This is a picture of our new backyard, taken last weekend.Choose your favorite caption from the selection below, or create your own and leave it in the comments section: “OMG, the pigeons are mutating! Look at the size of those things!” “Thanksgiving’s come early this year… Cletus, get yer shotgun!” Actually… the birds in question are actually neither pigeons or turkeys — they are peafowl. As you may recall, we recently bought a house. Our new neighbors have about a dozen peacocks/peahens that they let roam around the neighborhood. Which seemed really cool, at first. Until we found out they could…

Dressing up as an Elvis impersonator for a Las Vegas wedding… inappropriate or funny??? We had some good friends get married at the MGM in Las Vegas last weekend.  After a few cocktails at the bar on the night before the wedding, my husband and his twin brother thought it might be hilarious to rent Elvis costumes to attend the wedding.  The next morning, however, we had our doubts.  What seemed like a good idea at midnight on a Friday does not always wash in the light of day.  Plus, it is – ahem – the bride’s day.  Two Elvis’s might…

A little story of two companies, one chair, and a clerical error… The company that I work for has a lot of temporary project sites, for which we establish mobile offices. We often furnish our mobile offices with rented furniture. This past month, we closed up one of our mobile offices, and called the furniture rental company to come pick up their desks and chairs.  Well, when they came to pick up the rented chairs, they had a surprise in store: an extra chair.  A few days later my boss received the following message: “During our scheduled pickup, we retreived 5…

The Cat (Maia) is the undisputed Queen Animal of the household.  She is the sweetest, most loving, devoted cat you will ever find.  Unless she is in one of her Moods.  Then she becomes a Queen B#@%.  This side of her also comes out when she has to co-exist with other animals. The vet once told me, “Your cat is highly susceptible to stress.  She should probably be in a single-animal household.”  Too bad for her, I thought, she’s gonna have to learn to deal.  All things considered, she’s learned to deal fairly well.  As long as she can bully the dog…

If anyone wants to know, they do not sell alarm clocks at Macy’s.  In case you are in there with a gift certificate to buy a shawl for an outfit and you don’t want to stop at another store to get a clock.  You will unfortunately be forced to spend your gift certificate money on other necessary items, like shoes or a new dress, or maybe some pretty wine glasses… A N Y W A Y.  We needed a new alarm clock because, as you may recall, the old one sounded like a turbo jet about to take off at any given…

Er, I mean, it’s Valentine’s Day.  (If you want to make sense of my obscure reference, click the link here on Roman History). Because I like having an excuse to dress up all pretty and have a candlelit dinner with my honey, Chris and I celebrated with a romantic Saturday night at one of our favorite local restaurants.  (Celebrating a day early because you know, the whole Monday-workday thing).  Our first choice was one of the valley’s most popular romantic dinner destinations, and this is what they told me when I called: ME: I know this is probably a silly question but,…

CHRIS:  We need a new vacuum.  This one sucks.  I mean, doesn’t suck, technically. ME: Can we get a purple one? CHRIS:  Can we get a purple one what? ME:  Vacuum. CHRIS:  Can we get a purple vacuum?  ME:  Yes, we were still talking about vacuums. CHRIS:  Why do you want a purple vacuum? ME:  Because purple is a pretty color. (Duh.) And this is when Chris rolls his eyes and says, “you are ridiculous” as if that answers my question on whether we can purchase a new vacuum in shade of purple, or not.

Let’s face it, Chris and I don’t always communicate on the same wavelength. Chris thinks in very straightforward, black-and-white lines. I think in circles and tangents and lots of color and — ooo look, a butterfly. But one thing that Chris is good at is interpretation. He knows that “it’s nothing” means “I’m upset about something that you did” and that “I maybe cleaned the catlitter box” means “I thought about cleaning the catlitter box but then a good show came on TV and I got distracted.” So, when Chris asked me last year what I wanted for my birthday,…

The front door on our rental house is faulty.  It doesn’t latch, so if you forget to dead-bolt it, and it happens to be a windy day… ahem.  The next thing you know the front door is wide open. And if you happen to be upstairs when said door is opened and you don’t realize that you’ve just posted an open invite to the neighborhood…the animals see this, and they get curious.  They decide maybe they would like to explore the wild. Chris gets a call from one of the neighbors.  The dog had wandered outside the wide-open front door…

Since it’s Sunday, and since nothing really interesting has happened since The Dog almost ran away, we’ll call today a “Sunday Advice” kind of day.  As in, Stuff You Shouldn’t Eat kind of day. Oh, the college years. So much to learn, and not all of it in school. I woke up one morning hungry for breakfast.  Since I didn’t feel like getting dressed and going to the store for food, I did a quick inventory of available foods in my kitchen.  (I had just graduated college and moved to L.A.  I had no job and my cost of living had doubled. …