Merry Prankster Sign Scrabble: A Photo Essay

This is a small but vital public service that civic-minded, queer, middle-aged, has-been journalists provide for the betterment of society-at-large. You're welcome :)

 What you have here is an abomination against nature, an insult to civility as we know it. Something must be done to put a stop to such heresy before children see it and start accepting it as normal. We usually attack under cover of darkness, but desperate times call for desperate measures. This hostile transgression against all that is right in the world demanded that we throw caution to the wind and take swift and decisive action in broad daylight. There is a culture war, and we're picking sides….. Our calculations determined that I should be the bottom and my co-conspirator the flyer because I outweigh her by 30 pounds. What we overlooked was that….. ….neither one of us was ever a cheerleader, so I promptly dropped her on her ass. This was not part of the plan. I think we accidentally smushed a dormant beach rose, which is a violation of Merry Prankster Environmental Preservation Policy (MPEPP). Yup, that's me rockin' that size 10 badonkadonk, a veritable marvel of gravity defiance, like staring at the sun, and in the twerk ready position, aww yeah….. I finally summoned a surge of Wonder Twins Power/fat ass prime sprinter watts and we got down to business…..and Kim Kardashian can only wish her bootay was that fly….. Girlfriend may be svelte, but in a clutch situation she's no Johnny Manziel, if you catch my drift. When crunch time was upon us, she was laughing so hard she was rendered incapable of spelling any better than the 'roided out bros at the gym, even though she's the one with the overpriced English degree. Not to worry, though, I have surgical precision and laser-like focus…..

. It sure is an awkward way for one of your queer grammar Nazi friends to flush out that you're a top, but like I said, I always step up under pressure….

She didn't drop me either, so mad props for that…..

Merry Pranksters Sign Scrabble: making the world a better place, one grammatical correction at a time. You're welcome, bitches….

my $10,000 blog

I've never really caught fire with Blogger. I was more of a rampant myspace blogger until late August of last year. That's when I got sued by one of my readers. One of my readers decided that my blogs could be used as evidence that I'm a bad parent. My litigious reader is my ex-husband from 17 years ago. My children with him are now 17 and 18.

So far I'm 10 grand and 10 months into defending myself and have yet to have his nuisance suit heard by a judge.

I started magazine writing in 2002. I was pretty active and published frequently from 2003-2007. I realized that I was way more interested in writing fiction than non-fiction, so I started writing blogs for the mental exercise and to put the ideas that often come to me on paper. I usually made 100-200 bucks per magazine article. I probably made 2500-5000 bucks writing professionally.

I heard from one of my readers/cycling buddies yesterday that one of my magazine articles got plagiarized. I recall specifically that I sold it for 100 bucks.

So what I'm wondering is can I break even by suing the person who plagiarized me? Why is my freedom of speech costing me money? Shouldn't I make money expressing my thoughts, and should my thoughts be hijacked to satisfy other people's greed?

spinning class doper

Crap.
Curtis just bought an altitude tent on Ebay wicked cheap for 'cross season.
That sounds like birth control as far as I'm concerned. I don't want to sleep in an effing tent.
I don't race bikes anymore. In 3 weeks when Phoebe starts kindergarten I am planning on getting my fat ass in shape with all that spare time, but within reason. The only thing I plan on racing to is the buffet table.
So my natural hematocrit at sea level when I was training and racing hard was always between 47 and 49, ALWAYS above the legal limit for women.
I'm just freaky that way.
Curtis runs in the high 30's. I always feel like I'm telling him he has cancer when I read him the numbers.
So I'm going to end up as a spinning class doper, rocking the hematocrit of 55.
All you other bitches get outta my way.

Rhode Island is the Belgium of New England

It's really gotten unbearable.
Where to begin.
I've been home for less than 24 hours.
There's a new detour sign off my highway exit that makes absolutely no sense.
I had to tell someone at work today that it wasn't okay to be verbally abusive to me. Hey I'm just the doctor, sorry to bother you with all these pesky questions and interrupt your cell phone call and argument with your family.
My lab coat came out of the dryer wrinkled and I refuse to iron or pay for a dry cleaner out of my own pocket. Someone suggested that I should put it in the hospital laundry. A week has gone by and even the one English speaking person who works in the hospital laundry couldn't tell me where my coat is. A real model of service and efficiency right there. It only has my name and fucking department embroidered on it.
Some creppy looking guy with a clipboard who looks like he is Vice President of the Water Sprinklers keeps writing down my license plate in the patient lot closest to the ER. I think I'm suppoesed to park half a mile away and take a shuttle. I'm trying to fuck with him by switching it up between 3 different cars. There's some really great retention of physicians right there. I can't wait 'til my boss gets their printout on my parking offenses and I get a scolding.
Tonight I took Damian to golf practice. I still can't tell the "normal" people in Pawtucket from the retards.
I cruised around with an open White Ale on the way home from golf-it isn't possible to be pulled over for any traffic offense in Providence no matter how badly you drive. I keep trying and they keep not pulling me over.
We attempted to engage in our favorite low class Rhode Island pasttime tonight-returning 6 months worth of empties to the packy in nearby Massachusetts.
The bottle room had just closed for the night.
Denied.
WTF???
Every time I come home it's more and more like the Bulgarian Embassy around here. The stupid leading the useless.

Dear PMS

What the hell? You again?
My Mirena IUD is clearly ceasing to spit out enough hormones because you're back. Last month about this time my tits felt like they were going to explode. I was so confused that I thought I was pregnant.
Since it's been 10 years since I had PMS I'd forgotten the hell that is you. Then brown gunk started collecting in my underwear. Oh yeah, periods. I forgot about that too. I don't even own tampons it's been so long. I was so slick on the birth control pills for the 5 years before I got knocked up that I hadn't had one of those since 1997.
Ok, it was wimpy, but it still sucked. At least my tits stopped hurting.
PMS, you are my sworn enemy. I remember the lost days when I was a teenager, in bed puking and bleeding through to the mattress, my pelvis in a vise. I remember that bathroom stall in Berlin when I got my first period in 9 months after weighing 95 pounds on the track team, thinking I was bleeding to death. My mother told me it was all in my head.
Funny. My head felt fine.
Even more unwelcome was the day when I was 19 when I puked at work, went home to bed on Motrin and Alice Cooper's "Only Women Bleed" came on the radio.
That was spooky.
Remember that stage when I had cramps on the start line and spent the first 20 miles strongly considering crossing the yellow line just to put myself out of my own misery? Then I bled through my chamois to my white Turbo saddle and still finished in the money? That was a real Uta Pippig moment.
PMS. You are mean. Period. You are gross.
As I type, PMS, my breasts are so engorged and sharp with pain I keep checking them to make sure there are not knitting needles sticking out of them.
I figured out after that BS last month in a couple days I'll get one of those wimpy old lady periods again.
This isn't funny anymore. Knock it off. I'm old.

alpha female sighting

I've fallen in with a social circle that calls themselves either "Patti's list" or "the nice girls." Patti started the list as an alternative to the mean girls. In one way or another all of us have at one time or another been a victim of the mean girls, and we just have no patience with it. It reminds me of trying to be friends with the Junior High cheerleaders, and going home crying every night. At some point you have to have some self-respect and realize they are the insecure losers, not you.
The mean girls are lead by a woman I referred to last year as "the alpha female." It's kind of funny because I think I said that once to the husband of her tennis partner, and it's taken off like wildfire, the husbands must have gossiped about it and tend to whisper it to me because they totally get what I'm talking about.
So last night I arrived late from work out to dinner with the tennis partner of the alpha female and her husband. I hate to say it but my dinner companions are in fact mean girls. I think they mean well, but sometimes they bulldoze. I tolerate them because our daughters are best friends. Alpha female sidles up to the table and starts chatting up my mean girl friend and her husband. Alpha female is completely invading my space, didn't acknowledge Curtis's or my presence and starts yacking on and on to my friends. I was so tired from my long day at work and now so irritated that it was all I could do not to walk out.
Unbelievable.
She may be able to crush my soul on the tennis court, and be incredibly rude, but I know in my heart that I can put her front wheel in the curb.

the tennis skort cameltoe

I'm not sure why women tolerate this.

I don't know if my ass is too big or too small, whatever, I'm just SICK of picking cameltoes and wedgies out of my bits and bobs.

I vastly prefer the 1970's granny panties with the little pockets.

I swear, I'm cutting all the compression shorts out of my tennis skirts and going Fancy Pants all the way.

I wouldn't want to be caught dead with them on for a date, but damn are they comfortable.