I will rue the day.

Sunday night was the night my parental abilities showed themselves, and I am already afraid for my future, non-existant (presently) children.

As many of you know, I have a lovely English bulldog named Zola, who is essentially my child. As a matter of fact, when I went to my high school's alumni homecoming game thingie, I brought my dog, while everyone else had their brats in tow. And guess what? Everyone was fawning over little, snorting Zola Bean. Because she is awesome. And much more well-behaved than those little minihumans. I try to keep in mind that she is of a different species, but I falter occasionally. Take Halloween, for example. I REEEAAAALLLLLY wanted to dress her up as a ladybug, but everyone objected so vehemently that I decided against it. (Next year, when I no longer have my parents as roommates, is a totally different story. I may even take myself trick or treating with Zola. I am not ashamed!!!)

Anyway, on Sunday night, I let Zola and Maggie (my parents' Corgi) out for their final take-a-shit/piss run. Thankful for indoor plumbing, I waited by the door in my jammies, letting Maggie in after she took care of business, and tapped my foot impatiently for my little snuggle buddy to come to the door.

Now, Zola has this habit of getting really excited after she's done the deed. Peeing, not so much, but pooping has her tearing back into the house like something literally scared the shit out of her. This bit of information is important.

So I hear Zola running in the dark and I prepare by turning the door handle a bit. There's no need to make myself cold without reason. Then I see Zola leap into the air and WHAM! she runs into the second of three steps leading up to the deck. Without much in the arena of reactions, Zola continues her run to the house, albeit a little more slowly. She enters the house and looks up at me with this sort of stunned look on her face, yet wagging her tail the entire time. I look down on the floor, and there's a little spot of blood that wasn't there before.

I freaked the hell out.

I'm not the kind of person who can't handle body fluids. I once helped a guy who'd split his head open when he was having a seizure; I'm not bothered by vomit; I have no problem when I have to plunge the toilet; etc.

But for some reason, the fact that my little, adorable Zola had a cut on her chin made me flip. I had her quickly follow me into the kitchen, where I applied pressure to the wound (in retrospect, not that big, but the amount of blood it was oozing was a little disconcerting) and called frantically for my mother, who was upstairs at the time. And Zola was looking at me like I was nuts. To be fair, I was. After I few minutes, I calmed down, stopped the bleeding and applied Neosporin, and all was well.

If I get this worked up over my damned DOG getting hurt, how am I going to handle my own flesh and blood? And I'm not just talking about physical injuries. What happens when my child isn't invited to a birthday party? When my daughter breaks up with her first boyfriend? When my son doesn't make the football team??? AUGH!!!

I'm horrified for my progeny. HORRIFIED.

Say Hi to ... Sadness

The fashion world is mostly a mystery to me. I know what looks good on me and I'm fairly adventurous when it comes to what I wear, but the culture surrounding the industry, I'm about as close to understanding it as I am figuring out the cure to cancer. The standards that it puts on women notwithstanding, it is ridiculously callous to those it calls its own.

I followed the blog of successful runway model, Daul Kim, for the better part of this year and found myself confused and, at the same time, amused by her stream-of-consciousness mode of writing. It was always a joy to go read what nonsense she had typed that day. Sometimes it was a whimsical paragraph about how lost she felt, but the next day, she posted a nearly unbearably peppy music video or a set of oh-so-posh, behind the scenes runway photos with her and her fellow models smiling cheerily. So imagine my surprise when I noticed an article on Jezebel.com that said she had committed suicide last week. She was only 20 years old.

Sadly, her blog is now closed to people who have not been invited to it, mostly as a privacy measure by her family which I totally understand. I was able to access it last week when I found out about her unfortunate passing and the outpouring of people she had touched without her even knowing it was amazing. Other models, friends, people who had just by happenstance managed to come across it ... all of them expressed a certain amount of loss.

I never knew Ms. Kim and I never commented on her blog. Now I wish I had. I don't have some idea that I could have prevented her from doing such a thing but because then maybe she would have known what kind of happiness her words brought to me.

Rest in peace, Daul. I will miss you.

(PS The title of this blog entry, since none of you guys can read her blog, is a homage to Ms. Kim, who always titled her posts with "Say hi to (enter whatever she wanted, even if it had nothing to do with what she was posting)." I really wish you guys could have read some of her stuff. Sad face.)

Oh, Twilight ... The Joke that Keeps on Giving ....

I have Tuesday evening marked on my calendar as "Make Fun of Twilight." My sister and I are going to watch the first movie at her house (apparently so I won't be confused, but whatever) and then go to the theater to witness the trainwreck that is Stephanie Meyer's idealized (and harmful) version of romance.

I'll admit it: I've never read the books and I don't ever plan on doing so. A friend of mine emailed me little snippets of the first book and I nearly vomited. I'm not claiming to be the world's best writer, but good GOD, I could have written better prose when I was in middle school. If this is what kids are reading these days, I might just try and pawn off my old diary entries with a splash of the supernatural and see how many millions of teenage girls I can lead astray.

Either way, I've been able to convince my sister that this is how her Tuesday should go, as well. However, I plan on bringing some kind of alcohol to this. I believe it's the only way that I will be able to stomach the tripe that will cross the screen. I've already gotten some pretty awesome ideas for drinking games from online buddies, but here's the question: anybody have any other ideas? It might get boring after taking a swig every time Bella looks mopey.