Drawings of cats doing stuff

I don't have a real post today, because I'm deeply uncreative and am not motivated to actually write any of the posts floating around in my head. And I'm also working on an important post that's pretty involved and will take a while to finish. And I'm lazy, and traffic was terrible this morning, and I haven't had coffee yet, and my pants are too tight, and most of these excuses are false but too bad, you don't control me.

Instead, here are some drawings of cats doing stuff. Apologies to those who have seen some of these before ... I wasn't about to draw ALL new ones when the ones I had were lookin' so fine! Remember the part about me being lazy and my pants being too tight? Yeah.

Cat poopin' in your favorite mug:

"Oh shit oh shit oh shit" Cat:

"I ordered tuna, not SALAD" Cat:

Mean April Fool's Prank Cat:

 "Who the f*** ordered Space Jam so many times? This cable bill is outrageous!" Cat:

Cat who shouldn't have followed his idiot owner out with the pogo sticks:

PowerPoint Cat:

Pharrell Cat getting some excellent fashion advice:

Flock of PowerPoint Cats:

"Don't Tell My Wife I'm Smoking Again" Cat:

Stack of PowerPoint Cats:

Different PowerPoint Cat being ridden by a tiny horse:

There you go. Now you're ready to face the day.



Hey there! For more thrilling blog action, follow me on Facebook and Twitter!

In which I start taking yoga classes.

Despite whatever Gwyneth Paltrow has to say on the subject, the fact is that it's hard to get regular exercise with a baby, and it's especially hard to get "me-time". If I'm home and Audrey's taking a nap or something, I'm not gonna use that downtime to run on the treadmill, I can tell you that. There are too many [millions of] other things to be done. 

So, on a recommendation from some of my Internet friends, I decided to give yoga a try. If you're having trouble picturing my angry, hate-swearing and occasionally violent ass participating in a yoga class, you're not alone. I felt the same way about it at first.

But, after taking a four-week intro class, followed by three hot yoga classes at another studio, I think I am ready to make some sweeping generalizations about yoga as a practice.

1

It really works at calming you

How do I know? Simple:

On the fourth week of my intro to yoga class, a spider fell onto my mat. It was a small spider, but given the angle at which he dropped onto my mat, it's entirely possible that he fell not from the ceiling, but from the top of my head. 

Ordinarily, when faced with the prospect that a spider may have fallen onto my head and then onto the ground right in front of me, I probably would have freaked out just a little bit.

But instead, I was totally calm. I looked at the spider and thought, "I probably should not crush this spider right here in the middle of yoga class. I bet that would go over badly -- killing one of God's creatures or whatever." So instead I decided to flick him off my mat and let him continue on with his life somewhere farther away from me.

I flicked him as gently as I could, but it was still apparently hard enough to separate three of his legs from his body. He crawled around in a circle in the middle of the room before eventually succumbing to his wounds, and I continued to do yoga on the mat next to the three spider legs he had abandoned. At no point did my heart rate rise at all.

Also, yesterday at hot yoga I knocked over my open 1L water bottle, and instead of screaming "F***" as loud as possible, I just quickly threw my towel and shirt over the spreading puddle of water and cleaned it up before most people even had a chance to notice and judge me.

Namaste, motherf***ers.

2

It is possible to be ridiculously flexible in some random body parts and embarrassingly inflexible in others

Yoga involves a lot of flexibility, especially in body parts that you don't really think much about being flexible or inflexible. I was a ballerina for a very long time in my youth, and so my body still holds on to some of that flexibility. My hamstrings? Awesome; I can put my face on my shins and kind of do the splits and all that happy horsepoo. Everyone in the class was all "dammmmmmnnnnnn" because they were jealous of my awesomeness.*

*nobody has ever been jealous of me except in my own head

My sides? NOPE. Put my arms over my head and lean one way or the other in the correct form and I could barely get past vertical. Same with leaning back. Everyone retracted their previous "dammmmmmmnnnnn."

I could only do one of these. The other two made me look like your Grandpa Joe trying to do the monkey bars.

Also, it turns out my arms aren't flexible at all? I always thought doing the splits up a wall was the ultimate sign of flexibility ... but then I saw people looking like this ...

... and I realized I'm wound up tighter than a piano string. The good news is that my quads, calves and hip flexors are really flexible, though, so ... yeah. That's pretty impressive too.

Whatever bitch, anyone can do that. Let's see you stretch those CALVES out though. I bet I could beat you.

3

Men who are super good at yoga are weird

Prepare for some sexism, kiddos.

Men should absolutely participate in yoga. It is beneficial for both genders.

But when I see a guy who is super duper good at yoga -- like, REALLY good -- I find that really weird and off-putting. Why are you so good at yoga? How are you so flexible? What's your story, weird guy?

There was a guy in hot yoga this weekend who was doing all the most advanced poses and doing the splits all over the place. You know those side bend stretches? He could bend his body over until his torso formed a 90 degree angle with his legs, like the girl in the picture above but with his feet together (which makes it harder). 

Naturally, I assumed he was probably a serial killer. I don't trust men who can do the splits.

How many has he killed? HOW MANY??!?!?

4

There will ALWAYS be people who try to look cute

Hot yoga is not a good place to try to pick up members of the opposite sex. It's just not.

It is 105 degrees in that room, and you are working hard pretty much the entire time. The first time I went, I did not wear a headband, and I regretted it as I frantically tried to wipe sweat from my eyes before it blinded me. The second time, I learned my lesson and wore a super awesome 80's style sweatband on my head.

I also learned that it's better to wear pants that come to at least the knee, even though IT IS 105 DEGREES IN THERE, because sometimes you need to pull on your leg and it's awfully hard to get a grip with a sweaty hand against a sweaty leg. So, short-shorts are impractical.

By the end of class, you will have sweat through every article of clothing you are wearing. Many people take their shirts off (I did too), but then you will have rivers of sweat running down your body and pooling in your belly button. If you did any drinking the night before, everyone will know it. If you had any makeup on, it will be all over your face like a clown by the time class ends. You will not smell fresh, no matter how much deodorant you put on. (well, maybe if you put deodorant on every square inch of flesh? But that would be insane)

AND YET ... there were still people there who were obviously trying to look good. 

There was a guy who had clearly done his hair. You know, with hair product.

Your sweat is going to make that Axe hair gel run into your eyeballs.

There was a girl in the smallest little shorts I've ever seen, with eye makeup on.

"Ready to get my sweat on!"

There was a girl who started out class with her hair down. It makes me shudder to even think about it. Long-haired women know what I'm talking about ... your hair is down and it's touching your skin directly. Your body starts to sweat ... a lot. Your hair soaks up the sweat like a sponge. The moisture continues to climb up your hair, and it gets heavy, stringy, and limp. It gets completely stuck to you, and every time you move, the hair has to drag along through your sweat to move with your head.

Pictured: one of those most unpleasant and uncomfortable things I can even imagine. My neck is twitching just looking at this picture, imagining sweaty gobs of hair glued to it.

Why the f*** didn't this chick put her hair in a bun. Oh god.

I forgot what I was even talking about. What does a panic attack feel like? I might be having one.

Namaste, NAMASTE! 

NAMASTEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!

Hey you -- we all know you're faking. Knock it off.

You know what really grinds my gears? People pretending to be a certain way whenever people are looking, even though in private they're much, much different (and worse).

Here are a few things that people like to showboat about that aren't fooling a soul. If you do these things, kindly stop it. You're just making yourself look ridiculous.

1

Pretending your relationship is stellar to hide the fact that it is garbage

Oh, we all know these people ... 

These people have phones that they could use to text each other or even call each other. They live together, so they could communicate face to face like normal humans. They could even send each other private Facebook messages to talk about how many smooches they are sending each other in the shower. So why, pray tell, would they choose to make this irritating interaction public?

My guess? Because Alison banged the entire San Antonio Spurs basketball team, while Jake has impregnated three other women so far this year alone, but they're too embarrassed to break up before Alison's younger sister's wedding (because Alison gave her sister quite a lecture about monogamy before being seduced by the Spurs), so they're pretending their relationship isn't faker than Alison's boobs (the Spurs didn't mind) by acting as lovey-dovey as possible in public.

Look at her, bangin' em all right out there on the court with everyone's clothes on and she cloned herself somehow and this is very poorly executed.

Not bad, Jake. Not bad.

What's really weird is that the people who do this seem to genuinely believe that they're getting away with it. They really think there are people out there who see this exchange and think "wow, I have never chatted via Facebook comment with my husband while he showered. I guess I don't love him as much as Jake and Alison love each other :-("

But that doesn't happen. Everyone who sees this just thinks "I give them a month, tops."

2

Pretending to discipline your child in public when we all know the inmates are running the asylum at home

Kids of a certain age are just shitheads, and there's nothing that can really be done about it. If a kid between the ages of, say, 1.5-6 years old is out in public, chances are that kid is going to shithead it up at least once. It's just their nature.

However, it is very easy to tell the difference between a misbehaving kid who is regularly disciplined at home and a misbehaving kid whose only 'punishment' at home is making his mother cry for seven hours every day.

Yeah, I don't think three-year-olds are at the age where guilt works on them yet. Wait til he's 40 and this strategy will be SOLID GOLD.

A friend of mine has a very, shall we say, "spirited" young boy. He has ADHD, which she is trying her best to control with the absolute minimum amount of prescription drugs. When that kid acts up, you don't even have a chance to blink before she's got him standing with his nose against the wall counting to 100 or doing wall sits while explaining why what he did was wrong. This is clearly a child who hears the crack of the whip on the regular. And I respect the hell out of his mom for being the Mighty Master of Discipline. 

And then there are the people who are not Mighty Masters of Discipline. We've all seen them -- a kid is on his back in the Walmart toy aisle screaming like he's being disemboweled, and his mother just stands next to him mumbling things like "if you don't get up right now I won't get you those Legos ... okay if you get up right now you can have the Legos ... okay you can have the Legos either way but if you get up now then you can also have ice cream on the way home ..."

But the worst category of all are the people who let their kid run wild at home, but think they can hide that from the world with a couple of well-timed strict pronouncements when they're out in public. The kid is running laps around the table at Christmas dinner and knocks Grandma over, so his Mom puffs out her chest and says "THAT'S IT! YOU'RE ON A TIME OUT!" And the kid's response?

And then the kid is like:

He is so badly behaved that he actually becomes a completely different child.

And now Grandma is aflame and Christmas dinner is RUINED.

RUINED.

Look, if you don't or can't discipline your kids at home, that's fine. (it's not fine). But don't go around pretending like you're f***ing Michelle Duggar, because you're not fooling anyone. You're much better off just throwing up your hands and letting your crazy Aunt Berthilda discipline your kids for you when they try to knock Grandma over at dinner. I guarantee they'll never do it again.

3

Pretending you're "thankful" for all your "blessings" when we all know it's YOURSELF that you're most thankful for

Some people are legitimately religious and like to thank God for all their blessings. Those people are fine and can happily continue on their merry thankful way.

But then ... there are these:

Ugh. Tucking a quick sentence about thankfulness onto the end of a long brag doesn't make it not a brag. I bet if you were to press Melinda about her #blessings, you could get her to admit that it wasn't actually Jesus who brought them these things. It was her hard work at the gym that helped her shed those pounds, and her husband's long hours at the office that earned him that promotion, and her many, many angry and vaguely threatening phone calls to her children's teachers that earned them those spots on the honor roll.

Don't pretend at piety to excuse your bragging. Just brag already. That's what 99% of people use Facebook for anyhow. You should see MY page!

If this isn't bragging, I don't know what is.

#soblessed

#thankful

#Jesus

#diaperfetish

My baby looks like various celebrities

Babies are weird. They make weird faces, and as they grow, they look completely different from one week to the next. One day they'll look like Richard Nixon, Bob Barker the next, and then suddenly all you'll see is Barney the Dinosaur ... there's no predicting it. Here are a few pictures of my baby over the course of her life where she looks like various celebrities:

 Baby the Hutt

 I am very happy.

 Everyone likes me but nobody's sure why.

 Lee Daniels' "The Lazy Eye"

 All Hail Glorious Baby

Fat guy in a little coat.

I'm judging you, which is kind of a pot-kettle situation since I am notably INSANE.

Why do you always bring up Gallipoli? I've told you time and again, it's a sore subject.

Thanks for playing! And thanks to those whose ideas I blatantly stole borrowed for this post (Nick for the Jabba the Hutt, Alec for the "glorious baby" quote). I'm not that creative so I need a lot of help from clever friends.

We'll play again when Audrey is older and looks more like Ian McKellan.

Also, I just now realized that NONE of her celebrity lookalikes are female. Wamp womp.

Stupid things idiots who can't drive like to do

My commute has been miserable this week (well, it's miserable ALWAYS, but after a week of vacation it seems even worse) so instead of writing a normal happy post, I am going to bitch angrily about all the dumb things people do on the road that make me hate them.

1

I no can understood "zipper merge"

When a lane is ending and a merge is necessary, here's what you do: you keep driving allllll the way up until the lines separating the two lanes start to disappear. Use that time to work on matching your speed to the speed of the cars in the lane you're going to be merging into. Then, when you get to the merge point, make sure your blinker is on and just drift into the spot between two cars. One of the cars already in that lane goes, then you go, then the next car already in that lane goes, then another car merges in behind him, and so on and so on like a ZIPPER so that nobody should need to hit their brakes.

Just like this handy diagram I made for you. Look how nicely that worked out!

What you should NOT do is slam on your brakes and sit with your blinker on at zero miles per hour 200 yards before the lane even starts to end. You f***ing driving school reject jackass. I hate you and I hate everyone like you who also does not understand how to zipper merge. Take a goddamned bus or something.

STAY HOME. THAT'S WHAT YOU DO.

Usually, when someone does this, I just go around them and continue up to the actual merge point and do my zipper merge like normal. It's not my fault you're an idiot, and I'm certainly not going to wait for you to idiot yourself out of my way.

2

So what if super rain is falls, why need I to turn on headlights?

I cannot believe how many people drive around in piss-ass pouring rain on the freeway with no damn lights on. Do you realize that you're completely invisible when you do that? Like, James Bond invisible car invisible? When it's raining hard enough for you to need your wipers on, turn on your goddamned lights you idiot. What are you, trying to save energy? Jesus Christ, you suck. I would say "I hope you crash" except it will probably be me that you crash into, so I guess I just hope you continue to get lucky. F*** you.

"But driving without your lights on is like smoking cigarettes -- it's a total sign of coolness! People will think I'm such a square if I turn on my lights! 'There goes that rule-follower,' they'll say. My reputation will be ruined!" -- a person who doesn't deserve to exist

3

Why you no want gas-brake-gas-brake-gas-brake in bumper-to-bumper traffic? You so slow, I pass you and make fast times 1 car ahead of you

My usual commute involves driving on a road with a major traffic bunching problem. You'll go 30mph for a while, then all of a sudden everyone is back to 5mph, then stopped completely, then 20mph, then stopped again. I hate driving in that shit, moving my foot from gas to brake to gas to brake every two seconds. It's also hell for your gas mileage. It makes a lot more sense to accelerate and decelerate more slowly, using the gas pedal to control your speed and braking only when necessary. But for this to work, you need to leave some space between you and the car in front of you -- you know, so that you have room to slow down without braking when you see red lights in front of you.

Most people understand this.

Some people don't.

They become furious at me for leaving these gaps between my car and the car in front of me, so they aggressively speed into the other lane and zoom around me at the first opportunity, moving back in in front of me ... where they proceed to move exactly the same speed they were before, but one car length further ahead, and with a lot more gas-brake-gas-brake action. Great job, buddy. You will get home .01 seconds faster than you would have if you'd just stayed behind me, and you'll burn a bunch more gas. You win!!!

4

I enjoy to make crash into other cars!

WHY DOES EVERYONE DO THIS ALL THE TIME. KNOCK IT OFF.

 "Sorry! I was trying to thumbs-down that Creed song that came on my 90's alt rock Pandora playlist." 

"Creed on a 90's alt rock Pandora playlist? I don't even blame you for running into me! I'd have done the same!"

5

Yes there be two lanes, but right lane gives cancer so instead everyone must drives in the left lane only to make extra traffics!

I think this is a Seattle thing. Imagine you're driving on a road that has two lanes. Eventually, one of the lanes will end and everyone will merge back down into one lane. But the lane won't be ending for a while yet -- a quarter mile at least. So what do you do? Do you make use of both lanes for as long as possible, and then execute a flawless zipper merge down to one lane just in time to fly through a green light and onto the freeway?

OF COURSE YOU DON'T! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT???!?!

Instead, you frantically sit in the right line at a DEAD STOP with your blinker on, trying to merge into the left lane a quarter mile too early. But no one will let you in, because the left lane is a solid wall of cars (traffic flows much better up by that green light. Y'know, where the MERGE POINT ACTUALLY IS). In fact, it's such a solid wall of cars, some people have to wait at a green light because there is no room for them on the other side of the intersection.

That is, there is no room for them in the left lane. The right lane is free and clear ... but people will literally sit and wait at a green light rather than make use of the right lane ... because it is going to end eventually.

It is the dumbest f***ing thing I have ever seen in my life.

But hey, at least I get to work a little faster as I fly past this wall of morons in the right lane and then zipper merge up where I'm supposed to. And when people sit in the right lane not moving with their blinker on, guess who gets to give them the most self-righteous and violent honk attack of her life?

 Highlight of my day, really.

The Dos and Don'ts of traveling with an infant

We survived our trip to Canada last week!! In total, Audrey went on four different flights -- two long ones and two short ones -- and I learned a lot from this experience. I read a lot of advice before I left, and now I'm here to share with you what tips I found most helpful, as well as some other tricks I picked up along the way.

DO: Buy "ready to use" formula to bring on the plane

This stuff is spendy as f**k, so I never bought it before this trip. I paid $10 for a damn 6-pack. But, it meant that to feed Audrey on the plane, all I had to do was fish a bottle of formula out of my bag and pour it into one of her bottles. If even that sounds like too many steps, you can get nipples that attach directly onto the formula bottle itself. I opted not to use these, though, because the nipples are really small and weird and make me feel like I'm feeding a baby animal instead of a baby human.

Haha look at this goat! He's having a bottle!! What a crazy goat! What's he gonna do next?!?!

The other advantage of bringing ready to use formula is that you have to undergo some extra screening to get through security at the airport, since large liquids aren't usually allowed. This will give you a great opportunity to flirt with the cute TSA agents as they check to make sure your baby's Enfamil isn't secretly a bomb or something.

Hey baby what are you doing later? 

DON'T: Have the kind of baby who thinks pooping right as you board the plane is some kind of hilarious laugh riot

There isn't a whole lot you can do to avoid this, but maybe start by having a sit-down talk with your baby about air travel etiquette before the trip. I did not do this, and as a result, my baby pooped as we were boarding not once but TWICE. The second time, she even blew out her diaper a little bit. (for any non-parents, a "blowout" is when the poop, ummm, 'exits' the diaper through the back waistband, frolicking instead in baby's clothing. You can't sit the baby down or push on any part of the diaper at all, lest more poop come out. It is exactly as horrifying as it sounds)

Both times, I had to ask the flight attendants for special permission to run to the bathroom and change her diaper before takeoff, while all the other passengers on the plane rolled their eyes and stared at their watches. We were those people.

You know, 'those people.'

DO: Bring a baby carrier onto the plane with you

I strapped Audrey into her Ergo carrier several times during the flights. On the first flight, I put her into it so that she could take a nap, and she slept wonderfully. On another flight, I put her into it before we landed, and she sat calmly the whole way down. I just had to bounce in my seat like I was having a seizure for like 20 minutes straight, but that was better than listening to her crying.  The Ergo also let me be hands-free while we exited the plane. Turns out it's a lot easier to wrangle luggage when you're not also holding a baby.


DON'T: Try to eat a sub sandwich while baby is in the Ergo carrier.

You will have to turn it sideways and eat it like you're playing the flute, and then lots of crumbs will end up on the baby's head. People will judge you.

Like this, but with a sandwich.

Having trouble imagining it? Okay, here:

Please don't make me also add the baby carrier. I don't have Photoshop and that's way, way beyond my abilities in Paint and PowerPoint.

Ugh, okay fine. See, I told you this was going to be a disaster, and I was right.

DO: Buy formula and diapers (or better yet, ask family members to do this before you arrive) at your destination rather than packing them

These things take up a lot of space. Don't do that to yourself.


DON'T: Travel somewhere that doesn't have your store brand of baby formula

Canada doesn't have Rite Aid, which means they don't have the Tugaboos Gentle formula that Audrey drinks. No big deal -- Tugaboos Gentle is just Rite Aid's off-brand version of Enfamil Gentlease. So we got Audrey the Enfamil instead.

Holy good God Almighty, the things that that Enfamil did to her digestive tract were unforgivable. After a day and a half drinking it, Audrey started letting out farts that could clear a room. They smelled like the worst dog farts of all time -- like a dog that had eaten nothing but overcooked Brussels sprouts and yard poop farted directly in your face. It was a sort of rotten vegetables and weeks-old dirty mop water fermented in feces kind of smell. And she was ripping them constantly, with a big smile that suggested she was proud of her work.

As you can imagine, a couple of brewskis only made the farts smell worse.

The poops smelled just as bad, and they were liquid. She blew out her diaper more times in the week we were gone than in the previous six months of her entire life. That was what I got to deal with on the tiny changing table in the cramped airplane lavatory while an entire aircraft full of people waited for me.

I have PTSD about the whole experience now.


On the whole, Audrey was very well-behaved on the trip and it was great to see her in the arms of her great-grandparents, who had never met her. I might even go so far as to say it was all worth it.

But if I never again have to clean up a liquid poo blowout in an airplane bathroom AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE WAITING FOR ME, it will still be too soon.