a feel-good song from Lucy

Five year-old Lucy happily sang to herself a song she made up about her older sister:

"Iris is a servant
Iris is a servant
Yeah yeah yeah!
She does all the boring stuff
She does all the boring stuff
Iris is a servant
She does all the boring stuff
Like cooking
And washing all the clothes."

Later, Lucy walked up to me and asked, "Wouldn't Iris make a good target?", her beautiful cherubic face beaming.

the winners of our Annual Readers Photo Contest!!

Once again your aging sot of a blogger commanded you to enter your photos for her amusement, and you rose to the occasion, you darlings (or at least some of you did. The rest of you are just skating by and will need to make it up to me next year). You may wonder, "Why the hell has it taken so long for this contest to wrap up?" At first, we (meaning Celebrity Guest Hughman and I) extended the deadlines to let some late entries sneak in, and then we extended it again, and then I was preoccupied, and then finally I did declare the winners and write it all up. However, only one of the pictures would show up: the one I uploaded to Blogger from my main email account. The others, sent to my gmail account, wouldn't load, even though they seemed to upload normally as I was composing the post. Evidently there is some bug, which makes no sense as Google owns both gmail and blogger, so one would expect them to go together like Armagnac and prunes (and if the image of Armagnac and prunes causes you to recoil, you need some more classic French desserts in your life. And while we're meandering, I have an anecdote: I used to have a pet rat, Leo, who lived cagefree. He occupied my apartment like another resident, which was delightful most of the time, but once I left out a Tupperware container full of prunes marinating in very good and expensive Armagnac for a planned dessert, and he ate all of it. Poor Leo must have felt like hell after eating his bodyweight not only in Armagnac but again in prunes). Anyhow, so finally a week later Hughman has nagged me into trying again, and here we are. Let me just say that I am hating gmail today.

Last year's winner and current holder of the Mr. Drunken Househusband title, Silliyak, weighed in with an unusual choice, a sad anorexic woman viewed from behind. This disturbed me, but the more blase celebrity guest judge Hughman said, "Frankly I can see this on the streets of LA every day."


Our beloved Carol Ann shared her travel duck with us. She explains: "This green rubber duck always go with me on trips and gets his picture taken. He's been to Vegas, Disneyword and Disneyland, and New York City, among other destinations. So, I decided that he should visit your blog." Awww! Hughman sez, "I love the duck. Is this where you get Green Eggs for Green Eggs and Ham? I wish the duck was swimming in a cocktail."

A new reader, April, gave me a scare. She sent in two pictures of herself, and this one, in thumbnail size in my email inbox, made my heart pound for a moment (and not for the same reason some of you readers' hearts are pounding as you gaze upon it). This picture, when tiny, looks uncannily like I did in the early nineties. I had very short bleached blonde hair, bright red lipstick, and a dominatrixish wardrobe for the weekends. For a moment, I thought our sprightly April was a stalker from my past (and I have been stalked; I have been stalked on two continents). When I opened the picture up to full size, I felt like an idiot, since her tattoos are quite different from mine and our facial features are different. Obviously April is my soulmate and not a stalker. If only we had teamed up back in the nineties; we would have been unstoppable. However, as Hughman noted, April is not going to take top honors because she hasn't added the Drunken Housewife URL to her picture, but she has a special place in our hearts (and I note that as I was uploading the picture AGAIN today, pulling up the thumbnail gave me a start once again. My god, it's uncanny).


Captain Steve had a very thoughtful entry, which really captured that Drunken Housewife zeitgeist. A book, a bathrobe, a cat: c'est moi. Hughman says, "It's all about the shoes. Kudos for including cats, cocktails, leopard print and Bust all in one pic."



Hughman and I felt that nothing could beat Captain Steve's entry, but a last-minute effort from defending champion Missy, holder of the Drunken Housewife title, blew us away. We loved the cat, the snarl, the cocktail, the beautiful colors... This had to be the winner, and it's ensconced at the top of this entry. However, I am declaring Capt. Steve to be Iris Uber Alles 2008, a new title!





Although the fight for Ms. Drunken Housewife 2008 was a hardfought and close one indeed, the Mr. Drunken Househusband 2008 was all too easy to call. Our dear Maine commenter, Jim aka "Brown" submitted a bold and carefully thought out entry which had Hughman musing, "Who can resist a man in lipstick? Sure he's supposed to be drunk but still he's not afraid to show his housewifey side." The only thing wrong with this picture is that it brought back unfortunate memories of my hideous bout with salmonella earlier this year, shudder; but of course that makes it all the more a propos. Jim, you are Mr. Drunken Househusband 2008! Enjoy your reign and don't abuse your powers!

Missy, Capt. Steve, Jim, Silliyak, Carol Ann, and April: please contact me to discuss your prizes (your choices include a book from my collection selected especially for you, darling; a t-shirt modified by me (I'm in love with my "108 Ways To Use A T-shirt" book); ordering up the post of your choice; or commandeering the space for your own rantings).

best not to ask

It is so tedious to tell one's dreams, and Miss Manners decrees that dreams should be shared only with those who share your bed. Nonetheless, I shall share that I dreamed last night that I went on a date with Hellboy. This could in theory have been quite a spicy dream, but in actuality the date consisted of our getting into an argument in a bar.

The husband's dreams, however, were of a higher calibre. He woke me up in the middle of the night with wandering hands, which led to a marked decrease in sleep all around but smiles over the coffee. "That must have been some dream you had last night," I said. He gave a silent nod, clearly choosing not to share any details.

"Mmm hmm," I thought to myself, concluding that I hadn't taken a starring role in that particular dream. "Too bad all Hellboy did was squabble." The Sober Husband has all the luck.

high expectations

Yesterday when we were putting her clean laundry away, five year-old Lucy's mind turned to romance. "When I get married, my husband will be very beautiful."

"More beautiful than Daddy?" I asked.

"Oh, yes! More beautiful than Daddy! As beautiful as Mommy!" Lucy turned a shirt over and over in her hands as she pondered her beautiful future spouse. "As beautiful as a butterfly! As beautiful as a flower! As beautiful as a princess!"

former lab rats make the best pets, karmically speaking

A public service announcement:

Here's the good news:

Cal State Northridge psych lab is permanently shutting down

Here's the bad news:

They want all the animals out by Wednesday, May 7, or they will all be killed. They have 50 mice; 20 hamsters (dwarf, syrian golden & black), 20 rat (black/white & brown/white), 5 guinea pigs (1 pair, 1 trio).

Dwarf hamsters, mice, rats + guinea pigs can live in same sex or spayed/neutered groups. Syrian (regular) hamsters generally need to live alone.

All animals are healthy and have only been used for animal behavior observation.

These animals were all whisked away in the nick of time by the delightful Debra Jenkins, a local rat and rabbit rescuer of great renown (I have not met Debra in person, but I got to know her a bit during the Great Petaluma Rat Hoarding Disaster of 2006. She has amazing networking skills for saving animals). Please contact Debra to adopt or sponsor a rescued lab rat.

I myself had several rescued lab rats, who came from a UCSD lab, who were charming pets who brought a lot of joy during their lives. I can't take in any myself right now, as my cat population is at ten (five kittens, including a pathetically undersized runt; one undersocialized young cat; plus four "regular" cats).

an extremely special contest

You may be wondering, "So, what happened to the Second, Possibly Annual, Readers' Photo Contest"? The answer is that we got a couple of requests for extensions, and seeing as how we're rather slothful here, we granted them. Also, it's been a tough decision this time around. We will announce the winners over the weekend.

But! Why wait a second longer to start the long-awaited NAME HOKGARDNER'S BABY CONTEST!!!! Why, indeed (we'd hate for poor Hokgardner to have her nameless baby before we get around to starting the contest).

Our dear commenter Hokgardner is expecting a child, but seeing as how this is child #4, she and her husband have run out of names. They have decided not to determine the gender ahead of time, doubling their work in determining prospective names. So we will here enlist the readers to solve Hokgardner's problem.

Grand prize: actually naming a baby. (Please note that just like on "Project Runway" where they say, "The winning design may be part of Macy's fall collection", the winning names may or may not be used). Imagine the bragging rights from this: you can swivel neatly on your stool, turning to the next barfly, and say truthfully, "I named a baby in Texas once."

Runner-up prizes: right to use this space for a rant or reflection of your choice, unedited (but I reserve the right to mock) or the right to commandeer me to write about the topic of your choice.

Guidelines: The other children are named Lily, Ella, and Campbell. There is a general sentiment that perhaps the letter L has been used enough and should not dominate the next (and probably final) child's name. The parents, as you may have surmised, favor traditional names and do not particularly care for creative spelling. That said, the expectant mother loves the name "Tallulah", but Mr. Hokgardner has refused to give his consent.

Also, think about the initials. The last name begins with G, so let us wasteth not our time proposing names such as Penelope Ingrid and Franklin Allen.

How to enter: post your suggested names in comments to this post. Enter as many times as you like. Eventually I will call a halt, and after Hokgardner and Mr. Hokgardner have conferred, we'll declare some winners.

an update in our ongoing studies of (a) hypochrondria in the young and (b) rudeness in contractors

On Friday morning, I was relaxing in my bathrobe with five year-old Lucy, when the doorbell rang. It was one of the workmen employed by the contractor building a home nearby, who has locked horns with me on a number of occasions. The worker asked me to please move my car (which was legally parked by my house) because a truck was stuck trying to get through. I told him I'd move it in a few minutes (there was no way I was leaving the house in my bathrobe; I didn't even have underwear on). The worker told me that there was a car stuck behind the truck which wanted to get through. (Funnily enough when one of those trucks trapped me in my car, unable to reach my house and meet our scheduled speech therapist, the contractor told me I had no right to complain as anyone who lives in a city must expect to get stuck behind trucks all the time).

After I got dressed, washed my face, and brushed my teeth, I went down and moved my car. The contractor was in a fury, pacing about in the street, but he didn't speak to me.

Six hours later I was driving the children home when I found a peculiar obstacle. The contractor -- or his minions -- had put five or six orange cones out in front of my house, arranged in a pyramid shape. It was difficult to get past them (this is a very narrow street), and they prevented me from parking in front of my own house (and mind you, there are two houses and an alley between me and his construction site. There was clearly no purpose to be served by the cones other than to annoy me).

I told the Sober Husband about this later, and he clearly didn't want to hear about it. "Why don't you write on your blog about this?"

"That must be a euphemism for 'shut up with your ceaseless yammering'," I said.

Meanwhile in that same day, Iris Uber Alles reported a headache in the evening and some nausea. I believed this, because she was wan, clingy, and wanting to lie down. However, five year-old Lucy would not stand for her big sister getting any extra attention. "I have a headache! And my stomach hurts, too!" she chirped, jumping up and down as she tried to get my attention as I felt Iris's forehead. Lucy then moved in for the kill: "And my tongue hurts!" She always goes one symptom too many, poor Lucy. She's a failure as a hypochondriac.