This book is fabulous. I'm only about 24 pages in, but already I've run across new terms and phrases like, "hair whippage" and "big hair hole" (a device that measures exact bigness of hair). This is humor very much in the SLAW (Southern Ladies Against Women) vein.

What it reminds me of most, though, is what a book written by my friend the Grand Czarina for Life of the Digging Dykes of Decatur would be like. I tried to find a good link to some reference for the DDofD, but the best I found was this lovely Jim Grimsley essay that mentions them toward the end (just to prove I'm not making this up).

The Digging Dykes of Decatur is a lesbian gardening club where no actual gardening ever happens. My friend Sherry founded it when her mother suggested she start a gardening club "for her own kind." Mostly they are noted for their fabulous presentation at Atlanta's gay pride march every summer. In their elaborate theme-decorated gardening hats and purple sashes with their titles (like Ms. Compost and Ms. Backhoe) written in glitter, the Digging Dykes push garishly festooned bubble mowers up steamy hot Peachtree Street, following the Grand Czarina who rides on her lawnchair throne in the back of a pickup truck.

And Sherry's flair for telling a story (and her magnetic attractiveness to nutcases) allow her to turn an ordinary day into the most hysterical thing you've ever heard. Good god, I wish she had a diary here.

Anyway, the Sweet Potato Queens seem to be led by a similar Grand Femme dictatorship. In Jackson, Mississippi, on St. Patricks Day, they wear gigantic red wigs and green sequined go-go dresses and ride their own float.

Like the Digging Dykes, the only way you get to be a Sweet Potato Queen is by the whim of "the" queen, and even then someone has to have died and the wannabe has to have put in years of serious sucking up.

We had a bit of a cold snap last night. After "Angel" and my final cigarette of the night, I crawled into bed with Deb. She had brought a few plants inside and spread out the funky Noah's Ark sheets across the rosebed in front. But then she realized that she had forgotten two.

So I started doing the voices of the plants (high-pitched, like the guy caught in the web in the 1958 version of "The Fly") with my face sort of buried in the covers like I'm already asleep.

Badsnake: Help us! Help us!
Deb: Stop it.
Badsnake: It's so cooooold out here. Are you mad at us?
Deb: Cut it out. *sighs* I raised those two from seeds too.
Badsnake: [regular voice] Damn, baby, that's cold. Those are like your babies out there.
Deb: Shut up!
Badsnake: [back to plant voice] Pleeeease! We'll be pretty for youuuu ... We're getting weeeeeak ..... brrrrrrrr...
Deb: YOU go get 'em.
Badsnake: [reg voice] I don't care. They're not my plants.

Deb got out of bed in a huff, put on some sweatpants, went outside and brought the damned things in. When she got back in bed, she said, "They were half dead already even before it got cold."

I saw them in the utility room this morning. She was right. Those are some scraggly, butt-ugly, half-dead damn plants. But it was fun messing with her like that. She made me say "Thank you, mommy" in the plant voice when she got back in bed.

Take a look at this.

Doesn't Deb's birth control pill packaging make it look like it's some fancy-schmancy chocolate or candy? Like mint or cappuchino flavor dark chocolate wafers? Her doctor gave her three packages of these the other day. I opened one up and tried a few, but I like those After Eight things better.

Today is the day I've been most tempted to link to Sara's diary. Yesterday's entry was really flattering to me, and my ego is thoroughly inflated now. Think I'll go touch myself.

So Deb informed me this afternoon that the friends of Jake and Sara who have the kid with leukemia who inspired Sara to do the long-ass walk thing in the first place will be here Thursday night. The idea was pitched that Deb might cook dinner for everyone.

Deb thought maybe she should check with me first. Good thing. I like these people and all, but Thursday is a quiet night. One of MY quiet nights. Thursday is "Gilmore Girls" night. No extra people. No children. Not even cute children who happen to have leukemia.

It's not like I've banned the child and her family from our house. They've been in our house. I just don't want the house full for a couple hours or more. Deb can go cook for them next door if she wants to. I just want my evening tomorrow night to be peaceful.

I want to be able to go out on the porch and smoke without feeling like I'm being a bad influence. Kids look at me funny when I smoke. They watch me roll a cigarette with the intense concentration of someone trying to learn a new dance step. Then I can't enjoy the good nicotineiness and I just end up stubbing it out.

Man, I don't know what it is with me and kids. I just don't like them much. They're okay from a distance. And I think black kids are much cuter than white kids. I think maybe snot and dirt show up better on white kids.

Anyway, I just don't know what to do with them. I don't know what to say to them. And they break shit. And they're sticky. And they generally smell. They're accident prone. And then they cry. And little kids can make that eardrum splitting, never-ending shriek noise. Like that little girl in "Aliens." I think that shriek alone could've saved everyone from the monsters. Monsters come; kid screams; monsters run away crying and holding their bleeding ears.

I've got siblings, but they're older than me by enough years that I was pretty much raised like an only child. I only had one best friend during my prime kid years. I never babysat anybody. I always told myself that I would never want money so badly that I would babysit to get it. Much like many idealistic young ladies might say they would never turn to theft or prostitution. I would rather steal and whore than babysit.

Teenagers are okay. Those I can deal with. In fact, Deb and I have a babydyke (not such a baby any more) friend who we've known since she was about 12 or 13. She came out at 14. Now she's a college student and a pilot. I think she's maybe 20. That kind of kid I can deal with.

It's the really short ones who look you right in the eye and expect you to DO something who make me nervous. They're unpredictable in the most highly distilled sense of the word. You can have them. Just not in my house. Not on "Gilmore Girls" night.

Bring them back when they're 14 and act like smartasses. That I can relate to.