Badsnake's Butch Household Tips (#1 in a new series):

If your dog eats breakfast too fast and throws up half of it, just give her a couple minutes. She will clean up most of the grossest part for you. Works best on hardwood floors.

I cleaned out the tub last night and ran a bath for Deb when she got home. She's so cute when she steps in and tries to get acclimated to the heat. All naked and crouched down, slowly lowering her delicate butt cheeks and other things to the surface of the steaming water. She had a glass of wine, and I read to her, sitting on the edge of the tub in my boxer-briefs and soaking my feet.

I sent away a check yesterday to get my own digital camera. A Canon PowerShot G1. I'm getting a deal on a used one, otherwise I wouldn't get such an expensive model. I've played with the G1 before and loved it.

Still, deal or no deal, it took a chunk out of my change if you know what I mean. I'm thinking about trying to sell some stuff on e-bay to sort of make up for the loss. I've got to remember to ask Sara for her advice on that. She's sold a lot of books that way.

What do I have to sell, you might ask?

Well, Mr/Ms SticksYourNoseInMyBusinessEveryDay, I have an Aria Pro II banjo. How 'bout them G-strings? I've had this banjo since I was a kid. Unfortunately my dad invested in a really good one before we realized that I wasn't just being lazy about practicing. I actually have no musical talent whatsoever. I am as rhythmically challanged and tone-deaf as a white girl can get.

I also have my childhood collection of Breyer model horses. About sixty of them. The problem is, the Breyer collectors what to know what each model was called, and hell if I remember. Oh sure, I can remember, Misty, Chincoteague Pony, but I've got stuff like Fancy Hereford Bull and Cantoring Bay Number 3. So, like an impulsive idiot, I just ordered the Breyer Collector's Identification book from Amazon. But don't worry, I did it on Deb's credit card. Heh.

My collection probably has models from 1970 to 1980. Every birthday, every Christmas, every extra $12 I had I would buy a new model. I had ten shelves full of them in my bedroom. Of course, none of the original boxes survived. Who cared about the damn box? The box that would probably add $10 to the value now.

We always bought these horses at a store named Hammer's in a nearby town, the only place that carried them. It was a crappy kind of two-story thrift store and Woolworth's. One half of the bottom floor was full of stuff like bolts of cloth and ugly women's housedresses and mumus.

One corner had the inevitable doomed-to-die fish, parakeets and hamsters section. I don't know why stores even had these sections. I mean, for every $1.13 hamster and $5.95 aquarium sale they probably had 20 hamster corpses. I guess I answered my own question. I'm sure there was one teenage boy in the store whose only job was to cull rodent carcasses and pull out floaters from the fish tanks. He was obviously a slacker, though.

And because this was a prime environment for Darwin's theory, that meant that kids ended up with only the most viciously aggressive cannibal hamsters available. Yeah, those make excellent pets.

I remember my grandfather bought me a hamster at an estate sale auction once. It bit the fuck out of me once we got it home. I'm surprised I didn't fling it up against a wall. I should have. But did I learn my lesson? No. When it died (I don't remember how or when), I got two more. I named them Starsky and Hutch. Starsky ate Hutch.

I didn't need to learn about the cruel laws of nature on National Geographic specials on TV. I could observe it up close and personal in my own home.

I also had a wild rabbit that the dog of one of my dad's hunting buddies carried in from the woods one day. When we got it, it was teeny tiny. My dad brought it home in a little brown paper bag. We fed it milk and honey from an eyedropper until it got big enough to eat rabbit food pellets (and leave rabbit pellets all over the house). The daily routine was me letting it loose and then spending a couple hours trying to coax it out from under my parents' king-size bed.

I had two chickens named Little Elizabeth and Tommy (named after my older sister and her boyfriend). They hatched from eggs in a home made science project incubator that my dad did all the work on. We kept them until they were adults and the ammonia scent of chicken shit filled the basement. We gave them back to the farm where we'd gotten the fertilized eggs.

I had a chameleon named Gilligan. He probably died from a meal worm overdose.

I had two "domestic" rabbits named Silver and Scout. They and their litter of baby bunnies (the stereotype is true) froze to death one night.

We had a squirrel that we kept in a huge cardboard box and fed corn through a carboard wrapping-paper tube.

We had a pony named Trigger who stayed at my grandfather's farm. She lived to be almost 30. When I was a kid she had a still-born foal. I found it and ran into my grandfather's store yelling, "Trigger ate a goat! Trigger ate a goat!" You can see how the hamster observations influenced my understanding of animal behavior. If hamsters were carnivores, I was sure ponies must be, too. We didn't have any other horses, so I don't know where the hell my grandfather took her to get her knocked up.

Damn. I went through a lot of animals when I was a kid.

My PowerMac G4 arrived at the office on Friday. But the monitor is still on back-order. Hooking that baby up to my current monitor would be like serving Veuve Clicquot with store-brand corn chips. So I'll try to wait for the monitor. I'll need a whole day to load software anyway, and I won't have a day that free of deadline until Wednesday at least. *crossing my legs with pained expression*

That's about it Legionairres. I've blathered on long enough. Cigarettes and caffeine await. I've got a day full of chores, too. All three animals are due for vet visits (that's not going to happen, but I'll go ahead and feel guilty for putting it off). The new Strangers In Paradise might be out (and it's about f-ing time), so I'll stop by the comic store. Molly needs more food. Kate needs a bath. The house needs vacuuming. I need to stop by the cigar store for some more smokes. Gotta buy Deb something for Valentine's Day.

I think I should start with going back to bed and masturbating. If you really love me, you agree.