Owner: Queen of Dysfunction URL:http://www.queenofdysfunction.blogspot.com Join Date: Thu, 19 Oct 2006 17:04:38 -0500 Rating:1 Site Description: What happens when a 32 year old wife and mother of two decides that blood may or may not be thicker than water, but it is definitely messier. Site statistics:Click here
It's been a while... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 ...since I've posted about my brother-in-law. The reason for this is simple; I have made a regular habit of emotionally shredding pushy family members who try to force a reunion. My position is rather simple: Keep Lee away from my family and I or fork out the dough for a casket to bury him in, because these days I have a paper-thin tolerance for infantile drug addicts with violent criminal records.Even still, sometimes the subject comes up in such wildly stupid ways that scream to be posted.Anyway, a couple of days ago I answered the phone. It was my husband's Uncle V, who was quite drunk, it being well past ten in the morning and all. Could he have a word with my husband? Sure thing. Uncle V thanked me profusely, but only after gushing that he loved me like his own flesh and blood and reminding me that he knew I was special the first time KofD brought me to Santa Cruz.Uh huh. Honey? Your drunk uncle's on the phone...Uncle V spent several minutes slurring his concerns for Lee to my
So in my haste to get the last post up I forgot to... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So in my haste
to get the last post up I forgot to mention that I completed the orientation for the funeral service program. So here it is:I completed the orientation for the funeral service program. Ta da!According to the nice mortician who has given up his day job to direct a program designed to mint the next generation of morticians, this semester will be a trial by fire. Apparently there is a gap in the funeral education market. This is not a good thing considering an entire generation of baby boomers are about to take their longest and strangest trip. Since we can't very well have tie-died corpses littering the place up, the great state of California has decided to gamble taxpayer money that Sacramento could produce a few qualified souls willing to do the honors.To this end, the program director wants to make sure that everyone knows what they are getting into before they take up space in a classroom on the taxpayer dime.So this semester we get two field trips. The first will be
The Apology 1970-01-01 00:59:59 No, not the Socratic-inspired one. Please, it's too early for that stuff.This is an apology to my readers. To all the people out there who read this blog and comment and send me nice e-mails and confusing e-mails and especially to those of you who send me those entertaining e-mails accusing me of being the Most Horrible Mother In The Universe and The Most Judgemental Person Alive.I'm sorry for the suckage of recent posts. I'm going to go wave a gun around in the quality control department today and maybe I'll threaten some jobs until things improve. I promise.It's just that lately most of my creative energy has been spent working on the first draft of a book that I would like to finish before June. It's taken me years to finally sit my ass down and produce something and I am far too chihuahua-like to focus on any one thing for longer than fifteen seconds. Therefore the book gets written and my blog starts to look like I hired a staff of third graders to write about their summer v Read more:Apology
Sly and the family matriarch 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I had a word with the quality control department yesterday. They were somewhat reticent to boost production so, as promised, I began threatening jobs. And gun-waving.But since QofD is a one-woman show, I was screaming threats and pointing a gun at my own head which made my quality control department roll their eyes and say Please, you haven't fired that gun once since you first pulled this stunt when you got ditched at the senior prom.I think I picked the wrong year to quit drinking. At least wine kept those QC assholes sedated and obedient.Moving right along, something Pirate wrote reminded me of my grandmother. (You haven't read Pirate? You're kidding right? Go read him. Read him now.)At any rate, Pirate had an excellent post about the Arizona state quarter showing the grand canyon and honoring the Navajo code-talkers and blah, blah, blah. Ok, he did't write "blah, blah, blah" but that's what I wrote because I don't want to copy his post verbatim here so if you really want to s
Pow! Blam! Crash! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I've been using the prefix Pow! a lot lately. As in Pow! Dinner! or Pow! Yoga! and sometimes Pow! Defiance! when I end the sixth hour of a Grand Theft Auto marathon by grabbing The King's controller and hucking it through a window.My kids love think it's hysterical. The King grew tired of it after the first time a Pow! Blowjob! turned into a Pow! Mood Killer!Fine. Whatever. Pow! is now Pow! Eradicated!So substituting swimming for running has been going very well. I'm now swimming 2000 yards in under forty minutes, working on a killer Speedo racer-back tan, and it's been at least four days since I've fallen on my face between the pool and the locker room.What's more, I haven't freaked out once during a pool workout. There has been no anxiety and no goggle-throwing. No paramedics have been summoned to coax me out of the locker room with the promise of miniature Snickers bars.This obviously portends a change in my relationship with water. Therefore I have decided to take the next
To "Person X"... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 who e-mailed me this article anonymously. Thanks. Thanks a hell of a lot.While you're at it, why don't you get a jump start on reminding me of every major air disaster that has occurred since Wilbur and Orville first lit off Kitty Hawk? After all, my husband and I are flying to Texas in March.Because you know what? Despite trying to infect my brain with your thought-worms about sharks, carnivorous mammals, reanimated corpses and urine-polluted waterways I'm still going to pay perfectly good cash to have someone toss me off a boat into frigid water where I'll be expected to swim anywhere from a half to two miles depending on the prevailing currents that day. Common sense be damned....and there's nothing you can do to stop me. In fact maybe I won't do the swim in 2008. Maybe I'll do it this year on August 5th with these people because unlike Sharkfest, their event isn't sold out.*It's good to know that just like in real life, I can't escape being razzed in the blogosphere. The
Let's put the "fun" back into "funeral" 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Alright, it took me a couple of days to digest the event that was "My First Class In The Funeral Education Program."Before we delve into this experience, a few facts.1) There are only three mortuary science programs on the west coast. Period. There is a southern-California based program in Cypress, one in Oregon, and the one I plan on applying to in Sacramento. The next closest programs are in Texas and Colorado. So from Utah to San Francisco, Portland to Bakersfield, this is it baby!2) Even so, funeral education attracts few applicants, and despite the breadth of the territory this program services, only 35 applicants are accepted each year with only a handful being turned away.3) The Sacramento program is actually the reincarnated San Francisco College of Mortuary Sciences. It closed it's bay-area doors in 2002 and scooted inland where it reopened at American River College.4) Since the mortuary sciences program is so small, it is contained in a single classroom and a handful of offi
9/11 1970-01-01 00:59:59 It's the fifth anniversary of 9/11 and it seems like nobody can get enough of reliving the horror of that day. Television news channels have looped footage of the jets being deliberately crushed like empty beer cans into the World Trade Center, bereaved family members are being exhorted to cry for the camera, and tear-filled "man on the street" interviews are replacing normal news coverage. We Americans cannot seem to cry enough over this and it has got to stop.Now, before I lose any of my readers, hear me out. I have nothing but sympathy for the victims of those attacks and their loved ones. I would never presume to admonish anyone for harboring a very justifiable anger toward the fascist misanthropes who perpetrated this massive public execution.I am just saying that despite the amazing personal and national loss we Americans experienced that day, we are not among the nations of the world who deserve or need anybody's sympathy.Here's a story for you, and despite my inability to do
Love wax, hate shopping 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Irene is my esthetician, or as I call her, the-pull-my-hair-out-with-wax lady. As of yet she is the only esthetician to groom my bikini line without drawing blood and as far as I'm concerned that practically qualifies her for sainthood. Yeah ok, there was that one time that she dropped hot wax into the crack of my ass (true story, yet I'm having trouble finding the post) but it was just one time and the scars have healed quite nicely thankyouverymuch.At any rate, I started going to her to have my bikini line waxed and she has craftily graduated to ripping hair out of more and more parts of my body. It started out innocently enough, with Irene suggesting I take in the bikini a bit "just to ensure a clean look with all your swimsuits." From there it progressed to a near-Brazilian, then my upper lip, my eyebrows, and after today, my stomach. Yes, I now get my stomach waxed. Aren't I the delicate flower of femininity?Irene's kids will be able to finance Cambridge educations on what the
Out sick... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I would love to respond to you folks, including a few funny e-mails and comments but I've been laid up all day with a fever and my tonsils feel like they're the size of golf balls. I'll get back to y'all when I am not puking my guts up....you're welcome for that visual.
I'm alive... barely 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So I'm finally vertical enough to answer e-mails and sit at the computer longer than fifteen minutes without developing vertigo. I checked the comments from the last post and all I can say is "Damn! I feel loved!" Dear readers, you had better be careful lest I develop a giant head and find myself unable to board elevators anymore. Then again, I suppose that's why I have Travis around. If it weren't for him I might have developed self-esteem by now.I wish I could say that I spent the last three days doing something productive like catching up on my reading or mentally cataloguing my frozen head collection. I did manage to hop on the computer for a few minutes early yesterday morning, but mostly I slept on the couch, became intimately familiar with our toilets, and watched television. Since most daytime television programming caters to viewers with a sub-vegetable IQ, I was restricted mainly to the Discovery, Discovery Times, Discovery Health, and History Channels.So actually, I guess
You can't pick your friend's nose 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I think I was mistaken in calling one of my neighbors a stalker in the previous post. I was just joking. She's not really a stalker, although I would pay her to stalk me because she's kinda cute and I'm hard up for attention like that.Jane is a fellow Elk Grovian who followed me into the parking lot of Target sometime last week. She says it was because of my license plate frame that had the url of my soon-to-be-defunct maiden blog site. (Between you and I? I think the license plate frame was a ruse and she was really following me because of my nifty "Honk if you love Engelbert Humperdink" sticker.)Turns out that Jane is my neighbor. She lives behind me. We actually share a portion of our back fence. I could spit and hit her sliding glass door. So while Jane is searching for a real estate agent to sell her house, I'm going to plug her site one more time here.An old friend
that I haven't seen in about eleven years e-mailed me out of the blue. We've known each other since I was four
Kirstie Alley ain't got nothin' on Camp Doha 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I was talking to my dad on the phone last night when the subject of the recent troop surge came up. He mentioned that current plans involve him returning to combat in August of 2008. At that point in time my dad will be 57 years old. Now, I would have to perform some fact-checking, but I'm pretty sure this would make him The Oldest Living GI In The History of Western Warfare.Do they make Depends undergarments in od green? Anyone?So anyway, we were talking and he tells me that it is probable this date may be moved up in light of recent events. Also, his unit is slated to go to Afghanistan this time instead of returning to Iraq. He claims that this is in keeping with an agreement he has with the U.S. government:"I don't care what shit hole you send me to, just don't send me to the same one twice."(Hello? Where was this laid-back persona when I was a curfew-breaking teenager?)At any rate, the idea of deployment doesn't seem bother him in the least. In fact he's kind of looking forwar
The dark art of gift giving 1970-01-01 00:59:59 One of my nephews is turning four next week and I need to find a good gift, and by good I mean "something that will make his paternal aunt spit nails from the true cross."Here's the thing: my sister has a sister-in-law on her husband's side named Christina. Christina is a fundamentalist nutjob.Christina homeschools her kids. Which would be fine if she were an intelligent woman with a grasp of grade school concepts. Unfortunately, she barely earned her GED and could only be described as literate in the barest of terms. I don't think requiring both hands and all toes to perform simple mathematical functions bodes well either. But hey, she homeschools anyway! Why? Because Christina is convinced that coming within ten feet of a public school teacher is enough to convert her children to a homosexual life of fetish clubs and Roman baths.Christina's mistrust of "The Establishment" runs deep. So deep that she doesn't even trust the medical community and has resorted to her own brand of ho
Spread my ashes... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 ...over the ocean when I'm good and dead. Don't trap me in a box six feet under the turf because I will haunt your ass. I mean it. And I won't do cute little things like make lights flicker or push glassware across countertops. I will come back and throw knives at you until someone digs my carcass up and sets fire to it.I married a man ten months younger than myself. He loves to give me crap about the miniscule age difference. He thinks it's funny. He thinks I'm destined to die first. My husband is oblivious to the gun and the shovel I keep in the back of my truck.At any rate, my birthday is on Monday and the King has embarked on his annual mission to make me batty:"Hey honey? Is that a new grey hair? You know what they say, your body's ability to produce pigmented hairs diminishes with age."or"Sweetheart? Would you mind signing this insurance form? We need to make sure the children are protected just in case, well... you know."or"Hey, wormfood... er, I mean schmoopy, I have a ma Read more:Spread
, ashes
Taking notes 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Ok, so between the weekend? And class last night? I am burned out. There should be a law against having a major UFC fight on Saturday night followed up by the Super Bowl (that the King swore he Did Not Care About At All Because Peyton Manning Is An Athletic Dung Heap and He Would Not Watch)(Liar!) on Sunday.At least I was in good company in sports widowhood. My next door neighbor and her husband were over to enjoy the festivities as well. So while both our husbands screamed at the television and tried to pretend that there isn't something terribly wrong with married men who gleefully pony up for pay-per-views in which scantily clad guys paw at each other in a octagonal cage, she and I had fun teaching the kids the finer points of sake bombs and keg stands.Let the schools deal with the more pedestrian end of college prep, we've got a handle on the important stuff.So last night I wrapped up the day by attending class. We were scheduled to hear a two hour lecture on the funerary practic Read more:Taking
&$*#(&@!!!! Weather 1970-01-01 00:59:59 In my corner of California we always get what a lot of people call a "false spring". I call it a fucked up idea of a meteorological practical joke.It works like this: come February we'll get teased with terrific springtime weather. Sunshine, temperatures in the seventies, warm breezes, birds chirping, lambs bleating, the whole kit and kaboodle. Then BLAM! we get sixty inches of rain dumped on us throughout March and April while Mother Nature whistles and pushes dirt around with her toe and wears her best "don't look at me, I just work here" face.Yesterday was one of those gorgeous sunshiney-highs-in-the-seventies-let's-go-drink-margaritas-at-Chevys-on-the-river-and-let-the-seven-year-old-drive-me-home days. Today? Rain. Clouds. Temps in the fifties.So you may wonder what the point of this post is. Truth is, I was just trying to explain why, on my way home from dropping my son off at the bus-stop today, I started screaming at someones lawn.It wasn't my fault. The robins made me do i
...and we're off 1970-01-01 00:59:59 ...with LL pulling into an early lead by bagging a 3 pointer in the QofD Celebrity Death Pool.Ok, so my readers must be on a constant conference call with God or have a direct link to the mother ship or be Drudge Report junkies or something because within seconds of this story my inbox was filled to capacity.
Fame! I'm gonna live forever! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Okay, I'm not really immortal, but thanks to Sacramento Bee columnist Anita Creamer I am a lot closer to justifying my booze and cocaine binges as simple celebrity excess. Well, on a local level anyway. I imagine if I took my partying out of the 916 area code I would probably get thrown into the drunk tank with the other plebes. (sigh)You may be wondering what the hell I'm talking about. Well, it seems that John Hughes of IpsoSacto pimped my site through the features department over at the Sac Bee. I encourage such shameless acts of QofD promotion and would like to personally thank Mr. Hughes for his pitching prowess.At any rate, my site was passed around the Sac Bee where everyone rolled their eyes until Ms. Creamer benevolently agreed to take one for the team and interview me. This, of course, was met with enthusiasm on my part. (Except when I realized that I had a living, breathing, columnist coming to my home and was forced to burn the stack of Playgirls I had sitting on the back Read more:gonna
How much do you love me? (UPDATED!) 1970-01-01 00:59:59 ...enough to venture over to IpsoSacto and vote for me?My previous post has been made eligible for the Sacramento Bee's "Sunday Blog Watch" by the folks over at IpsoSacto. John Hughes of IpsoSacto has described the "Sunday Blog Watch" in the following way:The blog roundup in The Sacramento Bee Sunday Forum section has been commandered and turned into a digest of local opinion. You can help create the article by nominating posts and voting on your favorites.So there you have it. If you go and vote for me (my blog entry is the last one in the pile when you follow this link) my blog will turn up in an article in Sunday's paper. I don't want to get all Richard Daly on you folks but you know the drill: vote early and vote often.Ok, I was just joking about the vote often thing. Kind of.Hey, I just noticed that my blog has been reviewed by the folks over at italk2much.com! Yeah, they are right about the template, I've been meaning to do something more original for a long time. And yeah...
Here is where I apologize 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I received an e-mail from John Hughes today in which he relayed the pure, unadulterated, dedication of my readers in their quest to vote for my site. You guys really rock, did you know that? Thanks for all the support. Now I know who to turn to the next time someone around here needs killin'.Apparently I was mistaken and read the blog watch rules wrong. Apparently my post appeared as part of an rss feed and not for the Sunday feature. Apparently I'm a big dumbass who sent my poor readers on a fool's errand.I would like to plead my case: I am retarded and I didn't know any better.So I apologize to all of you, even Tony who managed to actually vote. For that he is going to receive a jar of QofD's homemade salsa once he gives me his full name, mailing address, social security number, two forms of photo ID, and credit card information.Althoug being reviewed by italk2much is still something that really did happen, and being interviewed for a column in the Sacramento Bee really did happ
Rant, rant, rant... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I went to the grocery store today and ran into a walking, talking, stereotype. At the back of the store where the dairy products are kept, there was a 450 pound woman leafing through her WIC vouchers while barking orders at her pre-teen daughter. The mother had acrylic nails that were freshly painted and was carrying a Louis Vuitton bag while she and all her children were decked out in brand name gear. The daughter was busy keeping her three younger siblings in line while checking the different brands of milk to see which ones were eligible for purchase with her mother's food stamp/WIC voucher. I saw the same group again in another aisle doing the same thing with fruit juice.Five minutes later this woman and her four children were in the liquor aisle. This time she wasn't leafing through her book of vouchers. Instead, she loaded up her cart with two cases of Corona and a large bottle of tequila. I wanted to ask if she had learned to hoard food vouchers from my cousins since they are
Rigor mortis of the brain 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Rigor mortis
: ˌri-gər-ˈmȯr-təs also chiefly British ˌrī-ˌgȯr- temporary rigidity of muscles occurring after death.Yup, rigor mortis is temporary but even after it passes, an undertaker will have to massage away remaining stiffness if the corpse is to be embalmed. But be careful; dead people aren't likely to inform you when the pressure becomes too great and breaking bones during this process is not unheard of."You'll know when you've accidentally broken a bone," we were told last night. "Because the body part will flex and rotate at odd angles. The sight of a break will usually make most new embalmers sick. It's just unnatural."Unlike flushing a corpse with the multitude of chemicals used in the embalming process, which is so close to Mother Nature that it is practically intuitive.So yes, I had class again last night. We were scheduled to cover the funerary and burial customs of ancient Rome. At this point do I even need to mention that this didn't happen? I have to g
Post Valentine's Redux 1970-01-01 00:59:59 So Valentine
's Day? Gorgeous. We had one of those forerunner-to-spring days. The sun was out, the temperatures were hovering right around the mid-sixties, and I wore shorts all day long, which thoroughly confused my neighbors since the last time they were blinded by that much white stuff they were skiing in Heavenly.So the warm weather? In California. The holy-fuck-is-this-winter-ushering-in-the-new-ice-age-global-warming-is-a-crock weather? Everywhere else. Life just doesn't get any better.So the King and I have officially passed the honeymoon phase of our marriage. How do I know this? We have started to give each other more practical gifts for Valentine's Day. Yesterday I gave him a power tool and he gave me flannel pajama bottoms.Alright, so the "power tool" has a French tickler attachment and the pajama bottoms are crotchless, but they are still a far cry from the jungle gym assembly we had mounted to our bedroom ceiling that first Valentine's Day out the matrimonial gates.Not Read more:Redux
Honey-Do List 1970-01-01 00:59:59 There is absolutely nothing going on in the Dysfunctional household today, which I guess would make us less Dysfunctional and more, well, normal. Bleh.Anita Creamer, the columnist with the Sacramento Bee e-mailed me and let me know that her column about this blog will be running in the Scene section of the Sacramento Bee this Sunday, February 18th. So "Yeah!" for that!Other than that, there's nothing more going on here than mescaline-driven gunplay. Here's the short list of what the King and I have going on:- Shampoo an area rug- Do some weeding in the backyard- Fire off my hundred and forty second e-mail to my former employer threatening to mail the HR department copious amounts of dog poop if they don't release my retirement funds for roll-over. It's been five months folks, time to leave the break room and fire up the old computer!- Get drunk and start beating the kids before the title of this blog becomes obsolete.That's it folks. How about you guys? Any big plans for the weeke
Bitch better give me my money 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I promised my husband that I will not divulge the name of the company I used to work for in the following post. Not only does he still work there, but he is one of the few who are constantly swimming against the tide of union-induced apathy to deliver a product worthy of customer expectations. (Yeah. You don't want to get me started on the union.)Also, the following post is by no means a slight to my former department, which was filled with fabulous people performing small miracles. Nor is it a reflection on my former boss (hi John!) who, like my husband, had been given the reins of a department in stasis and told to improve morale with nothing more than two coconut halves and a palm frond. Y'all were great people and I miss working for and with you every day.On to the crucifixion.I went on maternity leave in September of 2005. I had my daughter in October of 2005. My year-long leave of absence ended in September of 2006. It has been five months and still, the drunken orangutans who Read more:Bitch
, better
Stuff 1970-01-01 00:59:59 A few items for housekeeping:- IpsoSacto is back up and running. Go tell John Hughes hello, but don't hack into his system lest he be driven to the proverbial ledge again.- Here's the link to the Sac Bee column about this blog.- I just checked my webstats and naturally, the people coming here are looking for posts about the funeral service class I am taking. In order to oblige I'll direct you here, here, and here.- We just made a run to Costco's liquor aisle so I'm taking the day off to teach the kids to play quarters. You know, college prep.
Pow! Flan! 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Unsolicited publicity for Jay is here. Said publicity is a reciprocal effort performed in the name of... well, because it's my blog and I can. He's a funny guy who deserves to have his cyber butt kissed by us lesser beings. So here you go Jay. And another one for good measure. And, yeah, ok I'm vying for a position on his staff, seeing as how he had to fire Britney and all. I will be a Cynical Bastardita if it's the last thing I do! Or something like that...My six year old son and I made flan last night.Yeah, I know that flan is a Mexican dish, or Salvadoran, or something un-redneck but I figure if those bastards at Chevy's can pretend they're serving authentic Mexican cuisine then this gringa could get away with attempting to whip up a latin-inspired custard desert.I didn't even put Spam in it.Anyway, I discovered the best part about making flan was the carmel. The instructions said to put white sugar in a saucepan and turn on the heat. Pow! Carmel!There were no other instructi
Ok, so I thought that the write-up in the Bee nece... 1970-01-01 00:59:59 Ok, so I thought
that the write-up in the Bee necessitated that I tell my family about this blog. Actually, if I had thought about it, this probably wasn't necessary at all since most of my family is on drugs or in prison. But at the point that I realized that I should just let it go I had already taken down the more incriminating posts.So you're good for now Uncle Dan. If the rest of the family does happen to put two and two together and figures out why valuables disappear and their spoons are blackened when you're in town it won't be because of this blog.At any rate, like any good and dutiful sibling is wont to do, my brother checked out the site and then sent me this:----- Original Message ----From: (my brother) (e-mail stricken)@yahoo.comTo: Me elkgroverunner@gmail.comSent: Tuesday, February 20, 2007 4:06:11 PMSubject: Re: A thought...Does it create family strife if you are busy burying people in the cold, cold ground, and I am busy digging the fuckers up?In fact, I think that
Cyber Fisticuffs 1970-01-01 00:59:59 I received an e-mail the other day from one of my husband's cousins. On his mom's side. As in "The Empire" to our "Rebel Base."So... to make a long story short, this cousin was fishing for gossip and e-mailed me. I had a feeling I knew what she was doing, but I wanted to make sure. So I gave a little nibble. She shot back with an e-mail that made her motivations obvious.Now, at this juncture I had two choices; I could continue to employ the Alexander family's institutionalized Colonel Klink response (I know Noss-ing!) and pretend that everything with Lee was hunky dory. Or I could e-mail her with my version of the truth. I suppose there was a third option which involved deleting the e-mail without a response, but I had time to kill and a sick, insatiable, curiosity.What to do? What to do?I thought about it, considered the consequences, and then composed a restrained e-mail outlining our concerns with Lee's behavior. I was interested. I wanted to see if other family members would ac Read more:Cyber
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