Don't Call It A Comeback! (at least not until there's more than one post this month)

I'm back bitches, gays, mothers who love profanity and anybody else who accidentally reads the word that is Miss Spoken!

Ahhhh, another extended hiatus from the blogosphere with absolutely no reason other than (a) I often question whether or not what I have to say is worth reading and (b) can I make what I have to say sarcastic enough that the collection of words truly conveys the ridiculous recipe of boredom, exhaustion, laundry and random vagina jokes that has become my existence.

Maybe I think too much.

Maybe I think too little.

I'll have to think about that at 3:00 in the morning when Satan's flock of Devil Birds start their early-morning cacophony of shrieks and cackles from their Hell-based nest (i.e. the tree right outside my bedroom window).

It's not that there hasn't been anything to write about. I have actually left my house and not just for butter and wine, although I gotta say, I really do love my butter and wine trips. And I have on occasion used my computer for reasons other than researching the do's and dont's of buying pharmaceuticals over the Internet (note: I think I'll stick to random trips to Mexico like any normal mother of three would do.)

Let me bore you with my June itinerary:

We kicked off week one with The Boy and Boss Lady participating in their school's Spirit Week. I'm told that this is some kind of school tradition and I do have vague memories of Legal putting me through this when she was in school. But the schools I attended in San Francisco either didn't perform these rituals or the memories were so horrendous I have deleted them from my memory bank. My elementary school was a concrete slab with three eight foot poles sticking out of the ground. Maybe a ball had been tethered to them at one point. Who the fuck cares. No jungle gym. No fucking tanbark. Nothing but concrete and benches to park your ass when you made little Susie close her eyes and you walked her repeatedly into the only structure available for your amusement: steel poles. Middle school was no different (except there were no steel poles, just a guy who sometimes walked by the fence and exposed himself). I wish I could tell you about high school but habitual truancy does not promote a great understanding of school pride, Winter Ball themes or even the location of a locker I'm sure I was assigned. But to be fair to my 16 year old self, it was 1988, Jane's Addiction just released "Nothing's Shocking" and you could buy Brass Monkey in 750 mL bottles.

Week one ended with a two night camping trip to Donner Lake. Ya'll remember how this ended last year? This time we managed to escape without too much blood and Legal stayed away from the vodka. Mostly because there wasn't any and she already learned her lesson about what it feels like to vomit copious amounts of wine so at least my Chardonnay was safe. This family of mine is pretty notorious for peddling crazy so it was only fitting that on our last night we almost got kicked out for playing Telephone. You know, the game that involves nothing but whispering. Fortunately for us, Johnny Boy is our go-to guy when it comes to speaking with the police or anybody in a I Can Arrest You capacity. Not only did we not get kicked out, But JB also schooled the Ranger on some of his own rules and regs that for whatever reasons, JB knew better than he did (Note: everybody run out right now and pick up a JB of your very own. It's like bail money in the bank.)

And that was just week one. Stay tuned for the remaining weeks which include belly dancers, an arrest and the subsequent chewing of Xanax like tic-tacs!!

Menopausing Cheerleaders and Unconscious Gay Men: Happy Easter!

As of late, creating posts worth reading are getting harder and harder to come by. I find myself sitting in front of the computer screen with my coffee getting cold, just staring at the goddamned cursor as it disappears and reappears. It mocks me. Bastard.

Blink. Blink. Blink.

Translation: You Suck. You Suck. You Suck.

Maybe I should tell you about the half time show at the Reno Big Horns D-League basketball game.

The theme was cheerleading. Actually, it was more like a cheerleading age progression, timeline, chronology type of display. It started with tiny little four year olds, decked out in glitter and pigtails. Then it moved on to something in the middle school range where the girls did some routine that included folding chairs and I'm guessing Hannah Montana G-strings. All pretty standard stuff. That is, until Bust A Move started thumping over the arena and four women strutted onto the court wearing lycra pants, sporting six inch roots and a high school graduation date somewhere in the early 70s. Sister Mercy, what a show. Taking mouthfuls of my $8 beer, I watched in total amazement as these women pumped, and gyrated and hip-hopped all over that poor floor. But I can't even rag on them too much because Easter afternoon, I could be found in my garage sipping vodka and dancing to Planet Rock. Fortunately, I left my lycra biker shorts in the 80s where they belong because really, the only people allowed to rock that look are people who actually ride bikes.

Or, I could tell you a story about My Gay who was also sipping vodka that fateful afternoon except he was mixing his with Acai Cleansing Pills and diet black cherry soda. Somewhere between his "total cleanse," and his attempts at purging the vodka with his fist down his throat, he passed out for ten minutes on my bathroom floor.

Because nothing says "Welcome Back, Jesus!" like a gay man passed out in the crapper.

Does This Meat Tenderizer Come With Lubricant?

Pampered Chef ... you guys ever heard of it? It's like Tupperware on steroids. And it's ridiculously expensive, unless you think $13 is reasonable for a spatula.

Maybe you're asking yourself, "How did Miss Spoken find herself at a Pampered Chef party of all places?" I'll tell you. It's because my brother, Puppet Boy, works in retail. He'll talk to anybody about anything. So when this woman walked into his job looking for (insert random item), they naturally got to talking. Thirty minutes later she walked away with (insert random item) in her hand and with one more sucker to add to her rolodex of Pampered Chef hostesses. She claims she didn't know he was gay but come on, he just signed up to host a Pampered Chef party and is so gay he can put a lisp in any word in the English language. Whore Mouth, Legal and I called him late one night just to hear him say "crackers."

*Ring .... Ring .....*

"Hello."

"Hey Will, say crackers and cheese."

*Insert muffled sounds of three grown women giggling*

"Huh? What? Why?"

"Just fucking say it."

"Crackerths and Cheesth."

"Bwahahahaha! Shit, I gotta go. I think Mom just pissed herself."

And so it was that Whore Mouth, Miss Perceived and I found ourselves at his Pampered Chef party. We don't get out much, so it was inevitable that we filled the first hour with drinks and the second hour drinking and cracking vagina jokes and assaulting this poor woman with our tasteless humor.

And we were especially full of the filth that night.

But it was her fault for passing around a meat tenderizer with removable parts. If you say things like "toothed side," "pound your chicken" and "cracking nuts" we have no choice but to ask if this thing comes with a suction cup base and whether or not it's seeing anyone at the moment. Because if you're going to spend almost $30 on a meat tenderizer, shouldn't it tenderize my meat? *wink, wink*

I think Miss Perceived tried to smuggle the meat tenderizer out of the house using just her pelvic floor muscles. She's kind of brilliantly criminal like that.

By the end of the night, I dropped a vodka soaked check on a gravy separator (who doesn't want their gravy separated?) and a pie plate. I also got to feel up Miss Perceived and dust off some old pedophile jokes that had been sitting on my shelf for a few years.

And I'm pretty sure Puppet Boy is the new face of Pampered Chef. Hope that works out better than his attempts at selling Girl Scout cookies on the side of the road in rural Alabama.

How I Could Just Kill A Man

When my family and I moved from San Francisco's Mission District, part of the reason (other than not being able to afford little things like food and rent) was to live in a neighborhood where the kids could play outside and the schools had actual text books -- to basically live a better life. Maybe Legal would finish high school and find a boyfriend that wasn't cloaked in red from head to toe and didn't have a record. Maybe we wouldn't have a crazy neighbor that would routinely call the police on us with claims that we were dragging dead bodies across the floor and throwing pots of piss at her door. Maybe Seltar would get a job where the work was consistent and the boss wasn't high on Oxycontin. Dream a little dream ......

So we made the move and from that very first night things were better. Much better.

We moved into a nice community of townhouses with a pool and a skatepark around the corner and an elementary school a short walk away. Seltar's job was a perfect fit. Neighbors actually introduced themselves and everybody was very friendly and even the UPS driver would bring lollipops for the kids every time he made a delivery. At first I thought this behavior was more Dateline Predator than genuine kindness, but then I relaxed a bit. Everybody moved a whole lot slower than they did in The City and it appeared that nobody here knew how to use a goddamn horn. All of these things took some getting used to. But life was good and the neighborhood was great. You didn't have to worry about wearing red on 16th Street or wearing blue on 24th.

Then Seltar passed and things got dark again. And there I sat for awhile but not too long. At some point, you start to shower regularly again and dinner becomes more than just semi-cooked rigatoni or a pizza delivered by a pimpled face boy that knows your whole family on a first name basis because he's ringing your doorbell four times a week.

But now my safe and quiet neighborhood is looking more like a scene from something John Singleton would direct. Okay, maybe not that hood. But something close, where close means not really close at all. But still, not what I signed up for. These are the suburbs, dammit!

First there was The Mother's Day Street Brawl of 2009. Then The Boy did a little shoplifting, Miss Perceived robbed a grave, undercover cops made a bust right outside my house (turns out the guy robbed the gas station around the corner) and our car was stolen, recovered and then broken into again.

The Fuck, right?

But wait ... there's more! Some random FuckNut tried to break into the vacant townhouse that is located right across from mine, by breaking out the entire two front windows. It wasn't even the hour when you would expect this type of shit. It was only 9 o'clock! I know that when I used to break into empty houses to steal microwaves and paint thinner, I wouldn't make my move until at least two in the morning. I'm Ninja like that.

Lastly, my daughter was at the local library trying to use the computer so she can get a motherfucking job and put to rest my constant bickering, when some sick fuck pedophile slithered into the teen area of the library and started jerking off.

But fear not readers because Miss Spoken has got herself a plan and it looks a little like this:

Masturbate in front of my kid again and I will chop, cripple and mutilate beyond recognition and no jury in Nevada will convict me.

Babbleville ... An Introduction

Welcome to Babbleville!

Babbleville is my fictional name for my very factual neighborhood. You could say we're located in Northern Nevada, but I prefer "majestic Sierra Nevada Mountains." It just sounds ... better. Here we get to sweat like whores in church during the summer and pay small children to shovel snow in the winter. Spring is nice; fall is even better.

Sounds good so far, right?

We're also close to Reno which hails itself as The Biggest Little City in the World. This qualifies us as a 24-hour community. Aside from higher auto insurance rates, it also means that the freaks don't just come out at night. They slither about all day long.

Let me take you to my block.

I live in a community of townhouses, all individually owned which makes for some good fun but, I'll get to that a little later. Also on the block -- a gas station that is always conveniently out of regular gas but not premium, an over-priced grocery store where I like to buy my 1.5 liters of Barefoot Chardonnay, a hippy sort of mystical thrift store that sells bikes with plush animals somehow sewn to the actual bike frames (huh?), a laundromat, a place that sells a pretty good chicken burrito, a Christian book/gift store, a tattoo shop and a hair salon that caters to the bingo crowd and AARP members.

In time you'll get to know the other residents but for now let me introduce myself. My name is Gina but in Babbleville, I am Miss Spoken. I can be guilty of letting my words get away from me. Like darts dipped in poison, they can sometimes sting a bit. Not always. Kinda. Maybe. I think I'm funny but I'm not always. I like a glass of Chardonnay at 3:00. I like more later. I have three kids I've nicknamed Legal, The Boy and Boss Lady. Legal used to tell her friends that I only liked the Disney villains. She was right. Me and Maleficent are like twins separated at birth (hey Malef, I want my horned headdress back whenever you get the chance. Text me!). 

So that's a snapshot of Babbleville and a brief look at Miss Spoken. Maybe tomorrow I'll introduce you to my next door neighbor, Miss Perceived. But it's almost 3:00 and Miss Spoken has a nagging sensation that there is something else she's supposed to be doing right now.