I Am Totally Dedicated to Teaching You Stuff

December marks my one-year anniversary as your Fragrant Liar. You probably remember fondly my inaugural post. I know! It feels like just yesterday that you all came into my little corner of the world with your cheeks aglow, your mouths agape, and your sensibilities aghast. It's all right. You recovered, didn't you?

I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for reading, commenting, and supporting this blog. I try hard to teach you guys stuff you can use in real life because the infinite smarts around here flow so freely. I am your one-stop shop. I'm like Fragripedia! Where else can you find all you ever wanted to know about men, women, children, strap-ons, boners, spanx, corsets, strange surgeries, thongs, penises, and assorted other treasures. My peeps, you are the world's coolest beneficiaries! De nada!

Oh, I know some uppity peeps have read my stuff with that WTF-in-the-headlights look, or, horror-struck, tried to escape before I could finagle their naughty inner child out of them. Alas, not everyone can be awe-fabu-wonder-credible, now can they?

But YOU can—you ARE. You who continue to breathe deep, ping a link somewhere, and brave the elements of this blog for a few laughs and to receive the kind of wisdom you just can't get anywhere else—you are my people. You are my inspiration to fire up the laptop. You complete me. You make me want to be a better blogger. I promise to never disappoint.

Wait, what? That totally sounded like a resolution, didn't it? That is so not happenin'! But I'll be back next year. I hope you will join me with your sense of humor and your naughty inner child and be ready to learn something! I am totally dedicated to keeping you guys in the know with real important stuff.

You people are awe-fabu-wonder-credible. (I know you are, but what am I?)

Happy New Year!

I Hereby Don't Resolve to Achieve Something

The 2010 New Year is upon us, and everybody in Bloggyville is talking about resolutions. Shyaaaah! Don't you people realize? A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other! I have been down this road before, most recently in 2009, and I totally don't remember a thing I vowed to do. Partly, I was medicated. Other partly, I'm a shoot-from-the-hip kind of girl anyway and . . . well, I forget stuff.

So what point is there in setting you people up with expectations I will never meet? I'd be all, "My glorious resolutions are blah, blah, blah," and then go off on a tangent neither of us was expecting, upsetting the delicate balance of our relationship. Like when I say, "I resolve to be less irreverent." Bwaaah-ha-ha! That's totally not happenin', but you get my point that then reverting to frat-boy humor with Penis Week would just make me a big fat, um, liar. Who needs that kind of pressure? I'm entirely too fragile.

I'd rather go with the flow and then switch things up when it feels right or when it feels wrong. I am messy like that. Inadvertently, I may disappoint people. I will totally feel sucky about it, but I'm cool with change. It's accountability that bites me in the ass when I'm just not ready to commit and/or I forget I'm supposed to do something. I would have to guilt myself when I don't spring forth with an exuberant "SCORE!" and even my best friends (those bitches) would gladly buy me a ticket on the Flagellation Freighter.

And frankly, this Christmas I'm just too full of casseroles and cookies to submit myself to the public scrutiny of a failed resolution. Instead, how about if I just let you know if I achieve something -- anything -- if and when I remember. I'll be like your personal reporter, on the scene, the moment I make my parents proud--I swear to you, that has happened before. What it was . . . I forget.
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Good Enough

Dear Santa,

I've been exceedingly good enough this year. If you insist, I'll tell you why . . .

• It's really not that bad to cuss habitually. My dad and mom always do it and I don't want to disappoint them by breaking with a beloved family tradition.
• Always telling the truth is overrated. Little white lies are actually beneficial under opportune circumstances, and saving my own ass is Priority One because, really, this shows that I love myself. It's a proven fact that one must love oneself first in order to love others.
• Vanity is just part of being a woman. Because of all my nurturing aspects and shit, I take pride in my appearance so I can be a good example for my daughters. How else would they know how much makeup and jewelry to don before they do anything strenuous?
• Shooting the bird at strangers and loved ones alike is educational. As both a student and teacher of life, I perform a valuable public service with a single mad flourish that says, "You have annoyed me, mofo, boogermuncher, pitsniffer, skidmark, fleabrain, buttdog, punkchild of the universe." In this way, they learn not to make that mistake again, and I learn that imparting my true feelings is the safest way to cleanse myself of nasty toxins.
• Embarrassing your children builds character. It instills in them a healthy dose of humility and an endearing penchant for storytelling they can share with others year after year. Intrigued therapists will take copious notes until their hands cramp up, and I ask you, how else would they learn to write like real doctors? See? Win-win for everyone!
• Just saying no is not really selfish. Deny, deny, deny, because people need to become self-reliant. If I loan some chick all my cherished Twilight tomes rather than letting her drive her ass to Barnes & Noble to buy her own damn books, she will never grow as a person. Withholding is its own reward.

For goodness sake, Santa Baby, this is by no means a complete list of the ways I've been good enough all year. But since you're coming to town, and I may be inebriated by the time you get here, I want to make sure there will be no misunderstandings between us on Christmas morning.

In holiday merriment,
Your Fragrant Liar

P.S.
It's totally pervy that you can see me when I'm sleeping. Dude, you can get your ass arrested for that. However, I am inclined to forgive your creepiness if you could see your way clear to gifting me with a new Lexus IS. If I have to, I'll settle for an ES350. Whaddaya say, big guy? I'll call off the coppers if you'll call up the elves and get them assembling my sleek new wheels.

P.P.S.
I don't have a chimney, remember? But I do have a garage, and I will totally kick the kids out of their makeshift gameroom if you don't have enough wrapping paper to cover it. Oh, and I don't want to be any trouble, so no need for a big red bow. Unless you insist.

Holiday Head-Shakers

Every holiday around our house inspires some memorable head-shaking that brings to mind lines from favorite Christmas songs. In addition to my brush with zombie rats, plenty of contenders "sleighed" me, like:

• Our resident angel from on high, Miss America, came down and addressed a sofa full of wassailing out-of-towners. "Want to know what the new baby is doing?" She sighed, screwed up her mouth in disgust, and rolled her eyes. "She's trying to suck on my mom's boob." O come let us adore her . . .
• The overhead lights in our kitchen went out. The Three Wise Men of the family gathered beneath them as one after the other stood on the island and attempted to remove the frosted plastic cover from the fixture. After much ado, they couldn't remove it. Naturally, this begs the question, how many men does it take to change a light bulb? While These Three Kings took their special gifts to another crib of worship (aka, our garage for beer pong and darts), my daughter TG mounted the island and popped that sucker right out. Joy to the Girls, the boys are dumb.
• My dad, he with the Santa belly, walked through the living room and sneezed explosively. Ho ho ho, his pants dropped to his ankles. Thankfully, I did not see the South Pole. Jump in bed and cover your head . . .
• Six-year-old elf extraordinaire, JazzyB, was dissatisfied with our holiday decorations. She took matters into her own hands by completely undressing a dozen Barbies and Kens and lining them up in the manger that is her elfin workshop, depicting her version of the nativity scene. Or an orgy. Or a firing squad. The world in solemn stillness lay . . .
• Three-year-old drummer boy, Destructo, stood at the toilet peeing while his mother supervised. He looked over his shoulder while pointing to his drumstick. "My peep big," he said. "Right, Mom?" Officially becoming the first woman in his life to protect his holy ego, she replied, "Um, sure, baby." Then he smiled at me, pa rum pum pum pum.

Naturally, this should all be taken as gospel. What memories are you making over at your place?

Zombies in the Attic

The other night I awoke at 2:30 to shuffling and scuffling noises, like something or someone stuck in a wall and clawing its way out. Or in the ceiling, dragging its leg along the rafters. My first thought was zombies. I'm told there are no such things as zombies; however, that didn’t stop them from infiltrating my psyche.

Make it stop! I can’t hear shit like that in the middle of the night.

Zombies are not what you want to wake up to, people. Or rats--especially, zombie rats in the excruciating throes of death, or re-enacting some kind of zombie death spiral. I imagined the creature had its foot caught in a trap, unable to escape. Noooooo! Don’t let me bear witness to the injustice! Stop suffering, little zombie rodent, and go to sleep. But ignoring the noises was impossible. How do you not dwell on zombies and rats when you're stuck in a sleep-deprived stupor? Zombies and rats are insistent in the dark.

Pollyanna being my childhood mascot, I invoked her to help me look on the bright side and be glad. Thankfully, Pollyanna is always game (she's very optimistic, but a slut). So she dragged me into a misty forest where we encountered a tribe of muscular, bare-chested male figures, led by a guy named Jacob. We double-teamed him under a new moon. Oh yes . . . we did. Jealous? Jacob had just phased on the fly when the shuffling and scuffling of the zombie rat in the attic demanded attention again.

No, zombie rat! I tossed and turned and wrapped my pillow around my ears. Pollyanna, beefy naked wolfmen, take me back to the forest! The sounds just became more ominous, like those noises that pea-soup-puking Reagan endured, which resulted in her getting a professional exorcism. You know how that satanic shit starts . . . always, noises in the attic.

I heard a mewl. Oh, torturous pain of death! Groggily, I sat up, grappling for my bearings. More shuffling and scuffling in the rafters. I got up and padded into the dark hallway, gaping at the ceiling, listening. Wait. Was that a mewl, or a mew?

To the left of me was the bathroom, and I heard more scuffling from behind the closed door. I turned the knob cautiously. In the dimness, all the drawers were open. WTF? Satan wants my vibrator? I flipped on the light. Like Uncle Buck in Bonnie and Clyde, Matilda rocked aimlessly on all fours, scraping her little cat head against the cabinets--her head was stuck up to her collar inside a Mr. Potato Head! She mewed plaintively, "WTF!" (Obviously, I speak cat.)

As I rifled through the bathtub paraphernalia (where the kids had bathed earlier) in search of plastic eyes, a hat, and a mustache to complete her ensemble, I wondered how long she'd been like that and whether she'd done it to herself. Perhaps it was the zombie rats, or perhaps we will one day soon need the services of an exorcist. In any case, I think this proves that my cat is incredibly intelligent. By sliding the drawers open and shut, she was S-O-S'ing me!

Well, doesn't she look like a genius?

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Sixty-Two Pricks

No, it's not Penis Week yet, people. Settle down. This is about the pricks that got my back. Sixty-two of 'em. They go by names like Timothy, Hackberry, Juniper, Alternaria, Bermuda, Ragweed, Cocklebur, Candida, and Johnson. I feel so used.

Why did I allow myself to be pricked so many times in one afternoon? Well, to find out just what's making your eyes drip like Niagara and your nasal passages close up like Tiger's wife's knees, you gotta have pricks. (Even though that analogy was tacky, I think Mrs. Woods would agree with me cuz she got the biggest prick of all.) So . . . yeah, sharp, painful pricks to the delicate skin of your very sensitive back, laced with pure itch factor.

No, this is not me.

For each prick, the degree to which the pricked site swells is the degree to which you are allergic and therefore need antihistamines. If the pricked site doesn't show a clear result (by which I mean, if that spot doesn't welt up, glow like a siren, and make you as the prickEE want to claw the eyes out of your prickER), the fun is amped up even more. Nursilla, who is probably a nice person outside of her prick-happiness, injects a more concentrated form of the itch factor into your unsuspecting upper arm. In mine, I got 21, bringing my grand prick total to 83. More pricks than one woman can stand, I assure you. Results are immediate, and once again, I am allergic to everything. Most notably, pricks.

As an aside, this experience has left me twitching and flinching whenever someone invades my personal space from behind. I am not currently accepting any more pricks.

They say if you move to Austin without any allergies, you will acquire them faster than you can say "Ah-choo!" I've been here since '93, so I didn't need a bunch of pricks to tell me I had allergies, but at least now all my pricks have names and I can use protection whenever they come to town.

I Have a New Baby

By "I", I mean my daughter TG, but that's not important. I was there, and I helped. Of course, TG did all of the hard work, which included six hours of induced labor, masked by the "tell me when it's over" miracle that is an epidural. Please. People, I had four kids myself, au naturale, which included concentrated breathing techniques and ridiculously contrived panting while aiming projectile obscenities at the rat bastard who'd knocked me up in the first place.

And pushing . . . There's a gift from on high. God, or whoever invented us, had a twisted sense of humor. Let's give women a hole the size of a kumquat and see if they can push a pumpkin through it, shall we? While my sperm filter had allowed gratuitous stuff into the inbox without so much as a cautionary flag, nothing was getting through the outbox. I prayed for C-sections that never came.

So what gives? Our new baby, the Princess Shaboobka, came out in two—count 'em, 2—pushes. Says the doc after push #1: "Oh, I think this one's going to be easy." After push #2: "Oops."

So, bloggy world, here is our precious new Shaboobka at three days old. She's a keeper, isn't she?

Name This Tune

People, meet Destructo.

He somehow got it in his head that he's Pavarotti.

Or maybe a long-expired, reincarnated soprano.

Please help us support Destructo's dream of reaching out to the world

via electrical cords.

Can you name this tune?

Want to sing along? Here are the lyrics (far as I can tell):

Oh, cat pee,
Oh, bad cat pee.
Can't tell cats to go outside.
Cuz they cry,
Aaaaaaaaaall the time—
Oh my god—
Go outside.
You cats,
Outside.