OK, call me unimaginative.

I'm just waiting for the kids to go to sleep. Last I checked, i.e., last time my earphones were off, they were running around the backyard screaming like a remake of Lord of the Flies.

So I'm checking out people's blogs--can you blame me?

And I found this:

You May Be a Bit Schizotypal ...

A bit odd and socially isolated. You couldn't care less of what others think. And some of your beliefs are a little weird. Like that time you thought you were Jesus.

What Personality Disorder Are You?

So I guess there's ANOTHER television show for me to catch up on. I mean, now that it's off the air and all, it seems only right.

--P

If you thought I craved bad carbs before now ...

... my state in the matter of a few hours should be off the charts. On top of a benefit I'm chairing (which is next Thursday, and which explains the paucity of blog updates around heah) I have the usual housewife shite, financial doo doo--a whole slew of crap into which I shan't bore you by going.

On top of that, my son is turning 10 tomorrow, and tonight we're hosting a sleep-over birthday party for six ten-year-old boys.

Yes, you read that right. Six. 10. Year. Old. Boys. Who are going to be eating pizza, playing GameBoy, running around the back yard, making S'mores in my fireplace or, if the weather holds, outside on the grill, and then going to sleep (shyeah, right!). Next morning I treat the little bastids to pancakes, bacon, and sausages and then I kick them right the hell out, fill the wading pool with ice cold martinis, and begin to do laps in it.

So if I am discovered in a few hours, while ostensibly baking and frosting a birthday cake, actually eating fistfuls of frosting right out of the bowl, you now know why.

A Theory of Population Density

Right away, I'm guessing you're thinking I'm about to say something snarky about the relative denseness of the local population. Well, fooled you! Because I'm not.

No, today's so-called thought is this: Chicago is the greatest city in the world. (OK, so maybe I haven't been to a lot of cities--Tokyo, Beijing, Vienna, and Lincoln, Nebraska come immediately to mind--so maybe I don't have much of a basis of comparison. But so what--this is my blog, and if you think you can do better, then please, feel free to start a blog on the world's greatest cities. I promise not to take it personally.)

So let's just say that we accept the proposition that Chicago is the greatest city in the world. Why don't more people live here?

Obviously, it's the weather.

Like this morning. That Stud Muffin I Married, who is currently in Pittsburgh, tells me that it's spring there. The trees are blooming, the bird is on the wing, it's warm--the whole bit. Well, it's kind of sort of spring here, too. There is no snow or ice to be seen; daffodils, dogwoods, and forsythia are blooming; robins leap about guzzling down worms. Spring, right? Except that when my kids left for school, they were wearing parkas and mittens. In fact, if I remember correctly, they wore their parkas to school last year on the last day of school. Which is in June.

So I figured it out. Chicago is the greatest city in the world, but IF the whole world knew it, THEN they would all move here. And if that happened, the mass of people would become so great that the world probably tilt, fall off its axis, and go whistling through space ... and we don't want that, now, do we?

Well, neither does the divine Providence who decreed, apparently, that the greatest city in the world should be built upon a flat expanse of prairie on the shores of a lake that allows the Canadian cold front free and unlimited access--and doesn't even ask to see its I.D. Which is so not fair, because when I go to Canada, I have to show an I.D. and say how long I'm planning to stay.

I mean, isn't this why the Republicans opposed NAFTA?

So I guess the down side of all this is this whole Canadian wetback scenario, where the cold front decides to cross the Canadian/U.S. border and stay however long it pleases. Who knows how long it will take before local authorities wake up to the situation and increase border patrols between here and Ontario.

And the upside? Well, at least I don't have to worry about the earth wrenching itself free from its orbit any time soon.

Not to mention how hard they must be to parallel park

When I drive to Florida I see a lot of things I don't see in Chicago. Too many to list, so I'll just talk about one of them, OK? Recreational Vehicles, otherwise known as RVs.

You see a ton of these bad boys on the highway--enough to wonder whether there are fads in RV design, the way there are with automobiles and trucks and such. I mean, it stands to reason, right? Except that I wouldn't be able to tell a brand-spanking new RV from one that was 25 years old, unless the old one was all rusted out.

Yes, the sight of these behemoths fills the mind with many questions. Like: how many miles to the gallon can they possibly get? I'm betting seven or less. And: when someone else is driving the RV, can you just sit around normally inside it, or does it get really bumpy and unsafe, so you have to wear seat belts? And: do they have bathrooms? But the big question is: Where the hell do you keep them when you're not driving them?

Because I've heard there are people who camp out in Wal*Mart parking lots, but these people are already on the road. What I want to know is where do you keep them when you're at home? I mean, I can barely fit a minivan down my driveway. Where the hell would I put an RV?

Does everyone who has an RV live on a farm or something? No, wait a minute--that doesn't make sense, either. Farmers never get to go anywhere. They have to stay on the farm so they can milk the cows and chickens and stuff.

So basically, who buys these things? No one I know. So I'll probably never find the answer to any of these burning questions.

Still--and I'm sorry to report this, but it's the truth--pondering these and other road-trip inspired mysteries (which is better--Waffle House or Huddle House?) really makes me feel alive.

I, dingbat.

I'd ✍ something sensible …

Unlike my usual blather, that is …

Except I'm feeling like such a ☛dingbat☚ at the moment.

&mdash℗

Special -ed

I'm absolutely starving and have to go cook dinner, but I thought I'd meander on for a little bit about this thing I noticed several times on my way to and from Florida.

You see, there are quite a [SEE ROCK CITY] number of billboards [SEE ROCK CITY] to be seen on a drive [SEE ROCK CITY] of that length, so I thought I'd try to point [SEE ROCK CITY] out a little solecism that is frankly [SEE ROCK CITY] driving me crazy.

It's this. When you use a compound like "iced tea" or "old-fashioned," you don't leave off the final "ed." It's not "ice tea" or "old fashion." Please do not paint a phrase like "Enjoy our old fashion country cooking!" in red letters three feet high on a yellow background and expect me, the erstwhile English major and queen of punctuation (in case you hadn't noticed) to continue driving as if nothing had happened.

You really do not want me driving 80 miles an hour down your road in the mental state produced by such flagrant grammatical errors. I can not answer for my behavior when I see such vivid proof that the barbarians finally really are at the gate.

Stuckey's--this means YOU.

Super Size Us: The Prelude

So we just got back from Walt Disney World. This involved driving a rented minivan from Florida to Illinois. I must say, I'm feeling pretty smug right now. This is not something designed for pussies to do, no sir. I feel all macho 'n' shit.

On first day, we drove through appalling traffic (the entire state of Georgia is pretty much one big parking lot--also it poured rain a lot of the time) to Chattanooga, Tennessee. During the second day, we made it all the way back to the Frozen Nawth, a/k/a Chicago. Home of Jay's Potato Chips and not a Goo Goo Cluster or sack of White Lily flour to be found.

Not surprisingly, I spent a lot of time driving (when I wasn't watching DVDs with my kids or playing Tetris on my huzbin's Palm or camped out in the way-back seat reading P.G. Wodehouse short stories). Driving brings out my contemplative side (when it isn't turning me livid with road rage.) Not surprisingly, during two days of driving, I thought many deep, meaningful thoughts. Which I will be happy to share eventually.

But right now I have to get used to Central Standard Time before it changes to Central Daylight Savings or whatever they call it. All I know is that I expect to be suffering from time-change whiplash any second now. Plus I truly need to finish drinking this glass of wine so that I can bask in the sensation of knowing that if I want a refill, there's a bunch more of it downstairs in the refrigerator of my very own kitchen. It's not all that great, so I probably won't bother to get any, but just knowing it's there gives me a warm glow.

Home ... good.