BEGINNING OF NONSENSE TRANSMISSION

Admiral Boom. Don't worry, he plays pretty heavily later in this post.

Look. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but today was pretty ridiculous.

I had to wake up earlier than the dickens to deal with fancy real estate garbage. Tell me, who in their right mind schedules a four and a half hour broker open house on a Wednesday at 8:30AM followed by a showing at 1PM? Don't these people know I have two stupid dogs to deal with? Don't these people know there is nothing to do in Moscow? For six hours? 

Brandon graciously offered to tool around town with me until 2:00, which was his first mistake, because when you wake me up at 8AM I get really silly due to EXTREME SLEEP SHORTAGES.

I started the morning off by talking like that kid in Overboard (at the 0:22 mark, please). I am here to testify that there is nothing funnier than anything you could say in that voice. I finished out the morning by falling asleep in the passenger seat.

Then we got pulled over in Gennessee because our brake light was (still is) out.

Also we ate the nastiest lunch ever at the Jack in the Box in Lewiston.

Here is a tip from me to you: When you can buy two tacos for 99 cents, that is a sign. When your husband claims they were his favorite thing to eat, in high school, in Texas, that is another sign. Not good signs, mind yourself.

But what I really want to know is, who is this Jack In The Box person married to? He wears a wedding ring. (And suspenders.) I thought about asking the lady at the drive-thru to kindly pass my question up the management chain until it reached the big wigs, and then entertained a wonderfully heartwarming story in which the CEO of Jack In The Box honored my inquisitiveness with a lifetime supply of 99-cent tacos. The Holbs would certainly be happy with me then, wouldn't he?

By the time we got home at 2:00 I was two Almond Joys fatter and all together grumpy at the world.

To recover I had to drive to the mall by myself to partake in the Old Navy because isn't that what it's there for?

To get there one must drive past what I like to call the Battling Moscow Thermometers. There are three of them, and they can never seem to agree on the temperature. I like to pay close attention to them because I am convinced that one of these days I will crack the mystery. Some questions I have so far: Could the temperature really swing by six degrees on a one-mile stretch of the same road? Why can't they agree? What is in it for them, claiming differing temps? Today the First Bank told me it was 48 degrees out, while the University Inn claimed it was 54. The Second Chance Pawn shop told me it was 51. But why does a pawn shop need a blinking temperature sign anyway? Is their business somehow related to the weather? "It's cold! Want to buy some gold?"

(Second Chance Pawn should so hire me to write their slogans for them, that one just flew straight out of my brain. INSPIRED.)

I can sense already that this post is going to be very long and very, very stupid.

On the way to the Old Navy the local oldies station played a Backstreet Boys jam. Now, how am I supposed to feel about this? Even worse, how am I going to explain the Backstreet Boys to my kids someday? Will the Backstreet Boys be my generation's Styx? Then I started to wonder what it says about me that my boy band of choice was BSB, not N*Sync. And was that the right choice, given the Sexy Back? (Does Lance Bass cancel out the Sexy Back?) (Oh, these questions . . .) At the time I think BSB felt like the more sophisticated choice, which . . . well.

Lately I like going the mall because people seem to fawn all over me there. I don't know what it is, though I have an inkling. Today Ana, the manager at Bath and Body Works, told me how much she liked my earrings and then confessed that she had been stalking my Facebook page, and Anne, the manager at the Old Navy, told me that I looked fantastic for being fourteen weeks along. (But what does that even mean?) It's probably just the fetus they're excited about but you don't have to spoil my fun, okay? After all, I'm the one baking this fetus, and later I will push all my unfulfilled dreams on it, so, let's not forget to give credit where credit is due, am I right?

Then there was the whole thing about The Holbs and the 2-for-1 burrito that went down on my cell phone while I was trying on sandals at the Ross. It was an entirely confusing conversation wherein I just told him I was getting a salad and asked whether he wanted a Q'doba burrito or a Quizno's sandwich (so many Qs!), and he told me that Patty's had a twofer special on their big burritos, only but I wanted a salad, and then he said Well, don't get me a burrito unless you're having a burrito too, (for one), and I know my husband is about to graduate from law school but does that have to mean that he is now smarter than me? Because that whole thing made no sense at all.

So I got take-out Quiznos for dinner. I'm still not sure if that was the right answer?

It was really windy in the parking lot and I entertained visions of a grand tornado, big and black and angry, swooping down over Moscow to pick up our little shoe box of a house and deposit it across the country in . . . well . . . in where ever the dang hell we end up moving. I imagined our house landing precariously on the top of the Chrysler building, teetering and tottering this way and that, like a giant weathervane for all of Manhattan to see. We could be like Admiral Boom in Mary Poppins! Blowing those nuisance chimney sweeps to smithereens and marking the 6:00 hour on the dot twice each day. And then we wouldn't have to sell the house anymore or find ways to entertain ourselves for hours each day during showings that go nowhere. We may not even have to pay a mortgage anymore!

(How do mortgages work in weathervane situations?)

When I got home the ridiculous turned straight up stupid.

We watched Deadliest Catch while we ate dinner, prompting this little gem from the Holbscatch: "It's crazy that all these crabs just live in the ocean, isn't it?"

Then The Holbs built a Great Wall Of Holbrook out of pillows on the couch because I was talking too much.

Also we lost today's potential buyer due to the umpteen million beached trucks parked in my neighbors yard. Doesn't that just make you want to love up your neighbor? Love him up with a fist?

Now that we have gotten to this point I think it would be best to stop, as this is going nowhere, I have no thesis statement, and this has basically become a Masterpiece of Stupidity. And so.

END OF NONSENSE TRANSMISSION