If you know me, I’m quite sure that you are deathly ill of hearing me talk about the old girl.  Slowly, but surely, she is falling apart—one small piece at a time.  Since 2001, I have been driving a 1998 Buick Century, which we gratefully inherited from GR’s aunt.  I was 31 years old at the time I started driving it—way too young to be driving such a grandmotherly car.

At the time we took possession of the car, I was driving a newly purchased 2000 Honda Accord that I cherished, adored, and swooned over.  Because we didn’t really have a need to keep both cars, our options were to either sell the Buick (which only had 19K miles at the time…practically new!), go on a fabulous vacation, and continue making payments on the Honda, or sell the Honda, take a minor hit on the balance, and be car payment free.  Obviously, we chose to sell the cherished, adored, and swooned over one.  And then I cried and started sprouting grey hairs.  My carefree days of cruising down the road with the sunroof open and stereo blasting were over.  At the age of 31, Lulu turned very old, very quickly.  I even started listening to AM radio, which I have found that I am quite fond of.

Fast forward almost 10 years, and the Buick is still running strong.  Granted, there have been minor issues along the way (not including the increase of Lulu’s grey hairs)…

• There are no longer cup holders in the car.  They were flimsy, flip-over holders to begin with, and they have all been broken off.  Therefore, I have cola and coffee stains all over the floor carpet.
• Windshield wipers fly off randomly.  Usually when it rains.
• Hubcaps fly off randomly.  I have replaced all four hubcaps at one time or another.  Hence, the car has been dubbed the Ghetto Granny Mobile.  Yesterday, I had the brake pads and rotors replaced, and the technician was unsure if he could put the hubcaps back on due to the disintegrating plastic screws that hold them on to the wheel.  I lost one today, as you might have noticed in the picture above.
• My heater no longer works.  Thank goodness for warmer weather.
• The back driver-side window motor no longer works, causing the window to continuously slip down slightly.  At one point, GR duct-taped the window so it would stay up, but he duct-taped it on the outside of the window—adding to the appeal of the ghetto-ness of it all.  I made him remove the tape.  I’ve actually replaced the front window motor myself with instructions found on the internet, but Lulu has been too lazy to fix the back one…plus do I really want to spend $100 for the part?  I think not.  I have my eye on a bottle of Chanel Chance.
• One of the buttons on the thermostat control has broken off due to my continued adjusting of the temperature.  One minute Lulu is hot, one minute she is cold.  A sunroof could quite possibly remedy that situation.
• At one point, there was a leak causing water to flood my passenger-side floorboard when it rained.  I’m surprised that there’s not a hole rusted into the bottom of the car—similar to a sunroof but without the benefits.

See?  Minor issues, right?  I am currently 2K miles away from hitting the 200K mark.  That, y’all, is an accomplishment.  And now, I am contemplating the idea of putting the old girl out to pasture.  I turn 40 this year, and I have sworn that I will not go into my middle-ish-age years driving an old woman car.  Isn’t it about time for my mid-life crises to hit?  Shouldn’t I be driving this…

Sigh.  Actually, it will most likely be this…

At least it has hubcaps.

You see, I have been working at home for the past six months.  Count them, six torturous months.  The office building where I make a 72-mile round-trip trek to every weekday was heavily damaged during the Great Georgia Flood of 2009.  And to be honest, the damage wasn’t actually caused by the September flooding, but it sounds way more exciting than what actually happened.  We had a water pipe burst causing two inches of water to run amok and flow freely throughout the building.  Lives were not lost, people, but my soul has been deeply wounded.  I have turned into a depressed, hermitized, gluttonous, unhygienic, socially unacceptable, empty shell of a person.  Sad examples:

• On several occasions, I have spent two straight days in a row never changing out of my pajamas—much to GR’s chagrin.
• Some weeks, I never left the house.  God forbid, that would be cause for me to take a shower and apply makeup.  And to change out of pajamas.
• When I do actually get out, it’s generally to the bank drive-through or Wal-Mart.  Two places where it really doesn’t matter if you wear pajamas.  In fact, it’s fairly acceptable.
• The pantry has become my safe-haven of love and support.  Hence, the extra 6 or 7 pounds I have put on.
• I have fallen in love with Drew Carey.  And possibly Judge Judy.
• I spend time at my mailbox of hate waiting on the mail lady to stop by just so I can have someone to talk to.  Some days, I think that she skips my house on purpose.  I can’t understand why.
• I have actual conversations with GR.

Quite obviously, I am not a work-at-home kind of person.  Left to my own vices, I could easily turn into the 1-ton, recluse woman who has to be crane-lifted from her home.  It’s entirely possible, y’all.

I am also severely depressed about the state of my home office.  I have no “before” picture, but let me assure you, it does not look like this:

I cringe at the mere sight of it.  A home office that actually looks like it’s used as a home office.  I am appalled.

Alas, there is good news on the horizon.  On Monday, March 22, Lulu will be freed from this prison.  I will be returning here:

And I will be burning my pajamas.  Unfortunately, they don’t exactly pass the dress code.

Happy Halloween everyone!  With those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings, when friends come to call…it’s the hap- happiest season of all!  Hmm…perhaps I’m confused with Christmas.

Regardless, it’s a holiday, y’all.  Or a semi-holiday anyway.  Okay, it’s a pagan ritual that any God-fearing person should really not be celebrating lest they be doomed to hell and damnation.  I, for one, choose not to celebrate Halloween in the pagan sense, but more in the sense of celebrating the Kit-Kat bar.  The great love of my life.

I also choose to celebrate paranormal tales of spookery and ghostly hijinks…whether they are true or not.  And that is why I participated in a ghost walk tour in the small town in which my mother was raised.  Not that my mother has anything to do with it—it’s just that her hometown is apparently overrun by spectral spirits (come to think of it…that kind of explains some things).  The local community theatre was smart enough to see some money in all this supernatural nonsense, so they gathered some facts from the vast number of paranormal experts that visit the area, and they put together a theatrical, ghost-telling stroll through the town square.  Actually, it was quite entertaining!  And theatrical!  Oh people, it was theatrical.

Just to give you a sense of the intense theatrics involved, please watch a few seconds of this video promoting the tour.  I beg of you, for all things holy and non-Halloweenish.  Watch!  And listen!

Bless her heart.

So, here I am with Big H, Phoo, and a gaggle of other friends preparing to be spooked (thanks again Didi for organizing the big event!):

During the walk, we were able to go inside the old Gwinnett County jail that dates back to the early 1800s.  The iron bars are still intact on the windows and cells of the jail.  If you look closely behind the Xerox copy boxes in the following picture, you can see a patch where an imprisoned slave had tried chipping his way out.  I’m pretty certain that the Xerox copy boxes hampered his escape.

We circled and listened to tales about the Gwinnett County Courthouse in the town square, which is now home to the Gwinnett Historical Society.  There has been a courthouse on this square since 1872.

The courthouse was once flanked by two large oak trees, which were sadly used as hanging trees.  One tree was recently removed due to disease, but the other remains and has been proven by experts to have heavy paranormal activity surrounding it.  Looks pretty spooky to me…

We also visited The Singin’ Bean karaoke coffeehouse, which was a war veterans hospital in the late 1800s.  Apparently, three ghosts frequent this establishment.  One of the ghosts, Beau (on old army general), is associated with a tragedy that will befall upon you if you actually see him.  I tried not to look while I was taking the picture…

The tour lasted for approximately 90 minutes—the perfect amount of time, as it was getting colder by the second.  But, I actually learned a couple of new things about Lawrenceville that I had never known before.  My grandmother has owned a home in that small town since the early 1950s, and I thought that I had heard it all.  Apparently, I can tell her a few stories now.  And I will tell them in Madame Macabre’s voice.

Have fun trick-or-treating tonight!  As for me, I plan to turn out all the lights and lock myself in the basement with 4 taped hours of Survivor and a bag of Kit-Kat bars.  No evil spirits allowed.

Does it make a person crotchety if said person can’t even think of a single artist that she would like to see in concert, even if she had free tickets? (okay…maybe front row)

If so, call me old and crotchety.  I take that back—don’t call me crotchety.  Crotchety sounds sweaty and gross.  Call me old and surly.  Or cantankerous.  Or cranky.

Any way you put it, Lulu has turned into a Concert Nazi.  I can think of many other things that I would rather be doing than sitting a bazillion rows back in the rafters of an arena, all squinty-eyed and deaf, trying to enjoy the singing of a performer whom I paid upward of $100 to see, who is now the size of a migrant ant, and who sounds better on the radio anyway.  Eh-uh.  Not my idea of fun.

However, once upon a time when I was carefree and young-ish, those were not my feelings.  In fact, I have attended quite a few concerts in my time that I have thoroughly enjoyed.  And one in particular that I couldn’t tell you whether I enjoyed or not, but you might ask the lady that sat next to me who ended up with a Fat Tuesday’s Falcon Fever drink regurgitated all over her nice, if not slutty, concert-going outfit.  Forgive me, lady…I was all but 23.

Anyhow, as I was digging through my box of carefree and young-ish treasures the other night, I stumbled upon a couple of concert tickets that I have saved for reasons of which I’m not sure, other than the fact that they represent a couple of firsts—the first concert that I ever attended (at the tender age of 11), and the first concert that I attended sans parents (at the not so tender age of 16).

Now, for the embarrassing part.  Do you want to know the first concert that I attended?  Squint your eyes and look, y’all:

Don’t squint too hard, or you’ll end up looking like the guy below on the left.  The guy on the right is unable to squint for the love of God and all things holy.

Good ‘ol Kenny Rogers.  Not NKOTB, or the Jonas Bros, or the Spice Girls, or Hannah Montana, or any other random boy band or teen queen—they simply weren’t around in 1982.  Shaun Cassidy and Leif Garrett were has-beens at that point.  So, why not settle for an elderly man?  Every preteen girl’s fantasy.

After Kenny, there were many dry years of concert going.  Many.  I would not attend another concert until I was a junior in high school.  A concert for which I awoke at 5am and drove myself down to the local Turtles Records and Tapesto find a spot in line behind a kagillion people in order to buy a $17 ticket for this concert:

Good ‘ol Genesis.  The Invisible Touch tour.  Not Bon Jovi, or Def Leppard, or Poison—the bands that were cooler than Genesis at the time.  But oddly enough, I had a slight crush on the balding Phil Collins, and I could just barely see him when I stood in a chair on the floor of the Atlanta Omni, 46 rows back.

Soon after the Genesis concert, several of my friends and I worked briefly as volunteer ushers at the Omni.  Basically, all you had to do was show up an hour prior to any concert wearing a white shirt and black pants, carry a flashlight, ask for Barbara at the gate, and if you got there before all the volunteer slots were filled, you were in! 

As a volunteer, you got stuck in the rafters showing drunk people to their seats and getting high from pot smoke, but halfway through the concert, you were off duty and could sit in any open seat.  Or you could stand and scream.  But it didn’t matter, because I got to see

-Heart
-White Snake
-Jackyl
-Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
-Boston
-AeroSmith
-Wilson Phillips
-The Nelson Brothers (ha!)
-Richard Marx
-Sa-sa-samantha Fox (opening act for Marx, otherwise, I don’t think so)

And in addition to the handful of concerts that I ushered back in the day, I’ve actually plunked down money over the years to see

-Tom Petty
-Van Halen (3 times—with Hagar, thankfully)
-38 Special
-REO Speedwagon
-Bryan Adams
-The Rolling Stones
-Bon Jovi
-The Ramones
-ZZ Top
-Rick Springfield
-Kenny Chesney (2 times)
-Tim McGraw

I am totally a child of the 80s.  And just a teensy bit country.

So, what was your first concert?  And which concerts have you been to?

So, let me set up the fierce competition for you.

The Competitors

In one corner, we have Cascade Complete—weighing in at 4.68 lbs. and smelling like a fresh, floral bouquet.  Cascade has been ranked as the heavyweight champion for the second year in a row by an unnamed top consumer product guide.

In the other corner, we have Electrasol Advanced, also weighing in at 4.68 lbs. but smelling suspiciously like Pine-Sol.  Electrasol has been ranked as one of the top competitors of Cascade for several years running now.

The Tag-Teams

To begin with, I squirted (yes, squirted) mustard onto two dishes and let it dry outside in the blazing hot Georgia sun.  I wanted the mustard to be baked onto the plates, y’all!  I wanted it to be baked on like freaking glue!  I wanted the mustard to become one with the plate.  I wanted the competitors to really work for their money!  And I really wanted to take pictures of the tag-teams, but the thought of cleaning makes me dizzy, and I somehow failed to take pictures of both.  But I did take a picture of one…just to give you an idea of what we’re working with here:

Strategies

The heavyweight champion, Cascade, boasts that it

-cleans so well…no need to pre-wash!
-dissolves food!
-rinses clean!

The competition, Electrasol, claims to

-remove the toughest food stains from your dishes the first time!
-float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble!

Round 1: Electrasol is put to the test, throwing punches left and right and generally smelling up the place, but in the end is left looking a bit defeated in the face of the scorched-on mustard:

Round 2: Cascade comes out fast on its gel-like feet, wearing down the competition by using a combination of upper-squirts and fast hooks. And in the end, the baked mustard is dissolved into humiliation:

Decision

After careful consideration of both products, Lulu casts a unanimous vote—Cascade Complete is the reigning heavyweight champion of the dishwashing detergent WORLD!

So, enough with the silliness.  I really do think that Cascade did a better job of cleaning all of my dishes overall.  No spots or dried-on food to be found.  But to be fair, Electrasol did a decent job of cleaning as well…just not on the mustard stains.  And as far as Electrasol’s smell, well, someone should really think about doing some fragrance testing with that product.  But, seriously, what does Lulu really know about washing dishes anyway?

So, what’s your favorite dishwashing detergent?

It’s a mere two days into my new blogging routine and I’ve hit a complete writer’s block.  And as I said in my last post, not much has been happening in my life lately except for total morbidness, and I certainly refuse to write anything more about that.  So, I decided to check out my linky-love stats, and I found that Hottdog over at Sarcastic, Funny, and Brutally Honest had tagged me with a Crazy Eights meme a couple of weeks ago. 

And now, I will subject you to my list of eights.  No yawning, please.

Eight Things I Have a Passion For:

1.  Travel
2.  Suitcases and travel bags
3.  Cameras
4.  Writing
5.  Anderson Cooper
6.  Dogs
7.  Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme
8.  Planning and organizing

Eight Things I Would Like to do Before I Die:

1.  Pay off my house
2.  Drive something other than a Buick
3.  Meet Anderson Cooper (even though I would melt into a big puddle of blubbery goo)
4.  Work in the travel industry in some capacity
5.  See my son get married (although not anytime soon…please, not anytime soon)
6.  Travel to somewhere in India or Asia (T-Nut, please tell your hubby to start making those India plans!)
7.  See the Taj-Mahal
8.  Ride a camel in the desert

Eight Things I Say a Lot:

1.  Freak.
2.  GR, you’re driving me nuts.
3.  GR, do you have to be so loud?
4.  GR, you cannot wear that shirt with those shorts.
5.  GR, your fly is down.
6.  GR, you’re getting a beating when we get home.
7.  GR, isn’t it your bedtime?
8.  GR, please remember to <insert anything here>.
9.  GR, you’ve told me that five times already.
Oops, that was nine.  And the list is much longer, but we would be here all night.

Eight Books I Have Read Recently:

1.  Currently reading The Dream King: Ludwig II of Bavaria
2.  Eat, Pray, Love
3.  The Diary of Anne Frank
4.  Anne Frank Remembered
5.  Michelin’s Green Guide to Germany
6.  The Cuckoo’s Egg
7.  Nikon D40 Digital Field Guide
8.  Heidi

Eight Movies I Have Seen Eight Times:

1.  Titanic
2.  The Sound of Music
3.  Gone With the Wind
4.  Shrek
5.  Vegas Vacation
6.  Slingblade
7.  Pretty in Pink
8.  The Shawshank Redemption

And now I’m supposed to tag eight people.  But I’m thinking not.  I’m just crazy that way.

As for the crazy part, I’ve had no less than five funerals/visitations to attend to this past month—and while all of them have been truly sad, none were as heartbreaking as the sudden death of my cousin’s 24-year old boyfriend.  That’s just way too young to be checking out and leaving behind a young girlfriend who is just devastated…not to mention parents and a brother.

But, on a happier note, I am back and hoping to start writing blog posts a regular basis again.  I’m only taking one class this semester due to it being Summer, and I decided that working on my tan is of the utmost priority at this time lest I do turn into Morticia Adams.  Funeral homes and pale skin seem to go hand-in-hand, so I’m hoping to ward off any more visits by obtaining a healthy glow.  Of course, there is the chance that I will end up with skin cancer, therefore, defeating the point.  But I’ll worry about that tomorrow.

Anyhow, just wanted to check in to say a quick hello and that I’ll be making my normal rounds on the blog circuit again!

Auf Wiedersehen for now!  I’m in total Germany mode now…only 3 months to go!

Anyhow, this is going to be a short post because it’s 10:35pm, and my eyes are propped open with toothpicks at this point.  I just want to send out a quick “get well soon” to Phoo’s beast, Kaya, who is recovering from metal-plate-in-the-knee surgery (technically speaking) that cost as much as a very used Ford Escort.  Big H sent me this picture of Kaya earlier today, and I just couldn’t help but post it here…

Get well soon, Kaya!  I know that Big H is just counting the moments until you’re back to your old self again…

However, if by “the man” GR means “the one who maketh the plans,” then yes, I am “the planner” in our relationship.  GR is the hunter, gatherer, complainer, worrier, pest, and whatnot, and I am the planner of all things fun.  I live to plan.  That is my unofficial job in life.  You got something that needs to be planned?  Come to Lulu.  She will happily plan it for you.

And should there not be at least one control freak planner in every relationship?  Otherwise, god forbid, things would not get planned.  It makes me nervous to think about it.  So, in that vein, there has been a slight change in our Germany plans.  Basically, GR has changed his mind about going.  Let me repeat—GR has jumped ship.  I know!

First and foremost, GR is suddenly a nervous bundle of unnatural worry and anxiety about leaving the house and dogs for 10 whole days.  Gasp.  Remember a very, very long time ago when I told you it was a chore to get GR to cross the county line?  That’s count-y, not count-ry.  Well, I was not kidding, y’all.

But it’s not like I up and planned this trip all on my own without consulting GR.  I’m not that much of a control freak!  Yet somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew that this would happen.  Somehow, someway, I knew that GR’s anxiety would take over and he would conveniently forget that he had a small part in planning this trip (um, like agreeing to it), and then snap like a frozen fish stick accusing me of being “the man.”  Do you also remember a very, very long time ago when I told you that GR is wishy-washy?  Yep.  He most often snaps.  Like a frozen fish stick.

So, bad news as it may be, I forgive the man.  He can’t help that he has anxiety issues (take a pill already!) and thinks that he’s the woman in our relationship.  I totally love him for it.  Really, I do!  And because he loves me so much, he’s “allowing” me (I hate using that word, because it’s not exactly allowing…it’s more like giving his blessing?  Whatev.) to go on this trip without him.  But I won’t be going alone.  Oh no, people.  I’ve coerced a tall, dark Italian man my best friend from high school into going with me!!  Woo-hoo!  The Hofbräuhaus will never be the same now!  More on that later.

Okay, so I’m sure that you’re all thinking—hmm, GR is putting Lulu’s controlling, plan-happy ass on a plane to the other side of the world to get rid of her.  And maybe that’s a tiny part of it, but in all seriousness, he feels incredibly guilty that he’s not going with me on what we (I?) planned to be our 15-year anniversary trip.  Right, GR?  Lucky for him, I am not an incredibly sentimental gal.  And actually, our anniversary falls over Labor Day weekend when we’ll be at the beach in Destin, so we’ll be together then.

So never fear, people…all is well in the House of Lulu.  If you need me, you can find me over in the corner of my cave grunting and rubbing sticks together.  And making plans…

Y’all, Lulu’s body is failing her.  I can feel it in my 37-year old bones.  So, during my loooong blogging break, I decided to spend an ungodly number of hours in doctor’s offices taking care of many annual visits related to various parts of my anatomy—from my eyes all the way down to my toes.  And let me just say, being poked, prodded, and evaluated while wearing various medical accoutrements (i.e. paper gown, lead apron, protective goggles, etc.) is not my idea of a good time.  In fact, it pretty much sucks.

But, what sucks even worse is finding out that you have various issues or illnesses that may or may not be life threatening, or that may or may not be hereditary.  No, I’m not dying.  Well, not today anyway (unless, of course, I get hit by a Mack truck on my way home from the office).  But, I do have a couple of health issues that I need to take care of lest they turn life threatening.

I have a cavity—which I must have filled, or else my tooth will rot and fall out, in which case you can just call me The Toothless Wonder.  Unfortunately, filling a tooth involves a needle (Big H, do not read any further, lest you pass out) and many, many doses of Novocain, which generally doesn’t work for me, so I end up throwing up in my car on the way home due to the high level of toxic chemicals in my body.  It’s funny how my gums go numb after a couple of beers, but they refuse to cooperate with Novocain.

I have high cholesterol—which I must find a way to control, unless I choose to die of heart disease much like most of my dad’s family.  It’s obviously hereditary.  I mean, I’m not exactly obese, although I could stand to lose a good 10-15 pounds, and I do try to eat healthy.  I’m hoping that exercise and oatmeal and bottles of red, red wine is the key, but I’ll find out in 6 months when I go back for a recheck to determine whether or not I need to go on medication.  In the meantime, I’m scheduled for an echocardiogram so that the doctor can evaluate my freaking heart murmur.

I have a staph infection…in my nose.  Yes, I said in my NOSE, people.  And I’m not exactly sure how I contracted it, considering I don’t spend my leisure time in hospital corridors, on airplanes, or touching old people.  It’s kind of baffling to the doctor, but it’s there.  And you want to know how the doc found out it was there?  Take a look at this excruciating, painful, harrowing procedure:

Gently through the nostril, my ass!  Even the illustrated man looks like he’s in pain.

I went to the ENT to ask about my allergies, and walked away having an XXL Q-tip shoved into my sinus cavity, a CT scan, a deviated septum, and finding out that at some point in my life, I broke my nose.  Now, I’m taking Clindamycin HCL, which is a serious antibiotic that might cause me to develop an inflamed colon at some point in my life.  Nice.

So, there you have it, people.  Lulu is a poor, sickly soul.  If my weak, trembling fingers allow me to type tomorrow, I will tell you about my upcoming trip to Philadelphia.  And cholesterol be damned…I’m eating a Philly Cheese Steak!