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Touch my monkey.

27 Oct

With Halloween approaching, my sister and I were recently chatting on Facebook about costumes. She was planning to go as Frida Kahlo, the Mexican painter.

Me: That’s a bit obscure. How would people know?
Alicia: Long wig. Flowy Mexican dress. Uni-brow. Mustache. Monkey.

Me: Got it.

Fortunately, she lives in Ann Arbor, so most of her (well-educated and artistic) friends would be able to put that together. If I tried to pull that off in DC, where things run a bit more political and less cerebral, I think people would just think I was aiming going as a transvestite with a monkey fetish.

A few days later, I chatted her again.

Me: How is the costume progressing?
Alicia: It’s not. Too expensive. I’m at $35 already and I don’t even have the wig or the monkey. Pulling the plug. Besides, I don’t know where I would get a monkey.
Me: What about that monkey you had when we were kids?
Alicia: ???
Me: The puppet. Where you velcroed its arms around your neck and stuck your hand up it?
Alicia: I had this monkey?
Me: Yes. It had a squeaker in its mouth you could squeeze.
Alicia: Sounds like you were jealous of my monkey. You remember it a little too well.
Me: I was. You wouldn’t let me play with it.
Alicia: Had I known, I would’ve worn it around constantly.

Me: No doubt.

And because older sisters never outgrow their urge to taunt and get a rise out of their younger siblings, the next day this is what she posted on my Facebook Wall:

In case you’re curious, her latest costume idea is even better than Frida and would play well anywhere. Any guesses?

That’s right – she’s going as a bad ventriloquist. We’ve already decided that has the potential for sheer comedy after a few glasses of wine.

The best part? She’s been practicing saying, “Who’s your daddy?” through gritted teeth all week, which – even without the puppet – is pretty awesome.

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I’ve got your Swiss Cake Rolls right HERE.

9 Sep

With an almost six year age difference between us, my sister and I didn’t have much use for each other when we were growing up. We were kind of like Beezus and Ramona. Fortunately, as adults, through the wonder of modern technology, we’ve discovered that we share the same demented sense of humor.

We often chat each other on Facebook in the evening, discussing scenes or dialogue to include in our screenplay. [Note: we don’t actually have a screenplay, but we’re convinced that if we could just focus, we’d be able to give the Cohen Bros. a run for their money.]

Recently Alicia switched her profile photo to this image of Little Debbie:

So wholesome.

I think the impetus for this was that she had served a box of Swiss Cake Rolls for dinner the night before. (Dinner, not dessert.)

On Facebook chat, the person’s profile photo shows up next to every comment they make, and it was cracking me up to chat with this little farm girl wearing a hat. To enhance the visual exchange, I switched my profile photo to this:

Wholly awesome.

Now whenever we chat, it looks like I’m on brink of punching Little Debbie. Which brings me no end of amusement.

See what I mean:

 <–New profile photo = “Welcome to the gun show. Prepare for some kidney thumping.”

 Little Debbie says, “Eat my Swiss Cake Roll.”

  RR says, “F*ck your Swiss Cake Roll.”

  Now that’s just potty talk there, Miss Rosie.

  Rosie don’t have time for pleasantries.

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Using this logic, my kitchen is now full of trophies.

4 Aug

Earlier this week I mentioned that I don’t do “sick” very well. I didn’t elaborate, because I hate it when people hijack my Facebook feed with an on-going list of symptoms. This is how that usually plays on on my Facebook Wall:

Them: Wah! Wah!

Me: Click.

Them: Permanently hidden.

Someone once told me that there are three things no one (excepting maybe relatives) really cares to hear you talk about: 1) Your dreams, 2) Your vacations, 3) Your children. I think we should amend that statement and add 4) Your health.

The only time I want to hear about someone’s health is if something YouTube worthy has happened to them. Like a botfly larvae has been pulled from their body. Or their bowel movements have crippled an entire municipality’s sewage system. You get the idea.

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When the fear isn’t crippling, it’s freeing…

2 Aug

While I feel horrible for anyone confronting a phobia, some of the less common phobias are, um, borderline hilarious. Fear of snakes and spiders? I understand. Fear of air? Not so much.

(And yes, fear of air actually exists — it’s called anemophobia, if you’re curious. I didn’t know what it was a called, which is how I ended up on this site, doing a reverse look-up of phobias after WebMD indicated that fear of air is a symptom of rabies.)

For today’s post-lunch distraction, here’s a list of my newly-discovered favorite phobias:

  • Caligynephobia: fear of beautiful women. I think the Beach Boys named this one.
  • Deipnophobia: fear of dinner conversation. Pretty sure I’ve dated this guy.
  • Consecotaleophobia: fear of chopsticks. I’m going to guess the diagnosis of this runs pretty low in rural America.
  • Euphobia: fear of hearing good news. I want to meet this person. Sounds like a real Debby Downer: “Do you want me to start with the bad news or the –” “NO!”
  • Basophobia: fear of the inability to stand. How does this seed even get planted in one’s mind? And does it seize them only when they’re seated?
  • Arachibutyrophobia: fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth.
  • Papaphobia: fear of the Pope. Nice to know he ranks up there with clowns for some people.

Interestingly, there is a whole list of phobias that I would argue aren’t phobias, but are, rather, NORMAL fears… like thanataphobia (fear of death) or taeniophobia (fear of tapeworms).

And of course, the men out there who are rolling their eyes, saying phobias are for sissies… I have one word for you: Medmalacuphobia.

Look it up.

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I didn’t realize WebMD was a humor site.

1 Aug

I’m really not good at being sick. In part it’s because I’m always operating off a mental schedule that leaves no room for inefficiency or incapacitation.

Take yesterday morning. I love my Sundays — I typically get up early and clean, then walk to the farmer’s market and load up on produce. I’ll hit a few yoga classes, walk to the library, run some errands, cook meals for the week and have an awesome sense of accomplishment when evening rolls around.

Instead, I woke up at 6am with a raspy sore throat and headache. I tried to rally but ended up spending most of the day in bed, hoping that the rest would force this bug to leave my system. At some point I started to feel sorry for myself (probably when I realized I’d missed the last option for yoga) so I went to WebMD to diagnose myself.

I know, you’re not supposed to practice “internet medicine” because you’ll end up believing you have a rare disease with only two weeks to live. But really, I was just trying to remember if the adage was “starve a cold” or “feed a cold” because I couldn’t decide if it was wise to inhale the pepperoni pizza in my freezer. Don’t ask why I thought WebMD would offer Mother Goose-like guidance; clearly I was sick and not thinking clearly.

Anyway, WebMD has this application called “Symptom Checker” where you can select the symptoms you’re experiencing and it will whittle down a list of possible conditions you may have. When I saw the options of symptoms, I quickly abandoned my own diagnosis and started trying to construct the oddest line-up of issues I could imagine, just to see if I could stump the system.

Here’s what I came up with:

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