Reaction One: AAAAAAAHHHH! Just got out of bed, saw this and then stabbed myself in the face.

Reaction Two: The only way you could possibly be more annoying is to post the lyrics to “Don’t Worry Be Happy.”

1. You will not marry during the term of your contract.

2. You are not to keep company with men. (This is closely tied to number 1 – don’t think you’re going to “keep company” just because you can’t marry! Here, see this burka? Put it on.)

3. You must be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless attending a school function (Who checked? “OK, ma, I’m goin’ to bed just as soon as I drive by the school marm’s house and make sure she’s in bed. Just gonna peek in that there window.”)

4. You may not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. (Taverns? Yeah, OK, it is Wisconsin, but if we catch you lingering after finishing your cone… your ass is ours.)

5. You may not travel beyond the city limits unless you have the permission of the chairman of the board. (Dear Chairman of the Board: I was thinking of picking apples on Sunday outside the city limits… is this OK?)

6. You may not ride in a carriage or automobile with any man unless he is your father or brother. (Don’t EVER let us catch you with an uncle, cousin or your grandpa. We know all about your grandpa.)

7. You may not smoke cigarettes. (Pipes, OK, everyone enjoys a good pipe by the fire now and then.)

8. You may not dress in bright colors. (Think Calvin Klein, not Chico’s)

9. You must under no circumstances dye your hair. (Hair dye is for the wicked!)

10. You must wear at least 2 petticoats. (Who checked? “Hey, Phyllis, you’re looking a little deflated today… are you only wearing one petticoat?”)

11. Your dresses must not be shorter than two inches above your ankles. (”We’re just getting comfortable with all this ankle skin, we’re not ready for more!”)

12. To keep the schoolroom neat and clean you must: sweep the floor at least once daily; scrub the floor at least once a week with hot, soapy water; clean the blackboards at least once a day; and start the fire at 7 a.m. so the room will be warm by 8 a.m. (Pass out from exhaustion at 10:30 a.m.)

An older gentleman called our office and said, “Hi, I’m putting together a movie idea for Robert DeNiro. I don’t know him but I know he’s friends with that Scorsese guy but I don’t know that guy’s first name or how you spell his last name.” “Uh, that would be Martin S-c-o-r-s-e-s-e.” “Right! Thanks so much!”

A college-aged student sent a form letter to our office asking us to pay his way through college. For an extra bit of class, he hand-wrote the salutation because a mail merge proved to be too much for him to master. In the letter he did promise to keep us updated through the years with what he was up to.

People who refer to other people (usually younger than themselves) as “a Millennial.” Or “a Boomer.” People who believe that they have important insights into another person just because they know what generation that person happens to belong to.

The guy at my yard sale who would not pay $2 for a handmade pillow. Would only pay $1. I tried to ask why and I got a nonsensical answer about a friend who collects Asian items (pillow was made from old kimono thingy). I sold the pillow for $1 but I thought he was weird.

The smell of honeydew melon. Repellent.

Zsa Zsa Gabor + other Gabor sisters + Zsa Zsa’s weird husband, the Prinz

The popularity of the BoDeans in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Will we never tire of them? They play every festival, fair, benefit, etc.

People who begin sentences with “Us Jews…”

The fact that Susan Mallery, romance writer, has an entire series of books about Sheiks and the ladies who love them. The Sheik and the Virgin Bride, The Sheik and the Bought Bride, The Sheik’s Arranged Marriage, The Sheik’s Secret Bride, The Sheik’s Kidnapped Bride, The Sheik and The Bride Who Said No. But even better is a book title from another one of her series: Having Her Boss’s Baby. Uhm… ick?

How I really only enjoy Antiques Roadshow if I can talk trash about the people and their antiques.

That anyone would charge $700 for a haircut and that anyone else would pay it.

How much I want to make these cookies and EAT THEM.

Why I keep waking up at 5 in the morning to think about things like painting shelves, how Freja really needs to have her teeth brushed more often, what I should do next on my writing projects, etc.

Why I was so taken with a dirty, old dog toy I found on the sidewalk that I kept it to take photos of it in various settings. It’s an ice cream cone with a porcupine head and it squeaks.

Why I’m enjoying reading about Shirley Jackson’s life more than I really enjoyed reading her stories. The takeaway so far: she spent all her free time writing in order to get better, she was not popular at all in high school and she created her own little worlds/characters to help her get through life. Oh, and she saw ghosts and heard voices.

My plan is to take all the old papers, letters, etc. and make a paper-based diorama out of them of a ship at sea battling a Kraken. I thought that might look cool. So there is my winter project;  what I’ll be doing on all those snowy nights come January.

This morning I was down in the basement to feed Chief Jones (he has to eat down there so that Mistress Freja doesn’t gobble down all his food) and there was the box, waiting to be sorted. I plucked a coloring book off the top of the pile. It’s a book called “Write Your Own Story Coloring Book.” Kind of literal in the titling. Inside, each spread is a picture to color and then the other side is titled and has lines for writing a short story about the pic. The characters are the same on every page – Penny, Mark and a clown named Koko.

The instructions inside say, “Look at each picture and then ask yourself some questions. What are Penny, Mark and Koko doing? Where are they doing it? Why? How did they get there? You will find that when you have finished answering such questions, you will have made up your very own story.”

Sounds innocent and sweet. The first story is titled Penny, Mark and Koko Go for a Car Ride.

Here is what I wrote (spelling and grammar corrected by me for easier reading), “Penny and Mark were very excited because that day they were going on a ride in the car. Soon they were going to go. Soon they were in the country and there was lots of things to see. There was a cow and lots of other things to see. Suddenly Koko crashed and died.”

Another story is titled, A Ball Game with a Dolphin and a Mermaid. My sister did this one.

“Penny and Mark could play ball so they invited a dolphin to play with them but a snobby mermaid followed him and Penny and Mark had to let her play but they had fun. The mermaid always followed the dolphin so one day the dolphin said to her, ‘Stop following me!’”

Then there is my rather delightful tale for Mark, Penny and Koko Fly a Plane.

“Penny, Mark and Koko were going to go for an airplane ride and they were excited. Soon they went and a flying fairy guided them but she got tired and snot came out. And her snot got all over her wings. So they got better and better but soon she would not guide them. So she went down by the deer and cleaned up. The end.”

I made sure to draw the fairy with a gush of yellow coming out of her face and all over her wings.

Maybe this story is more to your liking: Penny and Mark Paint a Street Mural

“Penny and Mark found a fairy and the fairy had paint and said they should paint a wall. They shouldn’t have but they did. They painted moons, stars, fish, suns, cats, trees, people, birds, dinosaurs and other things. And soon another fairy came along and helped them paint. When they had finished the wall looked pretty but the police got Penny and Mark but not the fairies. They got away.”

In case you’re wondering what the deal is with the fairies, many of the drawings of Penny and Mark featured fairies in them for reasons never explained.

Perhaps the most disturbing story in the book does not appear to be written by me – it has my sister’s name on it. I have to say, however, that upon further examining the handwriting, it is most likely my work. It doesn’t look like her writing. And it looks as if I may have come back through at a later date, with another pen, and signed her name.

The Playground

“Penny and Mark went to the playground. They played on all the toys. They ran and played. They were having a good time when all the sudden Penny tripped and flipped. Mark pulled her hair. She screamed. He also tied her hair on the bars of the jungle gym. He left and went home. She couldn’t get down. He left her there all night and nobody came for her. She was 20 years old and Mark still didn’t come for her. She died with her braids on the jungle gym.”

A budding Shirley Jackson if I’ve ever read one. I’m sure I chose “20″ because it seemed unfathomably old and decrepit.

After a few more pages, the stories end and only the pictures are colored in. Maybe I got tired of Penny and Mark. On the final page of the book I wrote in brown crayon, “Penny and Mark spent 20 years in prison.”

Enough said.

Yesterday, as my co-worker Andrea was walking out of the building, a bunch of gals from a marketing firm down the hall were leaving at the same time. One of them said to the others:

“You know, the only reason Crystal is celibate is because she’s afraid someone is going to steal her creativity through her vagina.”

Zsa Zsa is the second of the three Gabor sisters: Magda, Sari (Zsa Zsa) and Eva. The sisters were born in Budapest. Zsa Zsa is now 93 years old.

Zsa Zsa attended a Swiss boarding school called Madame Subilia’s.

After finishing school, she was discovered in Vienna in 1936 by “the famous tenor Richard Tauber,” (oh, yes, Richard Tauber!) and invited to sing in a new operetta he was staging.

Zsa Zsa eventually became known more for her many marriages than for her acting abilities. She has been married nine times and has had seven divorces, one annulment and is still married to ninth husband, Frederic Prinz von Anhalt.

Her husbands included:
1. Burhan Asaf Belge – known as one of the young intellectuals during the early periods of Republic of Turkey and became a foreign affairs minister for that country. He was a lot older than Zsa Zsa. While married to him she reportedly had an affair with Kemal Ataturk, president of Turkey.
2. Conrad Hilton – most recently portrayed on Mad Men Season 3; Conrad and Gabor had one child: Constance Francesca Hilton, before divorcing in 1946. Gabor insisted in her 1991 autobiography One Lifetime is Not Enough (now on my must-read list) that she only became pregnant by Hilton after he raped her during their marriage. Which is a nice legacy for Constance. But for years after the divorce they were on good enough terms – in 1955 Conrad offered her a special rate at all Hilton hotels for the rest of her life. What a generous guy!
3. George Sanders – English film and TV actor, was in All About Eve and voiced Shere Khan in The Jungle Book. They divorced in 1954; in 1970 Sanders married Magda Gabor, Zsa Zsa’s older sister, for 6 weeks. Once that broke up, Sanders began drinking heavily and committed suicide in 1972.
4. Herbert Hutner – the U.S. chairman of the President’s Advisory Committee on the Arts from 1982 to 1990, made money on the stock market and also seems to have had something to do with producing plays.
5. Joshua S. Cosden, Jr. – not much info on this dude; Zsa Zsa and Joshua met six weeks before they married.
6. Jack Ryan – American designer noted for creating the popular image Barbie; they met because they were neighbors and she called to complain about his fire engine being too loud. Yes, he had his own fire engine and, I guess, a tree house. Their marriage lasted just over one year.
7. Michael O’Hara – Michael was her divorce lawyer when she divorced Jack Ryan.
8. Felipe de Alba – Mexican attorney who, in the 1940s and 1950s, was a popular actor. The de Alba/Gabor union was declared invalid because she hadn’t quite completed her divorce with O’Hara and then they seem to have said, “The hell with it,” or maybe, “just kidding,” and didn’t stay together.
9. Frederic Prinz von Anhalt – married in 1984 and STILL MARRIED. 24 years! Lucky number 9 (of course the Prinz freely admits that they didn’t marry for love but rather friendship). Wikipedia has this to say about the Prinz, ” a German-born American socialite (and a former masseur). At the age of 37 he became the adopted son of Princess Marie-Auguste of Anhalt in a business transaction put together by Hans Hermann Weyer, a former consul of Bolivia and dealer in titles.” This sure raises a lot of questions, doesn’t it? What I also know about the Prinz is that he declared he was running for Governor of California last February and, when Anna Nicole Smith’s daughter’s paternity was in question, he came forward and claimed to be the father.

According to Wiki, the Prinz claims he was good friends with one of Princess Marie-Auguste’s sons, who died in 1975, and that she adopted Prinz out of kindness and grief. Why it would occur to a grieving mother to adopt a 37-year-old man is a deeper question for another time. The British press claims that the Princess did it as a business deal because she was bankrupt. Either way, it’s weird. But it opens up new options for adults who want titles – get some old Princess to adopt you. The Prinz got adopted in 1980; the Princess died in 1983.

But then it gets considerably ickier: “Together with his wife, Zsa Zsa Gabor,  Prinz von Anhalt has adopted several men. Among them are: Marcus Prinz von Anhalt (formerly known as Marcus Eberhardt), who refers to himself as “Prince Germany;” Oliver Prinz von Anhalt (formerly known as Oliver Bendig); Michael Prinz von Anhalt (formerly known as Michael Killer) as well as Markus Maximilian Prinz von Anhalt and Oliver Prinz von Anhalt. Following the adoption, these men are entitled to use the last name of “Prinz von Anhalt”. German newspapers have speculated that Frederic is effectively selling the name, which would be a criminal offence in Germany and render the adoptions, which were made under German law, invalid.”

I’ve never heard of anyone having “adopting adult men” as their main hobby.

But back to Zsa Zsa, right?

In 1974, she bought a Bel Air home from Elvis that had been built by Howard Hughes.

She was the only Gabor sister to have a child, the aforementioned Constance. Mother and daughter have had their woes – in 2005, Zsa Zsa accused her daughter of larceny and fraud but then didn’t go through with the required court appearance and paperwork.

On June 14, 1989, Gabor was accused of slapping the face of a Beverly Hills cop who had stopped her for a traffic violation. She was found guilty and had to do 3 days of hard time plus pay $13,000 in legal fees. Interestingly enough, she also slapped a bellboy in a London hotel in 1968.

Her filmography includes such gems as Moulin Rouge (1952), Queen of Outer Space (1958), Frankenstein’s Great Aunt Tillie (1984) and Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987, admittedly, just a cameo). She also has television credits galore, hitting all the great shows that relied on guest stars: Gilligan’s Island, Love Boat, Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, The Facts of Life and As The World Turns. She was also a regular guest on many talk shows because of her flamboyant ways, exaggerated accent and funny one-liners.

If you’re like me, you often get confused and think Zsa Zsa was on the TV show Green Acres. She was not. That was Eva Gabor. Eva had five marriages, no children and died in 1995 at the age of 76. Just for the record, oldest sister Magda was married six times.

If you want to read more about Zsa Zsa, here are the books by or about her:

• Zsa Zsa Gabor, My Story By Zsa Zsa Gabor with Gerold Frank, The World Publishing Company, 1960.
• How to Catch a Man, How to Keep a Man, and How to Get Rid of a Man, by Zsa Zsa Gabor, Doubleday, 1970.
• One Lifetime Is Not Enough, by Zsa Zsa Gabor, assisted by and edited by Wendy Leigh, Delacorte Press, 1991.
• Gaborabilia, by Anthony Turtu and Donald F Reuter, Three Rivers Press, 2001.

I’m thinking that second one is a MUST read!

As for her current health condition, a website dedicated to the Gabor sisters has this to say, “On July 17, 2010 while watching her favorite gameshow Jeopardy Ms. Gabor  reached over to answer the phone and in doing so suffered a serious fall resulting in breaking her hip and several other bones. She got a new hip on the morning of Monday the 19th but complications arose during the surgery. After a blood transfusion later that week she is reportedly doing much better but still in critical condition. Her husband Prince Frederic Von Anhalt issued a statement to her fans to ask to please keep her in your prayers. She is truly a legend and the past 8 years she has been through hell healthwise what with that horrible accident in November of 2002 which left her partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, a massive stroke in ‘05 and now this. We pray that she will have a quick recovery and return home soon.”

On the site, they show a photo of the present-day Gabor in a wheelchair. But I think we’d all prefer to remember her like this:

Want more photos of the gorgeous Zsa Zsa? Watch the “Zsa Zsa Gabor In Her Heyday” slide show on Life.com

“A friend of mine went on a first date for dinner at some guy’s house (dumb) and he baked a frozen pizza and put in “9 1/2 weeks.” Um????”

That sounds like something that would have  happened to me, back in the old dating days. If his goal was to watch something steamy, he should have gone with something like, maybe, Unfaithful with Diane Lane? 9 1/2 Weeks is just a laff riot.

Well, that about sums up the day, people. We can all go to bed now. Someone had a tasty thai chicken wrap.