Than!ks

Today, I finally achieved my lifetime dream of petting a cow. Actually, it was really only a 2 day dream, and I'm not completely certain that I haven't petted a cow at some other point in my past, but I realized a dream of some sort, and that's what counts. The following is pictorial evidence.
This did not last long before she decided to show me exactly how she felt about me petting her by eliminating a large amount of waste on her tail. I tried to pet her again, but, she had managed to protect herself by swatting herself on either side, leaving a manure barrier between me and fantastic cow petting. This made me say, "Clever move, my bovine opponent." (or wait, maybe it was more like "Ew...there's manure everywhere." but who really knows...except for Shamus and Lilliput's sister Angelica...and their dog Tobias...and the video of the entire event that Shamus was taking. But other than that, no one knows what actually transpired.) and look for something else to pet. Unfortunately, the other cows were reportedly more likely to destroy me, so my only response at this point was this:
Note that I'm running with my head down, because when running from bloodthirsty cows, one should always watch for cow pies, or else live to regret it. You can't say you don't learn valuable life lessons from reading this blog.

Later, we had a lovely game of croquet, far away from the cow pies. Since most of my croquet knowledge has come from Alice in Wonderland, I had trouble figuring out how one is supposed to play without flamingos and hedgehogs. We seemed to work it out though, and in the 3rd game, I came in second place by default when everyone else decided they didn't want to play for second place, so one might say I'm a croquet master of sorts.

I logged onto Facebook today and it said "Sharon, you can now use Facebook to send thanks." Which made me think, "Crap, I've clearly been thanking people illicitly through Facebook for years." In fact, the majority of times I send messages on Facebook or e-mail, I like to try to slip in a request, just so that I'll have something to thank them for, because I have an awful time choosing a good sign-off. I do "Cheers" sometimes, and "Regards" can be good when you really don't know someone, or want to give it a little chill at the end, but really there's nothing like a good "Thanks" to end a message. Anyways, I was curious about this whole Facebook thanks thing, so I clicked on it, and all that happened was a new message opened with the subject line: "Thanks!" I'm luckly I had them to do this for me, because, had I done it myself, I would have had no idea where to place the exclamation point for maximum effect, and my person would have been left feeling completely unthanked. Th!ank you Facebook for once again enriching my life.

Char-Char (my 6 month old niece) came over to help me finish my blog. She's much better with a computer than I am, and managed to open some sort of magical code box and then reset my internet privacy settings. I would have let her do more, since she seemed to really know what was going on, but when she started drooling on the "R" key, I realized it might be time for a computer break. Although, I'm not certain that she didn't just know something more than me. Like that drooling on the "R" key will reprogram your computer to start dispensing delicious milkshakes, or that liberal use of words starting in "R" will help make a blog really rewarding for readers, as well as (w)riters. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr (that's me rolling an "R" to close off this post, in case you're confused, but I'll do it again now for effect). Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

It takes 21 Days to Break/Make a Habit

I bet you didn't notice the time passing, gentle reader, since your life has been abundant with metaphorical rainbows and puppy-dogs since my blog filled the dark hole in your heart you didn't even know existed until it was occupied by my musings. Or so I assume. But, time has passed, so much time that this is my 21st post. And, as my title may indicate, I've often heard it takes 21 days to break a habit, or, in this case, to make a habit. Unless you want to think of it as breaking my bad habit of not writing down random stuff everyday and posting it for your amusement, which is what I'm choosing to do. So today, I'm celebrating 2 things: My 21 days of posting, officially making daily posting a "habit" and the fact that I wasn't eaten by bears...yet. Everything's coming up Sharon!

Today I learned that when walking at Lilliput's place, it is important to watch for cow pies. That was a good lesson. I went on a quest to see their new calf while simultaneously not being eaten by bears, and though I was good on the second count, I could not find any sign of baby cow. I did see big cows though, and I think I need to apologize to Yelsel D'Stupid for mocking her belief that cows eat meat, because I'm pretty sure they were eying me in the way that something that wants to eat something else will eye up that something else. Then one licked its side, the universal sign for "I'm going to eat you and you will be delicious." Cows are terrifying and I'm glad for the invention of fences.

Thinking of fences, since going to the zoo, I have been considering ways it could be improved. My friend, Enna McLoggin suggested that it would be better if you could pay extra to go in a tiny cage inside the carnivores cage, so that they might be more interested in eating you. Also, to further increase the thrill, they could throw a rabbit in with you. I think that Alfred Von Bunnikins has super bunny senses, because after writing this I tried to pick him up and he bunny-ninjaed me.

So, later on (after first writing about my cow adventures) I went back with Shamus and did see the calf. Forgetting exactly how much the cows seemed to want to eat me earlier, I decided that I would try to pet one of them. Despite Shamus' assurances that the chances of them killing me were low (wait, in hindsight, he never actually assured that as much as didn't disagree when I asked whether it might be a possibility), I didn't manage to pet one because they seemed a little bloodthirsty as I approached. The point of this story is that I tried though. Tried and failed. And the lesson is if you never try, you never fail. But you also won't get to pet awesome cows. Although, I did try, and failed and also didn't get to pet cows, so I'm not sure what the point really is. Perhaps it's that before I die, I will pet a cow, even if it leads to my cause of death being cow.

What about cows?

Today I went on an adventure with my friend Yelsel D'Stupid (disguising names is hard, leave me alone). To be honest, just spending time with her is an adventure, because, based on countless interactions with her, I have come to the conclusion she has no mental filter. Or, at least, if she has one, she chooses not to use it most of the time.

For example, we were planning a camping trip and thought we should invite our friend Neyney Charmin (just be glad I don't get to name a small child...yet), and I said "It's a good idea to bring Neyney, because if a bear decides to eat us, it'll go for her first because she's a vegetarian, giving us some time to escape." I thought it was a well known fact that herbivores are generally more delicious than carnivores, but Yelsel seemed unaware of this and asked for more explanation. "Think about it," I said, "you don't really hear of people eating, say, wolf. Most things we eat don't eat meat." To which she said, "What about cows?"

For awhile, on this brilliantly sunny day, we ended up walking behind a woman in a raincoat. My suspicion is that she woke up and thought, "It looks like rain, I think I'll wear my yellow raincoat with my yellow shoes. Yes, that's a good idea." Then, after she realized that there was not a cloud in the sky she thought "Shit, if I take off my jacket, my shoes will just look stupid."



We met some people giving out Pringles Stix samples on the corner. This product confuses me. There are only two reasons I might eat Pringles. One is that I'm craving potato chips, but don't want to have to imagine that they have any relation to actual potatoes. The second is that I want to put two back to back in my mouth and pretend I'm a duck. Pringles Stix don't fulfill either of these criteria. Instead of a tenuous connection to potatoes, they have zero potato ingredients. Also, if you try to put two in your mouth to look like a duck, it's a lot of work and you end up looking like this:



That seagull was mocking me, so I imagined that I was crushing it's head with my giant beak. I also noted that Pringles Stix contained pork extract, which does have to go in the pro colum, because, as I mentioned earlier, there is an inverse relationship between meat consumption and deliciousness. They should include that in the advertising: "Pringles Stix: The snack of choice for people who don't want to be eaten by bears."

We also met a lot of rude people. When we went to sit and eat by the water some people started shouting "Ginger...hey ginger....ginger". As a redhead, I was highly offended and said to Yelsel, "Are they trying to mock me? Seriously, I have a name." She said they were trying to call their dog, but I watched carefully, and it had no response to that name. It wasn't even ginger.

Today, in a continuation of my lessons from the zoo, I learned about pigeon mating. It turns out that pigeons are not that different from giraffes when it comes to sex. From what I can gather, the male hangs out for awhile until he assumes that the female has stopped paying attention, then he suddenly goes for it and she's like "Seriously, how would I not notice that?" and runs/flies away. Then he repeats.

We sat for awhile watching this occur over and over again with completely uninterested females. Yelsel thought for awhile and then said, "I just don't get it. Why doesn't he just take the ones that are already bending over? That would make a lot more sense." I think that it is good that she is human and not a male pigeon, because there are already too many pigeons. Also, pigeons don't talk, and she amuses me.