Monday I wore these silver pleather ballet flats to work that I bought at Target last weekend. When I got home from work and was sitting at my desk on the computer, the tops of my feet started itching, so being a person who generally listens to her central nervous system, I scratched them. After the second scratch, I noticed the texture of the skin I scratching was out of the norm, so I swung my chair around and took a look at my tooties:

These are not my feet, but that's the amount of swelling I had. Juicy!

I normally have long, bony-looking feet, with a nice dash of huge purple veins running along the top. But they were so swollen I couldn't see a single vein, and my toes, whose knobby knuckles can be seen from space, were all looked like Lil' Smokies. It didn't hurt, and the itching subsided (I think it was just a coincidence).

I felt lke I was wearing jelly-filled socks that I couldn't take off. It was weird. Anyway it was gone by the next morning and I am never wearing those shoes again, so I hope they enjoyed it while it lasted.

Moral of the Story: Avoid the cheap silver ballet flats that are at Target right now. Unless you are into fat feet*.

*if you are, you will not be judged by the woman who steals mini condiments from hotels and restaurents- not to use,  they are just TOO DAMN ADORABLE.

Last Thursday night, just before midnight, I think I had my first deeply religious experience.

I use the world ‘religious’ not in reference to any organized religion, but in reference  to the most profound feeling I have found myself having  in my entire life.

I was sitting at my computer, listening  to “It’s The End of The World as We Know it” by R.E.M, casually browsing  Huffingonpost.com. I read a news report on recent statements made in an interview for magazine “Christian Today” by the deliciously simple  Joe Samuel “The Plumber” Wurzelbacher.

Joe speaks about his view on homosexuality (among other things):

“People don't understand the dictionary--it's called queer. Queer means strange and unusual. It's not like a slur, like you would call a white person a honky or something like that.***”

So, queer means "strange and unusual". OK, I can run with that.

I suppose the idea of expunging ones bowels in a porceline waterbowl INSIDE the house was strange and unsual to Joey’s forefathers— But should the sheer terror of shitting in anything that isn’t a hole in the ground stop the progession of defecation technology?

OR, queerer STILL! A machine that refrigerates  air and re-circulates it through a living space, thus creating an ideal climate temperature. I can just see stubborn old Grandpa Wurzelbacher  peering over his horn rims  at the  WWHHHIRRRRRRRRRIIINNNGG air conditioning unit, proclaiming, “We don’t take too kindly to queers in these parts.”

I was cracking myself up, thinking the hundreds of thousands of “things” that were, at one point in time, completely “queer” to humanity at large. Paper and pen, gun powder, polyyester. Antibiotics, plastic, berber carpeting. Motor vehicles, X-ray machines, Twitter.

Then I began to think about how the most important things I was thinking of aren't THINGS.

Seceding from the most powerful nation in the world and attempting to form a more perfect union. The Emancipation Proclaimation. Women's Suffrage. The Civil Rights Movement.

At one point in time, ideas are now considerend the historical leaps towards progression for the United States by the majority of Americans were thought of as incendiary, outrageous, and not in line with tradition . You might even call them queer.

It was while this whole issue was stewing in my head that I got my great idea. The idea was so great that it made my heart beat faster, my hands shake and my mind race. I flew to the keyboard and banged out the few short, choppy sentences I could make out from what was flying around in my head at a million miles a second. After I reread what I had typed, I wept. I am betting the farm that I get rich and famous from this Great Idea, because I don't weep for just any old reason.

All I will say is that I now have an idea, and that's all any decent writer needs. And, I will leave you with this:

Los Angeles Dodgers basebal player Manny Ramirez has been suspended for 50 games after drug tests revealed the presence of female fertility hormones in his blood.

Really, Manny? You thought that even though Rose, Canseco, McGuire, Strawberry, Clemens (the list goes on and on) all got nailed, the MLB wouldn’t be suspicious of the presence of a hormone almost exclusively taken by men after serious steroid use? Really, that’s like borrowing your parents car for the night and thinking they won’t become suspicious the next morning after finding empty 18-packs and a clean bong in the back of the Caravan.  

And really, what was going to be your excuse for having hormones that increase estrogen? Are you trying to pull a real-life Junior? Either you were trying to re-inflate your huevos after juicing, or someone’s biological clock is ticking! I'll knit some booties!

There are enough asterisks in the records books for America's pastime. Let all base ball players learn a lesson from M. Ram and take heed: No steriods means no steriods. Really.

"Nice pair'a hooters you got there... The birds..."

I’m not what you would call a very physical person. I cannot recall getting into any brawls in high school or college (except when I got kicked off the Powder Puff field during the last minute of the game junior year for shoving Stacy Whats-Her-Face after the whistle. And the time I kneed one of the Rapino twins in the mouth because she wrapped herself around my leg like a scared child during the game senior year. Touch football brings out the beast in me.)

Sometimes, I like to tickle Travis. The only reason I do it is because he HATES to be tickled. He laughs for about half a second and then starts bucking like a bronco and yelling at me to get off; He CANNOT  handle it.

The other night we were all jacked up on Diet Dr. Pepper, so I pinned him down and started tickling him. He easily got away and responded in kind by sitting on my stomach and digging his fingers into my ribs.

You know that point in the playfighting where it goes from being fun and innocent to being  On Like Mutha-fuckin’  Donkey Kong? I always think of that scene in Dumb & Dumber when Lauren Holly and Jeff Daniels are frolicking in the snow, and everything is hunky dory until she throws a snowball at him, and he snaps and rockets one at her face and slams her head into a snow bank. No need to go on. You get it.

I thrashed like a Marlin on a boat deck until he relented, then I took a flying leap at his chest, trying to take him off the bed and to the ground.

Except he moved at the last second.

So I went flying off the bed, landing directly onto my left shoulder. So now I’m convinced my rotator cup and my dream of being the starting Southpaw for the DBacks are both destroyed.

And then, THEN, I gave myself a black eye on a giant slip n slide. I WENT DOWN ONE TIME.

I guess the moral of the story is that I am a giant klutz. But tell my face and shoulder something they don’t know.