That's what I get for staying up all night to finish writing this title.

I went to the store on one hour's sleep. This is what I bought:

- 2 pounds of grapes that had a pretty picture on the bag
- 1 red bell pepper
- 24 panty liners (for the dog)
- 12 cans of dog food (also for the dog)
- 12 foil pouches of dog food (different variety than cans)
- 3 boxes of dental floss
- 2 bras
- 20 serving flat of Nanaimo Bars
- 1 bath mat with fishes on it
- 1 matching fish shaped toothbrush holder
- 1 Oprah Winfrey's magazine whatever it's called
- 3 packs of gum (same brand, different flavors)

This is what I had gone to the store to buy:

- butter

Note the discrepancy.

Dry toast, anyone?

I got this title for 50% off, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with it. It's just missing a

Attention Shoppers: Please stop putting coins in the Happy School Bus mechanical ride. The kid in there has ridden it 26 times in a row and is starting to look a bit green.

Attention Shoppers: We understand and appreciate that it's very hot today. Management requests, however, that you refrain from handling our frozen food items in an unsanitary manner.

Attention Shoppers: In order to bring you the everyday low prices that you appreciate, we are unable to pay our cashiers enough to put up with your crap. Smile, say thank you, and save your speech about the evils of inflation for your next address of congress.

Attention Shoppers: It has come to our attention that if your kids scream loud enough long enough that you will buy anything, and we will continue to strive to make this establishment as family friendly as humanly possible.

Attention Shoppers: We again apologize for any inconvenience caused by the line break in our sprinkler system over the soap aisle, and again request that all customers remain fully clothed.

Attention Shoppers: Please enjoy our recycled air, unrelenting noise, and affordably priced convenience foods. We invite you to visit our pharmacy before you finish your shopping trip today.

Attention Shoppers: If you are purchasing items for your kids that do not feature any licensed cartoon characters, please take a moment and stop by our courtesy desk to fill out a survey on socially maladjusted children for a chance to win valuable coupons.

Attention Shoppers: Will the customer who made the bulk foods manager cry please report to customer service immediately and apologize. Bring a broom.

Attention Shoppers: You don't need half that crap in your cart. Either put it back or stop whining about how broke you are.

Attention Shoppers: Consumables that are not sold by weight may be enjoyed while you shop provided that the packaging is presented to the cashier for purchase before leaving the store. We remind our customers, however, that this policy does not extend to personal hygiene products.

Attention Shoppers: First parent who figures out where the hell their toddler wandered off to wins a donut.

Attention Shoppers: The store is now closing. Or perhaps we should say the store is still closing. The store has been closing ever since we told you that the store was now closing fifteen minutes ago. But there you are! Still shopping. How can we make this whole store closing concept clear enough for you to fully grasp, shoppers?

Attention Shoppers: It's a beautiful day. Go play outside.

Make sure you rinse this title off really well before reading it.

Fruit should not pose a threat to mature, committed relationships. Once you've found someone who fills your heart with joy and makes every day worth living no plant matter on earth should be able to stand in the way of your happiness.

But c'mon. The avocado was obviously invented just to test me.

The man doesn't just like the decrepid things, he's downright evangelical about them. Avocado is his answer for everything.

"I'm tired."

"Eat an avacado, they have B vitamins!"

"I have a leg cramp."

"Eat an avacado, they have potassium!"

"I'm going to throw something at you."

"Eat an avacado, they have large pits!"

Maybe it's the lithium content, I don't know. Nothing can taste that good.

No, of course I haven't tried to eat one! I know everything I need to know about avocados just from watching him eat them. He calls them "nature's perfect food". I call them "god's earliest experiment in the art of baby *poo manufacture." The other day a glob of avocado gut slid off his spoon and splatted on the floor. The wet smacking noise and soft spread of the gushy green goo was completely consistent with my theory.

The persecution rests.

It would be one thing if it were simply a matter of conflicting tastes, but it's become something bigger than that. It's become a source of endless amusement to him. At my expense.

He could just eat the things when I'm not around, you know.

He could refrain from pronouncing the word avocado with the same inflection that a seven year old uses to pronounce the word snot.

"Avocaaaaaaaaaaaaaadooooooo."

He's not about to do either of these things, though. I know this from the sadistic glint of glee that fills his eyes when he sees me turning the same shade of horror green as the evil filling his spoon.

I should just not allow them in the house. I should just make him eat them outside.

He genuinely does believe they're magic, cure-all balls of fabulousness that can help restore the most pulverized of immune systems, though. And he does have a horrible, horrible, horrible cold at the moment.

Okay fine. But I'm not buying them again. And he better not sneeze on me with a mouth full of that sin. Besides, it could be worse. He's taken to expressing a keen interest in trying durian which, according to Wikipedia, has a "strong and penetrating" odor that has been "described variously as almonds, rotten onions, turpentine and gym socks".

I think I might start keeping a suitcase packed on grocery day.

*Yes, I am aware that the latest few posts in this blog have included higher than normal levels of excretory references. I have no explanation for this. For the record, though, even if I did have an explanation you would not find it posted here. Why spoil the magic, am I right?

Wow. Here I am writing this title. Who saw that coming?

Sooner or later everybody becomes something they never thought they'd be. A spouse with a mortgage and a kid. A clone of their own parent. A country music fan. Life can be terrifyingly unpredictable that way.

And so I find myself today, looking at a woman I never thought I'd become. Sleeves rolled up, sodden mass dangling from my fingertips, shivering my way across the yard with a flashlight at midnight to make a special trip directly to the burning barrel. I might not recognize myself, but there's no question that's me. I can tell from the whining.

I have become the owner of a dog that wears diapers.

It was never intended to be a regular thing. It was just a preventative/precautionary thing. At first it worked, too. Really well! As soon as I put pants on her bony little ass my ancient little dog stopped peeing inside the house!

For two whole days!

And then I guess she had a couldn't-hold-it-moment, and in that moment discovered that most miraculous property of modern dog diaper technology. That it makes pee magically disappear. It's like having your own personal urine fairy!

Once that little dog figured out how comfortable and easy it was to simply let loose in her conveniently attached pee-ceptacle there was no stopping her. Why squat in the wind and cold and damp if nobody could see when you were doing it inside and chase you out there anymore? They're little doggy stealth pants is what they are - hiding the crime, encouraging the behavior and perpetuating the need. I was totally suckered in, and by the time I figured out what was happening had already become a defenseless pawn of the absorbant canine garment industry.

When I started buying more than a pack a week is when I realized that I needed a more afforable, environmentally friendly solution, and bought the cloth diapers. They're not actually diapers per say as much as they are fashion pants with a tail hole that facilitate the sticking of a little absorbent pad into the crotch.

That's right. My ancient little twenty pound dog wears panties and a maxi-pad.

Like I say, it was never supposed to get this far. She can hold it - when she's in her little bed at night she pees not a drop, and if I physically pick her up and carry her outside in the morning she waits very comfortably until she gets outside. As soon as her little paws hit a horizontal surface, though, she gets her squat on.

Doesn't know to hold it anymore, maybe. Too old to care enough to hold it, probably. Never did like peeing outside, and finally just banked enough old lady attitude to call my bluff on the whole "you have to" position I took is my theory.

And called my bluff very effectively, too. I stepped over the line before I even realized that I might need to draw one the moment I brought that first pack home. Once you've done that the grey area becomes too morally torturous to contemplate. It's no longer a simple case of the poor old dear can't control her functions, it's probably time for her to be put down. You've already committed to basically controlling them for her. What's the cut off now?

"Sorry Allison. You went through eleven diapers last week and that was fine, but twelve? For twelve you die."

Sigh.

The things we do for love, eh? The smelly, ridiculous, expensive things we do for love.

Don't worry, though. I might put special, expensive clothes on my dog specifically for her to urinate on, but it's not like I have any country stations pre-programmed on my car radio or anything.

(Yes, country fans, consider my ass presented for it's whoopin'. I know I've got it coming.)

You'd think I'd have picked up a few new ideas for titles while I was at it.

Things I Have Learned Living a Month in the Country:

• That loaf of bread from the grocery store contains more than your minimum daily requirement of deer poop.
• That well water does not dissolve teeth. Apparently that's "normal grit" and not the shaved enamel of my molars.
• The Hutterites' preferred method of arm removal.
• The further away the convenience store, the greater the craving for junk food. Even if you never bought the stuff when it was within walking distance.
• The full, profound extent of my dog's love of poo.
• If you don't know the weather forcast, you aren't capable of having a conversation with anybody.
• If you don't go at least 60 miles per hour on the wet gravel road the guy behind you will, like, literally die, like, right now and really really painfully, too. You bitch.
• If he's in front of you 10 miles per hour is plenty fast enough for both of you. I mean what's your big hurry anyway, hot shot?
• It gets dark when the sun goes down.
• Cows like strawberries.
• Cows like yoghurt.
• If you offer a cow strawberry yoghurt it will look at you like you're the antichrist and run to the opposite end of the pasture, pooping frantically.
• That a lot of things in life involve poop.

This isn't one of those titles that go with these kinds of entries.

This is one of those entries that you write when your boyfriend turns to you and says "you know you've been here a month?" and you realize that it's way too late to write an entry before two weeks go by and that you just damn well better slam something up there before you log in to discover you're down to just a handful of followers - someone who knows you personally and never reads your blog but added you on principle and a bunch of people who started the blogs that added you when they were drunk and then forgot all about them.

This is one of those entires where you list a million different things you were busy with, like moving in to your boyfriend's place temporarily with your three cats and two dogs (yes, even the incontinent one and to answer your next question both - the man's not only wonderfully crazy he's also extraordinarily generous), spending 12 - 17 hour days fixing up your thirty year old trailer to sell, listing your trailer for sale, *selling your thirty year old trailer after only four days for a very fair cash price and no conditions in a depressed market, and dry walling the house you're trying to move into. This is one of those entires where people leave comments like "wow, you've been busy!", and that helps you to feel justified for having been so negligent about blogging. That's one of the not so secret motives behind these entries.

*yes, it's also one of those entries where you subtly manage to work in a little bragging.

This is one of those entires that carry the responsibility of following up with a real entry instead of another litany of excuses as to why there hasn't been one for over a month, at least it is if you have any appreciation at all for the wonderful people who have hung in there and continued to follow you despite your extended absence.

On a related note, this is also happens to be one of those entries where you go

WOOHOO! TWO HUNDRED FOLLOWERS!

Thank you, guys, for peeking over the edge of the world occasionally after I dropped off of it. This is my most favorite place to hang by my fingernails ever.

I'm thinking of firing the elf who writes my titles.

There are a lot of people who don't believe in the power of crystals. They don't think "a hunk of rock" can manifest a human desire. I think implicit in that form of detraction, however, is evidence that most people don't properly understand how to access the manifesting power of crystals.

Yes, crystals are inert. Change happens when things interact. To access the power of crystals to manifest things you have to use your power to change the state of the crystals.

Say I want to manifest something. Let's say something simple, like a glass of iced tea. I go and get my crystals - I have a whole container of them - and select a few for the process. How many I use depends on the results I want. Whether, for example, I want to manifest ice tea only for myself or if I want other friends and loved ones to benefit from the manifestation. I then take these crystals, transfer them to an appropriate receptacle, and change their state.

I'm not talking about any kind of elaborate ritual or extreme force or anything like that. I'm talking something as simple as putting them in water. Allowing the elements to mingle and merge. That's my entire job. The crystals - and the water, the contribution of that element should not be dismissed - do the rest, and literally almost instantly, I have my iced tea.

Now maybe this fantastical process is beyond the ability of our rudimentary little monkey brains to understand scientifically. Perhaps we never will completely understand how it is that crystals are capable of manifesting our desires, but can you argue the results when, to use our example, they consistently manifest ice tea every single time you use them for that purpose?

Granted, so far ice tea is the only thing I've had success using them to manifest, but then I buy all my crystals at the grocery store. I'm sure if you went to a proper crystal store you'd find ones you could add water to and get, like, ponies and sports cars and stuff.