Oh Come ON You Guise.

I am sore disappointed in the turnout.

Go here immediately and answer my questions!

While you do so, I will tell the rest of you a story.

---

Once, when I was about six, my brother was taking Tae Kwon Do classes. I always tagged along. We got to know a few of the other families that sat on the benches watching. One of them was the family of Lance Max Fishback. (Would YOU ever forget that name?)

Anyway, one day Lance Max Fishback's mother offered me a carrot. A whole, unpeeled carrot (a whole, unpeeled, and possibly unwashed carrot, judging by the unmistakeable flavor of dirt). She handed it to me with her bare hands. I ate it.

AND I SURVIVED!!

But the horror lingers to this day.

---

OK. So I expect that by now you have GONE HERE and have made your self known.

Thank you,
The Management

---

Edit: I'm proud of you. You came through.

Monday Musings; or, Make Thyself Known Immediately, If Not Sooner.

So I was musing the other day: WHO ARE YOU PEOPLE?

You all know me. And if you don't, allow me to introduce myself.

Hello. My name is Jo, and I have OCD.

I gargle with Purell,

My hands are always sopping with hand sani,

I snort Comet,

And I mainline Clorox.

OK, now you know me. So who are you? I have around 130+ hits a day, which I suppose is fair to middling for this young blog, so I want to know who's hitting me. Wouldn't you want to know that?

So introduce yourself! Come say hi! You can post anonymously if you want, but tell me a few things about you! Tell me who you are, even if you think I already know who you are.

• What's your name? Or what shall I call you?
• How did you find my blog?
• Do I know you in real life?
• How long have you been reading it?
• What keeps your reading it/what do you like about it?
• Or perhaps you think it's a train wreck/what do you hate about it? :P
• Do you like Tenacious D?

• Can you rub your belly and pat your head?
• Can you touch your tongue to your nose? GROSS! Stop this at ONCE! BOOGINS!

• Do you have obsessions or compulsions yourself?
• DO you think I'm completely, completely nutbar or have you learned a few useful tricks while reading my blog? 
• Have I changed your outlook in any way?
• Y'know, just give me some info about who's reading my nonsense. I'd like to know more! I love my fans and readers so much! And I want to know who you anonymous fuckers are.

Anyway, hi!!

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday! or, You Have Died of Dysentery.

Lake swimming. 

We've all done it as kids. I used to love nothing more than to ease, eeeease myself into the frigid waters of Lake Retreat when we went there for family camp. I used to swim, cannonball, and dive gleefully into those waters, yea though the surface was positively replete with duck shit. And in the outer areas, there were lily pads so dense that it's a wonder I never drowned. (I did get badly caught in them one time, and my wee short life flashed before mine eyes.)

I don't remember always showering after a visit to the lake. Sometimes I did, but surely, sometimes I did not. I do remember showering after an ill-fated, attempted canoe ride, in which I asked a morose, lonely, v. large girl to come boating with me, and I got in first, then she tried to, but she tipped us over. I in my favorite sweater and jeans and shoes was not pleased. Plus, I was 13, and it was very important to look good, so back to the cabin I went and showered that shit off me and washed my hair a dozen times.

But I digress.

Even though we all technically survived lake-swimming, is it safe?

Not always.

First of all, there are beasts. You may encounter snakes (including venomous ones), snapping turtles, alligators, leeches, Asian carp, etc. Or pissed-off geese.

Second, you may contract nasty bugs, such as pathogenic bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Picking up a case of Giardiasis is a not-uncommon threat. You contract it by swallowing even small amounts of tainted lakewater. Also frequently present are Shigella, Campylobacter jejuni, Leptospirosis, Helicobacter pylori, Legionella, Mycobacterium avium complex, Salmonella, and Typhoid fever (yes, Typhoid fever--not just what you die of in Oregon Trail).

Amoebas are another concern: 

Lakes and rivers are a popular place for those hoping for relief from the summertime heat. However, water-borne bacteria called amoeba could ruin your plans. It's a tiny parasite that breeds in water. It enters through the nose and attacks the brain. Symptoms are flu-like and can come on rapidly, and, if it enters your body, attacks the brain.

Lakes also often contain fecal coliform and Chromobacterium Violaceum, which has made people severely sick:

HOPE MILLS (WTVD) -- Doctors at UNC Hospitals are fighting to stop an infection caused by a common bacteria found in lakes before it spreads through the body of a 14-year-old Cumberland County boy. 

Matthew McKinney was taken to UNC Children's Hospital to be treated for the bacterial infection that he picked up while swimming in Hope Mills Lake on June 14. 

"It's not every day a doctor says, 'your son's dying, we're going to try to save his life,'" Matthew's father, Brian McKinney, said in an interview with Eyewitness News Wednesday. 

McKinney said doctors had to remove part of his son's nose, half of the palette in his mouth and five teeth.

"I just can't imagine. It's like something in the movies. It's a nightmare," he said. "I just can't imagine not having a roof to your mouth and bless his heart, he doesn't know this is happening." 

The teen is still in critical condition, but his father said he is doing a little bit better. Tests have showed the bacteria may be making its way out of his bloodstream. However, he's not yet out in the clear. 

The bacteria called Chromobacterium Violaceum that Matthew contracted is common in the sand and mud at the bottom of lakes, ponds and rivers across the state.  

"It's everywhere. It's natural. It's in the environment," McKinney said.  

McKinney said his son and his friends were diving under water, rooting up rocks lodged in the lake floor where the bacteria lives. 

"The biggest thing the doctor said was don't go digging in the mud," McKinney said.
Health officials have not closed Hope Mills Lake - nor issued a health warning - but they are advising swimmers not to drink the water. They also say it's a good idea to use soap and shower off after swimming, immediately clean and treat any cut or wound, and seek a doctor's care if a cut or scratch gets infected.

YIKE.

And for the love of God, please avoid these three areas:

Lake Karachay, Russia

According to a report by the Worldwatch Institute on nuclear waste, Karachay is the most polluted spot on Earth. It was used by the Soviet Union as a nuclear dumping site, and now the radiation level here is so high that it's sufficient to give a lethal dose after just an hour of exposure. 

Onondaga Lake, NY

Onondaga Lake is arguably the most polluted lake in the United States. No other lake in the United States receives as much of its inflow as wastewater. It is also severely polluted with various forms of nitrogen. Concentrations of total ammonia and nitrate in the upper productive layers (near the lake's surface) remain well above levels considered limiting to plant growth (phosphorus is the limiting nutrient). Concentrations of total ammonia and nitrite exceed standards, often by a wide margin, intended to protect aquatic life against the toxic effects of these forms of nitrogen.

The Berkeley Pit, MT

New fungal and bacterial species call this deadly lake home. The pit is one mile long by half a mile wide, and over 1780 feet deep, 1000 of which are filled with acidic water with high concentrations of heavy metals and toxic chemicals, including copper, iron, arsenic, cadmium, zinc, and sulfuric acid. The iron-rich water near the surface is reddish, yielding to a vibrant lime-green hue not far below the surface, where copper concentrations are higher. If you were to drink large amounts of this lovely concoction it would kill you by corroding through your digestive system.

And please, please, if you must swim in a bum-bum-germ-infested lake? Godsakes man, please shower afterward. 

Things What Are in My Purse.

Since women care about these things...

These items are in my purse Right As Of Now.

We have:

• Three packs of gum, for ever-fresh breath
• A business card for The Nail Palace, which is Our Place (or was before I decided to push my plate away and say NO MORE ACRYLICS FOR ME, MOM)
• A receipt for a mani/pedi at The Nail Palace
• My well-loved, well-used, gross leather wallet
• Several lipsticks and lip glosses

• Two pens
• My checkbook
• A piece of scratch paper with notes on it of what I wanted to tell my doctor the next time I saw her to discuss my OCD
• A Benjamin Washington

• A blemish cover-stick
• A teency tinecy tin of Altoids
• A cell phone
• A teency tincey flashlight
• The absolute most important item: PURELL. I would die without this. I use it on the regular.

• A ticket stub for Bridesmaids, one of the funniest fucking movies I've ever seen.
• **I was not paid for this endorsement**

• No those aren't condoms, they are sunscreen wipes, the best invention evaaaar.
• **I was not paid for this endorsement**
• A Sebastian lipstick called "Honesty," my absolute favorite shade, that has somehow lasted me for ten years, even I use it all the time. Good thing it lasts so long because they don't make it anymore!

• **I was not paid for this endorsement**
• **Someone should pay me for these endorsements**
• Germicidal wipes that I stole, yes STOLE, from a doctor's office

Usually you can find within my purse a few more antibacterial items, and a lot more crap, but I just did a Purse Purge. So there you have it. My purse contents. But now that I look at it in detail, I still need to add a whole mess of these:

Will do.

What's in your purse? Tell mama, child. I want pictures.

Fun Friendly Phobic Fact Friday!

/end trans

It's the Great Wuff, Charlie Brown!

So we are back from our adventure at the Great Wolf Lodge!

The trip was part success and part OCD nightmare. Allow me to break it down for you, in the LONGEST BLOG EVER.

First, we left the baby in my mom's care. Now, there's no one more capable than she (except for yours truly of course). My mom is a great babysitter & grandma. But we've never left the baby overnight before, so I was sad. It was nice, though, to have a couple days out with just our big girl, too.

Then, we had to make the drive in a ton of snow. Two hours south. If you haven't heard already, Seattle is having a major snowstorm. Well, more accurately, the convergence zones are, and I'll give you three guesses as to whether we live in one. OK WE DO. So just getting out of the neighborhood is terrifying. (Oh, and coming home today, with way more snow than before, was no picnic either.)

Once we arrived, my husband checked in while we waited in the car to unload our stuff. This was the first cute pic of the lodge that I took, the front doors!

It was funny, as I sat there waiting for my husband to finish registering at the desk, I watch 1,000 people go in and out of the doors. And I noticed that not one, not a single person seemed to care about the germs on the door handle. In fact, they handled the door more than necessary with full palm contact, touching it in several places, etc. I was like, "Am I really the only one? Am I the only person who thinks about the atrocities that lie on door handles and doors themselves?"

Anyhowz, inside, there was the adorable lobby:

One of my favorite things that I passed was this picture, in a kids' cave:

Dude. It's a THREE WOLF MOON painting. Could there be anything more awesome?? I ask you this.

Then we went to our room, the Wolf Den Suite (hereafter known as the Wuff Den, because when Maya saw her Wolf Den sleeping cave, she said, "This is where the baby wuffs sleep!"). The room was frickin adorable. I mean, I was squealing like a veritable piggy at the cute. Check out the Wuff Den!!

The rooms dens at Great Wuff Lodge have suuuper high ceilings. I don't know why or how, since this fucker has EIGHT FLOORS and it doesn't seem nearly tall enough.

Then I was done squealing at the cute, and it was time for bidness. It was bidness time.

I took my trusty Clorox wipes neatly in hand, and proceeded to clean EVERYTHING. Yes, everything.

I cleaned:

• The living room countertops
• The tables
• The light switches
• The inside doorknob
• The TV remotes
• Basically the whole Wuff Den children's sleep area itself
• The bunkbeds
• The phone
• The alarm clock
• The pen
• The activity guide
• The dresser handles and front boards even though we weren't going to use the dresser
• The headboard posts on the king bed (because people touch those fuckers with Sex Hands)
• The shower knob
• The bathroom sink handles
• The bathroom sink counter
• The toilet flusher
• The toilet lid
• The toilet SEAT

ET CETERA. I did everything short of splashing pure bleach around.

Once things were wiped down, I called reception and asked for two more sheets. Previously, I had swiped two sheet bundles off a maid's cart--

--but after arriving back at our room, I realized I was holding two bundles of approximately 100 pillowcases each. Oops. But actually, they came in handy. More on that in a second.

So I took the new sheets and put them on top of the duvet and tucked the top under, while the sheet below it was tucked over it. So the entire bedspread was contained. I did the same on the kid bunkbeds. Then I put a fresh pillowcase over every single pillow in the joint, the opposite way of the first pillowcase, so that we wouldn't touch the pillows by mistake. I hate it when that happens.

Then, I took those 9023842184 pillowcases and covered the entire couch and armrests with them. In case you're wondering, OH YES I DID.

I now present, Great Wuff Lodge Before & After:

Bed before:

Bed after:

Bunks before:

Bunks after:

And my pride & joy, the couch. The couch before:

The couch after:

lollllll you know you <3 me

Even though things were cleanish, I did my fair share of freaking out and saying, "Don't touch! Don't touch! Get off the carpet! Don't touch!" And of course, just walking on the carpets skivved my shits. Ahh well. Baby steps.

After we cleaned all the things, we went to the enormous waterpark. It was fabulous!

We stayed for hours. We did almost everything, over and over again. I loved the big waterslides. Although, I couldn't help but wonder, as I climbed all the stairs up to ride the waterslides, if any of the water dripping on my head from the landings above contained urine.

At one point, we stopped at the snack bar for some junkfood goodness. I got cheese nachos, and my husband got a mini-pizza. Maya got a PB&J. My OCD flared up real hard, because I saw the womyn who was handling our food--er, really handle our food. She wasn't wearing gloves, and she touched my chips (in fact, she picked one up off the counter and put it BACK on my nachos). Then she manhandled the pizza, as she cut it and put it in a box. I was sore disgusted.

Anyway, then we went back to our room to shower off the filth of the swimming pools, and decided to try to take a nap. No go. Nobody could sleep, even though Maya was exhausted. So then, we went to "gr8_space," their arcade (lol r u 4srs). That was two tons of fun, as we taught Maya to say, except for...DUN DUN DUN...the germs. OH the germs. I was saying "Maya don't touch your face!" every two seconds. But we did have fun playing a ton of games, and we got 278 tickets, which equaled exactly one set of sparkly lipglosses for kids and one tiny pack of Sweet Tarts. lol.

At some point, we wandered a cute gift shop, where we bequeathed unto Maya a sorcerer's hat, a silver crown, and a huge heavy golden coin. (She really wanted that coin.)

Later that night, we headed over to Camp Critter, a restaurant where you could eat under overhead tents. It was v. cute.

I had a rather tasty Mediterranean wrap, and even though I damn-near broke my tooth on a kalamata olive pit, I enjoyed it. Oh but my absolute favorite part (<--- sarcasm) was when Maya cheerfully piped up, "Mommy, you're so fat!" Thanks kid. Thanks a lot. Zut alors!


Oh, and as usual, we took our handy alcohol wipes to the restaurant and had at it. Wiped down the table and our hands (even after washing), touched the ketchup and salt with napkins, etc. You know me.

Also at dinner, Maya decided to sing "This Old Man." Here is how she sang it:

This old man, he played one,
He played knick-knack on my straw
With a knick-knack paddyback gav a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.


This old man, he played two,
He played knick-knack on my lamp
With a knick-knack paddyback gav a dog a bone,
This old man came rolling home.

And so forth. She kept substituting the real words for the things she saw around her, and my absolute favorite was "knick-knack paddyback gav a dog a bone."


Oh, and whenever you dine at Camp Critter, apparently they give you wolf wuff ears. Maya loved hers.

If you're wondering why she's in jammies, it's because right after dinner, they had a kids' show followed by storytime. All the kids wore jams.

The show was kind of hilarious, because at first everything was fine:

And then the dark-haired ladything got stuck in the door and it never fixed itself. It stayed like this the remainder of the show. The talking trees and moose and things all stopped moving, too, while the voices continued. Behold, the creepy creepy frozen lady:

It reminded me of the scary lady in Ju-On.

 Anyway, at the very end of the show, something magical happened. It started snowing! Soapsuds! :)

It was great. Maya had a cow. Here are some random merrymakers and then one of Maya:

After the show came storytime. Danielle came out and read a story about wuffs, and then all the kids got to have pictures taken with Wiley the Wuff. Soooo cute.

Then it was back to the room for a lovely glass (or three) of wine and bedtime. Oh, but first, Maya was drawing a picture, and I asked her to tell me about her drawing, and she said, "It's you, Mama! And you're standing on the water--" [here she points to the nose of the mama she drew, and finishes:] "--that's why you have a SNORTLER on!" My husband and I laughed our bum-bums off for like 15 minutes. Snortler!!

Anyway, come bedtime, at first I tried sleeping in the nice cozy king bed, but the featherbed and down comforter conspired against me, and my nostrils SLAMMED SHUT with allergy swelling. So I decided that the Wuff Den would be the girls' room, and I decided to sleep on the top bunk. (1) Because its fun to sleep on the top bunk, and (2) because it's fun sleeping in a girls' room, and (3) because shut up.

I actually went to sleep pretty quickly, which is remarkable due to the severity of my insomnia. Only hitch?        We forgot to put Maya in a Pull-Up before bed (yes, homegirl still wears Pull-Ups at night--child just will not night train), and at 4 am she woke up in a state because she couldn't find Coggy, her little stuffed dinosaur. I climbed down the bunk ladder to perform a Coggy Search & Rescue and thusly discovered the absent Pull-Up. Lo and befrigginhold, Maya was soaked through and through. Fuuuuu...

After turning on the light and finding Coggy (who was right beside her) and changing her pee-peed jammies and putting a Pull-Up on her and putting a towel down for her to sleep on and then going pee myself, I was wide awake. In fact I am typing this particular portion of my blog at like 5 am from the top bunk (on the godforsaken "experimental internet" on my Kindle, with a dumb little book light) because I still can't sleep. Fuuuuu...

How many more hours until we can go swimming??

---


The next morning, Maya was up at 7:30 am (I never went back to sleep at all), so we started to get ready and also pack up to check out. (You could stay at the lodge and do anything you wanted, including the waterpark, all day, even after check-out.) After loading up, we went to breakfast. I had the most un-credible omelette: green onions, black olives, spinach, tomato, cheese, and something else I'm forgetting. Then after that, it was back to the room for a quick wardrobe change, into our swimsuits, and we all headed out to the waterpark. We played for several hours, until we were kind of burned out, then showered in the locker rooms (which was HORRIBLE for me--using a shared shower, stepping on the shower floor, having to get changed in an open area and trying not to expose myself, trying not to step on the floor outside the shower, pulling clothes up a still-wet, sticky body, sweating like a sweaty horse...) and changed into clothes we'd brought separate from our other luggage. After, we all shared one mini-pizza, during which Maya was being so obnoxious that I said, "Let's be quiet. Let's see who can be quiet the longest." Maya paused five seconds, then said, "Not me." We loledirl.

After snack, we went to the Cub Club to make our own lotions. Actually, we wandered by, then realized the lotion-making segment didn't begin until 2:30 pm, and it was only 12:45 pm. We debated what we were going to do, because we basically had nothing else to do until then, and we didn't want to wait. Plus the snow was getting really bad. SNOWNOEZ!!!1 So I peeked in and asked the girl, "Do you think there's any way we could do the lotion-making now?" She was soooooo sweet. She said we definitely could, since the entire place was totally empty, then she set out to help us.

Maya and I each made one. First we sniffed a ton of oils, from patchouli (yiiick) to cucumber watermelon, and decided on our favorite smells. Maya chose a Christmas scent that smelled like oranges and spice, and she also picked "sugar cookie." They mixed pretty well! Mine was an odd combination, but turned out heavenly. I picked lilac, "tsunami axe" (which smelled fresh and a tiny bit like men's body wash), and "Egyptian musk," which was more soapy, not really at all musky. I blended them until they were just right, and now I have a delicious, light, fresh smelling lotion. Oh, and we got to color them. Mine is pale blue, and Maya's is green. (Her favorite color.) Maya named both of our lotions. She named hers "Green Butterfly." She named mine "Flower." :)

Oh, and the girl who was so cute and nice who helped us make these lotions, she kept talking about how OCD is just because she likes things in order and in place and gets mad when someone just dumps supplies in a big box or something. I was like, "Bish you cute n shit but you ain't know what OCD is!"

After that, we hit the road! This was the snow the day before:

This was the snow the next morning:

Rainbow? Or trick of the camera?

This is our snow at home. Tomorrow we are predicted to get, and I quote, between 10 inches and 3-4 FEET. What. That's not even a thing.

Look, our snowman lost his head and is leaning drunkenly.

You can't tell from that pic, but we have at least 6 inches. That's what he said.

Anyway, we managed to get through our ridic snowy neighborhood and safely into the driveway. Whew. Then we all took showers/baths, again, because that's how we roll, baby.

---

TIDBITS

As a sidenote, you'd think with all the walking and climbing stairs in the lobby and the waterpark--carrying a huge innertube, to boot--would actually make you lose a bit of weight or at least balance out the large intake of calories. But wouldn't you know it, this here bitch actually gained weight. FFS.

---

A few extra pictures for your pleasure:

Oh, and one of my favorite parts was encountering...AN ICE CREAM PEDICURE SPOT for kids. So that their feet can taste like ice cream.

So, basically, I was in a constant state of OCD terror, but still managed to have a genuinely good time. Not sure how that works, but it did. :)

THE END!

PS: Here's our snow this morning!

Dude our big tall flower tree broke! Or is just bent. We shall see. 

The Really End!