, I'm not going to try to make soup of them any more.

Another thing about being my age

Sally Forth and I are SEVEN YEARS APART. How can staid Sally Forth and I even be in the same decade? The Texan points out that I need to cool it seeing as she isn't a real person or anything. But still, it's enough to keep you awake at night.