My Head. It Has Not Been Reattached.

Well, hello! Here I am. Headless.

Things haven’t really simmered down on the home front nor the Hair Thursday front. I returned Friday from Oklahoma, where Wito was cared for (read: spoiled rotten) while I was prancing around New York with TV makeup on.

I ask of you, television guest or high class hooker?

It’s a tough call, my friends. I’m sure the makeup was spot-on for the cameras, but the six business men who shared an elevator ride with me in my trench coat afterwards probably assumed the latter. You should have seen me walking into my hotel, just waiting for the manager to pull me aside, all Pretty Woman-style. (Excuse me, madam. Where do YOU think you’re going?)

Although, I’m happy to say I would have kept those false lashes on for the rest of my life if I had the chance. (Dear unbelievably awesome hair and makeup team, any chance I could get you to move to California? I make really good margaritas! Love, Whoorl.) As for the television appearance, I will let you know as soon as I get an air date so we can all laugh together at my rambling in front of a live studio audience.

Gulp.

Speaking of the television show, did I mention that the week before my trip to New York, field producers were sent to my house to film an at-home interview, as well as some additional footage of my day-to-day activities? One of those day-to-day activities was me bloggity blogging on my computer, and only in the middle of filming my hands typity-typing did I realize that my nails were possibly atrocious.

Guitar lessons + nails = Not Pretty. ZOMFG.

My living room was completely inundated with bright lights, microphones, people, cords, did I mention people? Yes, people staring at me while I talked about lord knows what. It was truly an surreal experience.

Fast forward to the present. Wito has had a fever of 102-103.5 for the past 36 hours. He’s a sick little dude, and I am taking him to the pediatrician in a couple of hours. My house is in its normal post-weekend state (DEMOLISHED) and guess who’s coming over in 5 hours?

ABC NIGHTLINE.

It’s clearly a slow news week. Let’s recap - messy house, sick baby and Oh, OH! Nothing to wear. Send help.

(At least my nails are manicured this time around. Positive thinking RULES.)

A Weekend In Boston - Observations

1. Warm, sunny weather is my life force.

2. A trench coat is not a coat.

3. People stare. At the airport, walking down Newbury Street, running errands, everywhere. (Booger? Spinach in the teeth?) While having lunch at Zaftigs, the woman seated next to us literally turned her chair towards us and stared the entire meal, completely ignoring her lunch companion. I’m going to hold a seminar on my next visit entitled, Quick Sideways Glance: learn it, live it, love it.

4. I met the lovely Miguelina for coffee. What is the DEAL with all of the East Coast soul sistahs I’ve encountered? Why aren’t these types of women living in Orange County? (Wait. Don’t answer that.)

5. I couldn’t help but pretend I was Ali McGraw while visiting my brother-in-law’s school. Of course, my superstition got the best of me and stopped thinking that, because um, she DIES in that movie.

6. The stoplights in Boston must not employ sensors, but use timers lengthy enough to allow drivers to take a quick snooze (and possibly prepare an omelet) before getting the green light.

7. Strong headwinds will make your flight home quite lengthy. As in, Very. Long. (6 1/2 hours, to be exact.)

8. While watching BBC on said flight, I encountered a show where a dietitian actually trifles through people’s poop. In tupperware. A family of four stood around while this woman dissected their poop IN FRONT OF THEM. This has crossed some sort of television-viewing boundary, and yet, I am intrigued.

9. Fresh baby head smells really good. Yet, not good enough to persuade me to have another baby right now.

10. I will enjoy the beach today with renewed fervor. Flip flops! Sand in my toes! Warm sun on my face! YES YES YES!

Boston, you and I will meet again, my bipolar friend. Preferably in the spring.

The Miracle Ham Adventure

Friday, December 28th, 2007. The day that altered my life forever.

Picture this. A chilly day spent on my grandmother’s ranch in Oklahoma. After a fairly uneventful drive from Oklahoma City, we arrive with gifts in tow. Why, here we are, relaxing on (read: breaking) my grandma’s Lazy Boy.

Christmas at my grandmother’s home is a very relaxed affair. A down home meal, homemade pies, sweetened tea and some football. Usually, I end up sitting on the above chair for most of the 5-hour visit.

Except for this particular day- I heard my father and grandmother talking about some fantastic, life-altering ham and how he just HAD to have one to take back to the city. Some shuffling and jingling of keys ensued, and before I knew it, my dad was heading out the door.

Normally, this wouldn’t have phased me- I mean, it takes a lot to get my ass out of that fine leather chair, but for some reason, I found myself yelling, “Dad! I wanna go! Hold up!” He inquired incredulously, “You want to go pick up a HAM with me?”

“YesIwannagosomeonewatchmybabyokayfineseeya!”

Thus began our adventure to secure The Miracle Ham. Through two small towns and a very desolate 2-lane highway, the entire time listening to my father boast about a damn ham. “It isn’t injected with ANYTHING! Such smoky flavor! Hung to dry! Natural! The best flavor you’ve ever tasted!”

Luckily, I had his new iPhone to play with, thus counterbalancing the ham sermon. However, I was very careful to interject a well-placed “uh-huh…you don’t say…mmm, smoky” along the way.

I guess, in my mind, I assumed we were heading to a retail operation, such as a Honeybaked Ham store (although, YOU HAVE NOTHING ON THE MIRACLE HAM, FOOLS!) Little did I know that we were going to spend some quality time here:

The iPhone came in quite handy, you see.

I looked at my father and asked, “Is this, like, a meat production plant-type establishment?”

To which he replied, “I do reckon, little lady, now git over yonder!”

(My extremely suave and well-spoken father hasn’t lived in a small town since 1967, yet transforms into Smiley Burnette within a 20-mile radius of his old stomping grounds.)

We walked up to the door, me skittishly standing in my father’s new-found cowboy shadow, and what I saw next was marvelous.

A smoky office about the size of an elevator with what looked to be a 113-year-old woman sitting at a desk, smoking some Kool Menthols. Across the cluttered desk sat her grandson and great-grandkids, looking at us as if we were just transported from Mars.

Keep in mind, the Miracle Ham Establishment isn’t even located in a town. It is in the middle of nowhere, and I’m guessing the owner/operators of the MHE do not have daily run-ins with people donning winter white peacoats and iPhones. It was a little awkward on my part.

However, Smiley was having a ball.

“Well, HOWDY, Miss Jones! It’s me, Ronny! Arlene’s boy! How ya doing? I was hopin’ I could buy one of those deeelicious hams of yours. I’m fixin’ to head out to the big city, and I sure would like a taste!”

*insert overdramatic eye-rolling on my part*

However, my eye-rolling was cut short when I noticed the young great-grandson (10 years old, tops!) eyeing me like I was a juicy ham myself. People, he licked his lips and with great (and unnecessary) fervor.

Let’s see - Smiley Burnette in one corner, Kool Menthol Elder and 10-Year-Old Pervert in the other. Things couldn’t get much more uncomfortable when, all of the sudden, the front door busted open. As I peered through the thick smoke, I saw the silhouette of a Very Large Man yelling, “Give me my hooves! I need my hooves!”

Kool Menthol Elder - “Well, why on earth would you need some hooves?”

Very Large Man - “Because I’m building my GUN RACK! DO YA RECKON?”

10-Year-Old Pervert - *licking lips*

At this point, I was trying to silently delineate if pigs even had hooves, and if not, what kind of hooves did he mean? More importantly, WHY WAS I IN THIS SITUATION IN THE FIRST PLACE.

I quickly decided I was going to turn around and face the wall. Sure, it might look strange, but trust me, it was my best option.

I turned around, expecting a wall, when I realized it was a glass window. A glass window looking into the meat production “area”. Holy hell. May I just use a few words?

Pig. Parts. Blood. Rust. Raw. Machines.

I’ll let you take that for what it’s worth. I looked at my father and mouthed, “Halp.”

Thank God, at this point, a lovely lady (wearing the world’s bloodiest apron and a poorly-bandaged thumb) appeared with our Miracle Ham. Fantastic.

We said our goodbyes and made our way back to car, feeling much dirtier than before we left. (Well, at least on my part. Smiley was singing about billy goats or something.)

We returned to my grandmother’s house just in time for the big meal. And you know what? I ate two slices of The Miracle Ham.

Now, I’m not really a ham person, but that Miracle Ham? It was damn good.

NoBloShoeMoHalloweenPhoto

Yes, yes. Hair Thursday is coming, but probably not until this evening. Just in case you didn’t know, yesterday was Halloween, and instead of scouring the Internet for hair photos, I was chasing a runaway shark in the dark.

Don’t believe me?

This photo accurately portrays 97% of my evening. Although, Wito did grant us ONE photo displaying eye contact.

And you know what? 15-month-olds don’t care about candy. They care about trampling over other toddlers in an attempt to run into strangers houses because well, that’s where the light is, and they aren’t really down with being forced to walk around in the dark for NO GOOD REASON.

This year, I am not participating in NaBloPoMo. Mainly due to the fact that I ALREADY post every blessed day. Remember this place? Yeah.

However, I’m all over NoBloShoeMo on Flickr.

You should join. Off to solve some pressing hair dilemmas.

When Will I Ever Learn

This blog is not a place for celebrating my personal good fortune. Every time I start braggity bragging about something or other, trouble looms just outside of my peripheral vision.

I knew the minute I typed last Friday’s entry about what a GREAT flippin’ week I had, things would go awry in the land of www.whoorl.com.

“It’s just a quick Wordpress upgrade!” Famous last words.

With a click of a button, I demolished my entire website stylistically. Awesome.

I know a tiny percentage of you would like more details, and let me just say the upgrade wasn’t to blame. The upgrade rendered my theme a little psycho and when I upgraded my theme, I lost all of my CSS changes. ALL OF MY PAINSTAKINGLY DETAILED CSS CHANGES.

This leads me to explain to you just how picky and detailed I am regarding this website. I am constantly tweaking code. I obsess about pixels. ONE TEENY PIXEL can make the difference between happy and very angry. It’s a sickness. Right now, there are at least 15 changes I still need complete before entering Happy Pixel Land.

But that’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that I now want a completely different style and I’m determined to make it happen, even if it means drinking REAL caffeinated beverages. It will have to be perfect, which means more time.

No, wait. The WORST part is that 85% of you are sleeping right now. I have successfully bored you into slumber due to my highly-charged pixel rambles.

Why do I care so much? Because I’m crazy details girl. Little teeny-tiny details are going to take me from Beautiful Unique Snowflake Girl (Schnozz, you REALLY shouldn’t have called me that. My head, it grew.) to Crazy Muttering Woman In The Gutter.

That’s all for today. Please pardon the mess over here for the next couple of days/weeks.

Is The Universe Trying To Tell Me Something?

I can’t decide which is better - not posting at all or posting about our current house drama. Trust me, nothing would make me happier than to post photos of Wito’s first birthday party (soon, I promise), but I can’t. Almost a week later, I haven’t even downloaded the photos from the camera. This house situation has us pulling our hair out in clumps. And to think of all of the blogs I’ve read recently about wanting to sell a house, wanting to buy a house, etc. We just want to STAY in our house.

When we received word that our place had sold as an investment property, we were thrilled. It was the best case scenario, actually - no moving, no more showings, and a 1-year lease from our new landlord ensuring this wouldn’t happen again in the near future. Music to my ears. In fact, if you saw me forcefully swatting the air this past week, I was probably high-fiving the universe.

We’ve had a slighty bumpy road with this property in the past year. The first time our landlord tried selling our house was when Wito was only 4 weeks old. When the Realtor called me about setting up a “schedule” of house showings, I nearly died laughing. A SCHEDULE? For a breast-feeding mother of a 4-week infant? Yeah, right.

We take exceptional care of this property. Our landlord continually tells us we are the best tenants he has ever dealt with. We spend our own money making improvements to this house because it’s our home. We really thought karma was on our side.

Until the call from the Realtor last night. It seems the house has some structural problems, which isn’t any surprise to us, given its age. Plumbing issues, large leaks, broken pipes - no biggie. I don’t mind the inconvenience of living in the property while the repairs are completed. Hell, we’ve already dealt with plenty. Painters + Plumbers + Realtors = Complete Nap Annihilation.

Then the kicker. The house has termites and needs to be fumigated.

Like this kind of fumigated.

We are an environmentally-friendly family. We eat organic. We use chlorine-free diapers and wipes. Wito plays with non-toxic toys on a non-toxic playmat. We use a green dry cleaning service. We do NOT use any toxic household cleaners (basically, all of the big-name brands).

Yet next week, our belongings will be enveloped in a mushroom cloud of lethal bromide gas. (Termite man - “Don’t worry! No residue!”, Whoorl - “That’s not what the EPA says…”)

This is rather disturbing.

When I explained our stance to the Realtor about toxic chemicals in our house, I asked for 30 days to allow us time to move out before the fumigation commenced. She briskly told me that wasn’t possible, the fumigation was proceeding next week and if we were to move out before then, we would be breaking our lease agreement and forfeiting thousands of dollars of our deposit.

Now, this just doesn’t seem right. We are currently attempting to educate ourselves on our rights as renters and working to stop this process from happening so quickly. If anyone out there knows anything about renter’s rights, I would love to hear from you.

Another Profound Weekend

This might become a regular series - our weekend conversations are deteriorating by the minute.

I’ve recently started running again and my right ankle and hip have been giving me trouble. As I was lying on the floor, trying to remember the exercises my former physical therapist taught me, I mentioned how cool it would be if D was a physical therapist. Free therapy and adjustments for life!

He looked up from his magazine and without missing a beat, said, “It would be even cooler if you were a hooker for free.”

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