She's got electric boots mohair suit

My feet shouldn't smell like Doritos, right? Not even Cool Ranch Doritos.

I just slipped off my moccasins and was overwhelmed with the smell. I guess it's time to retire them. Not even baking soda has absorbed the odor reminiscent of spin the bottle kisses in someones basement.

For the first time in days, maybe even more than a week, I didn't leave the house yesterday. Well, I did step outside to hang the wash on the line and to fill the bird feeder on the deck, but otherwise, I was like the dog behind the invisible fence - barking at the neighbors, the television and my ringing cell phone, but not crossing the property line without being struck momentarily dumb by electric current. And I'm a quick learner so it only happened twice.

Yesterday it was me and the TV and a fight with the cat with whom I must race every morning to make the beds before she settles into her 6:38 a.m. - 10:15 space next to Nate's pillows. The fight between the cat and me was a draw, by the way. The bed was made and the bite she delivered didn't break the skin. It was a warning bite. If she weren't 13 in human years, I would have given her a tap on the nose and a sharp-tongued rebuke. Instead I gave her the ultimate insult. I talked to her in the baby voice and pet her on the head.

Because I've got obvious masochistic tendencies, I mainlined MSNBC in the morning and again in the evening. At some point, the lunacy that is our national political landscape got to me. I sought solace in chocolate bread pudding and red wine. Good thing I took my Prilosec this morning. And worked out on the elliptical yesterday afternoon.

I'm reading Matt Taibbi's Griftopia so watching MSNBC is a delightful bit of cognitive dissonance. Take this morning. Someone got the bright idea to exhume the corpse of Jack Welsh to talk about unions. You know it's bad when I miss Mika. Who told her she could take Fridays off anyway? What's she doing - working on her book that's going to be released this spring?

I did feel a little sorry for Andrea Mitchell who was on earlier this morning. Taibbi calls her husband Alan Greenspan the Biggest Asshole in the Universe in the chapter about Greenspan's development as a Deep Thinker under the tutelage of the brilliant Ayn Rand.  Bring me the head of John Galt. I need to scrub the toilets. Anyway, poor Andrea. I mean, it's one thing to marry the guy who helps engineer the wrecking of the world's economy, but have you seen Alan Greenspan? Talk about a pity fuck gone awry.

Yesterday evening, MSNBC ran a segment about Rush Limbaugh's defense of a Republican State Senator who called the protesters in the capitol slobs. Rush Limbaugh did funny voices and called the protesters slobs and long-haired, pot-smoking hippies. Uhhhhh, Rush? Find a mirror and then call your Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, okay? You and the whole looks/drugs thing = glass house. Bad idea, my friend.

I talked to the television and it talked back. It told me about the awesomeness of BP and Chevron and all the good they do for the world. Then came a story from Ameriprise and how people can fix their problems and have fabulous retirements. It all sounded so glorious and wonderful and amazing and as Louis CK will tell you, no one is happy. Me? I'm just looking forward to living the high life on Social Security. Good thing my stockpile continues to grow. Yes, I'm tracking expiration dates. Why do you think I don't have time for blogs and social media anymore? Managing inventory is time consuming. By the way, we may have crossed the point of no return on Advil. Need any?

While watching the evening shows and drinking wine on an empty stomach (pre bread pudding), I got noisy. Poor Sophie retreated to the quiet and warmth of her closet with pillows and a flashlight to finish reading a book. Later, when I asked her why she was in there, she told me that I was disturbing her with the loud TV and even louder commentary.

"On a scale of 1 - 10, how much was I disturbing you?" The wine was wearing off and I wanted to appear concerned.

She looked up at me from the closet floor, considering her answer carefully. "I'd say a six. You were loud and kind of crazy, but not Augusten Burroughs' mother crazy."

That's what I get for letting her listen to Running with Scissors with me in the car. She's accurate though. I was loud, a little too passionate in my response to the television, but I wasn't whipping up a dinner of cigarette butt sandwiches, was I?

I am pleased to know that from now on, I won't be the only standard for crazy around here. I've got Deirdre Burroughs to lean on and you bet I will. These kids give me a bit of trouble and I'll be threatening to find my very own Dr. Finch and we'll see how they like that.

Their therapist has asked me to not use the abandonment card to manipulate my darlings, but this is war, right? I've got to use whatever means necessary to stay one step ahead of them. As if. They're already so much smarter than me. And better looking. They should take pity on me and move over because I could use a safe haven in the closet, too.

"So you haven't sent an SOS text to the Department of Children and Family Services then?" I asked.

"No. I'll just write about in my journal so I can write a book someday," she said. "Can you shut the door now? I want to play a game." She showed me her iPod Touch.

Fair enough. And I take back what I wrote about Mary Karr. Maybe she kept extensive journals.

Unrelated to the TV, I screamed for the first of many times in the coming weeks. And no child was a target of my shrieking. It was phobia induced. Now that I'm hanging wash on the line, I'm going to have to banish this bee phobia. Today as I strolled out with a basket of wet laundry, one of those big bumbleturds aka Carpenter Bees rolled up in his Escalade and gave me a grin.

Cue the scream, the dropping of the wet laundry, the cartoon like spinning of my Dorito-scented slippered feet and the scramble off the deck with the door slamming behind me.

No one except the cats was around to see it. And the cats aren't easily phased so....

Someone get me a sandwich. Cigarette butts or dryer lint. I don't even care.

Do you have phobias? Talk to the TV? Expect a response? Faceplant in some chocolate bread pudding? What's your metaphorical closet floor?