Cranky Fibro Girl

Harnessing the healing power of snark

It’s Things Like This That Give The South A Bad Name

By 4 Comments

Image courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

I recently had a conversation with one of my friends, discussing the time about fifteen years ago when she came down to North Carolina to visit her boyfriend’s family.

My friend: “You know, I really don’t like lima beans.”

Me: “Ew! Me either.”

My friend: “And they didn’t just give me a spoonful or two. They served me an entire DISH of those things.”

Me: “Ugh!”

My friend: “But I was a good sport, and I ate it to be polite.”

Me: “Good for you.”

My friend: “But I had to draw the line at squirrel.”

Me: “What?!”

Me: “WHAT?! They tried to make you eat SQUIRREL?!”

My friend: “Yep.”

Me: “Please, oh please, tell me that at least your boyfriend thought that was weird.”

My friend: “Nope. He didn’t say a thing.”

Me: “On behalf of the entire South, I am truly sorry, and I deeply apologize.”

Is There Anything They Won’t Try It On?

By Leave a Comment

This weekend we had a cookout here and a number of the guests were engineers, like my husband.

There are many benefits to being around engineers, such as the fact that they generally tend to know exactly where you are, where you need to be, and the absolute best way to get you there.

And then again there can also be some personality conflicts, especially if you personally are possessed of a non-engineer kind of mind. Like the time that my husband and I went to Germany with his family. He and his dad are both engineers. I, my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law? Not so much. We had a lot of conversations like this.

We are all riding on the train.
We women: “So, how many kilometers is it until our next stop?”
My husband: “About 50.”
We women: “Do you think we might be able to find a drink with some ice there?”
My father-in-law: (wielding a sheaf of detailed maps, a calculator, a slide rule, and a stopwatch all at once) “No! It is exactly 47.975 kilometers until our next stop. At which point we will have exactly 6.025 seconds and only 6.025 seconds to walk from Platform 9 to Platform 17 and catch our next train. No ice for you!”

Or the time that we were entertaining another group of friends, 7 of whom were engineers, and yet not one of them was able to stop our oven control panel from beeping, beeping, beeping, beeping, My God! The beeping! Make it stop! And so they had to fall back on tripping the circuit breaker. (Their excuse? “We’re mechanical engineers, not electrical engineers.” Which is totally a lame-o cop out if I ever heard one, but whatever.)

So anyway these engineers were here this weekend, and one of them started talking about something called the “coefficient of friction” which, according to Wikipedia is “a dimensionless scalar value which describes the ratio of the force of friction between two bodies and the force pressing them together.”

He was describing a table he’d seen that gives values for the coefficient of friction between different materials, such as steel on steel, steel on aluminum, etc. And just as I was getting ready to completely tune out I heard him say this:

“And they actually had a value for the coefficient of friction for steel on steel that has been lubricated with bull semen.”

True Confessions (v.2)

By Leave a Comment

As much as I want to tell you that I consistently spend the bulk of my time in deep, meaningful reflection as I ponder The Meaning Of Life and How To Positively Affect My World, I just can’t. Well, I guess I could. It just wouldn’t be the truth.

Here’s why. As I move throughout my day I am constantly seeing, hearing, or reading things that are REALLY funny, especially if you look at things the way I do. And very often these funny stories involve topics that are pretty much the opposite of anything deep or meaningful. So then I am always faced with this choice: Do I let the humor go and try to maintain an image of polish, culture, and refinement, or do I tell the funny story? And of course, telling the funny story ALWAYS wins.

So here’s what happened today.

My husband called me this morning just to say hi and chat, which I always enjoy. Suddenly, apropos of absolutely nothing he said, “Did you know that there is someone out there who makes their living by providing prosthetic dog testicles?”

Me: “What?!”

My husband: “Yeah. It makes you wonder what they do with the originals.”

Nuh-uh. What it makes me wonder is, “Why on earth do you know something like that? And how do you even find that kind of information?”

Well according to him that kind of knowledge is readily available on the Internet (Important Side Note: although it’s not on any of the sites I personally visit). In case you’re wondering, he also passed along the helpful tip that if you Google “replacement dog testicles” you can read the original article.

Me: “It would never IN LIFE occur to me to combine those particular words.”

My husband: “Well that’s just in case you don’t know how to spell ‘prosthetic’.”

We now return you to your regularly scheduled day.