Weekly Ketchup: This Week's Words Are 'Malarkey' and 'Batshit'

If you watched last night's debate, you may have noticed that both candidates constantly interrupted each other and the moderator. The Pork Lo Maniac's sympathetic comment on that was: "Maybe they have ADHD?"

If you missed the debate, or if you just want to re-live all the snarky highlights, you can check out my re-cap of last night's vice presidential debate on Redbook's Mamarama: Vice Presidential Debate Re-Cap: All the Snarky Fun You Want in a Potential Leader of the Free World. Last night's debate was super awesome compared to last week's snoozefest of a presidential debate. That debate is summarized in a NickMom post, How Last Night's Debate Was Just Like Last Night's Dinner With My Kids.

Both Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan used the word "malarkey," which is fun to say. In fact, today I'm going to respond to as many Facebook statuses as possible with "that's a bunch of malarkey." There were also plenty of good zingers, which I compiled in the Mamarama post.

Honestly, I really don't normally like to write about politics. However, I do like to write about funny things... things that are funny "ha-ha" and things are funny "batshit crazy." Inevitably, that means that once in a while political stuff will come up.

Also, I usually make a point of not swearing in my writing, but sometimes certain cuss words are just the right choice. In this instance, the word batshit. For those of you offended by bat excrement, I'm sorry. It's one of my favorite words, but I won't make a habit of using it (in print).

All of this leads up to a post I have today over at Strollerderby that used to be titled The Top 5 Most Batshit Insane Political Candidates of 2012 but is now titled The Top 5 Most Completely Bonkers Candidates of 2012.

But because you're special (and because on my own blog I can say batshit batshit batshit as much as I like), you get the original image here. Bonus: even though I changed the image, the original lives on on Pinterest.

More fun stuff on Babble:
10 Hilarious Moms Share Their 'Mom-Shaming' Pics
OMG: Christopher Walken, Colin Farrell, and Sam Rockwell Re-Enact Honey Boo Boo (Video)
Good News: Your Kid Is About To Be Even More Addicted to Angry Birds (11 Angry Birds Star Wars Toys I Totally Want)
WAHM: 10 Moms Follow Their Passions in Work-at-Home Jobs
10 Ways to Save Money in Your Home Office
Cat Shaming: 12 Hilarious Pics of Bad Kitties

You know how sometimes you're like,
"that wine has my name on it"?
My awesome friend Ronna bought this wine
for a NickMom "house party"!

More fun stuff on NickMom:
How Lohan Family Drama Is Just Like My Family Drama
Facebook Mom: Annoying DIY Super-Crafty Halloween Costume Mom. I totally wrote this about myself. I am making all their costumes because I'm insane.
Mom's Shopping List: Carol Brady Mom! We're out of knee socks!

Speaking of NickMom, has anyone seen any of the TV shows yet? I'm seriously in love with What Was Carol Brady Thinking?

Why Does the Insect Kingdom Hate Me So?

Snidely Mosquito. You can tell it's evil because
it has a top hat and a walking stick.

I don't know what I've done to piss off the entire Insect Kingdom, but it hates me.

Maybe they're still angry about the Battle of the Fire Ants when we lived in Texas. Those effing things were actively trying to kill me, so I fought back with a few different approaches:

1. Boiling water.
2. Boiling water and corn meal, which was supposed to make them explode, but instead made grits for them to snack on, so they had a big party and invited their friends, leaving beer cans and used condoms in the bushes and giving me the finger every time I walked by.
3. Incredibly toxic chemicals that probably permanently poisoned the water supply of Ft. Bend County, Texas (sorry about that).

I regret nothing, because every time I tried to weed, the things would swarm, and even one fire ant would leave me with swollen, oozing wounds:

The result of the Battle of the Fire Ants, which will surprise absolutely no one, is that toxic chemicals are the only way to go, and even those didn't entirely eliminate the little bastards.

That was in 2010. Things settled down for a while after that, but apparently the insect world was just laying low, plotting.

In the summer of 2011, there was the incident which is now referred to The Incident Which We Shall Not Speak of Because Otherwise I Can Never Eat Grapes Again.

That incident, detailed and crappily photographed in my post, Speaking of Emergencies Every Five Minutes, involved my daughter finding a live black widow spider in a bag of grapes in our refrigerator.

Not only did I kill that spider, I froze it to death, because I was afraid to squish it. Mostly, I was afraid that I'd try to squish it, I'd miss, and it would skittle away and I'd never find it and then we'd have to move.

There was the time last fall when I was driving to Target and realized that a praying mantis was crawling across the windshield, inside the car. And then it just parked itself on my visor and clung upside down, smiling at me. Even knowing it was a harmless praying mantis, it's really hard to concentrate on driving with a bug looking at you.

When I got to Target, I let the thing loose in some landscaping. And all was right with the world, I thought.

And then yesterday a motherpucking wasp was crawling along the inside of my windshield. What the hell? Is my minivan cursed? Is there some kind of bug party always going on somewhere behind the odometer?

Also, the wasp had only one wing, which made it more intimidating. Like it had already tangled with someone and survived.

I then drove the longest six blocks of my life to my house, with a wasp right in my field of vision. I have no idea why I didn't just pull over and kill the damn thing. I think I was too busy swearing to think of that.

Here's a photo of the wasp from inside my car, once I had safely parked:

I know. I'm totally due for some kind of photojournalism award soon. Or maybe a Xanax. Whatever.

I ran in and got a giant was of paper towels, and bravely attempted to get the thing out of my car. Then I looked at the paper towels and realized the thing was still alive, and then I screamed like a little girl 39-year-old mom who has a live wasp on a paper towel in her hand.

And so, just like Harry Potter, the one-winged wasp lived. So, we're even now, right Insect World?

Wrong.

Yesterday evening, high off surviving my brush with death/interaction with a decrepit wasp, I went on a couple errands. In the process, I was bitten by a mosquito.

First of all, it's effing October. Those things need to go ahead and die already. But it was 80 degrees and humid, and the mosquitoes were out for their last hurrah, and I got five or six mosquito bites on my left arm.

You know that vein you can see on the underside of your wrist? Snidely Mosquito bit me right there. And apparently gross mosquito spit went a-flowin' all up my arm through that vein, because all of a sudden I was having a systemic reaction. My arm swelled up and hives started showing up from my palm to my elbow.

Don't hate me because my kitchen floor is so beautiful.

Neat.

I used hydrocortisone and iced the bite, and then my throat started to feel weird, so I took two Benedryl, and that seemed to resolve things pretty well. Yes, if it had progressed any further I would have gone to the ER. I'm sure I wouldn't have sounded like a crazy lady at all demanding emergency treatment for a mosquito bite.

Like I have time for anaphylaxis.

What else is going on?

NickMom
OMGOMGOMGOMG NickMom is now television. Not just a blog. It's tee-vee. There are four new shows, made just for you (yes, you), and my favorite one is "What Was Carol Brady Thinking?" where a little Carol Brady bobblehead pops up and snarks on the show. It's like an awesome cross between VH1's Pop-Up Video and Mystery Science Theater, except with more knee socks. Here, I wrote a little thing in honor of it: What Carol Brady Is Really Saying.

On NickMom the blog, I'm snarking on Chanel's crazy-ass runway purse, and hoping that Drew Barrymore's new baby girl waits until at least age eight to have her rebellious teen phase.

Babble
On Babble Pets, there's a video of cats listening to "Gangnam Style" and the 20 Most Adorable Etsy Halloween Costumes for Dogs (my fave: Chia Pet).

On Strollerderby, there's a slideshow I think you're really going to like: The Most Geektastic Halloween Costumes for Kids and Babies (my faves: Baby Mandrake from Harry Potter and Young Dwight Schrute from The Office).

Also, The Weather Channel is naming winter storms now and I'm pretty sure my kids supplied all the names. (Winter Storm Draco! Squee!)

And last but not least, my friend and fellow autism mama Rachel Kenyon is shaving her head in support of her sister-in-law, who is battling breast cancer.

(Photo Credits: Mosquito: Wikimedia Commons with added nonsense by SRMM. Winter Storm Draco: Joslyn Gray for Strollerderby. All others: SRMM)