Today I installed a new statistics thingie that allows me to check my stats without going to my site first.  Oh my god it is addicting.  I think I have checked my stats once every five minutes all day.  And you know what?  My stats are not all that exciting.  I mean sure, I love all of my readers and appreciate the time you spend reading my stuff but? for a shiny new toy it isn't getting much use.

Perhaps you all should visit more often.

Or I should, like, promote this site again.  I don't think I've done any promotion since…um…last? summer? Maybe even before that.  Since long before I stopped doing paid posting.  Perhaps I should start again.  'Cause if I'm going to be checking my stats so often I'd like them to, you know, do stuff.  Or something.

So have you ever watched a bunch of stand up comedy, laughed your ass off, looked at the cat and said "I wish I could do stand up comedy"?  Then, when your cat yawned and wandered off (with the Dr. Scholls insert thing that she stole from one of your shoes and will not give back) did you think "Wait a minute, I have a blog! I can be funny on my blog! Yeah! It's stand up comedy my way! Yeah!"?

And then, have you sat down in front of your blog post screen and thought "Okay self.  Be funny."?

And then, did you spend an hour writing things and then saying "that's not funny at all, that's trying too hard" and deleting them?

Or is that…not how the rest of you spent your Thursday night?

Though seriously, if you know how to get a Dr. Scholl's insert away from a cat who has decided it's her new best friend, I'm up for suggestions.

I have decided that I do not like the neighbors who live on the third floor of my building. In fact, I've decided that I dislike them so much that it is taking most of my willpower to not stomp up the two flights of stairs, bang on their door and tell them exactly what I think of them, finger jabbing into its chest and all.  Oh yeah its. Read on.  You'll see.

Yesterday I went out to mail some Netflix and this cat came charging toward me.  This cat? Was barely still a cat.  It's head was about twice as wide as the rest of its body. Why?  Because its body was starving. This poor little cat had no muscle tone.  In fact, it had no muscles at all–just some thick skin hanging off of its bones.  The poor thing looked like it had been a few months since its last meal.  It was so malnutritioned that it had bald patches on its back where you could tell that its fur had just started falling out.  I took one look at him and my heart broke into a zillion tiny little pieces for it.

I was convinced that the cat had been abandoned, especially when I called the number on its collar only to be treated to "this number has been temporarily disconnected."  It wasn't until after Will and I had set up a makeshift bed for it on the back balcony (we couldn't let it come inside because it was probably infested with all sorts of things that we didn't want Poppy to catch) and went back outside to bring it through the house that I saw it sitting in front of the third floor neighbor's apartment staring intently at the door.

Because I was curious, I knocked on the door and when the neighbor…person…answered the cat ran inside.

I say person because this person? Could have easily been male or female and I honestly couldn't tell the difference.  All I could think was "oh my god, the inbreeders from X-Files mated again and the offspring lives upstairs from me." and I very nearly said that out loud.  Luckily I caught myself in time and instead asked "is that your cat?"

"Yep, we let him outside once in a while because he gets cooped up in the 'partment."  (oh yeah. 'partment.)

I was completely shocked.  All I could do was say "oh.  Okay.  Well I'm glad he has an owner after all, I thought he was lost." and go back downstairs.

And do you know how I know that I've matured?  Because I waited until I got inside my own apartment and had the door shut securely behind me before I howled "Oh My God! Who the hell lets their cat get like that?!?"

And then Will had to listen to a twenty minute sermon on why some people should not be allowed to have animals and how could someone let a pet–something that is supposed to be treated with love and compassion–starve so badly?  And maybe I should go buy some cat food and beat that…person…over the head with the bag!"

Honestly? I was hopping mad.  Literally.  I was jumping all over the living room, waving my arms around saying things like "I can't belieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve it! Whooooooooooooooooooo let those people adopt a caaaaaaaaaaaaaaat??"

So far I haven't actually done anything about the neighbors except half heartedly start looking through the phone book for the number you call when you know someone is abusing an animal.  And the only thing that stopped me was "well, at least it has people who hopefully love it, even if they are inbred jackasses who are letting it starve to death."

Mad. I haz it.

Yesterday and today I took full advantage of the whole "hey, I work freelance! I can totally go back to bed!" thing. See, in our house, we set the alarms for whatever time Will needs to be up (today it was six in the morning (and yes, it was hell on toast trying to wake up that early) oh my god I just did a parenthetical statement inside a parenthetical statement!) because Will sleeps through his alarm. He puts it on the radio setting and sets it to the butt rock station and turns the volume up to eight and a half and do you know what happens? Every morning I am blasted out of bed by the sound of some backward wannabe Kurt Cobain incarnate screeching and growling and Will? Snores on. He doesn't hear it and swears that his alarm is broken. What does wake him up? My very very pointy elbows and fingers jabbing him repeatedly in the ribs while I scream "shut that fracking thing off! shutitoffshutitoffshutitoffshutitoffshutitoff!" And of course, by that time I am very awake (it's hard not to be awake with the jabbing being done as violently as possible).

And, of course, every morning as I am hunched on the couch and growling about how I would eat him if I could just to never have to hear that damn alarm again, he says "you don't have to get up with me, I mean, I appreciate it and everything, but you should go back to bed. You look so tired."

Once in a while (like on the six in the morning days) I will go back to sleep for an hour or two to save my mood. Usually though, I just stay up and use the time to be all productive and stuff. This week though? This week I have gone back to bed with relish and slept until eleven. Oh yeah, I slept in until eleven for two weekdays. And do you know what is sad? That this will probably be the "stupid thing I do before I'm 30 so that I can blame it on still being in my 20s." How lame is that? My final act of rebellion? Is sleeping in.

There are geeks who were rejected from CW reality shows for being too geeky who are shaking their heads at me right now and saying "not even I am that lame."

But wow, I'm well rested.

The decision to quit Blog 365 was a huge decision for me. I am incredibly stubborn and am so completely not a quitter. I know that sounds cliche but you have to understand that once I make a committment to something, well, there's just no letting it go. None. Out of the ten plays that were produced by my high school while I was a student there I was in…all ten. And you know what? For the last eight of them I was so miserable I almost gave myself an ulcer but I stuck with it because I wanted to look back at graduation and say that I had done every show I could. I lived in Vegas for three years even though I completely hated it and wanted to move about a month and a half after I got there. That's how committed I am to…um…commitment. How I managed to not marry my first boyfriend is still a mysterious miracle (not that we were together long enough for him to ask, thank God).

The point is, I committed to the whole Blog 365 thing. Wholeheartedly. For six months. But you know, for a few of those six months I completely resented that I was blogging because I felt like I had to instead of because I wanted to. And I was kind of mad that there was so much stuff on my blog that was just…terrible. While I was redoing my site, I kept wavering on "should I keep doing Blog 365?" and really, the only reason to keep doing it was because I don't quit things.

So I decided that I have officially become too old (the big 3-0 is next Monday) to let that be the only reason I do something. I took a deep breath and said "okay. I'm quitting Blog 365." It was a monumental moment. Poppy was so impressed that she yawned and fell off the edge of the bed.

Then, Saturday night, when I was showing Will the new site design (and, okay, hopping around and squealing like I was five and saying "look! look what I maaaaaaaaaaaade!") and having him read the "first" entry he said "You're quitting Blog 365? Awwwwwww…. why do you want to do that? I was so proud that you were blogging every day! Are you sure you want to quit? You were doing so well!"

So I smothered him with his keyboard.

The thing is, even though I have decided that I'm not doing Blog 365 anymore, once you've blogged every day for six months, you start to feel itchy at the idea of skipping a day. Technically I haven't skipped a day yet as I republished my site reeeeeeeeeally early on Sunday.

But it's still nice knowing that I'm sitting here typing this because I want to.

Um… Surprise!

I don't know if you read the Grey's Anatomy writer's blog (are you even surprised that I do?) but after the season three finale, Shonda Rhimes wrote that sometimes you have to burn everything down so that you have a place from which to rebuild. And that? Resonated with me. It nagged at me for a year.

If you've been reading me for a while or have talked to me in the last eight months or so, you know that I've been harboring a dream to be the "next Erma Bombeck, but…you know, for the millennium." The thing is, while I can dream of being a super fabulous columnist and I can read the writing of people I'd like to emulate, actually doing something about it has proven to be…harder than you'd think…especially if you are me and sometimes a little slow on the uptake.

Two weeks ago Jennifer Lancaster had a book signing at Powell's and we all know how my geeky fangirl got unleashed but what I didn't write about was how that reading kicked my ass! I was on the train ride home thinking about how Jennifer Lancaster had managed to parlay her blog into a successful writing career and how I so would love to sit her down and say "Teach Me Obi Jen Kanobe," and suddenly I realized why I'd had Shonda Rhimes nagging me from the back of my brain for a year.

Sometimes you have to burn it all down so you can rebuild.

Duh.

I've had a blog for four and a half years and what have I done with it?

I had to burn it down.

To be honest, the actual taking down of my archives has been harder than I thought it would be. I have them all saved in an XML file in case I panic tomorrow and want to put them all back up.

So what's new at Snarke?

The design. Obviously. I am really proud of this design because I..okay, I didn't do all of it myself, but if you had seen the original design that I built on, you'd understand why I'm all "look what I made!" (Incidentally, I did design the header all by myself!)

The tagline. I cannot wait to write about the inspiration for the tagline (again). Not only is it a great story but it is also the title of the proverbial first book—but since I don't know if there will ever be a book, I had to use it on my blog. It's just too perfect to sit on the shelf indefinitely.

No more Blog 365. I still want to post every day, but I want the posts to be worth reading, not something I tossed up in thirty seconds because I was too stubborn to not post.

What's Coming Up?

More swearing! That's right. I may never be able to swear in front of my Mother in person, but I should be able to do it online. To be honest, I wasn't just censoring myself for my Mom (where do you think I learned the words in the first place?) but more because it is really hard to be who I am at (almost) 30 "in front" of people who knew me when I was 13. But you know what? Me at (almost) 30? Soooooo much cooler than I was at 13.

And for the rest, well if I told you that, you wouldn't have to keep coming back!