an open letter

dear inventor of fleece sheets:

where have you been all my life? i love you.

thanks

get in line

the other day at wal-marts i was grocery shopping. and needed some laundry detergent. i can only get certain kinds of detergent. usually the one with no odor. or fragrance as they like to market it. i beg to differ. most give me an instant headache. kind of like that unscented dryer sheet i used the other day. i am half way through the box of these unscented dryer sheets. and i pull out a load from the dryer last week and instant headache. now, unscented dryer sheets don't have a smell. or so i thought. and especially when you are already half way done with the box. whatever. i had to wash the load again. anyway, so i decide to buy tide. not because it is three times as expensive as the other brands but because i know the regular scent does not affect my head. and it seems that the stink free versions just aren't getting our clothes the cleanest. and i need to find something that does. well good luck finding it. i counted twenty-six different kinds of tide. twenty-six. there is regular. mountain scent. lavender. and so on. then there is the kind with fabric softener. and it's not just one fabric softener. there are about three different scents of fabric softeners to chose from. and then you can get one for your high efficiency model washers. and all of those come in the above mentioned choices. who runs tide? general motors? i see another bail out coming.

needle in a haystack

so, i get this bright idea that the kids both need strings to attach to their mittens so they don't keep dropping them in the snow. we were still at my parent's house for the holiday and i thought my mom could just whip me some up. or i could go buy some. and then we read on the internet that those strings are no longer in use. because they can cause a hazard. like if they get caught in an escalator. and they don't break free. okay. good point. but it's funny how the internet can put the fear of god in you. every kid had them back in the day. it's like you can't have a string in your hood nowadays either. or lead paint. anyway, we think of another idea. we can use suspender clips. off to the fabric store we go. they don't sell the clips in pairs. they sell them individually. for four dollars a pop. we refuse to pay that much. and we are off across the parking lot. to goodwill. in search of old suspenders. zilch. the next day we are off to salvation army. we find some suspenders. and a bunch of other stuff we don't need. but neither one of us can pass up a good deal. the suspenders we found only had three clips per pair. and we need eight total. and one of the clips didn't hold well on one of the pairs. about two hours later i am looking in the woman's accessory section and what do i find but a pair of suspenders. black with pink polka dots. and black clips. three black clips. we still need two more. and you had better bet we are using that polka dot elastic for something too. we figured we had all that the store had and we would look again another day. but wait. on our way to the register we stop and look through the shirts. and my mom starts to laugh. which doesn't surprise me. we are always picking out the best shirts for each other. but this one was the show stopper. it was a white long sleeve shirt. with a pink patterned piece in the shape of the top of some overalls that was stitched on the front of the long sleeve part and the faux straps held on at the top with no other than suspender clips. one on each side. i. kid. you. not. if ever you need something you can call my mom. i swear she will find it. and i have no doubt that if we had not bought that shirt it would have remained on the rack until the year 3018. when it fell off the hanger. all by itself.

an open letter

dear ninety-nine point nine percent of all pottery barn outlet customers:

your shit stinks. just like everyone else's shit stinks. so do us all a favor. and get over yourselves. and furthermore, ninety-nine point nine percent of the merchandise appears to have fallen out of the delivery truck at one point, or five, before it reached the outlet store. and it's still outrageously expensive. but go ahead and knock yourselves out.

thanks

why ask why

but i am going to anyway. you know i am home for the holidays when on christmas day we rang in baby jesus' birthday with no other than a lifetime movie. thanks bill. anyway, today closed captioning is on. scrolling along the bottom of the screen. blocking all of the football scores. and yet the volume is so loud verna can hear it. and we are no longer even neighbors, as you all know, for what is going on to be well over twenty years. it leaves me to wonder why the deaf guy has control of the volume. yet again. or still.

last call

the other day my friend shel and i were trying to get in touch. except we couldn't. her phone doesn't actually ring any longer when someone calls it. and i always seem to leave my cell in my car. with no charge. we call ourselves organized chaos. we were trying to get our schedules together because both of us were spending christmas with our parents. in our hometown. shel finally got a new cell. but she couldn't activate it because once she did she would lose all of her contacts on her old phone. the phone was so old they couldn't even transfer the information from the old phone to the new phone. so she had to do it manually. i told her i didn't have that many friends. it wouldn't take me that long. she said it wasn't really all of her friends. it was more of all the takeout places. massage spas. and pedicure joints. that a girl, shel. that a girl.

merry christmas

man, santa. you're one. lucky. bastard. sorry i forgot the beer. ho. friggin. ho.