i was tempted to take a picture of it for about half a second and post it here just to freak you out

The mucous plug has left the building.
I repeat: The mucous plug has left the building.

Contractions have begun but are about as frequent as Nicole Ritchie's bowel movements.

Here's hoping though ... Maybe a leap year baby after all?

it's all fun and games until they wake my newborn

How To Kill Your Neighbor's Dog and Other Acts of Suburban-Terrorism

Lucky for them it's a comedy and not a how-to book.

because if you're friends of astley well then you're friends with me

the injustice of it all

my friend Court, whose due date is the day before mine, went into labor on Sunday night and is now a proud, first-time mama.
while i'm happy for her and delighted that mom and baby are doing well, i can't squelch the ever-building ball of impatient fury at the injustice of it building in my soul.
hell, it's my second baby, I'M the one who's supposed to go early, dammit!

but, as i have to remind myself daily, sometimes hourly, i gave up giving into the searing hot rage that boils just under the surface for Lent. so far, so marginally good, i have to report.

except for that dbag in a Tahoe who tried to parallel park on my car hood the other night. that mf'r deserved a crowbar to the windshield.

nothing to add but my support...

one of the few blogs i read on a daily basis has been expounding on the finer points of why the Bodies Revealed exhibit is more sideshow than science exhibit. i'll leave it to him and better informed others to argue the details with the masses, but i simply want to add my support with what i'd like to think is a pretty common-sense, even-handed approach.
Unlike the archbishop decree I'm supposed to listen to as a K.C. Catholic, my problem is not with the objectification of the bodies as scientific tools -- on the contrary, i think it's somewhat inappropriate for us with relics of saints (fingers, clothes, hair) stashed on our alters to get high and mighty about conceptualizing the body as only a vessel of the spirit -- but rather, my problem is with the potential human rights abuses implicated in the procurement of these bodies.
I would have no problem taking my nieces and nephews to these shows, with proper explanation and guidance, were all the legal releases and information on the donors in place.
The mere shadow of doubt is enough for me to take a pass this time around. And, from what I'm reading online of the popularity of these exhibits, the money-making train isn't stopping anytime soon and lines are forming for individuals who are gladly and willingly wanting to donate their bodies for such an exhibit. And that would include those of European ancestry.
So, I figure I can wait until they fine-tune this process a bit and create exhibits with properly-documented specimens. a cleaner conscience is worth the wait.

stay home for god's sake

with news of flupocolypse hitting the state, let's recap common courtesy during cold and flu season.

- lightly covering your mouth over a cough is not enough. plus, if you're a guy, it's kinda fey.
- if your hacking cough interrupts every other sentence, get thee home and to your bed. nobody's impressed with your dedication to your dead-end job.
- same for your phlegm barnacle laden larnyx. it's torturous to endure conversation with you as i can hear the snot bubbles gurgling in the back of your throat.
- this goes doubly for you who i can hear in the cubicle next to me, as i try to eat my lunch.
- this goes tripley for the hackster in the pod next to mine who is constantly wheeling his oxygen tank around. (I get headaches because this cold makes it hard for me to breathe, he says. I get headaches too, namely from the squeak squeak squeak of the ancient wheels of your rented oxygen tank rolling down the hall.)
- when being introduced to someone this time of year, a hand full of Purell is far more welcome than a handshake.

in other news, it feels like the fetus is kicking me in the sternum. either that, or i'm having a heart attack from trying to reconcile the irs tax code with our lackluster personal filing 'system' once again this year.

Touche

{ring, ring}

Travel Agent Dottie: "Hello, Eidson's Travel and Florist."

Me: "Hello, I'm a writer with GateHouse magazine, the premiere lifestyle magazine of Wyandotte County, and I'm looking to interview someone with your agency regarding the favorite getaways of Wyandotte County residents."

Travel Agent Dottie: {confused} "You're a writer with what?"

Me: "GateHouse, a lifestyle magazine for Wyandotte County."

Travel Agent Dottie: "Um ... have you been to Wyandotte County before? It's not really a 'lifestyle' kind of place ..."

Touche, Dottie my dear, and that's precisely why I love it so.

yes, kc, we can!

kc's own climate change mascot.

Found at 1 Pershing Sq.

note the cigarette for scale.

fir my honee on vday

I keep going back and forth.

That pundit on Charlie Rose I saw the otherday made a really great point, but it's not quantitative by any means --that a campaign between McCain and Obama is going to create a kind of discourse that's long been missing from presidential campaigns in this country. An elevated level of political substance. Instead of a dirty, mud-covered Clinton McCain bloodbath. And I think he's mostly right. I think the kind of discourse we're going to see against the Clinton's --and leveled by them -- is going to be foul-smelling stuff that will bring us back to the polarization of the previous 2 elections. I don'twant to see that. Yet I'm not so swayed by the Obama is more electable thing. Because I'm not really sure that's true against McCain. I think, even though for Hillary it hasn't worked, an 'experience and substance' argument from McCain will actually be effective against Obama. Plus, Obama doesn't have the Commander in Chief weight that Hillary does. And that really means something for all those people still scared to pu over more attacks.
Waffling over here ...

Learn to jog defensively

actually, i think i may be being rather generous in calling this dude a jogger. He was clearly not in marathon shape and was hardly at a full sprint when I pulled my car across the crosswalk in his way.
He yelled -- WHOA WHOA WHOA WHOA!!! and held his goose-skinned arms out and kind of shimmied his bare, white, hairy belly in response to my driving faux pas. In fact, I believe this motion is what actually caught my attention, not the Whoa's. (See Figure A.)

I'm not pleading total innocence here. I was driving a bit hapharzardly; sure I should've glanced to my right. But come on, I was pulling out on to Main in the Crown Center area by Union Station. How many joggers do we get in that area in FEBRUARY? AND I very pulled out slowly and I know this because I DID see the pedestrian to my left who I was careful to attempt to give right of way to, but he rebuffed me by coming to a full stop.
Seriously, in a real city, this near miss would've been easily avoided by a quick jog to the left and behind my bumper.
So in other words this guy was just a non-city dwelling johnny-come-lately, unseasonably-warm-in-February-jogging amateur whose life expectancy I worry about should he not learn to dodge a too-eager car in a crosswalk. And, hey, stop jogging in the gutter and use the sidewalk like normal people.

disappointment, jealousy and finally ... ennui

i had plans to get my caucus up tonight folks. I'd been planning it for months. I subscribed to the email list for ks dems even, to stay up on any late-breaking developments.

yet here i sit, sipping peppermint tea and blowing my raw, red nose into my husband's hanky (this fact alone should illustrate the direness of the situation).

i'm fucked up by the common cold, yo. relegated to witnessing my caucus being handled by the likes of that whore wolf blitzer. saying that Missouri is really who matters in the region. you fickle, fickle bitch, wolf.

at least the events of the day presented me with one interaction of note: I was privy to discuss the fracturing of the conservative evangelical movement with an actual, live, progressive evangelical. I always imagined them to be about as common as unicorns, but here was one right in front of me expounding on McCain's virtues and the promise of Obama. And you know, he was actually really even-handed and well-informed about the broader political landscape -- not just the conservative end of the spectrum. All this, yet, he described himself as an evangelical. My head almost exploded. I wish I would've gotten a photo so you'd believe that I actually saw one. It was amazing, and, so heartening. The young evangelicals are thinking critically for themselves. It's going to be interesting to watch this group evolve.

found in some notes from college

It's not deeply profound or anything but this phrase jumped off the page. Amid a bunch of emotional diarrhea preserved on the page for psychologically masturbatory reasons, I saw

Survival = Anger x Imagination.


Hmm. Apparently I learned something in college after all. I'm not sure what I was trying to survive other than some melodramatic relationships and the occasional alcoholic blackout. But hey, it still rings pretty true, you know?