Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

I finally got a chance to watch last night’s Six Feet Under, and I apologize to Alan Ball: the magic’s still there, it waws just hiding during the first three episodes this season. Can’t wait to see why Brenda has to talk to Nate next week. I’m obsessed with this show. Is that so wrong?

My fingers are all bruised and bloody and sore. The good news is that I’ve quilted all 50 stars and am assembling the union. The bad news is that I have one long stripe and all the short stripes to quilt still. Luckily they aren’t as labor intensive and nitpicky as the stars were, so they should go a lot faster.

I wonder if the cruise in April is going to happen. I was up every 30 minutes checking the news. Is there anything scarier sounding than an air raid siren? When I was a kid they used to test the local siren monthly and it would never fail to scare the crap out of me. Imagine having one go off 10 times a day, knowing that it could be for real this time, racing to put on your gas mask…

I think I’m going to take a sleeping pill tonight.

I don’t know what to do anymore. The three year old won’t go to sleep and screams at the top of her lungs for an hour when it’s naptime or bedtime. The 18 month old wakes up 4 times in the night. I feel that I’m on the edge of some kind of breakdown. There’s something stretched constantly tighter inside of me and it’s straining and groaning towards a snap. I’m always on the verge of throwing up. My hands are shaking and I cry at the most inappropriate moments. I think I’m going crazy.

No! No! No! No! 16 Candles sequel in the works. No! No! No!

My eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyees!

In watching the first season’s episodes on DVD, I’m recalling why I really love Six Feet Under. And I’m realizing why this season really doesn’t interest me. I think the series has jumped the shark.

There’s been nothing so far that’s topped the poignance of the first season. The end of the pilot, where Nate’s standing on the sidewalk watching all the people pass him by. The prayer circle in Familia. I just watched that one again and cried and cried.

Alan Ball, where’s the magic? Get it back!

I’m trying very hard not to blog about the war, but defacing one of your country’s most famous landmarks to protest – isn’t that cutting off your nose to spite your face?

“Honey, could you come here please? I think I need help. I went to the porch to take out the trash and one of the bags was chewed on – when I poked at it, something rustled in there. Whatever it is, it’s still in the bag!” … said in best “Somebody’s been sleeping in my bed… she she’s still there!” voice.

Hub called me out to the porch to help him catch the critter, pointing at the offending garbage bag. Meanwhile I was hearing a little thumpa thumpa thumpa noise going back and forth behind the table. I saw a brown blur climbing the screen and hopped back in the house to put on some shoes, get a flashlight, and snag a camera. I also got out a saucepan to bludgeon to death what I thought was a mouse or rat.

With the flashlight trained on it we discovered something horribly distressing. It wasn’t a common rat or mouse. It was… a little brown cute thing. I mean really cute, with big funny ears and liquid large brown eyes that just screamed “I’m a tiny furry woodland creature, please don’t kill me”.

Shit.

Hub and I watched it scurry back and forth around the deck for a while, I snagged a few pictures, then hub shooed it out the door.

No wonder the mouse traps didn’t do anything. The damn critter was about 5-6 inches long. It probably picked up the traps and hucked them across the room.

WTF is a gerbil doing on the loose? What is it with this town? There’s a colony of wild parakeets that live near a theater down the road.

Someone call Richard Gere! We do not have a mouse. We have a… giant gerbil.

More later.