A huge shipment of jimmy covers arrived today at work, three enormous boxes of rubbers. We all eagerly dug through to see what flavors we'd be handing out to the masses, and wow! What a variety. I don't think they had all of that stuff when I was in high school. In fact, I'm pretty sure they didn't, but I don't know. My girlfriends and I were TOO embarrassed to even be seen looking in that direction in the drugstore. So we either relied upon the boyfriends to produce said condoms (because we didn't know they'd be dry rotted from being carried around in a wallet since middle school), or we'd constantly troll for some uber-cool mom who was handing them out like candy, because that mom knew what was really going on. Unfortunately, none of my friends had that mom, nor did I. What's really amazing is that none of my girlfriends (nor I) caught anything, like a baby or something else.
So everyone's digging through the jimmy hats, checking out what's what, and some of these people were taking them for themselves. Uh, hello, these aren't for us. Damn, you got a job. Buy your own shit. These are for distribution and for me to blow up and float around in people's offices. Well, just the non-lubed ones. The one I blew up last week quickly deflated, ha-ha, so I was thinking I might try a few water balloons tomorrow. In fact, since our building was built into a hill, I can run around to the back of the building and just walk right onto the roof, and I'm feeling like I might run up on the roof and launch a few water filled jimmy covers off the roof, a la David Letterman. Since I got my yearly evaluation today, and yeah, I'm super awesome yet again, motherfuckers, I'm feeling pretty confident about acting extra stupid at work tomorrow, because it's a whole year until next October's evaluation rolls around and the bosses will probably forget about a Friday afternoon filled with me sneaking up on the roof to throw condoms around.
Once upon a long time ago, I worked at a dental research lab at the teaching hospital and we had to go up on the roof to smoke. There'd be all these nurses and secretaries up there, with some broken chairs and milk crates laying about, and a few concrete planters for the butts. I used to wonder who dragged all that shit up on the roof. And in the little entryway door to get onto the roof, laying in the corner would be a stack of magazines, Good Housekeeping, Redbook, People, and at least one Playgirl. That was a pretty hardened group of women who hung out on the roof, women who had just seen too much bullshit in one day, and then they'd go home and deal with more bullshit there. We'd sit up there and discuss whatever was going on, gossip and watch the med flight helicopter land on the roof the next block over, and all feel silently grateful we weren't the ones being off-loaded from that thing. Sometimes I'd sit out there in the evening during the winter, when it starts to get dusky around 4:30 or so, and I'd look in the windows of the hospital and I'd wonder what was going on in there, what the stories were of the people who were in those rooms. I knew in one of those darkened and unused hospital rooms, one of those nurses was getting taken care of herself, well, because that's what goes on in these large urban teaching hospitals.
But the jimmy covers today, it made me think about a few months ago, early in the summer, or late in the spring, and I had taken my children to the park in my neighborhood. It's just a little teensy county park with a playground, but it's well maintained since it's a county park. I don't know how my neighborhood ended up with a county park, because this neighborhood seems a little too blue collar to get a county park, but whatever. I'll take it. So I was sitting on the bench, reading my book while the children ran around and played, and out of the corner of my brain, I heard my older daughter tell my younger daughter, hey, let's go around and pick up all the trash and be nice to the earth. I thought to myself, help yourself, although this was a pretty clean park, so I didn't know what she was going to pick up. There's really no trash. So the children started running around and I was just working on my book. I saw a shadow run past me and it's the older daughter. She was furiously hunting for any scrap of paper she could find, because she's going to save the earth. I watched her pick something up and then run off. What's she doing with the trash she's picked up, I wonder to myself. I called out to her, hey, what are you putting the trash in? She turned around, and in the weakening light of the May dusk, I saw her silhouette, and she held something up and yelled, This! I squinted a little. Is that some kind of net she's putting the trash in? Or is that a bag she found somewhere? A tiny little bag? With a little point on the end of it? HOLY FUCK! SHE'S PICKING UP THE LITTLE SCRAPS OF TRASH AND STUFFING THEM IN A USED CONDOM!!!! I jumped up and watched my book fly off of my lap and land about three feet away with a soft thud and the crinkle of paper smashing against the ground. I immediately started screaming. "Drop it! Drop it! Drop it!" She just stood there, looking at me. I was jumping around like the child had latched onto a copperhead. I continued to scream hysterically. She finally just dropped that rubber, and came running over. I grabbed her hands and wiped them furiously on my jeans. But at this point, I had started laughing like a psychotic hyena because I realized now I had to explain that shit. Oh, the questions that a seven year old can come up with. I refused to give it up, because there's some stuff that a seven year old just doesn't need to know. And then, she and her sister, who had witnessed this whole horrid affair, spent the next fifteen minutes squatted down next to each other studying this condom, staring at it while they discussed between the two of them what this thing might be. All they knew is that they weren't allowed to touch it, and Mommy wouldn't tell them what it was. They bugged me about that thing for at least a month. I mean, there's no explanation you can possibly give children who are too young to know about that kind of stuff. Jesus. As for the kid who got laid out there (because I just have to assume it was some teenager, since I was a teenager once), kudos to you for getting some action when I can't even manage that, and I hope the mosquitoes didn't put too much of a hurtin' on your bare ass, but throw the damn jimmy cover away, for Christ's sake.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Freakshow of the Day
Okay, this is going to be a little different than my normal freakshow commentary. This will have to be a visual description, because I would do a cut-and-paste on the picture, but I've decided that all pictures on the internet probably have thousands of images of child pornography embedded in them, and if I download anything I will then infect my computer with child pornography and then I'll end up on the news, like the 76 year old grandma who the RIAA went after when the whole free music download thing blew the hell up. Sadly, this fear will probably keep my blog picture free, but I've been a little worried about polluting what I write with images that might or might not be mine, stolen, embedded with other less desirable stuff, etc. And then, I don't know if what's in my brain, and therefore on the screen, could translate well to a picture. Some things should remain pure. My body is not one of those things, but my words might be.
Reading and writing, that's serious stuff to me. I have a whole bookshelf full of books, not as many as I've read, because that would just be impossible to keep up with, but my bookshelf is full of most of my favorite shit, my shit I re-read every few years, or my books that have some kind of sentimental value. And yeah, some of it is complete tripe, but I'm just not going to apologize any more for reading Jackie Collins. There's just something incredibly comforting in standing in front of my bookshelf (especially when I've alphabetized it and categorized it, which I'm saving for a winter panic attack, I think) and touching all the spines, getting the books out, thinking about how many times I've read them or how many times I haven't read them yet. I'm that person who will open a book, and I have to smell the pages. A book smell is a good thing. I do this in my favorite big box book store, when I want to go and read for free and the library is too cheesy. There is nothing quite as calming as pulling a fresh book off the shelf, flipping the pages, reading a paragraph here and there, feeling that this might be the book I want to quick read for free. And then... I commit a heinous book crime. I crack the spine. Cracking the spine of a book is like taking the first sip of someone else's ice cold canned drink that they just popped the top on. Yeah, bitches, I just stole the best sip of the whole drink. Gotcha. Cracking the spine to a book is just like that. So I crack the spine to the book, feel the crisp pages flutter between my hands, inhale the essence of the book... and damn, are those pages stuck together? Holy shit! Is that what I think it is? Goddammit, this is a public store. People are nasty. No, seriously, it never happened there. But this one time, in a prison library...
Man, I really got off the topic there. Freakshow of the Day. Here goes. Remember, this is a little different for me.
Hi,
I would describe myself as kind,warm,intelligent,cute,classy,and funny. I am a single white guy.
I am looking for a daytime weekday intimate relationship with a attractive white woman. My main interest is to orally service a woman. I can host at my place. I am disease/drug free, and you must be also.
Okay, the written part is a little cheesy, but not the worst I've read. Not the best either, but this is craigslist. Standards are low here. Mr. Man is 35, and he's included two facial shots. He looks normal in that dweeby kind of way. But then, there's another picture. This would be the full body shot. Well, at least he included more than just his genitals. This is the picture I want to put on my blog, but I can't, what with my fears of embedded shit and all. He's balding, but not completely chromed out up top. He's got the ring around the head, and then, on the top, where he's balding, he's got a little fluff of hair that's the shape of a mohawk, but the consistency of a Rogaine commercial. Bushy eyebrows. Straight nose, normal mouth. He's standing up, obviously wherever he might live, and this is his laptop cam or something that's taken his picture. He's naked, except for the pair of white cotton underwear that look like boot camp issue. Since no genitals were exposed in the taking of this picture, I feel okay in sending this link to all of my girlfriends, even the married ones. And one other friend who will probably unfriend me tonight. Because he's a guy. So here's the emailed conversation that subsequently ensued between me and one of my girlfriends, who also has no life.
The original email was entitled, "Oh my god I'm so glad I'm single" and the body of the email, immediately on top of the link said, "Because this is what's out there waiting for me."
Girlfriend: Ha, now that is one hell of a birthday present to give yourself. are u sure u r ready...u may want to pace yourself.
Me: I've been laughing about that since I've seen it. I even sent it to one of my guy friends.
Girlfriend: i am just not believing he posted it...poor thing has no idea that he is the butt of a joke tonight. (He also has no idea he's going to the topic of most of a blog post)
Me: Did you show [insert her husband's name here]? Because that's just hot and I know you want [insert her husband's name here again] to be just like that guy.
Girlfriend: well i am waiting for him to get home. he is on evening shift and got called out so u r my entertainment for the night. u and that hunk of a man u found. i bet he is hung like a mule. (Yes! Women really do discuss this)
Me: I can't tell because he's squeezing his legs together so tightly. (Yes! Women really do discuss this in GREAT detail)
Girlfriend: he is trying not to crap his pants when he took that pic.
Me: I think he might have had to go pee-pee because he was so excited. Kind of like [insert other girlfriend's name here]'s dog when it breathes.
Reading and writing, that's serious stuff to me. I have a whole bookshelf full of books, not as many as I've read, because that would just be impossible to keep up with, but my bookshelf is full of most of my favorite shit, my shit I re-read every few years, or my books that have some kind of sentimental value. And yeah, some of it is complete tripe, but I'm just not going to apologize any more for reading Jackie Collins. There's just something incredibly comforting in standing in front of my bookshelf (especially when I've alphabetized it and categorized it, which I'm saving for a winter panic attack, I think) and touching all the spines, getting the books out, thinking about how many times I've read them or how many times I haven't read them yet. I'm that person who will open a book, and I have to smell the pages. A book smell is a good thing. I do this in my favorite big box book store, when I want to go and read for free and the library is too cheesy. There is nothing quite as calming as pulling a fresh book off the shelf, flipping the pages, reading a paragraph here and there, feeling that this might be the book I want to quick read for free. And then... I commit a heinous book crime. I crack the spine. Cracking the spine of a book is like taking the first sip of someone else's ice cold canned drink that they just popped the top on. Yeah, bitches, I just stole the best sip of the whole drink. Gotcha. Cracking the spine to a book is just like that. So I crack the spine to the book, feel the crisp pages flutter between my hands, inhale the essence of the book... and damn, are those pages stuck together? Holy shit! Is that what I think it is? Goddammit, this is a public store. People are nasty. No, seriously, it never happened there. But this one time, in a prison library...
Man, I really got off the topic there. Freakshow of the Day. Here goes. Remember, this is a little different for me.
Hi,
I would describe myself as kind,warm,intelligent,cute,classy,and funny. I am a single white guy.
I am looking for a daytime weekday intimate relationship with a attractive white woman. My main interest is to orally service a woman. I can host at my place. I am disease/drug free, and you must be also.
Okay, the written part is a little cheesy, but not the worst I've read. Not the best either, but this is craigslist. Standards are low here. Mr. Man is 35, and he's included two facial shots. He looks normal in that dweeby kind of way. But then, there's another picture. This would be the full body shot. Well, at least he included more than just his genitals. This is the picture I want to put on my blog, but I can't, what with my fears of embedded shit and all. He's balding, but not completely chromed out up top. He's got the ring around the head, and then, on the top, where he's balding, he's got a little fluff of hair that's the shape of a mohawk, but the consistency of a Rogaine commercial. Bushy eyebrows. Straight nose, normal mouth. He's standing up, obviously wherever he might live, and this is his laptop cam or something that's taken his picture. He's naked, except for the pair of white cotton underwear that look like boot camp issue. Since no genitals were exposed in the taking of this picture, I feel okay in sending this link to all of my girlfriends, even the married ones. And one other friend who will probably unfriend me tonight. Because he's a guy. So here's the emailed conversation that subsequently ensued between me and one of my girlfriends, who also has no life.
The original email was entitled, "Oh my god I'm so glad I'm single" and the body of the email, immediately on top of the link said, "Because this is what's out there waiting for me."
Girlfriend: Ha, now that is one hell of a birthday present to give yourself. are u sure u r ready...u may want to pace yourself.
Me: I've been laughing about that since I've seen it. I even sent it to one of my guy friends.
Girlfriend: i am just not believing he posted it...poor thing has no idea that he is the butt of a joke tonight. (He also has no idea he's going to the topic of most of a blog post)
Me: Did you show [insert her husband's name here]? Because that's just hot and I know you want [insert her husband's name here again] to be just like that guy.
Girlfriend: well i am waiting for him to get home. he is on evening shift and got called out so u r my entertainment for the night. u and that hunk of a man u found. i bet he is hung like a mule. (Yes! Women really do discuss this)
Me: I can't tell because he's squeezing his legs together so tightly. (Yes! Women really do discuss this in GREAT detail)
Girlfriend: he is trying not to crap his pants when he took that pic.
Me: I think he might have had to go pee-pee because he was so excited. Kind of like [insert other girlfriend's name here]'s dog when it breathes.
Girlfriend: could be....maybe he had to get drunk in order to get his clothes off to have his mommy take his pic (Ahhh, she threw out the mommy comment - nice addition to the shit talking that women do)
Me: She should have waxed his chest. That is disgusting. All that hair. Ew. (No man who looks like a bear shall ever get between these legs. Again. Because my standards are raised)
Girlfriend: your cat may like him
Me: Neither of my cats will ever meet this guy. (My girlfriend's a little slow and totally did not get this comment)
Girlfriend: well then looks like you are back to the drawling board or calling the one with the lysol can (That would have been a link last week that I sent her with some guy holding a Lysol can up next to his junk)
Me: I think I can just do without.
Girlfriend: awwww
Me: Please. If that's what the available male population looks like out there, I'm better off. Would you want to date some dude in tighty whitey's with his legs squeezed together, looking like he skinned a bear and put it on his chest? I think not. Don't cry for me, Argentina. (She didn't get that last comment, either)
Girlfriend: i think i would stay single, buy sex toys and drink (This is the exact same girlfriend fucking hassling me to have sex toy party. I'm resisting because I'm good with what I've already got, thanks, but now I'm rethinking it because that would be one hell of a blog post)
Me: What do you think I do every night? (She doesn't know about my blog and I'm not giving that little detail up, either)
Girlfriend: oh, that explains the early morning moods. (That's because I kind of made it to work on time on those days)
Me: I thought my mood had much improved since I left dickhead. Someone told me other day they don't hear me yelling as much in my office anymore.
So that's it. My Freakshow of the Day. All of a sudden I don't know if it's the guy in the saggy underpants or me.
37
I had my training thing today. I drove right up into the depths of Northern Virginia (okay, the outer depths) and made it in about two hours. I take back all the bad stuff I said about the traffic, because it wasn't that bad. Traffic in Short Dump is way worse. I was late, but only by a few minutes. I figure that I'm egotistical enough to feel like the party wasn't going to start til I got there, anyway. I knew a few people in the training thing, but I didn't like any of them enough to sit and socialize, basically because I'm pretty sure that none of them are as cool as me.
So in between the training thing and me feeling like I'm going to skip bronchitis and head right into pneumonia, I was calling my mom and my older daughter's cheer coach to find out if the football game was going to be cancelled tonight. At first, when they announced continuous downpours and flash-flooding, the information came down from the football coach that it didn't matter, because unless it was thundering and lightening, the game would go on. Geez. What a nutjob. These are children, not NFL players. Come on. So the cheer coach was out buying rain slickers, and the girls had permission to wear sweatpants under their uniforms. Finally, some common sense prevailed and some jackass cancelled the game, which actually would have been three games, but we were leaving after the first one. Why have kids running around on a football field at 8:00 at night on a school night? That's just stupid. The cancellation call came, and yay! Now my mom can just skip the football game, go straight to the grocery store formerly known as Ukrops and buy me a cake by the bakery currently known as Ukrops. My children shall eat cake and goldfish for dinner! Life is good! For them!
And then, after the sugar high had hit and the children had crashed back down, time for homework. My older daughter got a progress note sent home, which is apparently what they call bad behavior reports now?!? So we discussed that, and of course it's everyone else's fault. She just can't help what she blurts out of her mouth at any time, because she just can't. We discuss personal responsibility, and that she has to control herself and her mouth, and she decides that if another note is sent home, then no TV or computer for a week for her. Wow! That was way harsher than I was thinking, but we can go with that. It'll be easier for me since she picked the punishment. In the middle of all of this, The Ex calls for his nightly phone call (on the nights he remembers or isn't busy with the girlfriend), and god only knows what he told her. Probably that it's all Mommy's fault. I got on the phone to discuss the situation with him, and he says he's on a break from his part-time "gig" and he doesn't really have any time. Too bad, motherfucker. I guess you'd better make some time. Then he goes into what his part-time "gig" is, and I really don't care. I don't care about you and your stupid music. I'm not impressed and I never will be. I'm just sorry that he can't get paid for jerking off, because then he'd be rich and he could pay for both daughters' yearbooks.
37. I don't feel 37. I just decided a few months ago that I was okay with being 36. 37 feels old. 37 feels like I'm too old to be writing some blog about freakshows and stuff. I'll keep on with the blog, but this just feels weird. However, this is what I do every birthday when I decide that I don't feel my new age. I'll just keep telling people I'm 36 until 37 feels right, which will probably be next June. And then I'll be 37 from next June until the June or so after that. I had convinced people a couple of years ago that I was only 28. I mean, I still felt 28, and from their reactions when the truth slipped out and they discovered I was actually 34, I guess I still looked it. So I think I can still pass for 36. Maybe I'll go back to 34. I think I can still pass for 34, too. Thus far in life, I have resisted botox, plastic surgery, teeth whitening, ionic hair straightening, hair coloring, vajazzling, a minivan and tattoo eyeliner, but have succumbed to a couple of dumb tattoos, a piercing, Brazilian waxing, stretch marks and one divorce. I can definitely still pass for 35.
So in between the training thing and me feeling like I'm going to skip bronchitis and head right into pneumonia, I was calling my mom and my older daughter's cheer coach to find out if the football game was going to be cancelled tonight. At first, when they announced continuous downpours and flash-flooding, the information came down from the football coach that it didn't matter, because unless it was thundering and lightening, the game would go on. Geez. What a nutjob. These are children, not NFL players. Come on. So the cheer coach was out buying rain slickers, and the girls had permission to wear sweatpants under their uniforms. Finally, some common sense prevailed and some jackass cancelled the game, which actually would have been three games, but we were leaving after the first one. Why have kids running around on a football field at 8:00 at night on a school night? That's just stupid. The cancellation call came, and yay! Now my mom can just skip the football game, go straight to the grocery store formerly known as Ukrops and buy me a cake by the bakery currently known as Ukrops. My children shall eat cake and goldfish for dinner! Life is good! For them!
And then, after the sugar high had hit and the children had crashed back down, time for homework. My older daughter got a progress note sent home, which is apparently what they call bad behavior reports now?!? So we discussed that, and of course it's everyone else's fault. She just can't help what she blurts out of her mouth at any time, because she just can't. We discuss personal responsibility, and that she has to control herself and her mouth, and she decides that if another note is sent home, then no TV or computer for a week for her. Wow! That was way harsher than I was thinking, but we can go with that. It'll be easier for me since she picked the punishment. In the middle of all of this, The Ex calls for his nightly phone call (on the nights he remembers or isn't busy with the girlfriend), and god only knows what he told her. Probably that it's all Mommy's fault. I got on the phone to discuss the situation with him, and he says he's on a break from his part-time "gig" and he doesn't really have any time. Too bad, motherfucker. I guess you'd better make some time. Then he goes into what his part-time "gig" is, and I really don't care. I don't care about you and your stupid music. I'm not impressed and I never will be. I'm just sorry that he can't get paid for jerking off, because then he'd be rich and he could pay for both daughters' yearbooks.
37. I don't feel 37. I just decided a few months ago that I was okay with being 36. 37 feels old. 37 feels like I'm too old to be writing some blog about freakshows and stuff. I'll keep on with the blog, but this just feels weird. However, this is what I do every birthday when I decide that I don't feel my new age. I'll just keep telling people I'm 36 until 37 feels right, which will probably be next June. And then I'll be 37 from next June until the June or so after that. I had convinced people a couple of years ago that I was only 28. I mean, I still felt 28, and from their reactions when the truth slipped out and they discovered I was actually 34, I guess I still looked it. So I think I can still pass for 36. Maybe I'll go back to 34. I think I can still pass for 34, too. Thus far in life, I have resisted botox, plastic surgery, teeth whitening, ionic hair straightening, hair coloring, vajazzling, a minivan and tattoo eyeliner, but have succumbed to a couple of dumb tattoos, a piercing, Brazilian waxing, stretch marks and one divorce. I can definitely still pass for 35.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Yay! Cat Puke
My new cat seems to be settling in pretty well. I did not want a new cat. I did not want an old cat. I did not want any animals, even though I promised my older daughter that we would get guinea pigs in a few more months. I promised her that only because I knew the guinea pigs would need to go with her to her father's next summer, and he hates rodent animals. But she didn't know that when I promised it, so it was more like me being the cool mom.
The cat who I just had put down, I got him back in the fall of 1992, when he was about six months old. He was a gorgeous Russian Blue, and if you don't know what that is, look it up because I'm feeling a little anxiety ridden and assholish tonight and don't feel like explaining. I'm pretty sure a good dose of hot sex could fix this, but that's another topic. I got this cat before I realized what a pain in the ass animals are, but by the time I had realized that, I had already committed to him. Until I had my children, he was my child. He slept in the bed with me, listened to all my problems, laid his big fat ass right up on my chest when I was trying to nap on the sofa, hid under a chair and clawed my ankles when I walked by, all the things that cats do. He ignored me periodically, and demanded that I never ignore him.
The day I put him down, I didn't think the vet would do it, because he had refused to put him down four months prior, and I was scared that I was going to have to take this cat back home and watch his quality of life decline even more. He had stopped eating at this point, but I managed to get him to eat cheese popcorn and shrimp once a day or so. Because that's what he loved. Cheese popcorn and shrimp. So I took him to the vet and the vet, bless his heart, didn't even examine him. He just asked, is it time? And I started crying. Yeah, it's time. I had never seen an animal put down before, because when you grow up in the country, you generally say goodbye to your animals when you find them dead in their pen, they get hit by a car or they just go missing, and you know that they went off somewhere to die alone. Putting an animal down was a new experience for me, and it was hard. I kept thinking, this can't be it. This can't be the end of this 18 year relationship. They took him in the back and put in a catheter in his front leg, and then brought him back to me. He was laying all wrapped up in a blanket, and we snuggled for a little while, and I talked to him about all of the things that we had done. Sounds stupid, but he knew. He licked my hand, and I put my finger up next to his paw and he curled his claws around it, like we had always done. I always thought that was his way of holding my hand. The vet comes in and it's time. I kissed my oldest baby one last time and told him that I loved him, and the vet gave him the injection. For that one moment in time, I wanted to say, no, wait! Not yet! Not now! I'm not ready! I need more time! Please! But it was too late. As soon as those thoughts entered my brain, I felt him go limp and I knew he was gone, and I just sobbed. I sat there on that hard ass bench in that vet-smelling examination room with the blinds pulled on the door, and leaned my head up against the wall and sobbed. And I knew I wasn't crying for him, I was crying for me. Because that's what we do when we lose someone. We cry about what we've lost, what we've had, what we won't have again, nothing else. And then they took him, and that was that. I had him cremated, because I just didn't have it in me to bring him home and bury him. I just couldn't do it. I picked up his remains the other day, and started crying all over again. Goddammit, I hate crying.
I came home that day and threw all of his stuff away, and I cried about that, because that was the finality of it, and I didn't plan to get any more animals any time soon. Definitely not a dog, because I am diametrically opposed to dog shit in my yard. Definitely not a cat, well, because I need a break. Definitely not fish because I don't want to have to clean some scuzzy tank, and birds are too loud. I'll take a couple of months off and we'll get these fucking guinea pigs, because that's what Mommy promised. But the guinea pigs are no big deal, because they can stay in their cage, and well, when some hot guy asks me to run off to somewhere fabulous for the weekend when my children aren't here for some fast and furious horizontal action, I can just run the guinea pigs in their cage over to The Ex and then take off for fun times. So we can definitely do guinea pigs.
But then my other mother called. I've mentioned her before, and this would be my former neighbor who is now exclusively the neighbor of The Ex. But she's my other mother. Actually, she reminds me of my grandmother, and that's why I will move heaven and earth for this woman. I have issues with my grandmother dying before I was ready to let her go and without me being able to say goodbye, and really, we never appreciate our grandparents when we're kids. My other mother, she's a lot like my grandmother, so much so that my mother has even commented on it. I can't say no to my other mother, because it's like going back in time and getting that extra bit of love from my grandmother, but I only had to run across the cul-de-sac for it. Like I said before, people come into our lives for a reason. I like to think my grandmother sent her to me, because my grandmother wasn't ready to say goodbye to me, either. Actually, my grandmother is with me every day, because I named my younger daughter after her. But in spirit, my grandmother and my other mother are pretty much the same person. So this is my chance, maybe my only chance, to do for my grandmother what her cancer robbed me of.
She wanted me to take her cat, because she's selling her house and moving back to West Virginia. Which I'll also have issues with, but it's cool, because we can skype. I'm a little sketchy on the whole heaven thing, largely because I'm very sketchy on the whole religion thing, but if there's a heaven, I wish we could skype up there. Anyway, she's got this cat, and she wants me to take it. I can't say no to this woman. I can't, I won't, end of story. The cat came to live with us on Sunday, and the older daughter is okay with it, even though I made sure she understands that we won't be getting guinea pigs after all. Because this is her other grandmother, and she can't say no to this woman, either. We wake up this morning, the cat is yowling a good morning to us, the day gets started and then we see it. Cat puke. Right next to the front door.
Great. Here we go again.
The cat who I just had put down, I got him back in the fall of 1992, when he was about six months old. He was a gorgeous Russian Blue, and if you don't know what that is, look it up because I'm feeling a little anxiety ridden and assholish tonight and don't feel like explaining. I'm pretty sure a good dose of hot sex could fix this, but that's another topic. I got this cat before I realized what a pain in the ass animals are, but by the time I had realized that, I had already committed to him. Until I had my children, he was my child. He slept in the bed with me, listened to all my problems, laid his big fat ass right up on my chest when I was trying to nap on the sofa, hid under a chair and clawed my ankles when I walked by, all the things that cats do. He ignored me periodically, and demanded that I never ignore him.
The day I put him down, I didn't think the vet would do it, because he had refused to put him down four months prior, and I was scared that I was going to have to take this cat back home and watch his quality of life decline even more. He had stopped eating at this point, but I managed to get him to eat cheese popcorn and shrimp once a day or so. Because that's what he loved. Cheese popcorn and shrimp. So I took him to the vet and the vet, bless his heart, didn't even examine him. He just asked, is it time? And I started crying. Yeah, it's time. I had never seen an animal put down before, because when you grow up in the country, you generally say goodbye to your animals when you find them dead in their pen, they get hit by a car or they just go missing, and you know that they went off somewhere to die alone. Putting an animal down was a new experience for me, and it was hard. I kept thinking, this can't be it. This can't be the end of this 18 year relationship. They took him in the back and put in a catheter in his front leg, and then brought him back to me. He was laying all wrapped up in a blanket, and we snuggled for a little while, and I talked to him about all of the things that we had done. Sounds stupid, but he knew. He licked my hand, and I put my finger up next to his paw and he curled his claws around it, like we had always done. I always thought that was his way of holding my hand. The vet comes in and it's time. I kissed my oldest baby one last time and told him that I loved him, and the vet gave him the injection. For that one moment in time, I wanted to say, no, wait! Not yet! Not now! I'm not ready! I need more time! Please! But it was too late. As soon as those thoughts entered my brain, I felt him go limp and I knew he was gone, and I just sobbed. I sat there on that hard ass bench in that vet-smelling examination room with the blinds pulled on the door, and leaned my head up against the wall and sobbed. And I knew I wasn't crying for him, I was crying for me. Because that's what we do when we lose someone. We cry about what we've lost, what we've had, what we won't have again, nothing else. And then they took him, and that was that. I had him cremated, because I just didn't have it in me to bring him home and bury him. I just couldn't do it. I picked up his remains the other day, and started crying all over again. Goddammit, I hate crying.
I came home that day and threw all of his stuff away, and I cried about that, because that was the finality of it, and I didn't plan to get any more animals any time soon. Definitely not a dog, because I am diametrically opposed to dog shit in my yard. Definitely not a cat, well, because I need a break. Definitely not fish because I don't want to have to clean some scuzzy tank, and birds are too loud. I'll take a couple of months off and we'll get these fucking guinea pigs, because that's what Mommy promised. But the guinea pigs are no big deal, because they can stay in their cage, and well, when some hot guy asks me to run off to somewhere fabulous for the weekend when my children aren't here for some fast and furious horizontal action, I can just run the guinea pigs in their cage over to The Ex and then take off for fun times. So we can definitely do guinea pigs.
But then my other mother called. I've mentioned her before, and this would be my former neighbor who is now exclusively the neighbor of The Ex. But she's my other mother. Actually, she reminds me of my grandmother, and that's why I will move heaven and earth for this woman. I have issues with my grandmother dying before I was ready to let her go and without me being able to say goodbye, and really, we never appreciate our grandparents when we're kids. My other mother, she's a lot like my grandmother, so much so that my mother has even commented on it. I can't say no to my other mother, because it's like going back in time and getting that extra bit of love from my grandmother, but I only had to run across the cul-de-sac for it. Like I said before, people come into our lives for a reason. I like to think my grandmother sent her to me, because my grandmother wasn't ready to say goodbye to me, either. Actually, my grandmother is with me every day, because I named my younger daughter after her. But in spirit, my grandmother and my other mother are pretty much the same person. So this is my chance, maybe my only chance, to do for my grandmother what her cancer robbed me of.
She wanted me to take her cat, because she's selling her house and moving back to West Virginia. Which I'll also have issues with, but it's cool, because we can skype. I'm a little sketchy on the whole heaven thing, largely because I'm very sketchy on the whole religion thing, but if there's a heaven, I wish we could skype up there. Anyway, she's got this cat, and she wants me to take it. I can't say no to this woman. I can't, I won't, end of story. The cat came to live with us on Sunday, and the older daughter is okay with it, even though I made sure she understands that we won't be getting guinea pigs after all. Because this is her other grandmother, and she can't say no to this woman, either. We wake up this morning, the cat is yowling a good morning to us, the day gets started and then we see it. Cat puke. Right next to the front door.
Great. Here we go again.
My Edge
Today felt like the longest day ever. Until tomorrow, which will feel like an even longer day. My nasty little sinus infection is trying to move into my lungs and become a nasty little bronchitis episode. I am resisting, but just barely. The children are with my mom tonight, because I've got to get up at o'dark thirty and drive at least two hours for a training session that probably isn't going to train me in shit, but that's okay. Gotta do it. I dragged my ass in to the nail salon tonight to get my nails done, and the woman who didn't do my nails right two weeks ago was in there glaring at me because I got a snappish with her the last time. So we just glared at each other and then she said something I didn't understand, because that's what happens in these Asian nail salons. Whatever. Bitch. Who won't get a good tip from me anymore.
Tomorrow is my birthday. This is kind of odd for me, because this will be the first birthday I've had in at least 12 years that I haven't been attached to someone. I'm not quite sure what to make of a birthday that's not full of contrived shit that I always felt like was designed to make me feel guilty about something. I used to always take my birthdays off from work, and would just kind of designate the day as my own personal mental health day, and I would lay around and watch TV and eat Chex Mix and drink Coke and just be by myself. If you're an only child, being by yourself isn't a hard thing to do. But then I got married, and The Ex decided that he would also take that day off to spend the whole day with me. Now, maybe this was me being a selfish bitch, but I didn't want to share my birthday. And I didn't want him hovering about all day asking if I wanted to do this or do that. No, motherfucker. I already told you I want to just lay on the sofa and do nothing. By myself. All day. So this went on for about three or four years, and then he stopped taking the day off, but then he pouted about it because I didn't want to share my birthday with him. Hello, it's my birthday! Not yours. This isn't about you. Geez. So that worked for about two years, and then I said, fuck it. I stopped taking the day off. It wasn't worth the drama. But I always wondered if I really was being selfish. I guess that's all a non-issue now. I won't be taking tomorrow off, because of what I've got going on, but rest assured, while I'm in my training thing, my brain will be laying on my sofa watching some TV.
I was thinking about the whole legal status of divorce and separation today. I've got about four more months until the judge signs off on this thing and makes it legit. I don't even know why there's a separation period, other than this is one of those gray legal areas that's kind of a try-it-out thing. I guess like an engagement. So I'm engaged to be divorced. Depending on when the judge signs off, I could be legal on January 25th. I guess the separation is kind of like that time period that you have to spend where you determine, oh, wait, I really don't hate you and we can fix this with some dirty make up sex, or... oh, wait, I hate you even more than I thought I did a year ago and if I ever have to see you naked again I'll kill myself. I fall into that second category, but I'm pretty sure The Ex falls into that first category, what with his behavior and then telling me that I looked hot at the football game on Saturday night, which made me want to pierce my eardrums with an ice pick. Seriously. He told me that. I just turned and walked away without a word in reply. I mean, what do you say to something like that? Because whatever I said was not going to be what he heard.
The other thing that feels different this year, apart from the divorce, or maybe because of it, is that I feel like I'm on the cusp of something. I feel like it might be something good, but then I have these moments of sheer anxiety, the kind of anxiety that wakes me up from a dead sleep, and I think, oh my god, I could lose all of this in a minute. The kind of anxiety that drives me out of bed and wandering around the house, wondering how long it will be before everything just totally falls apart. The kind of anxiety that means I only get about three or four hours of sleep, and then just kind of sleepwalk my way through the next day, and repeat again about two nights later. Of course, this could be due to all of the changes I've been through in the past eight months, and the fact that I'm the person responsible for everything now. There is no one else to fall back on. If I fail, I fail big. I'll fail like I lose my house, my children have to live with their father because I'll be living in a homeless shelter or something, I'll fail like I have to file for bankruptcy, I'll fail like I've never failed before. I'll fail in the most epic and grandest sense of the word. That's a lot to think about at 3:59 in the morning when I should be sleeping. What's even worse is I used to have this kind of anxiety about losing one of my parents until it happened. So now I'm left feeling like I'm going to have this anxiety until I fail big, but even thinking that makes it worse, like I'm going to jinx myself or something.
I'm pretty sure I could manipulate a prescription for Xanax out of someone for all of this anxiety and fear of failure, but I can't. Because I wouldn't have any anxiety then, and I have survived off of caffeine, nicotine and anxiety since I was about 15, to the point that I had stomach ulcers by the time I was 18, and lived with that pain for about four years until they went away. Every now and then, I have one of those little flair-ups, the kind that makes me remember the pain of stomach ulcers, and I'm like, holy shit, this is uncomfortable. But I think I've just internalized it all in my brain, so now I just think constantly about all the what-if's and all the ways I can fail. And this is my edge in life. I'm scared that if I end up on Xanax or whatever else, then there goes the essence of Steph. There goes my edge in life, because I'll suddenly stop caring about anything. I'll just float through life, a big giant blob of nothingness with no brain, no worries, no thoughts on anything other than whatever people on that stuff think about, which I assume is flowers and rainbows and unicorns. I can't lose my edge. I just can't, because I can't be that person focused on flowers and rainbows and unicorns. I won't be able to keep my children organized, I won't be able to keep myself organized, I won't have a clean house, I won't pay the bills on time, I won't be able to do my job right because I need my edge at work. Everything I do at work depends on my edge and this overwhelming drive to do what I do, and do what I do really well. I can't just be a big blob of nothingness because that's not who I am.
The worst thing about this is that there's no middle ground here for me, no gray trial area of let's see if this works or doesn't work. It's either all or nothing. It's either me doing what I need to do each and every day not to fail myself, not to fail my children, not to fail my family, my employer, and everyone who meets me, or it's me being a big blob of nothingness.
Happy Birthday. And don't fail. Maybe this is where I start drinking for the night.
Tomorrow is my birthday. This is kind of odd for me, because this will be the first birthday I've had in at least 12 years that I haven't been attached to someone. I'm not quite sure what to make of a birthday that's not full of contrived shit that I always felt like was designed to make me feel guilty about something. I used to always take my birthdays off from work, and would just kind of designate the day as my own personal mental health day, and I would lay around and watch TV and eat Chex Mix and drink Coke and just be by myself. If you're an only child, being by yourself isn't a hard thing to do. But then I got married, and The Ex decided that he would also take that day off to spend the whole day with me. Now, maybe this was me being a selfish bitch, but I didn't want to share my birthday. And I didn't want him hovering about all day asking if I wanted to do this or do that. No, motherfucker. I already told you I want to just lay on the sofa and do nothing. By myself. All day. So this went on for about three or four years, and then he stopped taking the day off, but then he pouted about it because I didn't want to share my birthday with him. Hello, it's my birthday! Not yours. This isn't about you. Geez. So that worked for about two years, and then I said, fuck it. I stopped taking the day off. It wasn't worth the drama. But I always wondered if I really was being selfish. I guess that's all a non-issue now. I won't be taking tomorrow off, because of what I've got going on, but rest assured, while I'm in my training thing, my brain will be laying on my sofa watching some TV.
I was thinking about the whole legal status of divorce and separation today. I've got about four more months until the judge signs off on this thing and makes it legit. I don't even know why there's a separation period, other than this is one of those gray legal areas that's kind of a try-it-out thing. I guess like an engagement. So I'm engaged to be divorced. Depending on when the judge signs off, I could be legal on January 25th. I guess the separation is kind of like that time period that you have to spend where you determine, oh, wait, I really don't hate you and we can fix this with some dirty make up sex, or... oh, wait, I hate you even more than I thought I did a year ago and if I ever have to see you naked again I'll kill myself. I fall into that second category, but I'm pretty sure The Ex falls into that first category, what with his behavior and then telling me that I looked hot at the football game on Saturday night, which made me want to pierce my eardrums with an ice pick. Seriously. He told me that. I just turned and walked away without a word in reply. I mean, what do you say to something like that? Because whatever I said was not going to be what he heard.
The other thing that feels different this year, apart from the divorce, or maybe because of it, is that I feel like I'm on the cusp of something. I feel like it might be something good, but then I have these moments of sheer anxiety, the kind of anxiety that wakes me up from a dead sleep, and I think, oh my god, I could lose all of this in a minute. The kind of anxiety that drives me out of bed and wandering around the house, wondering how long it will be before everything just totally falls apart. The kind of anxiety that means I only get about three or four hours of sleep, and then just kind of sleepwalk my way through the next day, and repeat again about two nights later. Of course, this could be due to all of the changes I've been through in the past eight months, and the fact that I'm the person responsible for everything now. There is no one else to fall back on. If I fail, I fail big. I'll fail like I lose my house, my children have to live with their father because I'll be living in a homeless shelter or something, I'll fail like I have to file for bankruptcy, I'll fail like I've never failed before. I'll fail in the most epic and grandest sense of the word. That's a lot to think about at 3:59 in the morning when I should be sleeping. What's even worse is I used to have this kind of anxiety about losing one of my parents until it happened. So now I'm left feeling like I'm going to have this anxiety until I fail big, but even thinking that makes it worse, like I'm going to jinx myself or something.
I'm pretty sure I could manipulate a prescription for Xanax out of someone for all of this anxiety and fear of failure, but I can't. Because I wouldn't have any anxiety then, and I have survived off of caffeine, nicotine and anxiety since I was about 15, to the point that I had stomach ulcers by the time I was 18, and lived with that pain for about four years until they went away. Every now and then, I have one of those little flair-ups, the kind that makes me remember the pain of stomach ulcers, and I'm like, holy shit, this is uncomfortable. But I think I've just internalized it all in my brain, so now I just think constantly about all the what-if's and all the ways I can fail. And this is my edge in life. I'm scared that if I end up on Xanax or whatever else, then there goes the essence of Steph. There goes my edge in life, because I'll suddenly stop caring about anything. I'll just float through life, a big giant blob of nothingness with no brain, no worries, no thoughts on anything other than whatever people on that stuff think about, which I assume is flowers and rainbows and unicorns. I can't lose my edge. I just can't, because I can't be that person focused on flowers and rainbows and unicorns. I won't be able to keep my children organized, I won't be able to keep myself organized, I won't have a clean house, I won't pay the bills on time, I won't be able to do my job right because I need my edge at work. Everything I do at work depends on my edge and this overwhelming drive to do what I do, and do what I do really well. I can't just be a big blob of nothingness because that's not who I am.
The worst thing about this is that there's no middle ground here for me, no gray trial area of let's see if this works or doesn't work. It's either all or nothing. It's either me doing what I need to do each and every day not to fail myself, not to fail my children, not to fail my family, my employer, and everyone who meets me, or it's me being a big blob of nothingness.
Happy Birthday. And don't fail. Maybe this is where I start drinking for the night.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Stuff I Don't Like
Since I was laid up in the house all day, being sick for real, I had the opportunity to watch a couple of movies, completely uninterrupted by some child wanting this, wanting that, can you do this, can you do that... I'm not a movie person. I generally say that I don't have the patience to watch movies, but I think that might make me sound like I have ADHD, which I don't have. I think the problem is that the movies just aren't good enough to hold my attention. Most movies could actually be a 30 minute short film, or whatever they call them. Longer is not always better, Hollywood. I haven't been to the movie theater in years, 2001 to be exact, because movies are too expensive to not be fucking awesome. I'm intrigued with the new Bow-Tie Cinemas on the Boulevard, though, because it's a dinner, beer and movie kind of place, like the old Cinema and Drafthouse was. Maybe if I ever go on a date again, that might be a good place. The key words in that sentence are maybe, if and ever.
Not only do I not watch a whole lot of movies, the movies I do watch are usually watched standing up running from one room to the next, doing the mom thing, because it's impossible to sit down and watch a movie when you have children in the house. It's just impossible. My children, and don't get me wrong--I love them to DEATH--are little cockblockers. They cockblock me having a clean house, watching movies all the way through, sleeping late, having money, getting laid. All the fun stuff that a normal adult wants to do. Anyway, I've actually watched a ton of movies, but I've seen on average, about 34.892 minutes of each movie, and even that was broken up into segments. I've seen "There's Something About Mary" at least 20 times, but I've never seen any of the segments I've watched in the correct order, and every time I watch it I see something new. I'm left to believe that the movie doesn't make any sense, and therefore why would I want to sit down and watch the whole thing through? Every segment sucked. I'm sure it actually didn't, but you try to watch a movie in 5 minute increments for years, and you'll eventually believe that it sucks, too.
So today, since I was home alone, I watched a few segments of "Charlie Wilson's War", which I've seen other segments of, and quite honestly, I'm not impressed. What I'm left with is that maybe, just maybe, we should have just let the Russkies have Afghanistan. If we had just left the whole thing alone, I bet we wouldn't be messing around over there right now. I just bet. Furthermore, this will get me into the whole conversation that we don't need to be the world's police force. Since I haven't watched the whole movie all the way through, and because I'm not up on my Afghan history, I don't know if we were providing them weapons and shit to protect our investments or just to be dicks to the Soviets and because it was the height of the Cold War. What continues to piss me off is that now we're sending our servicemen and women over there to try to find some slippery bastard in a mountain range and our people are getting shot up and killed with the exact weapons we provided them with in the early 80's. But hindsight is always 20/20, right?
And then I watched, no segments here, the entirety of "Bridget Jones's Diary", which is one of those quintessential chick flicks. This bring me to the topic at hand, stuff I don't like, which would be chick flicks. In fact, I hate chick flicks, and I watch them very sporadically for two reasons: to give the genre yet another chance to not be complete tripe, and then to be completely annoyed when I discover, yep, it's still tripe. And here's why: chick flicks = fairy tales, albeit of the modern sort. Now, as a disclaimer, I am jaded. Obviously. But these movies, it's all about the happily ever after. And life doesn't work like that, or at least, it hasn't for me. I've lived a million fairy tales, and I've had a million happily ever afters, but the ever afters were never really ever afters. They were finite, and maybe some were over before they ever started and I just didn't know it. I'm annoyed that I'm two days away from not being 36 anymore, and I'm faced with the fact that I haven't had my happily ever after yet. I'm faced with the fact that I may never have my happily ever after. I don't know, it's hard to say. People come into our lives for a reason, and some stay in our lives for a reason, and others don't. Or maybe, I need to realign my thinking, and realize that this is my happily ever after. I don't like being negative, because it takes a lot more work to be negative and unhappy. I functioned like that for most of my 20's, and it didn't work out well. Maybe that negativity is what led to my marriage, my desperation for a happily ever after, and all of this shit has come full circle and this is my happily ever after. Like I said, I don't know.
In the interest of not being an unhappy and cranky bitch, here's a movie genre that does falls into the category of "Stuff I Like"--this would be action films and stuff with men in it. And not the dumbass men who are in chick flicks, at least not the characters. I've seen parts and pieces of all the "Bourne" films, and that's good stuff. I like movies with crazy car chases and/or heavy weaponry. That makes me happy. My primal estrogen was stirred up for about a week after watching "Jarhead". I'll never tell, but if any future date wants to get lucky, that's the movie to pop in the DVD.
Not only do I not watch a whole lot of movies, the movies I do watch are usually watched standing up running from one room to the next, doing the mom thing, because it's impossible to sit down and watch a movie when you have children in the house. It's just impossible. My children, and don't get me wrong--I love them to DEATH--are little cockblockers. They cockblock me having a clean house, watching movies all the way through, sleeping late, having money, getting laid. All the fun stuff that a normal adult wants to do. Anyway, I've actually watched a ton of movies, but I've seen on average, about 34.892 minutes of each movie, and even that was broken up into segments. I've seen "There's Something About Mary" at least 20 times, but I've never seen any of the segments I've watched in the correct order, and every time I watch it I see something new. I'm left to believe that the movie doesn't make any sense, and therefore why would I want to sit down and watch the whole thing through? Every segment sucked. I'm sure it actually didn't, but you try to watch a movie in 5 minute increments for years, and you'll eventually believe that it sucks, too.
So today, since I was home alone, I watched a few segments of "Charlie Wilson's War", which I've seen other segments of, and quite honestly, I'm not impressed. What I'm left with is that maybe, just maybe, we should have just let the Russkies have Afghanistan. If we had just left the whole thing alone, I bet we wouldn't be messing around over there right now. I just bet. Furthermore, this will get me into the whole conversation that we don't need to be the world's police force. Since I haven't watched the whole movie all the way through, and because I'm not up on my Afghan history, I don't know if we were providing them weapons and shit to protect our investments or just to be dicks to the Soviets and because it was the height of the Cold War. What continues to piss me off is that now we're sending our servicemen and women over there to try to find some slippery bastard in a mountain range and our people are getting shot up and killed with the exact weapons we provided them with in the early 80's. But hindsight is always 20/20, right?
And then I watched, no segments here, the entirety of "Bridget Jones's Diary", which is one of those quintessential chick flicks. This bring me to the topic at hand, stuff I don't like, which would be chick flicks. In fact, I hate chick flicks, and I watch them very sporadically for two reasons: to give the genre yet another chance to not be complete tripe, and then to be completely annoyed when I discover, yep, it's still tripe. And here's why: chick flicks = fairy tales, albeit of the modern sort. Now, as a disclaimer, I am jaded. Obviously. But these movies, it's all about the happily ever after. And life doesn't work like that, or at least, it hasn't for me. I've lived a million fairy tales, and I've had a million happily ever afters, but the ever afters were never really ever afters. They were finite, and maybe some were over before they ever started and I just didn't know it. I'm annoyed that I'm two days away from not being 36 anymore, and I'm faced with the fact that I haven't had my happily ever after yet. I'm faced with the fact that I may never have my happily ever after. I don't know, it's hard to say. People come into our lives for a reason, and some stay in our lives for a reason, and others don't. Or maybe, I need to realign my thinking, and realize that this is my happily ever after. I don't like being negative, because it takes a lot more work to be negative and unhappy. I functioned like that for most of my 20's, and it didn't work out well. Maybe that negativity is what led to my marriage, my desperation for a happily ever after, and all of this shit has come full circle and this is my happily ever after. Like I said, I don't know.
In the interest of not being an unhappy and cranky bitch, here's a movie genre that does falls into the category of "Stuff I Like"--this would be action films and stuff with men in it. And not the dumbass men who are in chick flicks, at least not the characters. I've seen parts and pieces of all the "Bourne" films, and that's good stuff. I like movies with crazy car chases and/or heavy weaponry. That makes me happy. My primal estrogen was stirred up for about a week after watching "Jarhead". I'll never tell, but if any future date wants to get lucky, that's the movie to pop in the DVD.
Freakshow of the Day
ladies, I'm seeking a woman to join m efor a little adult fun in an adult theatre booth.
Oh my god, do people still do this? Every time I come across something like this, I think about what complete naive moron I must be. I didn't know there were any of these places left in Richmond. I know there are a couple of adult bookstores left, but I didn't think they had those adult theaters in them. I mean, I always assumed that the internet would slowly be the death of those places. Kind of like how Amazon is slowly but surely knocking out the big box book stores.
One of the adult bookstores in Richmond, I think it's still open, is niftily named the Triangle Bookstore. Get it? I like the pretend the person who named that place will also open a little dive diner and name it The Y, or even better, The Why. Because that would be funny as shit to the people who get it, and those would probably be the people who remember the old Lee Theater, which was an adult theater on a block of Grace Street right next to VCU, so they had the element of maybe a little bit more high-falutin' clientele, or at least being able to claim they were right next to a major university. Of course, back in the day, Grace Street was grimy as shit, but it was part of the college, for better or worse, kind of like that one slimeball cousin everyone has who might end up on America's Most Wanted someday.
But back to the post of discussion, I don't know why anyone would want to go and hook up at one of these places. Disgusting and nothing but disgusting. Maybe the guy who posted this has been watching the news and knows that this is apparently a bumper crop year for bedbugs. I don't know. I saw a post on craigslist one night, imagine that, right in the middle of the casual encounters section, and it was the bedbug alert. Nice! Someone had been kind enough to link to a website where all of the hotels with bedbug problems are listed. I checked that website out, too, and some of them were pretty nice hotels. I spent a few minutes hoping that The Ex would end up at one of those places on his business travels, but that might mean that the bedbugs would immigrate to the children's bedrooms, and then hitch a ride over here, and then, uh oh. So maybe I'll just hope his girlfriend ends up at one of these hotels on her business travels. I guess if I add an extra link in the chain that will make it harder for the bedbugs to reach me. My grandmother used to tell me stories about when my grandfather was stationed in the Aleutian Islands, and they lived in a Quonset hut, and how bad the bedbugs were up there. I don't know if she was talking about actual bedbugs-bedbugs, or just bugs in general, but I always think about that when I hear about bedbugs.
I just went back and re-read the whole post on craigslist. I didn't cut-and-paste the whole thing, because it got a little explicit, and I figured the first sentence was all the ammunition I needed anyway, but this guy is available up until five o'clock today. Because that would be what time he needs to get home to his wife and kids in suburbia, I assume. Geez. I probably need to stop looking at this crap, because this is what's going to make me never date again--fear of ending up with one of these jackasses.
Oh my god, do people still do this? Every time I come across something like this, I think about what complete naive moron I must be. I didn't know there were any of these places left in Richmond. I know there are a couple of adult bookstores left, but I didn't think they had those adult theaters in them. I mean, I always assumed that the internet would slowly be the death of those places. Kind of like how Amazon is slowly but surely knocking out the big box book stores.
One of the adult bookstores in Richmond, I think it's still open, is niftily named the Triangle Bookstore. Get it? I like the pretend the person who named that place will also open a little dive diner and name it The Y, or even better, The Why. Because that would be funny as shit to the people who get it, and those would probably be the people who remember the old Lee Theater, which was an adult theater on a block of Grace Street right next to VCU, so they had the element of maybe a little bit more high-falutin' clientele, or at least being able to claim they were right next to a major university. Of course, back in the day, Grace Street was grimy as shit, but it was part of the college, for better or worse, kind of like that one slimeball cousin everyone has who might end up on America's Most Wanted someday.
But back to the post of discussion, I don't know why anyone would want to go and hook up at one of these places. Disgusting and nothing but disgusting. Maybe the guy who posted this has been watching the news and knows that this is apparently a bumper crop year for bedbugs. I don't know. I saw a post on craigslist one night, imagine that, right in the middle of the casual encounters section, and it was the bedbug alert. Nice! Someone had been kind enough to link to a website where all of the hotels with bedbug problems are listed. I checked that website out, too, and some of them were pretty nice hotels. I spent a few minutes hoping that The Ex would end up at one of those places on his business travels, but that might mean that the bedbugs would immigrate to the children's bedrooms, and then hitch a ride over here, and then, uh oh. So maybe I'll just hope his girlfriend ends up at one of these hotels on her business travels. I guess if I add an extra link in the chain that will make it harder for the bedbugs to reach me. My grandmother used to tell me stories about when my grandfather was stationed in the Aleutian Islands, and they lived in a Quonset hut, and how bad the bedbugs were up there. I don't know if she was talking about actual bedbugs-bedbugs, or just bugs in general, but I always think about that when I hear about bedbugs.
I just went back and re-read the whole post on craigslist. I didn't cut-and-paste the whole thing, because it got a little explicit, and I figured the first sentence was all the ammunition I needed anyway, but this guy is available up until five o'clock today. Because that would be what time he needs to get home to his wife and kids in suburbia, I assume. Geez. I probably need to stop looking at this crap, because this is what's going to make me never date again--fear of ending up with one of these jackasses.
Sick Day
I called in sick this morning, but not because I'm just trying to lay out of work for the day, but because I'm actually sick. Like, running a fever kind of sick. I think that part has passed, but I still don't feel really well. This was actually the perfect day to call in, too, because The Ex is dropping the children at home tonight, so I don't have to leave the house at all. Having to leave the house when you're sick is horrible, especially if it involves anything to do with children. Hell, having to take care of children when you're sick is horrible, but thank god mine are getting old enough that I don't have to supervise their every move. This doesn't mean that they won't destroy the house, but they are at the age that they know you can't drink the hand sanitizer. And yeah, that really happened one time. Hello, Poison Control.
I think this might be the first time I've called in sick all year. I'm trying to remember, and I've called in getting a divorce, called in the cops showed up at my house yesterday and I can't deal with coming in, I've called in Verizon sucks and I'm waiting on the tech to show up, I've called in my older daughter broke her arm and wrist and has surgery today, and I've called in that the anesthesiologist actually gave me gorilla tranquilizer and I just can't stand up yet. Luckily for me (but maybe not for her), my boss's husband left her a few years ago and she's a single mom and understands all of this. While I wasn't necessarily sick, I necessarily needed to be at home on all of those days, though on two of those days it was because I was a complete train wreck.
This is all vastly different from the kind of sick calling in that I've done in the past. That kind of calling in was usually related to 1) I just stumbled in the door at 3:39am from a hard night of drinking and I can't come in because I'm still drunk, 2) I stayed up all night in some variety of compromising position and I can't come in today because I'll be doing the same thing all day long in between napping, 3) I need a mental health day and plan to spend the entire day camped out in front of the TV doing internet shopping (which is very similar to I plan on spending the whole day at Potomac Mills because I'm pretty sure no one from work will spot me there), and 4) I am legitimately ill and you will have a doctor's note on your desk first thing tomorrow morning.
The reason I don't call in sick is because my sick time accrues from year to year. I took two complete maternity leaves on full paid sick leave, and I've been working to build my time back up. I'm up to about 800 hours of sick leave now, which I figure is money in the bank, because the guv provides no severance package, and they have to pay me for my accrued time. I also have no short term or long term disability, so it's stupid not to keep track of your time and keep some in the "time bank" as I call it. When I call in sick, I usually use my vacation leave, because I earn a lot of that, too, and the people I work for are wise to the old trick of not using any time all year long and then being told that the employee needs to take the whole month of December off. That actually worked with one boss, but it only worked that one year. And it wasn't the whole month, but more like two weeks. I didn't like that boss, so screwing her right at December was really more like an extra Christmas gift to me. I'm running out of my excess vacation leave, so today might actually be a real sick day for me. I used three days of sick leave in June when I had my operation, and didn't even bother to get a note. Policy says that if we're out more than three days, we have to provide a doctor's note. I forgot, what with having my belly button glued shut and all, and when I got back to work I asked my boss if she would need a note. She thought about it, and while she was thinking about, I ran down to my office and pulled my awards from the last three years off the wall that congratulate me for not using ANY sick time, and I ran back down to her office. I quick laid them out on her desk, and I said, I don't think I've really demonstrated any pattern of leave abuse. Do you? And she said she wouldn't need a doctor's note. Yeah, I thought so.
My plan for today is to watch a little TV, sleep a little more, and try to coax my new cat out of the basket under my coffee table so I can work on socializing her a little. She's spent the last several years living in my neighbor's garage with limited house rights, so I'm pretty sure that she'll actually like living in the house if she ever comes out from her hiding spot. Not only that, but that's my sofa blanket basket and if the cat keeps living in that basket, I'm going to have to wash the blankets every week so they don't turn into cat-hair cashmere. I need to get better today, because I have to go back to work tomorrow, since I'll miss Wednesday for a training session. Not only that, I haven't finished all of my September work yet and I don't want September to overlap into October the way August overlapped into September. And, one of my co-workers is going out on maternity leave in November, and I'm extremely confident I'm going to get stuck with her shit. No one has told me this yet, but I'm not stupid. It's all good, though, because I can knock it out. I'll get over this nasty head cold/sinus infection and I'll be back in fighting form tomorrow. And some of the people I work with? They'll wish I was still sick.
I think this might be the first time I've called in sick all year. I'm trying to remember, and I've called in getting a divorce, called in the cops showed up at my house yesterday and I can't deal with coming in, I've called in Verizon sucks and I'm waiting on the tech to show up, I've called in my older daughter broke her arm and wrist and has surgery today, and I've called in that the anesthesiologist actually gave me gorilla tranquilizer and I just can't stand up yet. Luckily for me (but maybe not for her), my boss's husband left her a few years ago and she's a single mom and understands all of this. While I wasn't necessarily sick, I necessarily needed to be at home on all of those days, though on two of those days it was because I was a complete train wreck.
This is all vastly different from the kind of sick calling in that I've done in the past. That kind of calling in was usually related to 1) I just stumbled in the door at 3:39am from a hard night of drinking and I can't come in because I'm still drunk, 2) I stayed up all night in some variety of compromising position and I can't come in today because I'll be doing the same thing all day long in between napping, 3) I need a mental health day and plan to spend the entire day camped out in front of the TV doing internet shopping (which is very similar to I plan on spending the whole day at Potomac Mills because I'm pretty sure no one from work will spot me there), and 4) I am legitimately ill and you will have a doctor's note on your desk first thing tomorrow morning.
The reason I don't call in sick is because my sick time accrues from year to year. I took two complete maternity leaves on full paid sick leave, and I've been working to build my time back up. I'm up to about 800 hours of sick leave now, which I figure is money in the bank, because the guv provides no severance package, and they have to pay me for my accrued time. I also have no short term or long term disability, so it's stupid not to keep track of your time and keep some in the "time bank" as I call it. When I call in sick, I usually use my vacation leave, because I earn a lot of that, too, and the people I work for are wise to the old trick of not using any time all year long and then being told that the employee needs to take the whole month of December off. That actually worked with one boss, but it only worked that one year. And it wasn't the whole month, but more like two weeks. I didn't like that boss, so screwing her right at December was really more like an extra Christmas gift to me. I'm running out of my excess vacation leave, so today might actually be a real sick day for me. I used three days of sick leave in June when I had my operation, and didn't even bother to get a note. Policy says that if we're out more than three days, we have to provide a doctor's note. I forgot, what with having my belly button glued shut and all, and when I got back to work I asked my boss if she would need a note. She thought about it, and while she was thinking about, I ran down to my office and pulled my awards from the last three years off the wall that congratulate me for not using ANY sick time, and I ran back down to her office. I quick laid them out on her desk, and I said, I don't think I've really demonstrated any pattern of leave abuse. Do you? And she said she wouldn't need a doctor's note. Yeah, I thought so.
My plan for today is to watch a little TV, sleep a little more, and try to coax my new cat out of the basket under my coffee table so I can work on socializing her a little. She's spent the last several years living in my neighbor's garage with limited house rights, so I'm pretty sure that she'll actually like living in the house if she ever comes out from her hiding spot. Not only that, but that's my sofa blanket basket and if the cat keeps living in that basket, I'm going to have to wash the blankets every week so they don't turn into cat-hair cashmere. I need to get better today, because I have to go back to work tomorrow, since I'll miss Wednesday for a training session. Not only that, I haven't finished all of my September work yet and I don't want September to overlap into October the way August overlapped into September. And, one of my co-workers is going out on maternity leave in November, and I'm extremely confident I'm going to get stuck with her shit. No one has told me this yet, but I'm not stupid. It's all good, though, because I can knock it out. I'll get over this nasty head cold/sinus infection and I'll be back in fighting form tomorrow. And some of the people I work with? They'll wish I was still sick.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Stuff I Don't Like *
* Formerly titled "That Is So Gay", but I changed the name because there's some stuff that will end up making this list that isn't so much gay as it is shit I just don't like.
Okay, so this is my new column, in the same vein as my Freakshow of the Day column, which seems to being doing pretty well, at least in terms of always providing me with new material on the regular. I have to say, as a disclaimer, that my title has nothing to do with homosexuality, but more along the lines of saying that something is just really stupid. But to say something is really stupid doesn't quite capture the essence of saying that something is gay. I got into saying this a few years ago at work, especially after a co-worker of mine was gay enough to actually diagram the Spectrum of Gayness for another co-worker, and placed both himself and the other co-worker on said diagram. Of course, the architect of the diagram placed himself at the far end of the "Not Gay" end, and placed the other co-worker at the other far end of the diagram, which was "100% Gay". So jokes abounded for months about where discussion topics fell on the Spectrum of Gayness. I am trying to get myself out of using this term, because I think I might have offended a couple of the lesbians I work with, although I'm a little put off by the fact that they don't want to sit around and discuss the other kind of sausage with me. I also try to watch what I say around my children because I don't want to get called into the principal's office to explain something dumb like this, because I feel like the principal will probably not understand the new lexicon of the word gay. However, just because I'm trying to get myself out of the habit of saying this at work and around my children doesn't mean it's not still in my head. And there's a lot of gay stuff out there for me to comment on.
So, here's my first That Is So Gay topic. I've been hanging on to this one since 10th grade, which seems like it was only about five years ago, but actually was more like 21 or so years ago. My god, that makes me feel really old. Anyway... gay topic.
Don Quixote.
Yeah, that shit is gay. I had to read this book in 10th grade, because I had gotten into Prince Edward County's version of AP English and History, except they called it the Civilization program, and you had apply for entrance and be screened and all of that. But this program was supposed to be for the smarter kids, the kids who would definitely head on to good colleges, the kids who had parents who gave a shit. Ha ha, tricked y'all and slipped right the fuck in. Like any socially mobile 14 year old girl, this program was not about improving my chances to go to a good college, it was not about giving me accelerated learning materials (that really weren't), it was not about learning how to write good essays, this program was about securing entree into a whole new group of kids, a whole new group of guys to date and securing my place at the cool parties. Because at 14, I had my priorities straight. Grades be damned, it was all about looking good and clawing my way to the top of the social ladder.
So I had to read this book in 10th grade, which was my first year in the Civ program. So it was somewhat of a rude awakening to me, because I had to stop reading good shit and start reading old stupid shit. The reading itself wasn't an issue, because I had read every Nancy Drew book by the time I was in 6th grade. In fact, in 6th grade, I recall that I didn't even check any books out of the library because they were too babyish for me. I remember the librarian wanted to have a conference with my mother about this, and my mother was like, well, she doesn't need to check any books out because she's reading Stephen King and James Clavell right now. But of course, my accelerated reading also almost got me held back in 6th grade, because I decided that in every class I didn't like, it would just be more fun to read instead of do my classwork and pay attention. So I would bring my big 400 page epic novels and such to school, and if I was in a class and didn't like the topic at hand, I would very sneakily sneak my book out of my bookbag and hold it in my lap and read it under my desk. And then they wanted to have another conference with my mother about the fact that I was failing 6th grade because I was reading in all of my classes. Uh, how about you make 6th grade not so fucking boring? So that turned into I had to leave my bookbag at each teacher's desk and I was only allowed to take my book and notebooks to my desk, which didn't serve to make me fascinated in school, it only served to teach me how to really slide through a class with minimal effort. And that skill served me well right through college, I'm pleased to say, because employers really don't give a shit about your GPA. I missed graduating with honors from college by, like, two one-hundredths of a point or something, but it didn't matter because I didn't even bother with going to the graduation. The fact that I had skated through college with virtually no effort had disillusioned me by that point.
Anyway, reading and reading comprehension in the Civ program was not an issue to me. It was the complete crap they assigned us to read that I had an issue with. Really, the only thing I took away from Don Quixote is that this was one gay ass book. Furthermore, if my children are assigned to read Don Quixote at any point in their lives, I will just tell them, that book is gay as FUCK, just read the Cliff Notes. Reading Don Quixote was not a defining moment in my life, and in fact, it was actually a sliver of time in my life that was one enormous waste. For real, I can't relate to a woman named Dulcinea, I don't care about a wingman named Sancho (because it sounds too much like a Dirty Sanchez to me) and I don't want to know about La Mancha.
Because it's gay.
Okay, so this is my new column, in the same vein as my Freakshow of the Day column, which seems to being doing pretty well, at least in terms of always providing me with new material on the regular. I have to say, as a disclaimer, that my title has nothing to do with homosexuality, but more along the lines of saying that something is just really stupid. But to say something is really stupid doesn't quite capture the essence of saying that something is gay. I got into saying this a few years ago at work, especially after a co-worker of mine was gay enough to actually diagram the Spectrum of Gayness for another co-worker, and placed both himself and the other co-worker on said diagram. Of course, the architect of the diagram placed himself at the far end of the "Not Gay" end, and placed the other co-worker at the other far end of the diagram, which was "100% Gay". So jokes abounded for months about where discussion topics fell on the Spectrum of Gayness. I am trying to get myself out of using this term, because I think I might have offended a couple of the lesbians I work with, although I'm a little put off by the fact that they don't want to sit around and discuss the other kind of sausage with me. I also try to watch what I say around my children because I don't want to get called into the principal's office to explain something dumb like this, because I feel like the principal will probably not understand the new lexicon of the word gay. However, just because I'm trying to get myself out of the habit of saying this at work and around my children doesn't mean it's not still in my head. And there's a lot of gay stuff out there for me to comment on.
So, here's my first That Is So Gay topic. I've been hanging on to this one since 10th grade, which seems like it was only about five years ago, but actually was more like 21 or so years ago. My god, that makes me feel really old. Anyway... gay topic.
Don Quixote.
Yeah, that shit is gay. I had to read this book in 10th grade, because I had gotten into Prince Edward County's version of AP English and History, except they called it the Civilization program, and you had apply for entrance and be screened and all of that. But this program was supposed to be for the smarter kids, the kids who would definitely head on to good colleges, the kids who had parents who gave a shit. Ha ha, tricked y'all and slipped right the fuck in. Like any socially mobile 14 year old girl, this program was not about improving my chances to go to a good college, it was not about giving me accelerated learning materials (that really weren't), it was not about learning how to write good essays, this program was about securing entree into a whole new group of kids, a whole new group of guys to date and securing my place at the cool parties. Because at 14, I had my priorities straight. Grades be damned, it was all about looking good and clawing my way to the top of the social ladder.
So I had to read this book in 10th grade, which was my first year in the Civ program. So it was somewhat of a rude awakening to me, because I had to stop reading good shit and start reading old stupid shit. The reading itself wasn't an issue, because I had read every Nancy Drew book by the time I was in 6th grade. In fact, in 6th grade, I recall that I didn't even check any books out of the library because they were too babyish for me. I remember the librarian wanted to have a conference with my mother about this, and my mother was like, well, she doesn't need to check any books out because she's reading Stephen King and James Clavell right now. But of course, my accelerated reading also almost got me held back in 6th grade, because I decided that in every class I didn't like, it would just be more fun to read instead of do my classwork and pay attention. So I would bring my big 400 page epic novels and such to school, and if I was in a class and didn't like the topic at hand, I would very sneakily sneak my book out of my bookbag and hold it in my lap and read it under my desk. And then they wanted to have another conference with my mother about the fact that I was failing 6th grade because I was reading in all of my classes. Uh, how about you make 6th grade not so fucking boring? So that turned into I had to leave my bookbag at each teacher's desk and I was only allowed to take my book and notebooks to my desk, which didn't serve to make me fascinated in school, it only served to teach me how to really slide through a class with minimal effort. And that skill served me well right through college, I'm pleased to say, because employers really don't give a shit about your GPA. I missed graduating with honors from college by, like, two one-hundredths of a point or something, but it didn't matter because I didn't even bother with going to the graduation. The fact that I had skated through college with virtually no effort had disillusioned me by that point.
Anyway, reading and reading comprehension in the Civ program was not an issue to me. It was the complete crap they assigned us to read that I had an issue with. Really, the only thing I took away from Don Quixote is that this was one gay ass book. Furthermore, if my children are assigned to read Don Quixote at any point in their lives, I will just tell them, that book is gay as FUCK, just read the Cliff Notes. Reading Don Quixote was not a defining moment in my life, and in fact, it was actually a sliver of time in my life that was one enormous waste. For real, I can't relate to a woman named Dulcinea, I don't care about a wingman named Sancho (because it sounds too much like a Dirty Sanchez to me) and I don't want to know about La Mancha.
Because it's gay.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Freakshow of the Day: A Triumvirate
Yes, motherfuckers. I said triumvirate. Because I am a Word.Smith. I debated for a few seconds between troika and triumvirate, but I've always liked triumvirate better. Sounds more latinish, and not like the Spanish kind of latinish. Obviously, this is a hott night on craigslist.
1) Seeking a sexy granny for hot fun tonight just make sure you can hang on responses with pics get first service wanna make sure you really are a gilf and female this is a real ad so you should be to it was 94 in richmond today thanks for reading
Okay, the guy who posted this was 31 years old. Ewwww, grossssss. Are you kidding me? I'm a little annoyed that he didn't put an age range for the grannies on his post, because sadly, I know a few people I went to high school with who are now grandparents. And I'm only 36. Okay, on the tail end of 36, but still. He really needs to specify. Does he want to do a Stifler in American Wedding, or he is just looking to hook up with a 40 year old woman who had her first child at 16, and her first grandchild at 39? Somehow, I feel like he's looking for a granny-granny, with saggy bat-wing arms and stuff. Actually, I call those arm flaps bingo wings, because that's really more appropriate. I laugh now, but I'll have me some bingo wings myself in another 20 or so years. Of course, that'll be cool, because my husband (if I ever get another one) will have himself some goat nuts that hang down to his knees, so we'll be a good match. I've never understood why men's testicles hang so much when they get older, other than it's the same concept as a woman's breasts. I worked with this old guy a few years ago, and I really think his nuts were a separate entity that were just attached to his body. They just bounced along in his pants. We'd see him coming down the hall or wherever we were, and I'd be like, oh, god, here comes so-and-so and his nuts. He sat down, his nuts sat down. He stood up and went back to his office, and there went his nuts. It's a hard concept to actually put in writing, which is really something for me, but all the women I worked with that I pointed this out to, they all agreed with me. Maybe it had something to do with this man being Italian. I don't know.
2) I would like to drink from your breast. I hear it is very comforting and a womans milk is sweet.
This might be kind of similar as the guy looking for an older woman with saggy breasts. I don't think he's posted again, so he might have just found him a hookup. For some reason, I keep reading this post with an Indian accent. You know, the kind of Indian accent you hear when you call American Express for assistance and you end up talking to some guy named Bob who has quite obviously never left Bangladesh. That outsourced Indian accent. Seriously, try it. Read this post out loud, and do it in an Indian accent. It's funny as shit. In fact, add to the beginning, "Hello, my name is Bob..." I always get pissed off when I call AmEx and end up talking to someone across the ocean. I then yell at them and tell them that dammit, I called American Express and I want to speak to a damn American, so can they patch me through to New York? When they refuse to patch me through to an American, or at least an Indian with an American accent, I get even more annoyed and remind them that I didn't open an account with Indian Express, I opened an account with American Express and I want to speaking to a fucking American. This is my obverse way of fucking with telemarketers, because I called them instead of them calling me. The best telemarketer screwing with I ever did, though, was to explain a few years ago to the Comcast telemarketer who called to sign me up for HBO was that no, I don't want HBO because it's too dirty, but can you see about getting me the CPN channel? She said she's not familiar with the CPN channel, and what is that? I tell her it's the Christian Porn Network, and my pastor has recommended that to me. In fact, not only did my pastor recommend it, but he said that he'll come over and guide me through some of the viewings during a confidential in-home one-on-one counseling session. So can you get me that channel? And on the Comcast end of the phone, complete silence. Because I said this with all seriousness and this lady isn't sure if I'm screwing with her or if I'm being serious. So I ask her again if she can arrange to get me that channel and how much extra will it cost, because this is really important and my pastor says that my salvation is dependant upon it. She says she'll have to check on it, but wouldn't HBO be just as good? I tell her no, it absolutely wouldn't, because my pastor said it's way too sinful. She says she'll have to check on it and call me back, which she never did. Imagine that. Ultimately, I won that battle. Best telemarketer screwing I ever got? My father decided to start giving out my number when telemarketers called him, at the height of the whole telemarketer thing before the Do Not Call List. Gee, thanks. One point for dad, zero points for me.
3) Looking for adult fun with couple or select SWM. We have herpes, you should have it too, or be prepared to deal with it. Respond with local reference in title. No picture, no reply.
Okay, this is just extra gross. I'll give this couple, or whomever (brother and sister) credit for being honest about the STD, but this is just gross. Now, I'm no brain surgeon, but I thought that once someone contracted a disease like this, and it gets in your body and your DNA gets mixed up with it, and you take medication (or stop taking your medication against medical advice) then the disease might change or mutate ever so slightly, and that your specific disease might then mix with someone else's disease and that's how we end up with medication resistant diseases. I mean, if we've got medication resistant lice out there, god only knows what else might be medication resistant. Again, gross. Yet another example of why craigslist is look-but-don't-touch. For god's sake, people, use a jimmy cover. Some shit doesn't wash off.
1) Seeking a sexy granny for hot fun tonight just make sure you can hang on responses with pics get first service wanna make sure you really are a gilf and female this is a real ad so you should be to it was 94 in richmond today thanks for reading
Okay, the guy who posted this was 31 years old. Ewwww, grossssss. Are you kidding me? I'm a little annoyed that he didn't put an age range for the grannies on his post, because sadly, I know a few people I went to high school with who are now grandparents. And I'm only 36. Okay, on the tail end of 36, but still. He really needs to specify. Does he want to do a Stifler in American Wedding, or he is just looking to hook up with a 40 year old woman who had her first child at 16, and her first grandchild at 39? Somehow, I feel like he's looking for a granny-granny, with saggy bat-wing arms and stuff. Actually, I call those arm flaps bingo wings, because that's really more appropriate. I laugh now, but I'll have me some bingo wings myself in another 20 or so years. Of course, that'll be cool, because my husband (if I ever get another one) will have himself some goat nuts that hang down to his knees, so we'll be a good match. I've never understood why men's testicles hang so much when they get older, other than it's the same concept as a woman's breasts. I worked with this old guy a few years ago, and I really think his nuts were a separate entity that were just attached to his body. They just bounced along in his pants. We'd see him coming down the hall or wherever we were, and I'd be like, oh, god, here comes so-and-so and his nuts. He sat down, his nuts sat down. He stood up and went back to his office, and there went his nuts. It's a hard concept to actually put in writing, which is really something for me, but all the women I worked with that I pointed this out to, they all agreed with me. Maybe it had something to do with this man being Italian. I don't know.
2) I would like to drink from your breast. I hear it is very comforting and a womans milk is sweet.
This might be kind of similar as the guy looking for an older woman with saggy breasts. I don't think he's posted again, so he might have just found him a hookup. For some reason, I keep reading this post with an Indian accent. You know, the kind of Indian accent you hear when you call American Express for assistance and you end up talking to some guy named Bob who has quite obviously never left Bangladesh. That outsourced Indian accent. Seriously, try it. Read this post out loud, and do it in an Indian accent. It's funny as shit. In fact, add to the beginning, "Hello, my name is Bob..." I always get pissed off when I call AmEx and end up talking to someone across the ocean. I then yell at them and tell them that dammit, I called American Express and I want to speak to a damn American, so can they patch me through to New York? When they refuse to patch me through to an American, or at least an Indian with an American accent, I get even more annoyed and remind them that I didn't open an account with Indian Express, I opened an account with American Express and I want to speaking to a fucking American. This is my obverse way of fucking with telemarketers, because I called them instead of them calling me. The best telemarketer screwing with I ever did, though, was to explain a few years ago to the Comcast telemarketer who called to sign me up for HBO was that no, I don't want HBO because it's too dirty, but can you see about getting me the CPN channel? She said she's not familiar with the CPN channel, and what is that? I tell her it's the Christian Porn Network, and my pastor has recommended that to me. In fact, not only did my pastor recommend it, but he said that he'll come over and guide me through some of the viewings during a confidential in-home one-on-one counseling session. So can you get me that channel? And on the Comcast end of the phone, complete silence. Because I said this with all seriousness and this lady isn't sure if I'm screwing with her or if I'm being serious. So I ask her again if she can arrange to get me that channel and how much extra will it cost, because this is really important and my pastor says that my salvation is dependant upon it. She says she'll have to check on it, but wouldn't HBO be just as good? I tell her no, it absolutely wouldn't, because my pastor said it's way too sinful. She says she'll have to check on it and call me back, which she never did. Imagine that. Ultimately, I won that battle. Best telemarketer screwing I ever got? My father decided to start giving out my number when telemarketers called him, at the height of the whole telemarketer thing before the Do Not Call List. Gee, thanks. One point for dad, zero points for me.
3) Looking for adult fun with couple or select SWM. We have herpes, you should have it too, or be prepared to deal with it. Respond with local reference in title. No picture, no reply.
Okay, this is just extra gross. I'll give this couple, or whomever (brother and sister) credit for being honest about the STD, but this is just gross. Now, I'm no brain surgeon, but I thought that once someone contracted a disease like this, and it gets in your body and your DNA gets mixed up with it, and you take medication (or stop taking your medication against medical advice) then the disease might change or mutate ever so slightly, and that your specific disease might then mix with someone else's disease and that's how we end up with medication resistant diseases. I mean, if we've got medication resistant lice out there, god only knows what else might be medication resistant. Again, gross. Yet another example of why craigslist is look-but-don't-touch. For god's sake, people, use a jimmy cover. Some shit doesn't wash off.
I Married A Creepy Stalker
I think the title says it all. I'll just get right to the meat of the whole topic. This is his weekend, which means that the children are with him. This also means that this is my weekend to do whatever in the hell I want, which is basically sleep. I got up early this morning to get my oil changed, and then made it back home pretty early, and watched some TV, cleaned my bathroom and my bedroom, and decided I had had enough. Nap time. So I put this little tripe post on facebook that says something to the effect of "I've been up long enough to need a nap" or something to that effect.
I get in bed and drift off, because I can sleep anywhere, anytime. But then the phone rings, about an hour after my post and a half an hour into my nap. It's The Ex. Here's the entire conversation:
The Ex: Hey, Steph, sorry to wake you up from your nap, but where are the shirts that go under the cheerleading uniforms?
Me: They haven't come in yet.
But I'm thinking, it's 80-some degrees outside and they don't need to wear their turtlenecks and besides, the game isn't for another five hours. Why are you calling now about this?
The Ex: Oh, okay. What about the hair bows?
Me: I told you the other night I would bring those to the game with me and do their hair there.
The Ex: Oh, that's right. Well, go back to sleep then.
Me: Hangs the phone up.
And here's the creepy part of this exchange. I un-friended him from facebook in February and my profile and everything on my page is private. This means that you can see my picture, send me a message and send me a friend request. That's it. I know this because I'm super secret about my stuff for the masses, because of where I work and what I do. I'm not one of these people who thinks I have a private profile but don't, I'm one of those people who actually do. When I un-friended The Ex, I cut most of our mutual friends out, unless they were friends who I brought to the relationship. Periodically, I've culled the herd even further down. I left a couple of people who were his friends, because we had the same games, and because I thought these people were mature enough not to be passing on my information to him. As of this afternoon, those few remaining people will no longer be able to count me as a facebook friend.
Well, I realized as soon as he got the first sentence out of his mouth that he's still watching me. I swear, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my heart started beating a little faster. I thought, oh my god, he's still watching me. If you've never felt like an someone is watching you, studying you, memorizing your every move, you have no idea how absolutely terrifying and blood chilling this is. This is how I felt through most of my marriage, although not constantly. But every now and then, I would catch him just staring at me. I would catch him watching me doing nothing. And the way he looked at me then was creepy. He would randomly show up at my office, and if my car wasn't in the parking lot, he would sit there in the parking lot and wait for me to come back to work. Sometimes, when we were married, I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be leaning over me asking me questions, I suppose trying to get me to talk in my sleep (which I do sometimes). He would search my car, go through my phone, find a reason to be in the room with me when I was talking with my girlfriends on the phone, and he hacked into my email. I found out later that he even answered my work cell periodically. There were times during the separation when I was sleeping on the sofa, and I would wake up to see him in the glow of the blinking blue Wii connector watching me in the dark. I would lay there, and fake sleep, and watch him between through my almost closed eyes, and try to keep my breathing even so he wouldn't know I knew he was watching me. He tried to insist that he would be the person who moved me into my new house, and then tried to insist that we should exchange keys to each other's houses just in case of something. Yeah, I don't think so. After I moved out, we arranged for him to drop something off at my house and leave it on the front porch. He texted me later that day and asked if I wanted him to get rid of a piece of gutter laying in the side yard. Okay, we agreed he would leave the bag on the front porch - why the fuck would you be in the side yard? So now I insist that he not drop anything at my house unless it's the children. My mother is of the opinion that he probably rides by my house at night when he doesn't have the children. The whole thing is just so creepy, it's almost creepy scary. I still catch him looking at me sometimes, when we have to be somewhere together, watching me, and I fucking hate it. I hate the way he makes me feel, I hate him for being the way he is and I hate me for marrying him.
The hardest thing of all for me is when I wonder if I was in an abusive marriage. I mean, it was never physically abusive, although there were a couple of fights where things went south so quickly I was pretty sure I was within a few seconds of getting the living shit beat out of me. Of course, when someone is screaming that they're going to drag you by your fucking hair and make you do what they want, this would be easy to believe. I keep going back to this thought in my head, how could I marry someone abusive? How could I have married someone who treated me like this? I'm too fucking strong for this, I'm too smart and I've got too much experience in the ways of how this stuff works for me to have married someone who thinks it's okay to threaten me, to intimidate me, to throw stuff at me, to manipulate me and guilt me into as much as he did. He told me for years that the reason he did all of these things was because of the way I treated him--he had no choice. I drove him to it, and that's left me wondering if I'm the one with the problem, if I'm the one who caused and created all of our problems. But somewhere deep within me, I know that's not it. After all of these years, I feel like the fog in my brain might be clearing and I know that it wasn't all my fault. I wasn't the person that he almost succeeded in making me believe that I was. I think my shroud of denial about this marriage is slowly falling away, and I'm faced with the fact that this probably was an abusive marriage, and no one else has named it as that because either they just don't know, or they don't want to be the person to say it out loud. When I make little pithy comments on here about the psychopath I married, please believe that I'm not joking. I'm being dead serious.
I wonder to myself, what do I have to do to get this man to leave me alone? What do I have to do to feel normal again, to not feel paranoid? Sometimes, I think the paranoia is in my head, maybe this is one of the after effects of being in a marriage that was never right, and maybe this is me just kind of slowly working my way out of the shell shock. He told me for years that I was the fucking nutjob, and that I was the one who needed psychiatric help, and that I was the one who had all the problems. It's hard not to kind of start to believe that, if you hear it enough. I decided a few months ago, the best revenge for all the shit he's done to me will be for me to just live well and look good doing it. But then something like today's phone call happens, and it's hard to feel like you're living well when you're being semi-creeped, or whatever you can call this dysfunctional shit. It's frustrating, too, because he has a girlfriend. Why make comments or worry about what I'm doing? Worry about your girlfriend, although, that woman will turn into me one day and will run the fuck away from him, too. I guess if there's any lesson in this, it will be that The Ex is the first and last creepy stalker I'll ever marry.
I get in bed and drift off, because I can sleep anywhere, anytime. But then the phone rings, about an hour after my post and a half an hour into my nap. It's The Ex. Here's the entire conversation:
The Ex: Hey, Steph, sorry to wake you up from your nap, but where are the shirts that go under the cheerleading uniforms?
Me: They haven't come in yet.
But I'm thinking, it's 80-some degrees outside and they don't need to wear their turtlenecks and besides, the game isn't for another five hours. Why are you calling now about this?
The Ex: Oh, okay. What about the hair bows?
Me: I told you the other night I would bring those to the game with me and do their hair there.
The Ex: Oh, that's right. Well, go back to sleep then.
Me: Hangs the phone up.
And here's the creepy part of this exchange. I un-friended him from facebook in February and my profile and everything on my page is private. This means that you can see my picture, send me a message and send me a friend request. That's it. I know this because I'm super secret about my stuff for the masses, because of where I work and what I do. I'm not one of these people who thinks I have a private profile but don't, I'm one of those people who actually do. When I un-friended The Ex, I cut most of our mutual friends out, unless they were friends who I brought to the relationship. Periodically, I've culled the herd even further down. I left a couple of people who were his friends, because we had the same games, and because I thought these people were mature enough not to be passing on my information to him. As of this afternoon, those few remaining people will no longer be able to count me as a facebook friend.
Well, I realized as soon as he got the first sentence out of his mouth that he's still watching me. I swear, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my heart started beating a little faster. I thought, oh my god, he's still watching me. If you've never felt like an someone is watching you, studying you, memorizing your every move, you have no idea how absolutely terrifying and blood chilling this is. This is how I felt through most of my marriage, although not constantly. But every now and then, I would catch him just staring at me. I would catch him watching me doing nothing. And the way he looked at me then was creepy. He would randomly show up at my office, and if my car wasn't in the parking lot, he would sit there in the parking lot and wait for me to come back to work. Sometimes, when we were married, I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be leaning over me asking me questions, I suppose trying to get me to talk in my sleep (which I do sometimes). He would search my car, go through my phone, find a reason to be in the room with me when I was talking with my girlfriends on the phone, and he hacked into my email. I found out later that he even answered my work cell periodically. There were times during the separation when I was sleeping on the sofa, and I would wake up to see him in the glow of the blinking blue Wii connector watching me in the dark. I would lay there, and fake sleep, and watch him between through my almost closed eyes, and try to keep my breathing even so he wouldn't know I knew he was watching me. He tried to insist that he would be the person who moved me into my new house, and then tried to insist that we should exchange keys to each other's houses just in case of something. Yeah, I don't think so. After I moved out, we arranged for him to drop something off at my house and leave it on the front porch. He texted me later that day and asked if I wanted him to get rid of a piece of gutter laying in the side yard. Okay, we agreed he would leave the bag on the front porch - why the fuck would you be in the side yard? So now I insist that he not drop anything at my house unless it's the children. My mother is of the opinion that he probably rides by my house at night when he doesn't have the children. The whole thing is just so creepy, it's almost creepy scary. I still catch him looking at me sometimes, when we have to be somewhere together, watching me, and I fucking hate it. I hate the way he makes me feel, I hate him for being the way he is and I hate me for marrying him.
The hardest thing of all for me is when I wonder if I was in an abusive marriage. I mean, it was never physically abusive, although there were a couple of fights where things went south so quickly I was pretty sure I was within a few seconds of getting the living shit beat out of me. Of course, when someone is screaming that they're going to drag you by your fucking hair and make you do what they want, this would be easy to believe. I keep going back to this thought in my head, how could I marry someone abusive? How could I have married someone who treated me like this? I'm too fucking strong for this, I'm too smart and I've got too much experience in the ways of how this stuff works for me to have married someone who thinks it's okay to threaten me, to intimidate me, to throw stuff at me, to manipulate me and guilt me into as much as he did. He told me for years that the reason he did all of these things was because of the way I treated him--he had no choice. I drove him to it, and that's left me wondering if I'm the one with the problem, if I'm the one who caused and created all of our problems. But somewhere deep within me, I know that's not it. After all of these years, I feel like the fog in my brain might be clearing and I know that it wasn't all my fault. I wasn't the person that he almost succeeded in making me believe that I was. I think my shroud of denial about this marriage is slowly falling away, and I'm faced with the fact that this probably was an abusive marriage, and no one else has named it as that because either they just don't know, or they don't want to be the person to say it out loud. When I make little pithy comments on here about the psychopath I married, please believe that I'm not joking. I'm being dead serious.
I wonder to myself, what do I have to do to get this man to leave me alone? What do I have to do to feel normal again, to not feel paranoid? Sometimes, I think the paranoia is in my head, maybe this is one of the after effects of being in a marriage that was never right, and maybe this is me just kind of slowly working my way out of the shell shock. He told me for years that I was the fucking nutjob, and that I was the one who needed psychiatric help, and that I was the one who had all the problems. It's hard not to kind of start to believe that, if you hear it enough. I decided a few months ago, the best revenge for all the shit he's done to me will be for me to just live well and look good doing it. But then something like today's phone call happens, and it's hard to feel like you're living well when you're being semi-creeped, or whatever you can call this dysfunctional shit. It's frustrating, too, because he has a girlfriend. Why make comments or worry about what I'm doing? Worry about your girlfriend, although, that woman will turn into me one day and will run the fuck away from him, too. I guess if there's any lesson in this, it will be that The Ex is the first and last creepy stalker I'll ever marry.
New Category
Stay tuned, a new category is coming. Since my Freakshow Of The Day seems to have worked out fairly well, I'll be cranking out another new category shortly. And the title of this new category shall be: That Is So Gay.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Not Feeling So Hot
I think I'm coming down with something. I had a couple of bouts of dizziness the other day, my neck is starting to get stiff and sore (which always makes me think I'm dying from meningitis), I'm cold at night, tired, my throat is feeling like maybe it will hurt tomorrow and maybe it won't. I think the stress of the past two weeks has gotten to me, that and I'm not getting enough sleep.
I'm annoyed that we might have to do cheerleading in the rain tomorrow. I asked the cheer director yesterday about how the inclement weather policy works in regards to notifications, and she said that basically there is no inclement weather policy, that football games are played in the rain. Okay, I know the pros do that and shit, but that's what they get paid for. Me, coaching in the rain? I don't think so. My daughters, cheering in the rain? I don't think so. But since I'm a coach, I can't just blow the whole thing off because it's raining, and I can't show up without my children. This just boils down to this sucks ass. I would hate to end up dying from consumption or something because I was standing out in the rain yelling cheers. Even more than that, my hair would look like shit and my feet would be wet. My feet can only get wet in the shower or pool, and my hair can never look like shit. My body and soul begin a long, slow, painful shutdown process if either happens. And let's not even get into what happens if my makeup runs. My saving grace will be thunder and/or lightening.
I need to get my oil changed, which means that either tomorrow morning or Sunday morning, I'll need to have my ass in Merchant's at seven o'clock to make that happen, unless I want to hang around for about three hours waiting. Not thrilled about that, unless the manager who usually flirts with me is there and is extra quick with my car. I also need to get my windshield replaced, because all of this running up and down 288 and 95 has finally caught up with me. The fourth chip in the windshield is what did it. I now have a nice long crack in that bad boy. I'm just not even pressed, even though I know I should be.
Cheerleading pictures on Sunday afternoon, unless there is rain, and then they'll cancel that. Pray for rain. Pray for rain. Pray for rain. Mommy needs a long day in the bed. Next week is going to be long and hard, mainly because I've got to drive to Northern Virginia on Wednesday and be there by 8:30, then stay til 4:30, and come rushing home for a football game at 6:30. I'm pretty sure I'll be late for everything that day. I hate driving in Northern Virginia. Actually, I don't think hate is a strong enough word. Really, if I wanted to deal with that kind of traffic and asshole drivers, I would just go to Henrico, which I have affectionately (or not) begun to call NoVa on the James. I think it has a catchy ring to it. My friends who live in Henrico aren't amused, but fuck it, they also don't have their porch railing duct taped together. Oh, and did I mention that Wednesday is my birthday? Between driving to Northern Virginia, sitting through a training session, driving back to the RVA, rushing to a football game, rushing home for homework and to make lunches, I'm pretty sure I won't be getting laid. In fact, I'm positive I won't be getting laid. Happy birthday to me. But, since I'm a glass-half-full kind of gal, I'll enjoy that this birthday is not full of The Ex, and it's not going to be full of me having to explain to him that not having sex with him is the only gift I really want.
And... I might be getting a new cat this weekend. Yes, I just put my other cat down, and yes, I had him cremated and just picked up his remains the other day. He's sitting on top of the refrigerator right now, because before he got old and could still jump, he liked to lay on top of the refrigerator. So that's where I put him for the time being, although I'm thinking about moving him to an empty shoebox in the back of the closet, because he liked that more than the top of the refrigerator. The children don't know he's home yet, but they know I got him cremated. My father was cremated, and I had to explain the whole concept to them when he died, which is hard to explain to a five year old. But I explain shit like that to my children, because children can handle more than we think they can. That, and I just think that children shouldn't wonder about stuff. Either I'll tell them and clear all the questions up, or they'll grow up having issues like the issues I have with my mother not letting me say goodbye to my grandmother when she was dying when I was in sixth grade. But about explaining difficult concepts to children, you just have to break it down in simplistic terms. Every now and then, the children discuss the big fire that burned Grandpa's body up, and that his ashes are at the house with Mothbrain. I don't know where in the house Mothbrain put them, because I never asked. I suggested she stick him in the garage or in front of the TV, because those were his two favorite places, but I don't know if she actually did it or not. I think if we cremate people, we should have enough respect to put them where they would most like to be if they don't specify where they want to be. Hence, my cat is on top of the refrigerator until I move him to the closet.
The new cat is my former neighbor's cat, and this woman is like my other mother. In fact, that's what I call her. She's selling her house and moving back to West Virginia, but wants the cat to stay here. So sometime this weekend, I'll be bringing home a lovable Siamese cat who has been fixed and declawed. This cat is also one of the loudest cats I've ever encountered, but Siamese cats are like that. I think she'll fit in fine with us, because my children and I are three of the loudest people I know. It's a little strange, because I had gotten used to the idea of not having any pets, and I was actually enjoying not having any pets. I already have two little cockblockers running around the house, and that's really enough for me. But my other mother, she knows I can't say no to her. I can't and even if I could, I wouldn't. Welcome to the family, Gel. We'll all be loud together.
I'm annoyed that we might have to do cheerleading in the rain tomorrow. I asked the cheer director yesterday about how the inclement weather policy works in regards to notifications, and she said that basically there is no inclement weather policy, that football games are played in the rain. Okay, I know the pros do that and shit, but that's what they get paid for. Me, coaching in the rain? I don't think so. My daughters, cheering in the rain? I don't think so. But since I'm a coach, I can't just blow the whole thing off because it's raining, and I can't show up without my children. This just boils down to this sucks ass. I would hate to end up dying from consumption or something because I was standing out in the rain yelling cheers. Even more than that, my hair would look like shit and my feet would be wet. My feet can only get wet in the shower or pool, and my hair can never look like shit. My body and soul begin a long, slow, painful shutdown process if either happens. And let's not even get into what happens if my makeup runs. My saving grace will be thunder and/or lightening.
I need to get my oil changed, which means that either tomorrow morning or Sunday morning, I'll need to have my ass in Merchant's at seven o'clock to make that happen, unless I want to hang around for about three hours waiting. Not thrilled about that, unless the manager who usually flirts with me is there and is extra quick with my car. I also need to get my windshield replaced, because all of this running up and down 288 and 95 has finally caught up with me. The fourth chip in the windshield is what did it. I now have a nice long crack in that bad boy. I'm just not even pressed, even though I know I should be.
Cheerleading pictures on Sunday afternoon, unless there is rain, and then they'll cancel that. Pray for rain. Pray for rain. Pray for rain. Mommy needs a long day in the bed. Next week is going to be long and hard, mainly because I've got to drive to Northern Virginia on Wednesday and be there by 8:30, then stay til 4:30, and come rushing home for a football game at 6:30. I'm pretty sure I'll be late for everything that day. I hate driving in Northern Virginia. Actually, I don't think hate is a strong enough word. Really, if I wanted to deal with that kind of traffic and asshole drivers, I would just go to Henrico, which I have affectionately (or not) begun to call NoVa on the James. I think it has a catchy ring to it. My friends who live in Henrico aren't amused, but fuck it, they also don't have their porch railing duct taped together. Oh, and did I mention that Wednesday is my birthday? Between driving to Northern Virginia, sitting through a training session, driving back to the RVA, rushing to a football game, rushing home for homework and to make lunches, I'm pretty sure I won't be getting laid. In fact, I'm positive I won't be getting laid. Happy birthday to me. But, since I'm a glass-half-full kind of gal, I'll enjoy that this birthday is not full of The Ex, and it's not going to be full of me having to explain to him that not having sex with him is the only gift I really want.
And... I might be getting a new cat this weekend. Yes, I just put my other cat down, and yes, I had him cremated and just picked up his remains the other day. He's sitting on top of the refrigerator right now, because before he got old and could still jump, he liked to lay on top of the refrigerator. So that's where I put him for the time being, although I'm thinking about moving him to an empty shoebox in the back of the closet, because he liked that more than the top of the refrigerator. The children don't know he's home yet, but they know I got him cremated. My father was cremated, and I had to explain the whole concept to them when he died, which is hard to explain to a five year old. But I explain shit like that to my children, because children can handle more than we think they can. That, and I just think that children shouldn't wonder about stuff. Either I'll tell them and clear all the questions up, or they'll grow up having issues like the issues I have with my mother not letting me say goodbye to my grandmother when she was dying when I was in sixth grade. But about explaining difficult concepts to children, you just have to break it down in simplistic terms. Every now and then, the children discuss the big fire that burned Grandpa's body up, and that his ashes are at the house with Mothbrain. I don't know where in the house Mothbrain put them, because I never asked. I suggested she stick him in the garage or in front of the TV, because those were his two favorite places, but I don't know if she actually did it or not. I think if we cremate people, we should have enough respect to put them where they would most like to be if they don't specify where they want to be. Hence, my cat is on top of the refrigerator until I move him to the closet.
The new cat is my former neighbor's cat, and this woman is like my other mother. In fact, that's what I call her. She's selling her house and moving back to West Virginia, but wants the cat to stay here. So sometime this weekend, I'll be bringing home a lovable Siamese cat who has been fixed and declawed. This cat is also one of the loudest cats I've ever encountered, but Siamese cats are like that. I think she'll fit in fine with us, because my children and I are three of the loudest people I know. It's a little strange, because I had gotten used to the idea of not having any pets, and I was actually enjoying not having any pets. I already have two little cockblockers running around the house, and that's really enough for me. But my other mother, she knows I can't say no to her. I can't and even if I could, I wouldn't. Welcome to the family, Gel. We'll all be loud together.
Freakshow of the Day
Here we go:
I am seeking an attractive 18-25 year old female who enjoys shopping and being worshipped. I am the type of guy who will kiss my girls feet and do almost anything to make her happy, seriously. I would drive my girl and her friends around wherever she wants to go, out to eat, to a movie, whatever. I would come clean her house, wash her car and do her laundry. I will kiss her feet in front of her friends. I have my act together and all I need is the company of a sexy young lady. I am interested in something long term or just hanging out sometime. Please send me a picture and tell me about yourself.
Okay, so this isn't really a freakshow in the true meaning of the word freakshow, but more just sad. Oh my god, what is wrong with this guy? It's no wonder he can't get a date or anything. I think the title of this post should have just been "Really Clingy and Needy". Because that's what this is. Either this poor guy is so desperate for some female attention that he'll resort to this, or he's got some really serious issues. And the woman who ends up with him? Oh my. What a hot mess this could be. I want to email him and say, dude, grow a set. Please. If a woman wants to date a man with no balls, then she'll find a nice dyke.
I am seeking an attractive 18-25 year old female who enjoys shopping and being worshipped. I am the type of guy who will kiss my girls feet and do almost anything to make her happy, seriously. I would drive my girl and her friends around wherever she wants to go, out to eat, to a movie, whatever. I would come clean her house, wash her car and do her laundry. I will kiss her feet in front of her friends. I have my act together and all I need is the company of a sexy young lady. I am interested in something long term or just hanging out sometime. Please send me a picture and tell me about yourself.
Okay, so this isn't really a freakshow in the true meaning of the word freakshow, but more just sad. Oh my god, what is wrong with this guy? It's no wonder he can't get a date or anything. I think the title of this post should have just been "Really Clingy and Needy". Because that's what this is. Either this poor guy is so desperate for some female attention that he'll resort to this, or he's got some really serious issues. And the woman who ends up with him? Oh my. What a hot mess this could be. I want to email him and say, dude, grow a set. Please. If a woman wants to date a man with no balls, then she'll find a nice dyke.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Freakshow of the Day
It's taking more and more work to find my freakshow of the day. I've checked out the craigslists in other areas and I must say, not much better than the Richmond craigslist. I mean, I haven't ventured far beyond the men for women, but I might have to start. Of course, I could just be getting numb to this tripe.
Anyway, here goes:
"Hey ladies im not going to waste your time, so please dont waste mines.. Im a single male thats in the swinger lifestyle. I had a partner that i use to attend parties with. But she moved. Im looking for a mature sexi drama, clean female for some nsa fun that like to attend parties or who wants to give it a try."
Ahhhh, a swinger's party. Good stuff. I've never been to any swinger's parties, and I never will. Not my ball of wax. But I know a couple of people who have done that, and I probably know a couple more people who have done it but I don't know they've done it. Anyway, one guy was a friend of The Ex's, and the way The Ex explained it to me was that this guy's ex-wife sucked his friend into it because the ex-wife wanted to screw around and not get in trouble for it. This was the explanation given years before I realized The Ex tends to blame everything on the ex-wife. Thanks to me, he'll soon have two ex-wives to blame. The other person that I know, we used to work together, and she said that while she and her husband were stationed at this military base (god, there's always a military base in one of these stories, right?), her next door neighbors used to have dinner parties quite frequently, and she was somewhat insulted that she and her husband never got invited. So she said something to the neighbor one time, and the neighbor fessed up that the dinner parties were actually swinger's parties. Dinner of a different sort. But that was the cover story, a dinner party. My friend said she would have never known, because everyone going in the house always had some kind of casserole dish with them. She and her husband were in the Air Force, thus explaining the nifty cover story. If we were talking about oh, say, the Marines, the cover story would have just been it's a swinger's party.
Since I've never been to a swinger's party, I have no idea what happens. I don't know if it's just one straight orgy in the living room, and everyone is just going at it, or if they split up, or what happens. I am left to my imagination, which is really a scary thing. I wouldn't get involved in this because, like I said, it's not my ball of wax, but what if you get stuck with someone who isn't that attractive? How do you decide who gets who? Draw names out of a hat or something? Is it like picking teams for middle school kickball (which we all know was excruciating)? Who picks first? What's the order of the picking? How does this work? Do you switch in the middle or something so you get more variety? Who decides that? So many questions, so few answers. I'm obviously not up on the swinger's etiquette, as you can tell.
The dumbest thing about all of this is what I can't get out of my mind. This would be that there's some kind of swinger's ref kind of running around the party, and after about an hour (I guess?) this person - and this is the absolute dumbest part of my imagination - blows a whistle or something and yells "Switch!" and then everyone switches. I don't know how I've got this association stuck in my brain, and this bothers me, because I remember where most of my brain associations come from. I wonder if this is the remnant of some drunk ass conversation I had with someone sometime, and this is what's left. I remember one drunk ass conversation I had when I was in high school at a party. I was talking to this guy I knew only very remotely who went to the private school, and I was on this uncircumcised rant, and I blathered on for about a half an hour and finally this guy looks at me and tells me he's not circumcised. Oops. Anyway, back to swinging. I can't listen to the Will Smith song "Switch" without thinking about this. I can't hear someone say this word without cracking up. And then they look at me, and I just shrug and say, "Swingers". But they don't get the humor in it, because they aren't in my brain, and so it just takes too much time to explain what's in my brain and the humor is lost by the time I try to explain the whole thing. So I don't explain anymore.
If you know how this whole thing works, feel free to drop me a line to explain it. But be warned, I'll cut-and-paste the email onto the blog, because I think everyone should know this. So at least make sure it's grammatically correct.
Anyway, here goes:
"Hey ladies im not going to waste your time, so please dont waste mines.. Im a single male thats in the swinger lifestyle. I had a partner that i use to attend parties with. But she moved. Im looking for a mature sexi drama, clean female for some nsa fun that like to attend parties or who wants to give it a try."
Ahhhh, a swinger's party. Good stuff. I've never been to any swinger's parties, and I never will. Not my ball of wax. But I know a couple of people who have done that, and I probably know a couple more people who have done it but I don't know they've done it. Anyway, one guy was a friend of The Ex's, and the way The Ex explained it to me was that this guy's ex-wife sucked his friend into it because the ex-wife wanted to screw around and not get in trouble for it. This was the explanation given years before I realized The Ex tends to blame everything on the ex-wife. Thanks to me, he'll soon have two ex-wives to blame. The other person that I know, we used to work together, and she said that while she and her husband were stationed at this military base (god, there's always a military base in one of these stories, right?), her next door neighbors used to have dinner parties quite frequently, and she was somewhat insulted that she and her husband never got invited. So she said something to the neighbor one time, and the neighbor fessed up that the dinner parties were actually swinger's parties. Dinner of a different sort. But that was the cover story, a dinner party. My friend said she would have never known, because everyone going in the house always had some kind of casserole dish with them. She and her husband were in the Air Force, thus explaining the nifty cover story. If we were talking about oh, say, the Marines, the cover story would have just been it's a swinger's party.
Since I've never been to a swinger's party, I have no idea what happens. I don't know if it's just one straight orgy in the living room, and everyone is just going at it, or if they split up, or what happens. I am left to my imagination, which is really a scary thing. I wouldn't get involved in this because, like I said, it's not my ball of wax, but what if you get stuck with someone who isn't that attractive? How do you decide who gets who? Draw names out of a hat or something? Is it like picking teams for middle school kickball (which we all know was excruciating)? Who picks first? What's the order of the picking? How does this work? Do you switch in the middle or something so you get more variety? Who decides that? So many questions, so few answers. I'm obviously not up on the swinger's etiquette, as you can tell.
The dumbest thing about all of this is what I can't get out of my mind. This would be that there's some kind of swinger's ref kind of running around the party, and after about an hour (I guess?) this person - and this is the absolute dumbest part of my imagination - blows a whistle or something and yells "Switch!" and then everyone switches. I don't know how I've got this association stuck in my brain, and this bothers me, because I remember where most of my brain associations come from. I wonder if this is the remnant of some drunk ass conversation I had with someone sometime, and this is what's left. I remember one drunk ass conversation I had when I was in high school at a party. I was talking to this guy I knew only very remotely who went to the private school, and I was on this uncircumcised rant, and I blathered on for about a half an hour and finally this guy looks at me and tells me he's not circumcised. Oops. Anyway, back to swinging. I can't listen to the Will Smith song "Switch" without thinking about this. I can't hear someone say this word without cracking up. And then they look at me, and I just shrug and say, "Swingers". But they don't get the humor in it, because they aren't in my brain, and so it just takes too much time to explain what's in my brain and the humor is lost by the time I try to explain the whole thing. So I don't explain anymore.
If you know how this whole thing works, feel free to drop me a line to explain it. But be warned, I'll cut-and-paste the email onto the blog, because I think everyone should know this. So at least make sure it's grammatically correct.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Friday
I am freaking exhausted. This cheerleading shit is getting old. Just when I feel like I'm starting to really connect with my inner cheerleader, we have a really bad practice and I'm like, fuck this. Can't we just go back to gymnastics or kid-yoga or something? Please? These children could not stand still tonight. They totally killed my Saturday night football game afterglow, which I was still basking in until about five minutes after I arrived at practice. They couldn't stand still, they couldn't put their hands on their hips, they couldn't be quiet, they couldn't listen. However, they could be loud, so I suppose I should just take what I can get. The mom section was getting a little loud, too, and more than once I wanted to turn around and say to them, "Hey moms, if you could kindly SHUT THE FUCK UP I would really appreciate it. K? Thanks". But I restrained myself and just yelled louder. I feel even more coach-ish, because more than once I stopped them mid-cheer and yelled, "No! That's not it! Do it right this time!" Jesus H. Christmas.
The cheer director again failed to make a showing. Hmmm, no surprise there. I wonder if she's avoiding the football director, because he's apparently on crack. He cornered my assistant coach and starting yelling about homecoming and all the shit the cheerleaders need to do and homecoming is in two weeks and what have we done? Uh, hello, we haven't done a damn thing. First of all, why does a youth association need a homecoming? That's what high school is for. High school is very specifically for getting ready for college, getting drunk on the sly, getting laid and getting stoned. And homecoming, where all three of the prior might or might not happen. Depends on the crowd of kids you run with. Anyway, we don't need this in a youth association. Furthermore, I'm getting to the point where I don't give a fuck. He's babbling on, according to my assistant coach, about moon bounces, carnival stuff, a pep rally that Friday night, posters, raffles, the list goes on and on. And then he says he's already dropped about a thousand into it. Well, hoss, that's on you. Because old homeslice here will not be putting any money into this, because we just did fund raising, plus... I already paid $180 for each child to cheer. So the football director can kiss the very whitest part of my ass. If he was single and looked good, maybe we could work something out. But he's neither, so oh well.
I need to pack lunches for tomorrow, finish folding the laundry, pack book bags, clean up the house and get my tired ass to bed. I finally finished my August stuff at work today, and am now plowing into the September work. Because there's no time to get started on September stuff than like, say, September 21st. My grass seed has probably died because we're on mandatory water restrictions, although the water source that's getting low is not where I get my water from, so I don't know why I have to be restricted, too. My gutter pricing came today and the price went up from the estimate? And the job's already done? I'm annoyed that I just went and had it done without a written estimate, but I'll count that as a lesson learned, and in all, I will probably never have to replace these gutters again. I hope. I am incredibly grateful I don't have cheerleading practice tomorrow, because all I really want to do is come home from work, kick off my shoes, make a good dinner for my kids, eat at the table with my kids, do homework, spend some time hugging and shit, and then watch Survivor.
This weekend coming up is The Ex's. I am so relieved, because I need a break. I can make it til Friday evening, I know I can. I gave him the courtesy call today and reminded him that I won't be available to watch the kids on Saturday while he does the concession stand, so he'll need to make other arrangements. I plan on doing my cheerleading thing, watching my older daughter do her thing, and then coming home and collapsing on the sofa and listening to the golden sound of silence. And then, I'll get up and listen to Justin Beiber and work out a 20 second or so dance routine for the cheerleaders exhibition in late October. Okay, maybe I'll listen to something else and just translate the moves to Justin Beiber at a later time, because who the fuck wants to listen to him if they don't have to?
I can do this. I can make it til Friday evening. Oh, and my mother-in-law will be coming to the football game on Saturday. Lovely. She's never heard my side of the whole divorce story, mainly because she hasn't asked, and I feel like initiating that conversation would be akin to snitching. Sometimes I just want to say, "Well, you raised him. What did you expect?"
The cheer director again failed to make a showing. Hmmm, no surprise there. I wonder if she's avoiding the football director, because he's apparently on crack. He cornered my assistant coach and starting yelling about homecoming and all the shit the cheerleaders need to do and homecoming is in two weeks and what have we done? Uh, hello, we haven't done a damn thing. First of all, why does a youth association need a homecoming? That's what high school is for. High school is very specifically for getting ready for college, getting drunk on the sly, getting laid and getting stoned. And homecoming, where all three of the prior might or might not happen. Depends on the crowd of kids you run with. Anyway, we don't need this in a youth association. Furthermore, I'm getting to the point where I don't give a fuck. He's babbling on, according to my assistant coach, about moon bounces, carnival stuff, a pep rally that Friday night, posters, raffles, the list goes on and on. And then he says he's already dropped about a thousand into it. Well, hoss, that's on you. Because old homeslice here will not be putting any money into this, because we just did fund raising, plus... I already paid $180 for each child to cheer. So the football director can kiss the very whitest part of my ass. If he was single and looked good, maybe we could work something out. But he's neither, so oh well.
I need to pack lunches for tomorrow, finish folding the laundry, pack book bags, clean up the house and get my tired ass to bed. I finally finished my August stuff at work today, and am now plowing into the September work. Because there's no time to get started on September stuff than like, say, September 21st. My grass seed has probably died because we're on mandatory water restrictions, although the water source that's getting low is not where I get my water from, so I don't know why I have to be restricted, too. My gutter pricing came today and the price went up from the estimate? And the job's already done? I'm annoyed that I just went and had it done without a written estimate, but I'll count that as a lesson learned, and in all, I will probably never have to replace these gutters again. I hope. I am incredibly grateful I don't have cheerleading practice tomorrow, because all I really want to do is come home from work, kick off my shoes, make a good dinner for my kids, eat at the table with my kids, do homework, spend some time hugging and shit, and then watch Survivor.
This weekend coming up is The Ex's. I am so relieved, because I need a break. I can make it til Friday evening, I know I can. I gave him the courtesy call today and reminded him that I won't be available to watch the kids on Saturday while he does the concession stand, so he'll need to make other arrangements. I plan on doing my cheerleading thing, watching my older daughter do her thing, and then coming home and collapsing on the sofa and listening to the golden sound of silence. And then, I'll get up and listen to Justin Beiber and work out a 20 second or so dance routine for the cheerleaders exhibition in late October. Okay, maybe I'll listen to something else and just translate the moves to Justin Beiber at a later time, because who the fuck wants to listen to him if they don't have to?
I can do this. I can make it til Friday evening. Oh, and my mother-in-law will be coming to the football game on Saturday. Lovely. She's never heard my side of the whole divorce story, mainly because she hasn't asked, and I feel like initiating that conversation would be akin to snitching. Sometimes I just want to say, "Well, you raised him. What did you expect?"
Monday, September 20, 2010
Stupid Stuff in My Head
I have a lot of stupid conversations, and some of them occur exclusively in my brain. I think I've gotten through most of my life on laughter, because if I don't laugh, I might just cry. I'm not too big on crying, because it makes my makeup run and just makes me feel like shit. So I don't cry a whole lot, but I try to laugh my way through most of my days. I think this is what's built up my emotional resiliency, or something like that. Here's some of the stupid stuff that went through my brain today.
Jimmy covers. I had a conversation at work today and was quite amazed that people don't know what jimmy covers are. I think this might just be the defining term that separates 30-somethings from 40-somethings, because I thought this was a pretty common term, but apparently it's not for people in the 40 and up category. This conversation came about when a large shipment of jimmy covers arrived at work and a few of us spent 30 minutes de-boxing them (ha ha) and ripping them apart to be handed out to the eager masses. I even came across a non-lubed box and ripped one open and blew it up, because everyone should have an inflated jimmy cover bobbing across the floor of their office. And for real, you can only do this with the non-lubed ones. No one wants spermicide in their mouth. Blech. And this conversation led to...
craigslist. A few of my co-workers involved in the jimmy covers conversation have been privy to my emailing links of pics I have found on craigslist. I only do this to two of my freak girlfriends, because I don't want to disrespect anyone's marriage or anything, but some of these pictures are too hilarious/unbelievable not to share. I can't for the life of me figure out why some of these men on craigslist haven't just gone right into porn. I mean, you've already listed yourself on the casual encounters section, which kind of proves that you're ready to have sex with a total stranger. If this were something where I could post adult pictures, I came across the best one ever tonight, which would be a circus quality penis. My god. This poor guy, no wonder he can't hook up. I'll leave you to wonder which end of the scale it was on. But yeah, that one got emailed, too.
My extra rib. I have an extra rib. I didn't know this until about two years or so ago, and that was only after I had conned my way into a third doctor's office to check out this lump on my chest. When I first found it, I immediately had a heart attack and knew that I was going to die from breast cancer in less than six months. Have I mentioned in previous posts that my father died from cancer exactly three and a half weeks after his initial diagnosis? So anything that's wrong with me, I immediately think it's cancer and go rushing off to the doctor and manipulate some kind of testing. You never know. So I found this lump on my chest, kind of in between my collarbone and my breast, and I of course immediately assume the worst. It's breast cancer, I've got bad genes and I'm the one who is going to introduce this bad mutated gene to all of my female descendants, because breast cancer does not run in my family. It makes sense though, because somewhere, someone had bad genes and it's mutated and now look where we are with breast cancer. Rush off to the gynecologist, and see a guy at my practice who is fresh out of his residency. We have a lovely conversation about the local schools while he's alternately feeling up my breasts and has another hand up in me, and he says it's not breast cancer, it's too high up on my chest. It's some kind of fatty tumor that women get. But then he tells me that he and his wife live in the Fan and are sending their children to city schools - by choice. Okay, this man is obviously stupid and doesn't know shit about anything if he's opting to send his children to city schools. Who does that? So I rush off to my general practitioner, who I've been seeing for almost fifteen years. He feels me up and tells me that I have an extra rib. Huh? Oh, wait, I forgot. This jackass is from Canada. He doesn't know shit, either. So then I take a break and regroup. I just need a tiebreaker at this point. That's all I need - a third doctor who can tell me if this is a fatty tumor (which feels really hard) or if this is an extra rib. Off to Norfolk to manipulate my way into see my daughter's plastic surgeon, because he's one of the best pediatric plastic surgeons in the country. I get a couple of questionable moles removed, and oh, by the way, what's this lump here? Well, damn, it is an extra rib. The old Canuck was right all along.
And that leads me to recycling. I'm not into recycling. Some women in my office have answered the call of Greenpeace or whomever it is and have decided to start recycling, and have placed these recycling bins all over the office. But when the bins get full, they just pile up the trash in our storage room to the point that it looks like a dump. Really. I hate that this recycling stuff only gets taken out once a month. It's stupid. Either commit to something or don't. Take the freaking recycling somewhere once a week or let's just throw the shit in the trash. I mean, trash isn't that bad. Hellooooo, Mt. Trashmore. So every now and then, just to be a complete bitch, I very surreptitiously throw old food right down into the recycling bin and force the recycling to become trash. I like to consider myself a recycling saboteur. I've discovered that if I cover the old food up with more recycling shit, then the women who move the recycling stuff to the storage room don't realize that in about 4.576 days, it will start to stink. And the smell will worsen. And people will complain. And that, in turn, will force these women to not wait for a whole month to remove the recycling out of the office. And I will have won.
Which leads me to organ and blood donations. I have decided that this is just a higher form of recycling. I'm sure I'm going to offend someone out there, but oh well. We don't do blood drives at my current office, but we did at my last office. I would inevitably get asked if I would donate blood on such and such day, and I get a cookie out of the whole deal. Uh, how about some wine and porn? That would make the whole process a little more pleasant for me, for one. Hell, you can have some plasma, if you pull out some vintage shit. Vintage wine or vintage porn, either of the two would be fine with me. Anyway, I would always kind of cock back in my chair and say something really stupid (but with all seriousness) to the effect of, "I kind of question the practicality of donating something that I'm still using." Or, if they argued, I would think kick it up a notch. "Ethically, I'm still on the fence about recycling bodily fluids." At this point, I would either get a disgusted or confused look and they would drift away. I win again. And yeah, I'm still on the fence about the whole donating organs thing, too. Remember my earlier post about how modern medicine is fucking up natural selection? This plays into it. Other than a family member, specifically one of my children, I'm not so sure about the whole organ donation thing. I'm still using them. And when I'm not using them, I might just want for my body to go out like it came in. Which would be intact. But I'm still debating this one
Maybe or maybe not up soon: my grandfather, the sometime pig farmer, and stolen library books.
Jimmy covers. I had a conversation at work today and was quite amazed that people don't know what jimmy covers are. I think this might just be the defining term that separates 30-somethings from 40-somethings, because I thought this was a pretty common term, but apparently it's not for people in the 40 and up category. This conversation came about when a large shipment of jimmy covers arrived at work and a few of us spent 30 minutes de-boxing them (ha ha) and ripping them apart to be handed out to the eager masses. I even came across a non-lubed box and ripped one open and blew it up, because everyone should have an inflated jimmy cover bobbing across the floor of their office. And for real, you can only do this with the non-lubed ones. No one wants spermicide in their mouth. Blech. And this conversation led to...
craigslist. A few of my co-workers involved in the jimmy covers conversation have been privy to my emailing links of pics I have found on craigslist. I only do this to two of my freak girlfriends, because I don't want to disrespect anyone's marriage or anything, but some of these pictures are too hilarious/unbelievable not to share. I can't for the life of me figure out why some of these men on craigslist haven't just gone right into porn. I mean, you've already listed yourself on the casual encounters section, which kind of proves that you're ready to have sex with a total stranger. If this were something where I could post adult pictures, I came across the best one ever tonight, which would be a circus quality penis. My god. This poor guy, no wonder he can't hook up. I'll leave you to wonder which end of the scale it was on. But yeah, that one got emailed, too.
My extra rib. I have an extra rib. I didn't know this until about two years or so ago, and that was only after I had conned my way into a third doctor's office to check out this lump on my chest. When I first found it, I immediately had a heart attack and knew that I was going to die from breast cancer in less than six months. Have I mentioned in previous posts that my father died from cancer exactly three and a half weeks after his initial diagnosis? So anything that's wrong with me, I immediately think it's cancer and go rushing off to the doctor and manipulate some kind of testing. You never know. So I found this lump on my chest, kind of in between my collarbone and my breast, and I of course immediately assume the worst. It's breast cancer, I've got bad genes and I'm the one who is going to introduce this bad mutated gene to all of my female descendants, because breast cancer does not run in my family. It makes sense though, because somewhere, someone had bad genes and it's mutated and now look where we are with breast cancer. Rush off to the gynecologist, and see a guy at my practice who is fresh out of his residency. We have a lovely conversation about the local schools while he's alternately feeling up my breasts and has another hand up in me, and he says it's not breast cancer, it's too high up on my chest. It's some kind of fatty tumor that women get. But then he tells me that he and his wife live in the Fan and are sending their children to city schools - by choice. Okay, this man is obviously stupid and doesn't know shit about anything if he's opting to send his children to city schools. Who does that? So I rush off to my general practitioner, who I've been seeing for almost fifteen years. He feels me up and tells me that I have an extra rib. Huh? Oh, wait, I forgot. This jackass is from Canada. He doesn't know shit, either. So then I take a break and regroup. I just need a tiebreaker at this point. That's all I need - a third doctor who can tell me if this is a fatty tumor (which feels really hard) or if this is an extra rib. Off to Norfolk to manipulate my way into see my daughter's plastic surgeon, because he's one of the best pediatric plastic surgeons in the country. I get a couple of questionable moles removed, and oh, by the way, what's this lump here? Well, damn, it is an extra rib. The old Canuck was right all along.
And that leads me to recycling. I'm not into recycling. Some women in my office have answered the call of Greenpeace or whomever it is and have decided to start recycling, and have placed these recycling bins all over the office. But when the bins get full, they just pile up the trash in our storage room to the point that it looks like a dump. Really. I hate that this recycling stuff only gets taken out once a month. It's stupid. Either commit to something or don't. Take the freaking recycling somewhere once a week or let's just throw the shit in the trash. I mean, trash isn't that bad. Hellooooo, Mt. Trashmore. So every now and then, just to be a complete bitch, I very surreptitiously throw old food right down into the recycling bin and force the recycling to become trash. I like to consider myself a recycling saboteur. I've discovered that if I cover the old food up with more recycling shit, then the women who move the recycling stuff to the storage room don't realize that in about 4.576 days, it will start to stink. And the smell will worsen. And people will complain. And that, in turn, will force these women to not wait for a whole month to remove the recycling out of the office. And I will have won.
Which leads me to organ and blood donations. I have decided that this is just a higher form of recycling. I'm sure I'm going to offend someone out there, but oh well. We don't do blood drives at my current office, but we did at my last office. I would inevitably get asked if I would donate blood on such and such day, and I get a cookie out of the whole deal. Uh, how about some wine and porn? That would make the whole process a little more pleasant for me, for one. Hell, you can have some plasma, if you pull out some vintage shit. Vintage wine or vintage porn, either of the two would be fine with me. Anyway, I would always kind of cock back in my chair and say something really stupid (but with all seriousness) to the effect of, "I kind of question the practicality of donating something that I'm still using." Or, if they argued, I would think kick it up a notch. "Ethically, I'm still on the fence about recycling bodily fluids." At this point, I would either get a disgusted or confused look and they would drift away. I win again. And yeah, I'm still on the fence about the whole donating organs thing, too. Remember my earlier post about how modern medicine is fucking up natural selection? This plays into it. Other than a family member, specifically one of my children, I'm not so sure about the whole organ donation thing. I'm still using them. And when I'm not using them, I might just want for my body to go out like it came in. Which would be intact. But I'm still debating this one
Maybe or maybe not up soon: my grandfather, the sometime pig farmer, and stolen library books.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Saturday Night Youth Football
Last night I got totally sucked into youth football. Our youth organization, as poorly organized as it is, has managed to suck me in. This was our second set of games, and last week our games were in the morning. This week, the first game started at 5:00pm. The children and I showed up on the field, and I was feeling more optimistic about the performance of my little cheerleading team that I'm coaching because I knew what to expect for this game, and so we had practiced walking in a straight line, keeping our hands on our hips, turning and giving the parents and crowd some cheers, and all together, our cheerleading team of five and six year olds was in much better form than the first game. Our little three year old, well, she's three, so when she randomly starts crying I just have to go with it.
Because I've spent pretty much my entire life scorning cheerleading, I had no idea how challenging it actually is. I can't even believe I'm saying this, but it's a lot of freaking work. Especially when the cheerleaders really want to wiggle around, chitter-chatter amongst themselves, and their version of loud yelling is my version of a quiet talk. Maybe it's the coaching that's more difficult than I ever thought it would be. The football game we were cheering for lasted about an hour and 15 minutes or so, and my girls got exactly two water breaks of about five minutes each. The rest of the time, on their feet, in formation, doing their cheers with me yelling periodically, "BE LOUD!!!" I'm pleased, and somewhat shocked, that I might just manged to turn this group of ten minuscule drama queens into a finely tuned cheerleading team by the time it's all said and done. Except we need to come up with a dance routine to fit into our two minute routine for the exhibition in late October. Uh oh. I feel a Justin Beiber song coming on, because I don't think having them wiggling around to Lady Ga-Ga would be that appropriate.
I couldn't watch much of the football action when my girls were cheering, because I was too busy roaming around making sure they were standing still, not crying, keeping my eye on the clock, trying to keep an eye on my older daughter, because it wasn't her turn to cheer yet and I wanted to try to make some effort to make sure she wouldn't get abducted or some other crazy shit that all moms think will happen. Our team lost again, but it wasn't as bad as the previous week. We got one touchdown, so that was an improvement. But the second game, I was good to go. I got the opportunity to sit down and watch the action, from right up on the cheerleading sidelines, since I'm a coach and all. The younger daughter and I got our dinners from the concession stand, and I got to watch my older daughter do her thing, and got to watch a little football.
I think I've mentioned in a previous post that I don't know much about football, and I don't. I do know what a touchdown is, and I do know what a field goal is, I think. Isn't that when they kick the ball through the end posts, or whatever those things are? And I know what a huddle is. But other than that, I know that I'm supposed to yell when our team has the ball. And that would be the extent of my football knowledge. At this point, the sun had dropped below the trees, and the stadium lights had been turned on, and the sweat on my brow had dried. I was settled into my folding chair, wishing that it was about 30 or 40 years ago, and I could just smoke a cigarette right there on the sidelines. But it's not, so I had to sneak off to the parking lot and even then I felt guilty because I was wearing a coaching staff shirt, and I just always feel guilty smoking at any function that children are present at. My older daughter was rocking it out, and I was really enjoying the night, because The Ex wasn't there, so I didn't get any of those creepy someones-watching-me feelings, which was nice.
Our team, the team of seven, eight and nine year olds, was doing pretty well. They were up by two touchdowns, and then the other team start closing the gap. It was at about this point in time I started to take notice of our football coaches. They were doing the typical football coach stuff, pacing up and down the sidelines, yelling at the kids, calling out plays (I think), jumping up and down excitedly, arguing with the refs, arguing with each other, and then throwing their hats on the ground, jumping on the hats. This might just be endemic of all male coaches, because I think that basketball coaches do this stuff, too. Our advantage seemed to disappear. The cheerleaders, all five of them on this team, picked up the pace a little. The stadium lights were burning, the crowd had thickened, waiting for the next game to begin, and you could feel the expectation in the air. Across the field, the expectation was that they were going to take this thing in the last few minutes. On our side, the feeling was that we had just lost one hell of a lead and might just lose this whole thing. With each play, the crowd grew a little louder, the lights burned brighter, the huddles lasted a few seconds longer. Even I got into the action, furiously watching each play as our team scored another touchdown and brought the score even.
Overtime. The clunk of the equipment and helmets colliding with the mighty force of an eight year old seemed to get louder, more intense. The stomping of the feet on the metal bleachers came more rhythmically, and more parents were standing than sitting in their folding chairs. The coaches jumped higher, and hats flew around a bit more, and the cheerleaders moved down the field to stay close to the action. I had totally lost my younger daughter at this point, and looked around for her only periodically. Out of desperation for her not being abducted while this awesome game was going on, I snagged her as she bolted by me one time and sent her out on the field with the bigger girls. Thank god that coach is the sister of The Ex's best friend, because I don't know if I could have gotten away with that with anyone else. The youth association was selling spirit wear, and cowbells were on the menu. The clatter of the bells was ringing, and when the opposing team scored, there were groans and sighs all around.
Double overtime (I think). Damn, this is some good action. How come I didn't lay a bet down on this before hand? I looked at my watch, and jesus, these kids have been playing ball for almost two hours. The junior and senior teams were there as well, and a couple of those kids look like they could just skip high school and head right into college ball. We scored, and then they scored. I think, because I was totally confused with each play, and I didn't know what it was going to take for the game to actually end since I know nothing about football other than this game was HOT. The line ups (or whatever they're called) are really close to the end zone, so it's not going to take much to score. But I didn't know if it was our end zone or theirs. I just knew that there was one point between the two teams at this juncture, and we could totally win this thing. Suddenly, all of those kids on the football field were mine. I had given birth to all of them (on our team) and I was placing all of our collective hopes and dreams of winning this game on those children, those same children who will go to school on Monday and be normal kids again who burp at the lunch table, forget to raise their hands in class, and try to learn their word-wall words. But tonight, they were not normal kids. They were a lean, mean, green uniform wearing team that needs to win this thing.
The other team had the ball. The kid with the ball is running towards the end zone, oh shit, he's going to make it. I see our kids running for him, leaping, missing. Oh fuck. This is over. My mind was processing each movement in a slow motion, yet panoptic kind of way. I could hear the thuds as each kid who leaped and missed hit the ground. And then, from the back, one kid turned on the turbo and pushed the kid with the ball down. Boom! Took him down.
It's our ball now, and the end zone is rightthere. Thatclose. Still one point between the two teams. The parents are screaming, the cheerleaders are screaming, the bleachers are thumping, the older teams waiting their turns are screaming. And then, it got quiet. For that one millisecond in time, the air swelled with pride and anticipation. Even the announcer was silent. This was it. Go hard or go home, kids. The play was made. Touchdown, motherfuckers!
And that quickly, it was over. The teams lined up to shake hands, and I quick folded up my chair and got ready to rush home, because we've been at this ballfield way too long. But I knew, as an ever so slight fall chill descended down upon us, that even if we don't do cheerleading next year, we'll go to the games. This shit is too good to miss. And with that realization, I knew I had been sucked in.
Because I've spent pretty much my entire life scorning cheerleading, I had no idea how challenging it actually is. I can't even believe I'm saying this, but it's a lot of freaking work. Especially when the cheerleaders really want to wiggle around, chitter-chatter amongst themselves, and their version of loud yelling is my version of a quiet talk. Maybe it's the coaching that's more difficult than I ever thought it would be. The football game we were cheering for lasted about an hour and 15 minutes or so, and my girls got exactly two water breaks of about five minutes each. The rest of the time, on their feet, in formation, doing their cheers with me yelling periodically, "BE LOUD!!!" I'm pleased, and somewhat shocked, that I might just manged to turn this group of ten minuscule drama queens into a finely tuned cheerleading team by the time it's all said and done. Except we need to come up with a dance routine to fit into our two minute routine for the exhibition in late October. Uh oh. I feel a Justin Beiber song coming on, because I don't think having them wiggling around to Lady Ga-Ga would be that appropriate.
I couldn't watch much of the football action when my girls were cheering, because I was too busy roaming around making sure they were standing still, not crying, keeping my eye on the clock, trying to keep an eye on my older daughter, because it wasn't her turn to cheer yet and I wanted to try to make some effort to make sure she wouldn't get abducted or some other crazy shit that all moms think will happen. Our team lost again, but it wasn't as bad as the previous week. We got one touchdown, so that was an improvement. But the second game, I was good to go. I got the opportunity to sit down and watch the action, from right up on the cheerleading sidelines, since I'm a coach and all. The younger daughter and I got our dinners from the concession stand, and I got to watch my older daughter do her thing, and got to watch a little football.
I think I've mentioned in a previous post that I don't know much about football, and I don't. I do know what a touchdown is, and I do know what a field goal is, I think. Isn't that when they kick the ball through the end posts, or whatever those things are? And I know what a huddle is. But other than that, I know that I'm supposed to yell when our team has the ball. And that would be the extent of my football knowledge. At this point, the sun had dropped below the trees, and the stadium lights had been turned on, and the sweat on my brow had dried. I was settled into my folding chair, wishing that it was about 30 or 40 years ago, and I could just smoke a cigarette right there on the sidelines. But it's not, so I had to sneak off to the parking lot and even then I felt guilty because I was wearing a coaching staff shirt, and I just always feel guilty smoking at any function that children are present at. My older daughter was rocking it out, and I was really enjoying the night, because The Ex wasn't there, so I didn't get any of those creepy someones-watching-me feelings, which was nice.
Our team, the team of seven, eight and nine year olds, was doing pretty well. They were up by two touchdowns, and then the other team start closing the gap. It was at about this point in time I started to take notice of our football coaches. They were doing the typical football coach stuff, pacing up and down the sidelines, yelling at the kids, calling out plays (I think), jumping up and down excitedly, arguing with the refs, arguing with each other, and then throwing their hats on the ground, jumping on the hats. This might just be endemic of all male coaches, because I think that basketball coaches do this stuff, too. Our advantage seemed to disappear. The cheerleaders, all five of them on this team, picked up the pace a little. The stadium lights were burning, the crowd had thickened, waiting for the next game to begin, and you could feel the expectation in the air. Across the field, the expectation was that they were going to take this thing in the last few minutes. On our side, the feeling was that we had just lost one hell of a lead and might just lose this whole thing. With each play, the crowd grew a little louder, the lights burned brighter, the huddles lasted a few seconds longer. Even I got into the action, furiously watching each play as our team scored another touchdown and brought the score even.
Overtime. The clunk of the equipment and helmets colliding with the mighty force of an eight year old seemed to get louder, more intense. The stomping of the feet on the metal bleachers came more rhythmically, and more parents were standing than sitting in their folding chairs. The coaches jumped higher, and hats flew around a bit more, and the cheerleaders moved down the field to stay close to the action. I had totally lost my younger daughter at this point, and looked around for her only periodically. Out of desperation for her not being abducted while this awesome game was going on, I snagged her as she bolted by me one time and sent her out on the field with the bigger girls. Thank god that coach is the sister of The Ex's best friend, because I don't know if I could have gotten away with that with anyone else. The youth association was selling spirit wear, and cowbells were on the menu. The clatter of the bells was ringing, and when the opposing team scored, there were groans and sighs all around.
Double overtime (I think). Damn, this is some good action. How come I didn't lay a bet down on this before hand? I looked at my watch, and jesus, these kids have been playing ball for almost two hours. The junior and senior teams were there as well, and a couple of those kids look like they could just skip high school and head right into college ball. We scored, and then they scored. I think, because I was totally confused with each play, and I didn't know what it was going to take for the game to actually end since I know nothing about football other than this game was HOT. The line ups (or whatever they're called) are really close to the end zone, so it's not going to take much to score. But I didn't know if it was our end zone or theirs. I just knew that there was one point between the two teams at this juncture, and we could totally win this thing. Suddenly, all of those kids on the football field were mine. I had given birth to all of them (on our team) and I was placing all of our collective hopes and dreams of winning this game on those children, those same children who will go to school on Monday and be normal kids again who burp at the lunch table, forget to raise their hands in class, and try to learn their word-wall words. But tonight, they were not normal kids. They were a lean, mean, green uniform wearing team that needs to win this thing.
The other team had the ball. The kid with the ball is running towards the end zone, oh shit, he's going to make it. I see our kids running for him, leaping, missing. Oh fuck. This is over. My mind was processing each movement in a slow motion, yet panoptic kind of way. I could hear the thuds as each kid who leaped and missed hit the ground. And then, from the back, one kid turned on the turbo and pushed the kid with the ball down. Boom! Took him down.
It's our ball now, and the end zone is rightthere. Thatclose. Still one point between the two teams. The parents are screaming, the cheerleaders are screaming, the bleachers are thumping, the older teams waiting their turns are screaming. And then, it got quiet. For that one millisecond in time, the air swelled with pride and anticipation. Even the announcer was silent. This was it. Go hard or go home, kids. The play was made. Touchdown, motherfuckers!
And that quickly, it was over. The teams lined up to shake hands, and I quick folded up my chair and got ready to rush home, because we've been at this ballfield way too long. But I knew, as an ever so slight fall chill descended down upon us, that even if we don't do cheerleading next year, we'll go to the games. This shit is too good to miss. And with that realization, I knew I had been sucked in.
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