i'm looking to create a word to describe the excess flesh riding above an ill-fitting bra. i'm not sure what this bursting mound of mammary should be called, but know that there is a term out there floating in the air above our heads which aptly defines it. suggestions?

a small detail i don't discuss about the things i sell on ebay

gone skiing.

the following events happened to me in a seven minute span on an otherwise picture-perfect day.

1. i sat down to watch some queued up college basketball when alex changed the channel on the remote. for those who don't have tivo, just accept that this is not something you want to happen.
2. after taking the remote away from alex and turning back to the tv to turn the channel back, he reached up and pushed my Vietnamese iced coffee over onto our white futon. for those who haven't experienced Vietnamese iced coffee, it is the approximate color and viscosity of 10w30 motor oil.
3. after removing the futon cover i went to the basement and started the washer only to find i just doused a load of laundry that had been washed but hadn't yet been moved to the dryer.
4. after emptying the washer and waiting for the water to fill, i was spraying a stain treatment onto the futon. it took my brain a few moments to realize i was bathing the nine open cuts on my hands with Zout. and these were not your average scrapes or abrasions, they were the mementos from my latest window project which means they were slices from glass which makes a paper cut feel like butterfly kisses from your high school sweetheart.

and, i'm not entirely convinced this isn't further retribution for yesterday's post.

and, i'm sure i'm not going to have to suck the pipe for this either.

i'm not sure who started it. since i'm writing the tale, we'll let the benefit of the doubt go to the historian which means bookguy began this mess.

the first time it happened we didn't think much of it. the second time, we eyed one another suspiciously. by the seventh time we knew there was a greater force guiding events. it began when i came into work with a zit, bookguy promptly and expectedly said something along the lines of 'nice zit'. two days later he had a festering carbuncle on the tip of his nose four times the size and three shades darker than my own.

as i alluded to, this trend oddly continued, meaning anytime one of us would harangue the other over something we knew they would be insecure about, mother wrath would deliver a much worse malady upon the offender. we termed this phenomenon as juju, bad juju specifically. the juju proved so reliable we actually reached a point of maturity, if even maturity through fear of consequence (is there really any other kind?). if you had a blemish you could see the other staring at it, the rolodex of insults spinning in their brain but knowing they wouldn't pluck a card out lest they suffer a retort from the juju god.

bookguy now lives in another state and we've missed many opportunities and facial imperfections. i think this distance gave me a false sense of security because i recently acted foolishly. he posted a picture of himself on his web site wearing a new pair of glasses. knowing him well enough to know that he'd be uncertain of his ability to pull off such a contemporary style (surely picked out by his wife) i sent him an email regarding a boondoggle we'd soon be taking; 'you're not planning on wearing your new spectacles on our trip, are you?'

i woke up wednesday morning to discover someone had relocated mount krakatoa from whatever continent it resided on to just below my right eye. this is classic juju at work. and it will not be lost on my travel mate.

fricken juju.

last weekend we celebrated bella's third birthday. what's the difference between a two-year old and a three-year old? you can have conversations like this with a three year old at the dinner table:

marty
so what part of today did you not like bella?

bella
when Isaac was touching our dolls.

marty
oh. and what ...

after a mishap in the basement, bella informed me that 'this is not a house where we say dammit'.

she's right. fact is dammit is possibly the cleanest expression of disgust ever uttered, shouted, screamed or just plainly said in our house. fact is, dammit only came into existence about a year after bella came into existence. fact is, dammit is what i reserved for when in the company of a relative or a person of the cloth. fact is, i feel i can now say dammit with the conviction and intonation to make one feel i just said something much, much more severe. fact is, it's really to damn bad ours is not a house where we say dammit.

here's another way having a three year old around differs from a two year old.

excerpt from Survivor by chuck palahniuk

my mom rules rules the universe that contains all moms. why? because she knows more about the underbelly of this country's sex life than me and all of my peeps combined. how many of you can say the same about your tired old mom. if you recall, she works for the centers for disease control, sexually transmitted diseases division in particular.

she recently called and asked if she could talk to a variety of my friends about what they may know about trends and commercial practices within the young gay community for an information campaign they are planning. i gave her a few names of people i thought might be helpful and then called them myself to ask if they would mind helping my mother out with a project she was working on. they all agreed.

the night before one of the couples who were to meet with her called the house and got marty. the guy on the phone said that his partner asked/made him call to see if troy's mom had some kind of ulterior and/or deceptive motivation in speaking to them. specifically were they going to come home the next day to find a gaggle of baptists picketing their home. marty assured them they were fine and no such thing would happen.

i called the night after they met with my mother asking for directions to their house from the baptist church down the way just so the bus didn't get lost en route.

i'm not sure how i came to have these snapshots [below]. it's almost certain that i asked for them in some way. but, this is a guy i used to work with and these shots are from when he was in the army years earlier. he was one of those crazy-eager and overly bright fellas who was a great catch for any organization, although companies rarely seem to notice when they get an young individual with such pluck.

the thing i'll most remember about jon is his smile. he could crack a grin that was so authentic and true that it would just turn you in a better direction, without fail. well that's what it did for guys, i'm pretty sure it unglued girls at the seams.

and i just thought of another thing. he grew up on a farm and once had to reach up the business end of a pregnant cow to pull its calf out. and he was like 13 or 14 when this happened. his dad was out of town and the cow started having this baby and it was breach or something so he had to help the process along and how you help is you reach up and work the little dude free. he said he'd seen his father do it but wasn't formally instructed on the process. i guess part of the technique involved pulling the calf mostly out, but leaving its torso in. this is so one of the mother's contractions would squeeze all of the uterine goo out of the calf's lungs freeing it to breath. he didn't know this or forgot this and just kinda yanked it out (i'm pretty sure i wouldn't have done that, wanting to prolong such a singular experience and all). well the calf hits the ground and can't breath and he's realizes what's happened and has to somehow get all that muck out of the lungs. i wish i could recall what he said happened next but i had long since drove my lunch fork straight into my eye as to divert further attention away from the thought of having a cow's undulating vagina massaging the full length of my arm. but i have a really vague notion that his mouth may have been involved. i'm admittedly real foggy on that though. i'm telling ya, i was reeling.

let's now call me confident on not knowing much else about jf.

when i was being put together my ears came from a plywood box marked REFURBISHED. this would usually be cool had the worker responsible for testing my previously opened ears not been both hung-over and suffering from ADD. resultantly, i on occasion have funky things go on in my aural cavities. as for what kinds of things, i'm talking of things that would send most falling back from their bathroom sink in abject disgust and horror. but for someone accustomed to the host of things that have fallen, poured or been otherwise extracted from my ears, i view it as another day moments before leaving for the office.

last monday was one such day. a jet white q-tip went in and a sludgy black cudgel came out. studying it momentarily i took stock of how i felt, how my ear felt. all felt well so i moved on. by thursday my ear had swollen shut. if you've never seen an ear swollen shut, ask marty who sought proof of my ailment before letting me spend the night on the couch. if you've never experienced how an ear this swollen feels, ask ligaya who reports it to be worse than labor (and she experienced that twice).

off to the doctor i went. he, like many before him, quickly grabbed a pad wrote a name and address on it and said 'go here'. off to the ear-nose and throat guy i went. you haven't lived until you've seen the host of cool gadgets these fellas have. if these gurus would open weekend spas where they cleaned out your ears and other crannies with their cool-ass mini-vaccums and micro-water-picks i'd be the first in line.

the first such ENT guy i went to was so nice. he asked about the problems i've had with my ears and sat through my numerous accounts, jotting notes here and there. he said things like "well, let's take a look", "yeah, i think we can get that cleaned up for you" and even stuff like "now you let us know if that gives you anymore problems" not to mention "hello", "goodbye" and "have a nice day". below recounts what the guy i saw today said to me:

what ear is it?
you're going to feel some discomfort here.
hold still.
now you're going to have to hold still.
i'm changing your prescription.

those aren't the highlights. that's it! this guy makes endo look like dick van dyke in the music man. what a fricken neanderthal! and, sadly, his technique was about as honed as his gift for gab (thank god he wasn't my first). now to the troll's credit, he straightened my ear out. the fact that i was floppin' in the chair like nemo in the sink should not be overlooked though.

and just so all of your private ridicule isn't spent on me today, bookguy cleans his navel with a q-tip.