I have a legit reason for not posting for 4 days

It's all because of the slugs, and I'm traumatized.

I came home from hanging with with Photographer, late in the evening last Wednesday. It had rained. I was talking on the phone and I just sat down on the swing in the yard and gabbed. It had rained, as I said, and the grass was still damp and cool brushing against my legs as I sat swinging on the swing.

When I got off the phone I walked in the house.

And you know that moment when you're used to having wet legs and then dry air hits the wet and it feels all wrong and itchy? I reached to scratch my leg and right there, on my bare skin, on my shin, was a SLUG!! As in a snail with no shell sort of slug.

OMG! OMG! OMG!

I shrieked and jumped around and flung it to the ground and practically hyperventilated. I squashed it with my shoe, on the sidewalk, and just felt all heebee-jeebee about it.

I went into the house, went into the bathroom, and flipped on the light and I saw ANOTHER one on my leg, which I grabbed off with a tissue and then flushed. My heartbeat was about out of my chest and I just felt really ick-o.

And I thought I was going to lose it when I found a third one on my foot. I got it off and then jumped around like an idiot. It was gross and creepy and yucky and it was nasty. I was flinging my body around and just was a mess about it. I had to go upstairs, take off all my clothes and check in the mirror to see if there were more.

I think my heart is finally beating normally right now. Maybe.

And that's why I haven't been able to blog. I was traumatized by a slug family.

Mags

The not so novel navel

The word belly button is even gross. I don't like the actual body part, nor it's name. If I have to refer to it as all, I call it a navel. Though the word 'navel' is awkward to me as well. Navel makes me think of the military, like a navel base, but it also conjures up images of giant bell buttons walking around in uniforms. I know. I can barely bring myself to eat a navel orange.

I understand why we humans have belly buttons but I'm just not a fan. You know how some people are totally anti- feet? Repulsed by feet? Freaked out by feet? Well, I'm that way about navels. Innies and outies are equally repulsive to me.

Navels on skinny people are even icky. I know some folks think a guy with six pack abs has a sexy bellybutton but I am not one of those. I like the abs and the way a guy's hip bones are cut, but I don't like the belly button.

In a movie if a guy or girl licks another person's navel I get all creeped out! Or licks a shots or eats a cherry or whatever.... just.... ewwwww!

I also think innies are gross. Since I've gained weight I don't even look at my own belly button. I just make sure I wash and rinse it well. But here's a semi- gross story! (I'm obviously desperate for blog fodder if I'm telling this story) My navel hurt the other day. Actually was in pain so I itched the inside of my navel and my finger came away with pus and blood. Oh yeah. I had a pimple in my navel. GROSS!! And I was completely freaked out. I wanted to run and flee but like a shadow, the belly button would be coming with me. So I cleaned it well, with peroxide watching it bubble, and with alcohol (OMG PAIN!). Then a few days later it itched again. After an internal struggle of to itch or not to itch, I finally caved to the comparable to water torture and itched it! And... more repulsion- a scab the size of a small stone fell out. More alcohol and more bubbling with peroxide. More wanting to flee from my own body. And I've never gone back.

But my navel zit is not as disgusting as ITSam's belly button was (maybe it still is... I'm going to write about him in the first person since he's not dead, that I know of. I'll treat him like literature). His belly button is huge- you could practically stick your whole fist in it!!! And he's really hairy, so it's just beyond gross. He has globs of lint in there, every day. All the hair catches his shirt fuzz- it's like a lint trap in the dryer, and it gathers huge clumps. Revolting.He showers and washes but it just gets all... lint-y.

I have no idea why, but I was thinking about a day he and I were watching television and he was messing with his navel cave- I don't know why. He plucked the lint and then was turning his navel inside-out and he asked me to look at it. He said he could see a spot and wanted to know if his belly button was bruised or if there was a freckle in it. Seriously?!? But I looked. I said I would look but wouldn't touch it. And it was black. HIS BELLY BUTTON WAS BLACK ON THE INSIDE!!!!!!!!!!! I was slightly freaked out. So, I took his keys from the table and poked and scraped the black gunk from the creases and it CAME OFF!! OMG!!! the deep, dark creases of his navel had mold in it!!!! I threw up in the back of my mouth a little bit, and then went home.

(In all fairness, it wasn't mold. It was just wet lint from a dark colored shirt, post shower)

But his belly button smells. It smells so gross I can't even come up with a description- 4 week old sweat socks and molding cheese? Maybe it smells like the color brown. Ya know? Yuck.

He's a very, very clean guy, obsessively showering and never wearing dirty clothes. He has (had?) good hygiene. But the whole navel thing had me freaked out as if I wasn't revolted by navels before, but then to add his?

The human body is necessary but it's really pretty gross.

Maggie

Looks can be deceiving

I decided to drive thru McDonalds on my 27 minute lunch hour today. I grabbed my coat off the hook and my purse, went to the office to sign out (so if there's an emergency they can find me, I guess) and when I walked out there door, there he was.

A student was running up the stairs, carrying his lunch tray, when he tripped on his too big middle school boy feet and *splat* down he went, face planting on the stairs. I paused and waited to see if this was a potential disaster or if he would be like me: pop back up and look around to see if anyone saw him hit the ground. I was prepared to pretend I was digging in my cavernous purse (think carry on suit case)for my car keys so he could save some face.

He didn't move so I jogged toward him and as I got close he raised his head up and the tears started flowing. And his face was covered, and I mean covered in red ooze, dripping down his nose, his lips, and off his chin. His hands were covered and he was bawling his fool head off.

I turned around and stuck my head back in the office and said "Austin ________ fell on the stairs and there's blood everywhere."

I ran back to the kid and told him it was okay. I helped him stand up and he could walk but he was clutching his face and stomach. By this time another teacher arrived and was helping me help him. I gave him some tissues to stanch the flow of blood, which was everywhere. (I so don't do blood. Even when Mac was learning to ride a bike, his skinned knees were taken car of by the neighbor lady because the blood made me feel faint)

By the time Austin calmed down and we could maneuver him down the stairs and toward the nurse we found out... well, the school cafeteria was serving hotdogs and french fries for lunch. Austin wasn't covered in blood at all, but ketchup! He filled one of the little sections on his tray with ketchup to dunk his fries. And it was now all OVER him and the south staircase!

Well bloody hell- he about damn near gave me a heart attack!

And I passed on fries at lunch...

Maggie

PS- and Austin was fine. He suffered from a skinned knee and having the wind knocked out of him. And a bit of bruised ego... Me, on the other, well, I'll never be able to eat Heinz again!

What the CLUCK?

Alternate post title: I should stay the hell away from cooking chicken...

I read Finger Lickin' Fifteen, a Janet Evanovich book and I was hungry for chicken. Go figure. it's just the way I work, okay? It was either fix chicken or get arrested for sexually assaulting a guy who could be Ranger. The chicken was a safer bet, so I thought.

I had a whole chicken in the freezer and I thought I would bake it with a rub on it, and then do some country fried taters with onions and peppers and a pan of corn bread in the cast iron skillet and call it dinner. Mac thought it sounded good so he was on board with it.

Well, the first problem was that I decided this but didn't have enough time for the chickie to thaw. It was about half frozen when it went into the oven. My second problem is I've never cooked with a rub before (other than on the grill, anyway) so I didn't realize it would take longer to bake so the rub didn't burn while the bird was still raw. Of course, I discovered that when I read it online about 10 minutes after the chicken went in the oven. The final problem is that this bird must've been on frickin' steroids because this was a ginormous chicken. Bottom line: the chicken was not going to be done baking the same time as the rest of the food. So I quickly scrambled some eggs and fried up some sausage and we had that with the corn bread and taters.

Though we were all bummed about the chicken, I figured I would just pull it off the carcass and make either a casserole or a pot of homemade chicken and noodle (or dumpling) soup the next day. The chicken actually was taken out of the oven about an hour after we were done with dinner.

Live and learn...

But of course, it couldn't just end there. The chicken was beautiful and fine. It was golden and crispy. The juices bubbled. It smelled like heaven. The aroma was mouth watering even though we were all full from the impromptu breakfast-as-supper- I hastily tossed together at the last minute. We even pulled off little bits of the chicken and the skin- it was tender and golden. This was the perfectly baked chicken- with not one bag of guts or flame or exploding anything in sight.

Daddy-O and I decided we would leave it on the counter to cool to the touch before pulling it off the bone. We weren't going to leave it out long enough that anyone would get sick, but this was piping hot and before ripping all that scrumptious meat from the carcase it had to cool off.

In about 30 minutes I went to the kitchen to start on the bird and snatch a few yummy bites while "plucking" only to find to my utter horror that the chicken was no longer fit for human consumption because ...*dramatic pause*... it was covered in about 50 enormous black ants. Oh. My. G-R-O-double S-- GROSS!

Now Daddy-O and I are clean people. We are rather fastidious when it comes to a clean kitchen. Some folks might even akin such cleanliness to an OCD that should be medically treated since we clean everything with bleach water and 409 ALL THE TIME. There isn't a crumb or a smear of jam or a bit of food to be found. We didn't have ants 'cause we're nasty. We have ants because it's the MidfreakingWest in the middle of July in high humidity with temperatures hovering near 100 in a house that's over 100 years old and the ants just need to go somewhere. And all over my dang chicken is the somewhere they went, those little bastards.

I was mortified and mad. I was disgusted and pissed. I was grossed out and just irritated. I felt bad that Daddy-O, who bought groceries, had wasted money on food we couldn't eat AND that all the patience and hard work to make the perfect chicken was stamped out by the "Invasion of the Picnic Creatures."

And I swear if I had waited 10 more minutes to walk into that kitchen, the chicken would've marched passed us in the living room! And the final exceptionally gross thing is that the ants were stuck in either the grease at the bottom of the pan or in the rub goo on top of the bird. Oh, it was just awful! AWFUL AWFUL AWFUL!

So the bird went into the trash, the pan was immediately set to soak in hot soapy water, Taro the Ant killer was set out all over the place, and the bleach water and 409 were hauled out to scrub yet again.

I hate ants. This is my second run in with ants on my food in my lifetime but at least this time I didn't eat them. That's a post for another day.

I don't think I'll ever eat chicken again. Or at least not for a very looooong time.

cluck it,
Maggie

Heard in the classroom today

The set up: The freshman girl earned a can of Pepsi as a prize and was allowed to drink it during class, and had been do so, minding her own business. A boy sitting next to her reaches over and takes a big pull from her soda, uninvited.

And here's what I heard her say:

"Hey, I wouldn't do that if I were you. You don't know where my mouth has been."

Grossed out in high school,
Maggie