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Grow your own handygirl.

Did you all have nice Thanksgivings? Did you agree with the winner of the National Dog Show? If you turned on the Lions game, how long could you stand it?

My holiday weekend was heavenly. Little Sweet showed me what she really does online, and we kept the lights off in favor of glow sticks, and we read books in bed, and we did some getting ready for Christmas. Plus, because now she's big enough, I made her help me move furniture. Poor kid. I wanted the treadmill in the basement, and I could roll it as far as the kitchen, but from there, I was out of luck. There was no way even two of us could get it down the stairs without smushing one of us like a Walmart early bird. So we took it apart.

And not in any sort of neat way that might be simple to put back together. I had to bend this piece of metal to get one of the bolts out, but I can't see now how that will matter. Right? And I hate my wrench. At one point, she said, "Can't we call somebody to help us?" I was like, "Who?"

Even in two big pieces, it was heavy enough I needed her help to get it down the stairs, but she was a trooper. Next, I teach her how to hang doors.

Living way off the superhighway.

I try to pay my bills online if possible. My gas company only recently started taking payments that way. Their site was, let's call it, retro. As in circa 1997 design and usability. But for a couple of months, it worked sporadically enough for me to stop writing them checks. Then today, I try again, and the site looks a little bit snazzier, but it has no record of me having registered before, and so I start all over and sign up again. I do. But when I go to actually make a payment, I get notice that paying online requires also paying a five-dollar "convenience" fee. How convenient. Who are these people?

My car payment – one of the only other places I still have to send a check in the mail -- is like this as well. They actually want a $10 service fee to pay online. How much cooler a car could I have gotten if I'd wanted to add $10 a month to my payment?

And then, I get my cable bill, which is suddenly $30 more than last month. This happens once in a while, when whatever limited-time offer I'm taking advantage of runs out. I'll just call tomorrow and find myself a new plan. But the bill had the nerve to note that I had saved $10 this month by bundling my services, exclamation point. As if by telling me "good job," they'd distract me from the fact that that's just not true.

How can you not love 30 Rock?

Liz: And meeting someone new, ugh, all the nodding and smiling and sibling listing. And what's the upside? It works and you have to have a bunch of sex?

Jack: Lemon, what do you want? Do you want to be alone for the rest of your life?

Liz: No. I just wish I could start a relationship about 12 years in where you don't really have to try anymore and you can just sit around together and goof on TV shows and go to bed without anybody trying any funny business.

See here.

My glasses broke. Such a bummer, because I love this pair, even if they were a little cheap. The one arm (is it called an arm?) broke totally off.

I've been wearing them around the house anyway, with just one ear holding them up, but when I lean over, like to clean out the cat litter, they fall off. So I was heading to Shopko this morning and figured I'd take them to the optical department. The woman there took care of things. She disappeared into the back with them and when she came back, they were all better. She found a stray arm that pretty much matched my glasses, though with a funky tiger-stripe on the inside, and hooked it right on. And she didn't charge me anything. It was such a generous move, and I felt really taken care of for that five minutes of my morning.

Can people hibernate?

How's this for a dumb start to the day: driving to Menards in a snowstorm only to find out they're out of shovels.

I also got a new garage-door opener, because mine broke. Worked fine all summer, until the snow started. Funny, garage-door opener. You're hi-larious. So I'd say the trip wasn't a waste except the new one doesn't work either, which only means I have to go back. Who exactly is messing with me here?

Middle of nowhere.

Peter and I had separate encounters with the local TV6 website yesterday. (We both probably went there to check for school closings, but no luck.) He emailed me this headline: "Meat processors experience deer rush." Ten points for the best response in the comments.

I was more entranced with this map that came up when I googled the station:

Yup. Feels like a pretty accurate representation of where we are.

Captivity.

Really, the beauty is in watching the whole slide show of G and Janers and the real-live baby tiger at the mall. I don't think G's afraid of the animal so much as of sweet Jane, who gets more and more crazy-eyed as it goes along. Thankfully, the tiger seems to stay quite calm. But here's a sample.

Gr. I do not know why I can't put the pictures where I want them. Forgive my scrap-booky chaos.

A little dream.

I'm sick. I'm stocked with Theraflu and Nyquil and Kleenix. I slept all day yesterday, and all night last night. Except when I woke myself up laughing again. This time, I tried to remember what was so funny. There was some big dinner – my sister, and my Green Bay contingent, and other people – but then I saw a sign, or a sticker, reserving the table for my mom and stepdad, for sometime later. But it was worded funny, like "Big Momma" or something. Like Oskar would say in Extremely Loud, I cracked up. Now, fully awake, I don't get it at all.

But it's good to wake yourself up laughing, and it was time for another dose of Nyquil anyway, and I went back to sleep to dream that the woman in the office next to me was telling me to be sure to include plenty of little toys and key chains and such when you send your manuscript to a publisher. I showed her a Barbie I kept calling Annabelle, and she said that would be perfect.

I'm feeling a little better this morning, but I have so much work to make up from my Friday of being unconscious. I can't wait for Thanksgiving.

How about this instead?

I ordered a pair of shoes from Old Navy. They were this kind of wild electric blue platform t-straps. Bizarre, but cute, and $12. I don't know, I was in a mood.

So the box arrived today, and inside is one thing: a skirt. A satiny pleated teal-green knee-length skirt, wrapped in plastic labeled "Women's patent t-strap platforms." Completely not even close. But I was curious, and I opened it up, and it's my size. Totally not the kind of thing I would buy, but it's not bad. Kind of department-Christmas-party shiny. I've been wearing it over my jeans since I got home.

So I have to wonder, is it worth $12? If I had $12, would I buy it? You know what, probably not. But that's not the real question, which is more like, "Would I pay $12 to *not* have to wrap it back up and go outside and take it to the UPS store?" I might; I'm already planning on ordering pizza to be delivered for dinner.

I might just keep it. Maybe it's a sign. I never really needed the shoes anyway.

Chestnut? Macadamia?

The Zen Buddhist priest who I named my fantasy football league after just stopped by my office and told me we had a new faculty member. Huh, I said? He meant my hair, which is darker than last week. "It's called acorn," I said. Though I'm not even sure that it is or if that was some other box I considered.

Which isn't poetry or anything, but is so much better than last week's run-in we had. That time, I very nearly bumped into him when I was exiting the ladies' room talking out loud to myself. Having an argument with nobody in the bathroom is not how I want him to picture me. Or you guys either, so I hardly know why I'm mentioning it.

But with acorn hair, sure. I guess that's true enough.

The case.

I played a great game of email Crack the Case yesterday. The solution, which I never really got to, involved fish sedative and a backroom blood transfusion. The student essays I'm grading today seem so logical by comparison. (But not nearly half as fun.)

Turns out it said, “Family: Michael Crichton…”

I'm still aglow in last night's news (seriously, I really wanted to toast somebody, or kiss somebody, or toss glitter into the air with someone besides the cats), but there are other headlines too. Like this one I clicked on this morning because I thought it said, "Finally: Michael Crichton dies of cancer." Because geez, how rude is that? Like we've all been just waiting, impatient for it to happen. I didn't even know to be worried.

Preliminary results.

Voting took a long while in the township. The line looped back and forth and around, which I was prepared for. I had "The Things They Carry" to read for tonight's class. (I heard the woman behind me tell her husband to just get behind "the lady with the book" after he checked in, to make sure he went to the right place.) And in general, I don't care about a long line, as long as things are organized. They were fine, although one woman on her way out stirred up trouble by suggesting anybody N through Z could just head right inside. People perked all up and got out of order. I was almost glad I didn't fall in that range, so there was no real test of my urge to jump the line. That lady turned out to be crazy, and we all got patient again. During my hour and a half, I heard the volunteers there wonder how to better handle all of us. They pulled a table outside at some point. I hope it helped.

My favorite moment was a six-and-a-half-foot man in red and black checkered flannel, who told somebody – his neighbor? – who was leaving, "Throw some slop at Boswell for me if I don't make it back." And just when I'd been worrying about what if I didn't make it out in time for class. Who was going to throw the slop at my kids for me?

What about The Golden Compass?

In my fiction workshop class, we write bad stories on day two. The idea is to put all that ugly melodrama and those clichés on the table so that none of them will ever ever turn in a story that opens with a ringing alarm clock. "Brrring! Brring!" I tell them my own pet peeves too, just so they know. (I hate the word "glance," for example, and "smirk," and any moment in which characters introduce themselves to each other, which I'm convinced should never be done in direct dialogue.)

And they have dislikes too. This year, one girl said she hated stories about dust. The rest of us were a little confounded, not being able in the moment to think of any stories – good or bad – *about dust*. I asked her, do you hate dust, in general? As in, are you just a neat freak? No, that wasn't the problem. It was dust as a metaphor, maybe, or dust as something else. Literary dust. We said okay.

But now they're turning in stories, and I think they've all decided on the sly to make sure they use the word. I've seen dusty wings and dusty fur and dusty china cabinets and dust in people's eyes and throats. It's kind of cute. I just hope they're not all trying to drive that one girl crazy.

Nice boots, G.

Little Sweet was a "rathead hunter" for Halloween. She had fun, though she said she had to drop off her bow and arrow because it just got too heavy. I don't have pictures (or really, geez, my own visual image), but here is my niece, Supergirl. I hope they called her in to take care of whatever's killing all the dogs where she is.

Happy November then.

If my cats have been closed up inside for the past month, where did this latest dead bird come from? Have they been saving it? Keeping it hostage?