I have no new blog post this week. That's right. I'm tired, I have a New England Horror Writers event this weekend, and weekend. As a faithful reader, you must be outraged right about now. I’ve got a lot of nerve, I’m sure you’re thinking. Who do I think I am?

In response to your outrage, I have compiled a fun list of things you can do instead of sending me death threats this weekend. Why not...

1. Visit a local dairy farm and find out how milk gets from cow to carton. Do NOT, however, visit a local slaughterhouse to find out how sausage is made, unless you've been seriously considering becoming a vegetarian. Just trust me on this one, okay?

2. Use your iPhone to film your own zombie apocalypse movie. This is a low budget, high payoff event that will bring the whole family together for the low, low price of one bucket of pigs' brains.

3. Teach yourself how to play electric guitar. You’ve always wanted to learn—now, with no pesky blog post to distract you this weekend, you can finally take the time to do it. Not enough cash on hand to buy that Stratocaster you've always wanted? You can satisfy your need to impress the chicks by getting serious about learning the air guitar.

4. Write the Great American Novel. Go ahead. Give it a shot and let me know how that goes for you.

5. Write to your local congressman to complain about the state of the economy. Do not, however, write to grouse about my lack of a blog post this week. If you use proper grammar, punctuation, and verb tenses, he or she might even invite you to the state capitol for a nice lunch.

Now that you have some fun options for the weekend, I'm going to go take a nap. I'll see you next week.

Oops—Joe Courtney's on the phone again, wanting to know why I promised everyone lunch. Ingrate. You think he'd be happy that I sent so many disgruntled voters his way!

I have never met a single person who enjoyed a good tick. Personally, I hate them. Everybody hates them. So why do they even exist?
I can figure out a purpose for just about every other insect in the world. Burying beetles take care of pesky decaying matter. Mosquitoes give bats something to eat. Even fleas give baboons something to snack on while they’re grooming each other. But ticks? Totally useless in the animal kingdom, as far as I can tell.

I won’t lie—I’m a fan of global warming, and I just sent Al Gore a nice thank you card last week for all the 80 degree weather we’ve been having in New England this balmy March. But the warm weather has given those  @!$$!* ticks a new lease on life, and they now seem to be out year-round. Jason made the mistake last week, one sunny day, of clearing brush without bathing in Deep Woods Off. The result? He managed to remove two ticks before they bit him. It was the third one, the one I discovered the next day, all hunkered down and enjoying himself a Jason snack, that was the problem.

I don’t remember the last time I had to remove a tick off of a human, and can’t even swear that I’ve ever had to do it. But I was ready and willing to go to battle for my hubby. Armed with peanut butter, rubbing alcohol, tweezers, and a filleting knife, I went in for the tick.

I had once heard that if you smother a tick with peanut butter, it will back out of where it has bitten you. This is a bald-faced lie. All it does is leave you with an oily tick that smells like peanuts. I wiped away the peanut butter and tried my next trick: grabbing on to the rotten little parasite and pulling. 
This resulted, of course, in a partial tick still being clamped tight to Jason’s skin while its headless body squirmed in a kleenex leaking blood all over the place. It was positively revolting. I told Jason to hang tight while I made myself a sandwich with the peanut butter and thought about my next angle of attack.

I wound up going in after the tick head using a pair of pliers to pinch up the skin while I sawed away at Jason’s stomach with the knife. Honestly, I don’t know how I managed it without getting sick. Jason was absolutely no help, as he was more concerned with staunching the bleeding than comforting me in my time of need. All in all, it was a pretty lousy way to spend the afternoon, and now Jason has to keep an eye on the gaping hole in his stomach to see if he develops a bulls-eye rash.

I’ll tell you one thing, though. Neither one of us will ever go outside without tick repellant again. 

In honor of my sister's birthday this week, I was going to write this blog entry for her. But I think it's probably more for my two nephews, who often wonder why their mother and aunt are doubled over with laughter for no apparent reason in places like the grocery store or at church.
My nephews chalk it up to "sister telepathy" (which, I'll admit, is what we told them it was), that strange sixth sense between siblings that causes them to giggle hysterically when one of them turns to the other, says "see—food!" and proudly displays a mouth full of half-chewed peas. (I never said our humor was particularly sophisticated.)
The thing is, my sister and I have known each other our whole lives. Nobody else quite understands the habit we both have of checking our bagels to make sure those are really raisins and not ants before we eat it. Or why both of us will travel an hour to Whole Foods just to use the soap dispenser in the bathroom—but not on rainy days, when there might be suicidal frogs on the road. The truth is, nobody understands me like my sister. Which is probably why nobody can make me laugh quite like her.
My sister was the one who did my makeup for me before my dance recitals, in such a memorable way that I have not worn makeup since for fear of replicating her work. She introduced me to the wonder that is Hamburger Helper, something we'd never had in our house growing up. (Right now, both of my parents are reading that line and saying "Hamburger Helper? Why did we even bother with the fresh veal and pork chops?") And she has let me be the crazy, sometimes irresponsible, but always entertaining aunt to her two precious boys. It just doesn't get better than that.
So, to my two nephews, who still don't quite get why Mom and Auntie Stacey were laughing so hard they were crying when Mom gave Grandpa a pair of used socks, I can only tell you this: some day, many years from now, you two are going to be at a baseball game or out to dinner and one of you will turn to the other and say "what do you call a herd of caterpillars?" And you will both laugh so hard that milk will come out of your nose.
Nobody else will get it. Onlookers might even think the milk thing is disgusting. But you two will get it. And you will think, brother telepathy.
Happy Birthday, Kim!

244.

I nearly slapped my doctor when she told me my cholesterol was 244. Luckily for her, the fat in my blood slowed my killer reflexes, and all I managed was a limp wave. She thought I was trying to be friendly.
  
I honestly don’t understand how this has happened. I try very hard to eat healthy things. Why, just take a look at my meal plan during a typical day:

Breakfast: Oatmeal topped with bacon.
Lunch: Salad topped with ranch dressing, cheese, and bacon.
Dinner: Grilled tilapia wrapped in bacon, with a side of cheese smothered in sour cream.
 
See? Oatmeal, salad, fish … these are all healthy foods!

Since clearly my high cholesterol couldn’t possibly have been caused by something I ate, I decided it must be the result of genetics. I called my parents to yell at them for hardening my arteries.

My mother was sympathetic, until I noticed the way the conversation was heading. Wait a minute—was she actually bragging about her HDL levels? Show off! Although she did have a point—with numbers like that (I have to admit, she impressed me) it became abundantly clear that my father was the culprit.
 
“Hi, Dad. I’ve got a teeny, tiny bone to pick with you,” I seethed when he came to the phone.
 
My father admitted that my cholesterol woes were probably a direct result of being his child. He gave me some good advice, mostly on how to beat the cholesterol screening the next time I had to have one. It was kind of hard to hear him, though.

“Wait a minute! Dad, you’re eating potato chips right now!”

“No, I’m not,” he mumbled through a mouth full of potato chips.

“Yes you are! Those are Cape Cod chips, too. I can tell by the sound of their crunch!”

Dad was busted, so he gave the phone back to Mom. She assured me that there are a couple of light cheeses out on the market that tasted better than, say, boiled socks or dinosaur dung, but not much. I hung up the phone, heart sinking. I had to face the truth: my love affair with cheese was over.
 
I kissed my hunk of Gouda goodbye, and carved the block of cheddar in to the shape of a heart before throwing it out. I’ll admit, it was an emotional breakup. I chewed on a slab of raw bacon to soothe my broken soul. That helped a little.
 
I’m determined to control this thing without medication. I’ve decided to shed a few pounds, so I’m starting the Atkins diet tomorrow. I can’t wait to see my doctor’s face at my next cholesterol screening!

I'm something of a perfectionist, so I like to bring my 'A' game to whatever I do, be it my job or doing laundry. It should be no surprise, then, that when I decided it was time for my mid-life crisis, I would aim high (no pun intended...you'll get it in a minute.)
It all started a few weeks ago when I turned 39. I started to wonder what the heck I've been doing with my life. I have yet to become a famous author or to turn down a marriage proposal from Vin Diesel. Nobody has named a newly-discovered variety of orchid after me, and lets face it, I have failed to achieve the status of fashion icon in my community. In fact, they've started to complain at the local grocery store when I show up in my pajamas. Sure, everyone thinks it's cute when the teenyboppers do it, but when an unshowered old bag shows up in the produce section wearing her Spongebob nightie, now all of a sudden the store manager wants to call the cops.
But I digress.
The point is, I was panicking. Time was running out, and I still hadn't made my mark on the world.
So I decided to climb Mount Everest.
Really, I don't know why I'd waited this long to think of it. I could take a leave of absence from work, buy some sensible snow boots, hire a Sherpa, and hike my way to the top of the world. Brilliant! Exactly what I needed to pull myself out of this slump!
I googled Mount Everest as soon as I got home. The first thing to come up was the number of frozen corpses that still litter the path up the mountain. I was fine with that. Maybe we could set up camp on top of George Mallory. You know, because he's there.
As I scrolled through the pictures of this truly awesome natural masterpiece, it dawned on me what I was seeing. Lots of snow. And lots of high peaks. Potentially slippery peaks, what with all that snow. 
I remembered a few important things about myself. Like how I start to whine if the thermostat is set below seventy. And how I have a tendency to trip over my feet so often that I've often been compared to an old Chevy Chase skit. Not to mention that not one of my friends is a bona-fide Sherpa guide. As I stared at a particulary breathtaking photo taken from the summit of Everest, my dream of climbing to the top went up in smoke. Which was okay, because where there's smoke, there's fire, and I really do appreciate being cozy warm.

Instead, I decided to buy six packages of Hostess®
sno-balls and eat them all in one sitting. The snack cake-induced sugar high made me forget all about my failed hopes and dreams, and once I washed it down with a shamrock shake, I was feeling much better about life in general. Crisis averted, and now I have these brand new super-chic snow shoes to boot!