All the World's A Stage

Alert the media everyone, because I am poised to make a comeback. You are now looking at (well, looking at the text of) the newest member of a community theatre production of Little Shop of Horrors. The part? Church Lady. Go ahead and Google search it, but you won't find anything. That's because it is a made-up ensemble part. And I couldn't be happier.

I was one of those theatre kids in high school who you probably threw dirty looks at because we were obnoxiously in-your-face and fancied ourselves hil-ar-ious. After a phase of treating everything like it was a performance, I calmed down, went to college, and busied myself with other things. I always missed theatre but it seemed like you couldn't be involved unless you were a "serious artist."

Around Christmas I happened to go on the web page for the local community theatre and saw they were holding auditions for Little Shop of Horrors. I put the idea in my back pocket for a while, and by the time I decided to casually check the site again I was startled to find auditions were taking place that evening. An internal debate ensued culminating in me making the decision to just go for it and scrambling to find and practice 30 seconds of a song to sing for the audition. I belted a few ballads in my car on the way home from work, eliciting a few double takes from passing drivers. A quick hello and kiss for Mark and I was off to the theatre.

I had no idea what to expect, but was still taken aback by the turnout for auditions. Thirty or so people were crammed into the lobby filling out info sheets and sizing each other up. I grabbed a paper and nestled into an empty space on a bench sandwiched between two people who were about 15 years older than me. The woman to my right looked reasonably normal, but it was when I took a look at the Guy to my left that my nervousness ebbed away for a second while I choked back a snicker.

Here, at a small community theatre in a small college town, Guy had come to the audition dressed up to look exactly like the main part. He had the nerdy outfit of the lead character down to a tee, sporting thick rimmed glasses, a sweater vest and bowtie. I caught a snippet of  the conversation he was having about recently moving to Georgia from Chicago where he was trying to make it as an actor. I didn't catch how exactly he went from Chicago to small-time Georgia, but I could only deduce that he held his talents in a little higher esteem than they actually deserved.

I turned my focus to filling out my own form, relieved to see this wasn't going to be a super serious audition when two of the questions were "What is your street name?" and "Draw a picture on the back of this paper of a unicorn doing something unlikely." Just as I was finishing my drawing of a unicorn sitting at a computer and complaining that someone defriended him on Facebook (brilliant, I know), Guy tapped me on the shoulder.

"Do you think I should staple or paper clip my resume to the form?" he asked, holding a copy of an actor resume and two full-page headshots. I looked at him blankly.

"Uh....." I managed to get out.

"I think I'll see if they have a stapler," Guy said, completely unfazed. As he got up I shot a confused look to the woman on the other side of me, who just shrugged a little.

The director came out and explained that we would all wait in the lobby and go in the theatre one by one to sing our song snippet. The first audition started, and we realized that we could hear the audition from the lobby. We all lapsed into a nervous silence. All of us except Guy. Oh, no. He's a thespian. He stood up and started making a production out of stretching and shaking it out while we all watched him out of the corner of our eyes. When they called his name I curiously listened to see what kind of chops this ridiculous human being actually had.

The sound that filled the lobby next was something of a cross between a 13-year-old boy going through a particularly rough patch of puberty and a goat being castrated. I winced as Guy kept trying to hit higher and higher notes, voice painfully breaking which he seemed to think he could fix by just singing at a louder volume. After what felt like a million tortured years, it was over and Guy made his way out of the theatre to sit back next to me.

"I am glad we did those vocals warm-ups," he said a little breathlessly. "I think it went better than usual."

I mean, really. This is just not even the kind of shit you can make up.

By the time I was done with my audition Guy had whipped out a Macbook from the large man bag he'd brought with him and was silently mouthing words to a script he had pulled up on the computer. Complete with hand motions and everything, he sat their pantomiming while I waited for the rest of the auditioners to have their turn. Guy suddenly turned to me.

"What kind of acting experience do you have?"

"Oh," I said, caught off-guard. "Nothing major, just a few things in high school. But that was a long time ago."



"What is your job?" I asked politely.

"Well, I'm working as a janitor."

And that was the end of that conversation. But it must have sparked some fond memories of the Shakespeare production he was in because the last time I looked over before the director came back out Guy was grinning ear to ear watching a computer slide show of himself onstage.

They didn't call my number to stay for the next phase of auditions, so I didn't feel too encouraged about my chances. To my surprise, the cast list arrived in my e-mail inbox the next morning and my name was on it. I made the rounds of calls to my family, telling my sister that I met someone that will be a lot of her musical theatre major peers in 20 years. Just to be on the safe side, I waited until we had our first read-through last week to be absolutely sure something had gone terribly wrong in the order of the universe and Guy was going to be my fellow castmate. As soon as I could breathe a sigh of relief at his absence I knew it was totally blog-worthy.

So now I am resuscitating my career as an actress extraordinaire, though Mark doesn't seem to fully appreciate that he is now living in the midst of celebrity. I just can't work in these conditions. No one understands my genius.

Except maybe Grover. He's just the gift that keeps on giving.

Hair Today, Gone Tommorow

On the whole, I have had an extremely lame couple of weeks. My routine has consisted of work, home, sleep, work, home, sleep, etc. I made the determination a long time ago that I was not going to be one of those people that word-vomits a stream of consciousness onto their facebook/blog/twitter, documenting every little thing I eat or mundane thought I have. Therefore, I have not blogged.

But something horrifying happened last week. The catalyst to shake up my monotonous routine was making a truly sobering, tragic discovery: not one, but two WHITE hairs growing on my poor, unsuspecting head. At the same time. Like two little white hair friends set out to be a bad influence on the brown hairs and turn them against me too. Not to mention this was coming on the heels of having already discovered one a few weeks ago and yanking that sucker out before it stood a chance. For those of you counting at home, that is a grand total of three white hairs growing on my otherwise brunette, 22-year-old scalp.

You may be thinking this is an overreaction and a few white hairs is nothing to justify these dramatics. I might agree with you if my dad hadn't gone prematurely white in his thirties, thus setting me up for a little smack in the face by genetics. I had always thought I would be the kind of person to age gracefully, but not starting this young. This young I plan on being dragged kicking and screaming if my body continues to not act its age. The saddest part of it all was that I pulled out several perfectly nice brown hairs trying to get at those white bastards. If they insist on trying to come back around, I can promise I will be even less forgiving.

Feeling prematurely old is bad enough, but then something happened to make me feel dumb. And feeling dumb is bad enough when you are fully loaded with brown hairs. Feeling dumb with white hairs is just demoralizing. I've been casually applying to jobs in Athens because filling up my tank three times a week due to commuting and additional travel is just not ideal. I saw there were openings for a few jobs at JcPenney, which is definitely not my department store of choice but I figured I could fake it. I go in with my resume in hand before realizing that of course you don't actually meet with a person so they can evaluate your people skills. That would make too much sense. You sit at a kiosk and fill out an application on a computer. A computer is way better qualified to gage how you might do at a customer service position.

So I filled out the basics about who I am and where I've worked, and proceeded to the 50-question survey portion of the application. This basically consisted of personality assessment-type questions: "How would you best describe your character? A) Honest, B) Hardworking, C) Determined, or D) Loyal?" Mixed in with these questions were ones that anyone could plainly see what the correct answer was: "If you were to catch a co-worker stealing from the company, how would you react? A) Report them immediately, B) Warn them that if you caught them again you would tell the supervisor, C) Not say anything, or D) Join in with them?" Oh yes, I am absolutely going to divulge that I would be totally on board to become a criminal, Caribbean Joe Fuddy Duddy Shirt-Stealing dream team with my delinquent coworker.

The final portion of the questionnaire was a series of two opposite descriptions from which you had to determine how much either of them fit your personality. Example: On one end you had "I openly express my feelings" while on the other you had "I never show how I am feeling," with the "strongly agree" option for both, "somewhat agree," and "neutral." I tried to tailor my answers to make me sound like a superstar potential employee- agreeable enough to work on a team but strong enough to work independently, confident enough to say I am right but humble enough to know when I am wrong, ambitious enough to have goals but wise enough to know my place on the totem pole. I thought I was a shoe-in....

Until I got to the end of the 50th question and hit the submit button. A window popped up on my screen, which I cheerfully read thinking it was further instructions or just letting me know someone would be in touch. But as I read further, it went a little something like this:

"Based on your answers and application, you have been determined to be unqualified for the position(s) you applied for. You may reapply to JcPenney in 180 days. Really, you are better off trying to find something else, because JcPenney kinda sucks anyway. I mean, if you look at our junior section it is reminiscent of what your grandmother thinks the kids are wearing these days but in actuality is completely devoid of anything attractive. And we really don't even have good deals. So you are better off going to Macy's or Belk. Hell, even Sears seems to know what the trends are and they sell dishwashers! Overall as a company, we just fail."

Okay, maybe that last portion may be slightly exaggerated in my memory. But the part where they essentially told me I am unqualified to fold shirts is ingrained forever. I sat there stunned for a moment then got up with my head held high and sauntered out of there. As soon as I was in my car, I gave Mark a ring.

"Those mother effers at JcPenney told me I am not good enough to work there!" I spat as soon as Mark picked up. "I have a college degree in public relations! PUBLIC RELATIONS! That means that the University of Georgia deemed me fit to RELATE with the PUBLIC. But nooooooooooo, apparently that is not good enough for JcPenney. There are people that get jobs there that don't even have a HIGH SCHOOL diploma. What the HELL? I am never shopping there again!"

"Whoa," was Mark's reply. "That sucks. Whatever, screw 'em. You don't need them."

"Damn straight," I said, bitterness ebbing away. "You can still shop there, though. I know you usually find stuff there that you like."

"Cool. Thanks."

I then got an earful of mockery from my parents, which was fine because it had evolved from humiliating to hilarious. I know that there are plenty of jobs out there I am qualified for that are a lot more stimulating than cleaning out dressing rooms. But my boycott of JcPenney still stands. Never again. Long live Macy's!

Snow Country for Cold Men

As I trudged through the snow and ice with Mark in Chicago on December 26th trying to find the train stop at the close of our Christmas adventures, I thought to myself, "Everything from my toes to my teeth to my hair follicles is freezing right now. I can't feel my face. I shall never complain about Georgian forty-degree winters again."

Even as our plane touched down to snow flurries in Atlanta, I reckoned "Ah, well, I guess I missed our yearly winter snowfall."

Oh, how wrong I was.

When you live in Georgia you learn to become immune to the ominous reports the weather channel doles out when they think there is a chance of snow. If I had a dollar for every day the Board of Education pre-emptively canceled school in a frenzy because of the foreshadowed blizzard only to wake up to a perfectly un-precipitated day, I would have, like, twenty bucks. (Okay, maybe that is not a dramatic enough example...but you get it. And twenty bucks is nothing to sneeze at. It buys you almost two whole movie tickets as long as you don't want to see it in 3-D.)

So when I kept hearing rumblings of snowfall last weekend, I didn't really start getting my hopes up until mid-Sunday. The weather channels seemed sure of it, and I was texting my fellow co-workers throughout the day about what the implications would be for the following work day. As the predicted 7:00 p.m. beginning of the snow came and passed without so much as a flurry, I started to become grumpy.

"I'll bet nothing is going to happen and I got all excited for no reason," I pouted grouchily to Mark.

And then around 8:30 the skies opened up and I have never seen so much snowfall in all my life. We were fascinated, the cats were fascinated- we just sat there in awe watching the world turn white in record time.

"Well, shit," Mark said as we gaped at the window. "We probably should have picked up some more stuff at Wal-Mart."

"Yeah, and maybe not have called everyone we saw there who were stocking up on supplies dumb and panicky..." I said sheepishly.

When we went to bed the snow was still coming down steadily, and we woke up to what we later learned was just shy of nine inches of snow. Mid-afternoon we bundled up and ventured out to one of the main roads close to where we live to see if we could find any sort of life form. God Bless America, because while there was not a car in sight, the Waffle House on the corner was open and ready for business. It was comforting to know that even in a snowstorm, the sign on their door held true: "We've got you covered. Scattered, smothered, and covered."

The notion of being snowed in sounds wonderful and romantic, sipping hot cocoa by a crackling fire and reading stories and poetry to one another by candlelight as you gaze into each other's eyes. In actuality, the closest we had to cocoa was Diet Coca-Cola, a crackling fire doesn't really work out in a second-story apartment with no fireplace, and we never lost power so the reading by candlelight turned into playing hours on end of Donkey Kong Country on the Wii. Sensual. And when I tried to gaze into Mark's eyes, he just said, "What is wrong with you? You're creeping me out."

The other problem you encounter when Georgia gets subjected to abnormal winter weather elements is that the lovely, powdery snow quickly gets buried under a layer of ice that stabs your ankles as you sink through eight inches of it and then when you complain about it a certain husband of yours says, "Well, maybe you should have rethought the outfit." Which he was probably right, because my winter weather ensemble consisted of sneakers, black leggings and shorts (a look I would NEVER sport in any other circumstances), striped knee socks, several layers of mismatched shirts and coats, a further mismatched scarf, and an even further mismatched head-warmer. I looked like a walking episode of What Not To Wear: I Live In The South and Don't Have A Clue How To Dress Myself For The Snow Or Really At All For That Matter Edition.

As the next few days progressed, alternating between slightly above freezing temperatures that slowly melted the snow and temperatures in the 'teens that just re-froze it into a precarious sheet of ice over everything, navigating anything on foot or in a car became damn near impossible. It is a wonder I did not break my ass bone.

Ultimately, the better part of last week saw me spending the majority of it as my alias Diddy Kong and Mark and I dipping into the Island of Misfit Foods as we began resorting to eating things that had been hanging out the pantry for quite some time. I was pretty excited to finally get out of the house and back to work on Thursday.

And then I quickly realized, what was I thinking? Work sucks! Why didn't I appreciate the time off when I had it? Man, I really need a break...

Two Thousanleven.

A week into 2011 and I am still working off my holiday hangover. No, this doesn't mean that I went on some kind of crazy drinking bender from Halloween through New Year's. If I had, I would probably be dead and you would have gotten some far more exciting blog posts (from when I was drunk, not some kind of creepy, post-death blog haunts). 

This hangover is the kind where I become bitter towards how holidays fall on the calender. How is it fair that we get three magical months containing Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas before crashing down onto the cold and depressing months of January, February, and March? Yes, each of these months has a holiday. A LAME holiday. Let's review:

New Year's. A whole lot of build-up with a minimal yield of excitement. You spend the whole night drinking and watching a ball on T.V. Then you finally get to do a countdown for the clock to turn midnight and...nothing really changes. Happy New Year! Now you get to date all of your papers and checks wrong for the next month and try to figure out if you are going to go with "Twenty Eleven" or "Two Thousand Eleven" and how to say the latter without it coming out as "Two Thousanleven." So many syllables. I think I'll just pick a time each day to get wigged out about when it finally hits. "Three! Two! One! Woo! It's 2:34 p.m.!" I don't see people getting annoyed by that at all.

Valentine's Day. It's only made for people who have a significant other and even then there is no guarantee you will get a good Valentine's day. (Though if other people's men are like mine and got them a wireless router for Christmas, they will be needing to do some Valentine's Day damage control. And Mark, I know that you will end up reading this. I love you and your gift to me on our first married Christmas of faster internet was, ah, beautiful and romantic. Just know that chocolate, jewelry, stuffed animals, and spa treatments are too. 'Nuff said.) Frankly, I can't fully enjoy a holiday I feel apologetic for knowing that there is such a strong movement against it. It's more like I Am Sorry I Am Not Single And Get To Enjoy This Holiday Day. And you certainly don't want to be that jerk that gushes on and on about how in love you are and your Valentine's Day was just perfect to a single or recently broken-up with friend who will just sit there and have one of those daydreams where they picture themselves strangling you like in the movies. It's a very precarious holiday. Very much indeed.

St. Patrick's Day. I don't get this holiday. You wear green and get drunk. I can do this any of the other 364 days of the year. And you run the risk of forgetting to wear greenand people continually pinching the bajeezus out of you all day. How is this even fun? Plus, we just stole it from the Irish and bastardized it like so many other holidays we celebrate here. Talk to me again when there are real leprechauns who take you across real rainbows to real pots of gold. Now that's a holiday.

I guess I should be appreciative that we have any holidays at all these months and take what I can get. It's not like May, June, or August have much going for them either. (Except August has my birthday, but that's become somewhat of a lame holiday as well.) But at least they are warm. Now I am just stuck inside watching T.V. But at least Grover likes T.V. too.

Beth on a Stick

Alright, enough of this holiday hiatus. I have officially survived, relatively unscathed and only minimally frostbitten. Let me tell you though, Chicago and South Bend are cold. And at a high of 25 degrees, I heard from multiple northerners that it was "surprisingly warm."

...WTF? Note to self: never live north of the Mason-Dixon line.

All in all, I had two wonderful Christmases- a faux one and a real one. My family and I designated December 18th "Faux Christmas," with Santa obliging to make a visit early and us going through the usual Christmas morning routine. We woke up and Dad filmed me and Kate like he does every year when we come out to see what bounty Santa hath brought forth that year. (Our geek-out factor has only diminished slightly as the years have gone by- we still run out and squeal "Santa came! Santa came!" I don't know if I should be proud or disturbed by this.) Then we open gifts and go through stockings, which now always include scratch-off lottery tickets but absolutely does not mean we are hillbillies with a gambling problem. We just support education. I also am going to be a scratch-off katrillionaire.

We then flew out for the real Christmas with Mark's family, and by comparison to my usual Christmas celebrations it was fairly tame. The highlights included going ice skating (my butt and the ice got to be besties), going to Christmas Eve Catholic mass (I grew up Methodist. Catholicism vs. Methodism = similar cast, two totally different productions.), and several huge family dinner parties (I am such a charmer. They like me! They really like me!).

The sadness of being apart from my family really only hit me when we returned home the day after Christmas. Having to get back to work while they were just starting our normal trip sucked to say the least. However, to keep my spirits up, they created what we lovingly deemed Beth on a Stick. They basically took my pictures and taped it to one of the handheld fans we used as programs from the wedding. Kate periodically sent me text picture messages of all the fun things I was doing via Beth on a Stick. So rather than trying to describe it, I have decided to present some of the highlights. Enjoy.

Beth on a Stick : What I Did(ish) This Christmas

A Photo Essay.

...with lots of subtitles and punctuation in the title like real artists do!

On the car ride, gearing up
for the big trip.

Spending a little quality time with my cousins

Wouldn't be complete without
playing some cards

Ready to open some gifts!

My grandpa was highly amused
by my gift of a bathroom aid called
"Trap a Crap"

Got to add the last piece to
the jigsaw puzzle

Getting some wisdom from Grandpa

In Kentucky now with my
favorite rolls in the world

And the Beth was hung by the
stocking with care. Merry Christmas
to all, and to all a good night.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Our first Christmas season as a married couple has so far been a little on the anti-climactic side. Not to say it hasn't been nice, because it has. I don't know exactly what I was expecting- picking out a Christmas tree in a romantic montage with a great backing soundtrack, decorating it with the help of birds and our other little forest friends while singing a perfectly executed duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside," playful snowball fights that induce passersby to throw up in their mouth just a little by our nauseating couple-y cuteness. Well, other than it being the south and not having gotten much colder than 50 degrees outside, I thought they were fairly attainable dreams. Ha.

So far it has been mainly the heartbreaking realization that while the people around me (including Mark) are winding down with finals and looking forward to the prospect of a whole month's break, the real world isn't split into semesters and if I want to have any kind of Christmas vacation I get to take unpaid time off. Woo.

We did have a nice time going to pick out a tree. I am ashamed to say that we did something that I have frowned upon and judged others for doing as far back as I can remember: we got our tree before Thanksgiving. We justified it by saying that since we were going on our trip to see Mark's family the week before Christmas, we wanted to have as much time with it as possible to get maximum bang for the buck. I hardly think I am on the same level as department stores and places like Hobby Lobby, who were fully stocked and pushing Christmas merchandise as I was running around getting last minute wedding things in July. I mean really, that is just blasphemous. But whatever way you look at it, we committed a serious holiday grievance and I can only hope that the Christmas gods will be understanding and one day forgive me.

The only snafu we hit was during the decorating process. We each had a few ornaments from our trees back home, and grabbed some gold ball ornaments from the dollar store (we keeps it real) to fill the rest of the space. We got the tree home and lit while Mark serenaded me, singing "Christmas balls! Christmas balls! I've got great big Christmas balls! Wrap them up like Santa Claus, I've got Christmas balls!"

Lovely.

I took a break and went back to our room to return a call from my granny that I was unable to answer as we were making about the 16th attempt at getting the tree straight in the stand. She and I got talking for a bit, and when I walked back out into the living room I came to a halt as I stood before a fully-balled tree.

"You..." I said breathlessly. "You decorated without me?"

"Just the ball ornaments!" Mark said cheerily before taking in the look on my face. "I got finished with the dishes, so I went ahead and did the boring ornaments too... are you okay?"

"Yeah," I said gruffly. "I'll be right back."

I then went into the bathroom and started bawling. My husband, God bless him, can be completely oblivious sometimes. My family is all about sentiment and tradition, to the point where we are some of the biggest cheeseballs you will ever meet. Mark completely didn't realize how badly he hurt my feelings by decorating our first Christmas tree without me.

Fast forward to a few hours and nasty little fight later during which I fully brought the dramatics, making a case about how this instance was just one in a series of instances that were indicative of a larger problem with the way Mark does things (blame me having a lawyer as a dad- always trying to make my case beyond a reasonable doubt). It was not one of the prouder moments of our fledgling marriage. Finally, exhausted, we chalked it up to having always done the holidays completely differently in each of our families. Neither of them were bad or wrong. They were just different. We each just needed to be more understanding of that and patient with the other one while we adjust.

When all was said and done, the tree is rocking and our apartment is all decked out and fab. Mark even surprised me yesterday by putting up a bunch of blue icicle lights in our room. It is not quite at the point where my family's house in Canton is, which looks like Christmas itself came in and vomited joy and magic all over the place. (Mom is on Christmas crack. No joke. Another rare but addicting drug- decorating your entire house with Santas, snowmen, pictures, lights- anything cheerful you can get your hands on. An intervention has been staged.) But it is hopefully the start of our own little tradition, which is still going to be great.

And we also dressed Grover up like Santa. I sat him on my lap and told him that my one wish was for him to stop waking me up every morning at 7:00 by pawing at my face.

Texting and Blogging with Molly

Well, Mark and I successfully made it through our first big holiday of married life, handling it very diplomatically by spending two nights and each of our parents' houses. And my family actually made (most of) the Thanksgiving meal, which anyone who knows the Johnsons knows that is truly a sight to behold. For some reason, the cooking gene skipped my mom and ever since I can remember, she has simply not been interested in being one of those dash-of-this-dash-of-that, Food Network-watching, new recipe-trying kind of people. We have probably been to every restaurant within a 25-mile radius of our house. Whenever there's a new pizzeria opens, we'll be there. Whenever there's a new Chinese joint, we'll be there. Whenever there's a grand opening of a sandwich cafe- well you get the idea.

So this was a far cry from our normal routine of escaping down to Gulf Shores Beach, Alabama in order to avoid having to cook. Our desperation to dodge home-cooked meal-making transcends state borders. It is truly sad. But really, who can pass up the opportunity to have Mahi Mahi and turkey in the same meal? Nonetheless, it turned out pretty well, and I contributed macaroni and cheese that I made from scratch right down to the cheese sauce. I kicked Kraft's ass and I kicked it hard. I twisted Cheesasaurus' little mascot arm until he cried uncle. It was fantastic.

Another thing I love about being home is getting be around a dog. My cats, though slightly annoying at times as we all know, are my darlings. But my dog growing up was one of my BFFs, and when she died in February it devastated our whole family. Right after our wedding, my parents and Kate got a new dog named Molly. She is a stocky flat-coated retriever mix, which basically means she looks like a Golden Retriever that got dipped into black ink. She is extremely sweet and definitely has her quirks, one of which being the fact that she settles for no less than two walks per day. While our old dog became a nervous wreck at the mere sight of a leash, you mention something about a walk and Molly goes nuts, leaping in the air with such a great vertical that Shaq would even be jealous.

And then there is her other major quirk: she only goes to the bathroom while on her walks. She never wants to be let out to go in the yard, and if you try to go out with her she just sits and stares at you until you give up and take her inside. While out on her walks, she also feels the need to stop and sniff everything, peeing in about a dozen spots along the way. Molly also uses this time to have a little, uh, "extended personal time," if you know what I mean. So Mom and Dad load down with a plastic bag and butt inspection gloves every time they walk her, and often make fun of each other about who had the misfortune of having to take care of Molly's little souvenirs.

The first night I was home for Thanksgiving, Mom came home with Molly from their evening. When Dad asked how things went, she said, "Well, Molly did some texting and some blogging tonight."

Kate and I looked at each other, confused.

"What do you mean she 'texted and blogged'?" I asked.

"Well, we decided that when she pees in all those places during her walk, it is like her equivalent to texting with other dogs," mom said merrily.

"And blogging is just what we say when she poops," Dad said frankly.

"Let me see if I get this straight," I said slowly, completely affronted. "You are using the term blogging to refer to dog feces? Which would therefore mean you are equivocating my blog to poo?"

"Hmm, I didn't think of it that way," Dad replied with a smirk.

"It's not funny!" I retorted, trying to look pains and not crack a smile, because let's face it. It was kind of funny. "What. The. HELL?"

So now I have to come up with a completely new name for this because I inevitably keep thinking about poop every time someone asks me about my blog. I mean, how hard can it be to change the name of a long-standing and well-respected form of internet communication? Oh, who am I kidding? Thank you, Mom and Dad, for your twisted sense of humor. I hope Molly wrote you a nice big blog tonight. ;)