Come on in! Here. Let me take your coat. What's that? Oh, I'm not laying it across the bed in the back bedroom...I'm keeping it. Sorry. You should have asked sooner. Go pick your seat. Heh, heh. I never get tired of that one.
Thank you all for showing up for my event on such short notice. It's not every day one gets an invite to a pity party. I truly appreciate your support. Some days Val can take anything the old world throws her way, and other days she's a quivering glob of plain gelatin. Take last night, for instance. I was feeling especially vulnerable, what with my championship plastic-baby-thawing performance, and the subsequent accusation of cheating. You'd have though I took an icepick to that glacierized inanimate infant. That put my nose out of joint. Then I read comments on the reportage of my victory.
The magic of ordinary days would have seen me viewing those comments through my rose-colored glasses (assuming I had them back from The Charlatans Optical Delusions Emporium and Professional Prevaricators Shoppe), taking such jibes in stride, like Jackie Joyner-Kersee over hurdles in her heyday, acknowledging the typewritten banter as a case of ganderfying the goose, giving Val a taste of her own medicine, fair play in a turnabout. However...I was still smarting from the announcement in front of the entire baby shower crowd that since I win everything, I must have cheated! I swear. That proclamation was as shocking as the time Ellen DeGeneres leaned over that sitcom airport microphone and BLARED to the sitcom airport and TV viewing audience, "I'm gay!" It took me by surprise. Probably more than Ellen's announcement took anyone by surprise.
So I was smarting, you see. My virtual 44 oz. Diet Coke cup was half empty, not half full. I started grousing about my image. How I am perceived by the masses of baby shower attendees and blog readers. A quick scroll through past comment sections seemed to point to an unavoidable fact. Val is a bragging, win-at-all-costs, husband-wood-chipping, menopausal, insane-asylum-bound, pencil-wielding eyeball-stabber who wears clothing made from dinner napkins, releases enough gaseous emissions to single-handedly warm the globe, cares not enough about her pets to let them reside inside, with an identity that is very hard to be. No wonder that tooth-sucker who works at The Charlatans Optical Delusions Emporium and Professional Prevaricators Shoppe looked at me like I was something she scraped off her shoe, that looked like a chunk of mystery meat filler that fell out of her Walmart Chicken Chimichanga, that resembled a cooked version of the blob that comes out of a patient's midriff during psychic surgery.
Let's all grab our Walmart stuck-together paper plates and move to the serving table. Do NOT take an extra fork! We have the main course all respectable pity parties, fried worms, along with a bit of crow, some humble pie for dessert, and a choice of Val's salty tears or hemlock tea (sweetened and unsweetened) for the beverage.
"What about games?" you ask. We will have the 44 oz. Diet Coke Chugging contest. The Thaw Val's Cold, Cold Heart contest (no fair removing Val's heart for heating). The Putting On Big Girl Panties contest, where participants must dress themselves in 10 pairs of granny panties and run across the room without picking their seat. The Soup-Stacking contest. And the Spin Juno And See Who Chews Her Nose contest. Prizes will be awarded at the discretion of Val, consisting of various and sundry treasures collected over the years by Hick at auctions and flea markets. Sorry, the Department of Health prohibits the dispensation of Auction Meat.
I hope you all enjoy my little soiree. I think it will be good for what ails me. Tomorrow Val will be back to her Mother Teresa/Pollyanna/Mary Poppins self, writing about fluffy kittens, gamboling puppies, silky unicorns, rainbows, and lollipops.
Like a post-apocalyptic roach, Val is a survivor.
However, you could fashion that auction meat into the always popular meat clothing items, a la Lady Gaga, deftly sidestepping those silly Health Department "suggestions."
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteWell, let me chug a triple martini and I will be right over to enjoy your party. Is your Mom coming? I can't wait to see her "holey" pants. I want to pet Juno's silky fur while stacking soup and picking seats! Oh! Wait - did I just fall down a chuck hole near the BARn? Just call me Alice from now on.
Sending you a whole plum pie covered with a cinnamon, butter and brown sugar crust full of pity. I will also pick my seat for you. But you CAN'T HAVE MY COAT.
ReplyDeleteI think "husband-wood-chipping, menopausal, insane-asylum-bound, pencil-wielding eyeball-stabber who...releases enough gaseous emissions to single-handedly warm the globe" kind of describes all of us, so you might have to have a Seek and Find game to detect the real Val. As long as you bring Chex mix, and maybe some of Mom's extra slaw, not to mention tiny frozen albino frogs, I'm in.
ReplyDeleteI think it great that you can write when you're down. I just curl into a ball and want to be left alone, and i definitely don't write or do anything productive. Fortunately, this doesn't happen often. I hope things brighten for you soon and you can return to being your old self. Take care.
ReplyDeleteUh oh, Stephen! You really messed up and didn't even realize it! "You can return to being your OLD self'" You are the one that had better take care!
ReplyDeleteHey Val, you know what they say about opinions and...everybody has them. Don't let it get you down. Toss that party along with some Chex and I'll be there. I fill the bill.
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteWell, Madam, I could do that...if I was crafty or a seamstress. If I was, I would be making my own napkins out of my shirts, or shirts out of my napkins. The Auction Meat is MINE.
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knancy,
Mom has been housebound since the big snowstorm last Thursday. I almost lured her out today, to go for a ride, but she saw The Pony slip in her driveway, and shelved that notion indefinitely. Thank goodness my sister the ex-mayor's wife took her some baby shower leftovers. I hear that pulled pork is a good side dish for slaw.
If you can't see the sinkhole before falling in, you must be a patron of The Charlatans Optical Delusions Emporium and Professional Prevaricators Shoppe.
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Leenie,
That pity pie sounds delicious. Kudos on the seat-picking, but the coat refusal is a challenge. Here. I'll throw it on a bed in the back bedroom. Maybe somebody will toss it out the window, and you can shinny up a tree like a ring-tailed lemur to reclaim it. I hear that tree-climbing technique is easily learned in the Pacific Northwest. A lazy mailman told me.
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Tammy,
There is no such thing as EXTRA slaw. All slaw if vital. I just whipped up my second batch of Chex Mix today. And I have THREE tiny unfrozen albino frog babies laying about the house. They are not for cheating. If you comb your hair with a fork, you might, indeed, be mistaken for Val.
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Stephen,
I am already feeling like my OLD self. Uh huh. That almost got past me, if not for the diligence of my trusty back-haver, knancy! I'm sure it was just a Freudian slip of your fingers. You are the best of all at tiptoeing across the egg-shell field. I'll let this one slide. Thank you for your well-wishes.
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knancy,
You are like my food-taster and bomb-sniffer. My first line of defense. It pays nothing, of course. But if you ever get a thorn in your paw, I will pull it out, to curry further favor.
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Linda,
How are you at making clothing out of Auction Meat?