The Bloggess

I’m not sure if she still does it, but Oprah used to do a thing where she picked all of her favorite things for the year and then did a show about them.  I was thinking of doing the same thing, except instead of things that millionaires love, it would just be things that make me happy that I spent an extra few dollars on.  Mostly because every time I use these things I think “Holy shit, I’m so glad I have this and I wish I could give this stuff to everyone in the world.”  I can’t though, but what I can do is tell you the stuff that I’ve been happiest about finding and you can do the same thing in the comments and then we can all find awesome cheap or free stuff that we love.  Also, this post isn’t funny.  Sorry if you were coming here for that.  But to make it up to you I’m giving away a gift certificate with enough on it to buy pretty much everything I’m going to talk about.  (As long as you live in America.  If you live somewhere that doesn’t have Amazon I’ll just paypal you the amount.)  Also, I’ve been given absolutely no compensation to write this and the people and products I’m writing about have no idea I’m doing this and some might actually be sad for having been linked back to such an irreverent band of misfits, but they can just suck it because I love them anyway.  The bastards.

So, things I love that are worth spending money on or that are totally free anyway:

Allie Brosh.  Her blog is fantastic and free and she has a book coming out in a few months which is wonderific.  She sent me a copy and I literally shot juice out of the hole in my stomach from laughing so hard.  I also told her she could use that as a blurb.  Because I’m a giver. 

J. R. Watkins Coconut Sugar and Shea Body Scrub.  I have super dry skin and this exfoliates with sugar and then the shea butter stays on your skin.  It’s the only thing that doesn’t disappear immediately on me.  (You can usually get it way cheaper at Target.)

A bath sheet.  It’s like a towel, but bigger, and when I dry off I feel like I’m at a fancy hotel drying off using the duvet (until laundry day when my two bath sheets are in the wash and I have to use a beach towel.)  I’ll know that I’ve finally “made it” when I can afford a whole set.

Neuro Sleep.  I have no idea what’s really in it but it makes me sleep better than rum, and that’s saying a lot.  I have one every few nights and my insomnia has gotten slightly less horrific.

TARDIS Beach Towel.  I know.  Two towels in one list?  Who needs that many towels?  Me and Douglas Adams.  That’s who.  (You can sometimes get this cheaper on ThinkGeek.)  The awesome things about this is that when you’re at the pool you can tell all the cool, slightly nerdy people who will be fun to sit by because they all go “OHMYGOD, I WANT THAT.”  The other people look at you like you’re a total dork.  It’s okay to pee in the pool if you’re standing near those people.

Little Snowie Shaved Ice Machine.  It’s pricey at a little over $200 but we’ve used ours almost every day for years and years.  We don’t buy the syrup because it’s expensive but we eat them plain, or with fruit juice, or with booze drizzled over the top.  My favorite is Amaretto and Chamboard when we’re flush, or Strawberry Hill when money is tight.  Also, when it’s really hot you can make a laundry basket full of shaved ice, put on your bathing suit, and have snowball fights in the yard.  Our neighbors hate us.

Neil Gaiman.  I’m a voracious reader and could probably write a million paragraphs on all the books you should read, but I’m most grateful for the day (a million years ago) I went into the comic shop and was disappointed to find the latest issue of Strangers in Paradise hadn’t arrived yet.  The guy behind the counter looked at me as if to size up my worthiness and after a few seconds came out to introduce me to Neil Gaiman’s Sandman.  He had me start on book 4 (Season of Mists) and I devoured it and reread it 20 times until I could save up enough to start from the beginning and collect them all.  Sandman is my Catcher in the Rye and it saved me from a dark place by showing me I wasn’t alone.  I owe that guy behind the comic counter more than he’ll ever know.

The Suicide Hotline.  I realize this is a weird one, but I struggle with mental illness and one day I had urges that I was really afraid of.  My shrink wasn’t answering and I was afraid I was really going to hurt myself.  The girl on the other end of the line listened and gave me actual pointers on how to avoid the self-harms issues I was struggling with. I still use those coping mechanisms she gave me.  It saved me from myself, and it was free.

Jenny Lewis in all her incarnations. People are rediscovering her now and that’s awesome.  My ideal party would be me, her, Amanda Palmer, Regina Spektor and Miranda Lambert all in my bathroom with a karaoke machine and a bartender and some illegal fireworks.   Rabbit Fur Coat is one of those CD’s I buy over and over because I always lend it out to people when they’re struggling.  This song as well is rather healing for me.

Stephen Parolini ~ His blog is Counting on Rain and he’s one of my favorite writers ever.  He writes amazing, dark, beautiful short stories for free.  He doesn’t post often, but when he does it’s always something incredible.

Levar Burton explaining how not to get shot by the police.  Yeah.  This one isn’t a happy one, but I used this dozens of times this week to help people explain that just because you don’t see racism doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.  There were lots of other great commentaries out there this month, but there’s something about the guy who raised us on Reading Rainbow talking about his fear for his life that makes most people at least pause and think a bit about the world as it is, and as we want it to be.  And that’s a good thing.

Venture Bros.  So good.  Impossible not to like.  Gateway drug to Archer.

 Independent book stores ~ It’s ironic that I’m linking to Amazon here for everything, because Indie book stores are my kryptonite.  Not only do they have awesome, weird stuff that you won’t find in mainstream stores, but they also are amazing resources for readers who need suggestions.  You can sometimes make friends with your local book-monger and ask them to compile a reading list for you based on your likes.  Their books are sometimes a bit pricier, but it’s worth the extra few dollars and if it weren’t for Indie Book Sellers my book wouldn’t have nearly as loud of a voice.

What Should I Read Next.  You know when you read an amazing book and you wish you could find another similar to it but you can’t?  Well, now you can.  Type in the book you like and “What Should I Read Next” will give you a list of books similar to that one.

Doctor Who.  You either hate it, or it changes your whole life and you spend nights waiting for David Tennant to tell you that you’re the key to saving all the kittens in the universe.  It’s ridiculous and silly and requires an enormous willing-suspension-of-disbelief, but some of the most beautiful moments on TV come from Doctor Who.  You can watch it for free on Netflix.  Start with the 2005 reboot.  Watch through episode 10.  If you don’t like it you can at least say that you tried and now you can spend your free time looking for the soul that you seem to have lost.

 Microwave slippers.  I have arthritis so my feet hurt a lot.  I pop these in the microwave and slip them on in bed to sleep in when I’m having a super rough day.  I feel ancient just typing this but I can’t live without them during the winter.

Okay, your turn.  What have you discovered that you now can’t live without?  Just leave it in the comment section and at the end of the week I’ll pick one random person to get a $350 amazon gift card so you can buy everything on this list.  Except Neil Gaiman.  You can’t buy a person.  That’s illegal, you guys.

UPDATED:  Alright, it’s the end of the week and I usually just send an email to the person who wins or announce it on twitter, but when I read the comment selected by my random number generator I really felt I needed to share it.

From Dangerous Lilly:  I don’t think I have a shot at winning it, but if I did I wouldn’t keep the gift card. I’d give it to my best friend. Because she’s amazing, and life handed her a big bag of suck lately, so she’s always on the brink of poor but can’t do a thing about it til after her transplant and her kids drive her nuts half the time. So yeah. I’d like to give her something awesome but she won’t let me if it’s from my own pocket. I have things that make me happy, that I can’t live without, and most of them cost money so…. I’d rather share the love.

I seriously adore you people.  DangerousLilly, check your email.

This post doesn’t have anything to do with the title.  It’s not even a real post.  It’s just an update to tell you that my friend Maile drove me to have my surgery tubes removed today, and then my doctor forced her to pin me to the table so that I wouldn’t punch him when he yanked the tubes out of my stomach.  And Maile looked at both of us for a second to see if he was joking and he super wasn’t, so she shrugged and totally pinned me to the table.  This is the sign of a good friend.  Or a terrible one.  Maybe both.

Then the doctor unstitched me and yanked, and it felt like if you’d accidentally gotten a jump-rope wrapped around your liver.  Or like if I was a one of those dolls that talks when you pull the string on her back.  And the thing that I said was: “Ughaaah.”  Which equates to “So now I know what a yo-yo feels like and also why people want to punch you.”

Also, there was butthole art all over the wall from Debra Messing, and there was also an art display of healthy versus unhealthy assholes.  (The literal ones.  Not the figurative ones.)  But it sort of made sense because my doctor just borrows the office from the rectal surgeon who works there.  I didn’t even notice the assholes until we were leaving and Maile thought that was weird, but I think it was weirder that she was so eager to pin me to the table as someone practiced battlefield style, bite-down-on-this-bullet sort of medicine on me.

Then my doctor started talking about catacombs and corpses and he closed by telling us that he would probably die soon but he felt blessed about it because we were all doomed and that the end times were possibly near.  He said it very cheerfully though.  The man has a hell of a bedside manner.  As we were driving home Maile said, “This shit could only happen to you.  It’s like you manifested the exact kind of crazy, fantastic doctor to fit your life.  I would never believe it if I weren’t there.”  And, yes, that’s sort of how my whole life goes.

PS.  I took a picture of the butt-hole art and I wanted to link to the artist, but when you google “Debra Messing Butthole” you really don’t get what you think you’re going to get.  Or you get exactly what you think you’re going to get if you’re interested in pictures of Debra Messing’s butthole.  Which I wasn’t, but I understand why google would be confused.  This time it’s on me, Google.  I asked for too much.

(I wrote this before my surgery but I forgot to publish it before I went under, and then drugs happened.  Sorry.  I suck at timelines.)

This isn’t a real post.  It’s just a small recap of what’s been going on behind-the-scenes lately.

We moved a few months ago, continuing our pattern of buying a house, fixing it and then putting it up for sale about 15 minutes before it actually feels like home.  When Victor decided we should move again I told him that this house will be the last one because I wasn’t moving again unless it was in a coffin.  Then he waited until I was out of town and bought an old (but very sweet) house that needed massive repairs, had lots of issues, and could probably kill us.  In short, he bought the “me” of houses.

When we moved we all three decided on the one thing we each wanted in “the perfect house.”

Victor wanted something safer in a gated community because I had a bit of a stalker problem last year (Please don’t stalk me.  I’m very boring in real life, I assure you.)  I wanted a smaller yard with big trees and a lush lawn.  Hailey wanted a pool.

The week we moved in to our new gated community a man rammed the front gate and had a full shoot-out with the local police department.  Luckily for him, the police have extremely bad aim and arrested him.  The gunman in question lives on our street.  We have succeeded in locking the crazies in with us. Also, we got a flier from the homeowners association that there’s a neighborhood mountain lion on the loose that’s eating puppies.  (Not a joke, although it sounds like it should be.)  And I just assume the sewers are filled with panthers.

Three weeks later I watched as a man ardently sprayed what I thought was ant-killer all over our green lawn.  He was ardently spraying plant poison.  He had the the wrong address and was supposed to be destroying the yard on the next street so they could put in different grass.  He did an excellent job.  We are now dirt farmers and the harvest is plentiful.

Last week I decided to just take a break from all the insanity of busted pipes and roof replacements and angry mountain lions and simply relax in the pool.

Someone bring me a damn pina-colada.

PS. Everything will resolve itself eventually and in another few months I will either have some fabulous stories, some very pretty “after” pictures. or possibly a nervous breakdown.  Maybe all three.  Why limit myself?

PPS.  My home-health nurse came today and says all my vitals are good and that I should be healthy enough to have my surgery tubes removed on Wednesday.  If this surgical shit goes as well as the remodeling has gone then I suspect I will be filled with dead possums and missing several important appendages by Thursday.

The selfish things I wish for most often:

I wish I were a little less scared.

I wish I were a little less sad.

I wish I’d mastered subjunctives well enough to definitively know if I used “were” correctly in the previous two sentences.

Your turn.  What do you wish for?  (You cannot wish for world peace or for more wishes or give your wishes away.  So, really…what small – or large- thing do you wish for right this very moment?)

As of today, my book has been translated into several different languages, which is awesome and also very, very confusing.  Most recently, it’s come out in Turkish.

I don’t get any say on the foreign covers until they’re already come out, and when I saw this one my first thought was “Hang on.  Am I…smelling my own crotch?”

But then I realized that it was actually a really flexible, thin version of me who was slamming her head into the keyboard.  Which makes much more sense.  Unlike what occurred when I tried to translate the summary of the book:

I’m pretty sure Neil Gaiman just told us all to go to hell.  In Turkish.  Best. Insult. Ever.

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And in entirely unrelated news, it’s time for the weekly wrap up:

This week’s wrap-up is sponsored by the wonderific folks at  SelectAware.com, where you can find exclusive coupons, deals and promo codes for thousands of your favorite stores (And no sign-up required.) SelectAware.com gives deal seekers a way to help each other save money by letting them find and post coupons through an easy-to-use website. You can check it out here.