An Open (Albeit Anonymous) Letter

Dear Mrs. PTA President,

I'd like to write this letter to address your numerous Facebook posts begging for assistance. With everything, probably to include wiping your big ass. Actually, I would hope that your husband would handle that for you. I am beginning my fourth year in elementary school (3rd grade daughter) and my second year in elementary school (1st grade daughter), plus the five years I spent myself in elementary school, which should have been six years, but the school system I transferred into was still 20 years later trying to put itself together after the MRI. That would be Massive Resistance Incident. Actually, that school system is about at the 50+ year mark and it's still not got it's act together, but that's a whole other issue.

I appreciate the time and effort that you and the other mothers put into the PTA. I especially appreciate your weekly newsletters and how many trees you must contribute to killing on a yearly basis. However, it's not even November and I've had just about enough your perkiness. Here's a list of all of the shit that the PTA has orchestrated thus far this year, along with what I've done.

* Back-to-school picnic. This should have just been called "Take your kid's supplies to school and get roped into picnic on the playground". Well, I wouldn't have even gone, but since the school requires about $150.00 worth of supplies at the beginning of the year, it was more shit than my kids could carry on the bus. I opted not to help, mainly because I don't like the PTA moms (more on that later), and because I just didn't fucking feel like it. We also didn't buy dinner at the picnic because I didn't want to eat cold pizza or the local chicken shack. And, I was crabby that day, too.

* September Chicken Shack night - nope, didn't do this, but we never do this one. Thank God, the older daughter doesn't like Chicken Shack, and besides, why would you do a monthly fundraiser for a school with an enrollment of 1000 at an establishment that can't possibly seat more than 78? Per the occupancy code the last time I was in there. Nooooo thank you.

* Back to School Teacher Breakfast - nope, I didn't volunteer to help with that, either. I have a j.o.b. and have to work on weekdays. Plus, I find teacher conversation to be quite boring unless it's related specifically to my children, and once teacher-type people find out what kind of job I do, they usually try to sidle off because it's not for the faint of heart. I tend to bring my career up to people I don't want to talk to, and then just let them remove themselves.

* PTA meeting and Back to School night for kindergarten and first grade - Yes, I went to this, but I wasn't quite so panicky about missing first grade information this year, especially since I've done first grade once on my behalf and once on my older daughter's behalf. And blissfully, the school has a new principal this year which meant that he didn't start out the PTA meeting by blathering on about the school rules and all of the accolades the county has or has not heaped upon him. The fact that he didn't even wear a tie was comforting, because I'm pretty sure the last principal thought she was a Neiman Marcus model, but that's what happens when your husband is a Hall of Famer. NFL, that is. And guess who didn't show up? That's right, baby daddy didn't show up. He's pissed me off so much and disappointed MY children so much in the past week he's getting ready to lose his capitalization.

* Back to School night for second and third grades - I did this one too, and even sat through another PTA meeting that was put on for the parents that missed the one held at kindergarten and first grade night. I withheld my vote that night, and you should have remembered to tell parents if they already voted that they should withhold their votes, too. Baby daddy was there for this one, sitting next to his next door neighbor whom I hate with a passion of all passions. May her hair fall out for her continuing to dye it all shades of brown, red and blond and then claiming that each is her natural color. Bitch, I'm not stupid. And, I know you didn't get your boobs done because no boob job sags like that eighteen months after the alleged surgery. You just got some fancy bras from Victoria's Secret and hiked those old worn out puppies up under your chin.

* Back to School night again, Bageezus Christ! But not for me because it was just fourth and fifth graders. If I'd been thinking ahead though, I would have gone and snuck into a fourth grade class and hung back and acted like someone's aunt so I would know what to expect for next year.

* County-wide donate denim stuff at the mall - didn't do this either because I didn't know what it was until you kindly took the time to explain on the Facebook page two days before the whole thing was over. And no, at that point I wasn't going to dig through my jeans to crucify myself about what doesn't fit so I could donate it. Dammit, those jeans will fit again! Sometime. I hope. But my boyfriend keeps telling me how much he likes my ass, so maybe I'll just stay the way I am.

* Boxtops - Yes, yes, yes, I do this, but if my kids and I make it through elementary school and neither of them wins the drawing for the big summer boxtop collection prize, I am going to be pissed. I spent months and months clipping boxtops, strongarming coworkers and family members, and guess who won the drawing this year? The older daughter's archnemesis. I shall spend this school year trying to figure out how to either fix the drawing so that one of my children wins, or just sabotage the whole damn thing.

* Join the PTA - Yep, I did this, too, although I don't know why because membership comes with no rewards and you're still going to kill trees and send all that shit home with my kids whether I'm a member or not.

* Kid's concert by some Wiggles-like singing group at the local mall - I actually thought about going to this, until I realized the tickets were $17.00 A PIECE. Wha?!?!?!??  Uh, I don't have that kind of money, and for that price, you need to have an open bar. So we didn't go and I elected to let the more affluent families of the school pick up that tab. And pick it up they did, because our school had the most number of tickets purchased and won a free concert at the school! Go rich families of my kid's school! You rock!

* Blurb on facebook about the PTA needing to borrow carnival games. I thought about being a complete asshole and purchasing a bunch of carnival games, and then having the athletic association reimburse me. And then, I was going to email you, Mrs. PTA President, and let you know that the athletic association has carnival games that you can rent for a small fee. Which would be half of the purchase price. I think that would have been completely fair, since you refused to loan the school mascot costume to the athletic association without a deposit check last school year. I must say, I giggled when I saw the athletic association represented at the Back to School picnic in their newly purchased mascot costume, just like a big, giant FUCK YOUUUUUUUUU!

* Fall after school program - Yes, I signed my kids up for this. They like it and I pretend like the cost doesn't hurt.

* Order pizza online from a certain pizza place and a percentage goes back to the school! - Wow! Except I don't like this pizza place and am pretty sure it's just baked throw-up. So, no, not doing that one.

* My Coke rewards - Holy fuck, whoever is chairing the fundraising committee needs to take a fucking break. I drink a lot of Coke and you shall get none of the codes. Nor shall I enter them for you.

* Fall fundraiser - I probably would have ordered something, except it all appeared to be complete crap. I don't need any wrapping paper, thanks though. The athletic association had a better fundraiser and that's where I spent my money. You should call the cheer director for tips, which I am sure she will give you but only after she makes a passive-aggressive comment about the mascot costume-deposit-issue from last year.

* Jogging Club - Okay, this is a good idea, especially because it's free, except I have a j.o.b. and can't get my children to school 15 minutes after I'm supposed to be at work to run around the bus loop for 25 minutes. The older daughter is still complaining about not being able to participate in this, but since I've found a neighboring athletic association that offers summer track and field, she might get her run in after all. If I can't convince her to go for swim team this year.

* Monthly jumpy house fundraiser - That's the baby daddy night with the kids and he's damn sure not going to spend any money on that, nor would he spent time jumping around in the jumpy houses with them. Two points to my super-fabulous boyfriend for jumping his heart out last time we went there.

* Skate night - I had to work late and my kids had homework. Maybe next month.

* Pizza joint night - Football and cheerleading practice, and we probably won't go next month because you've managed to find yet another TINY restaurant that we can all cram right into.

* Fall dinner and pumpkin night at school - Yes, I got your numerous emails pleading for volunteers to serve food and do other stuff. I'm not volunteering because I don't want my kids running around willy-nilly for an hour unsupervised, but mainly because I volunteered last year and most of you bitches wouldn't speak to me once you figured out I didn't live in your neighborhood. Mighty high falutin' considering I've run into Mrs. PTA Vice President in the nail salon a time or two completely bombed out of her mind and the last time she was so fucking drunk she couldn't hold her head up and had to prop it up on the nail drying station (a little problem there, Mrs. Vice President?), and Mrs. PTA Treasurer has an older son with absolutely no manners, breasts that hang down to her belly button, a deeper voice than my boyfriends AND a unibrow, and Mrs. Spirit Wear Committee chomps on bubble gum like she's getting her jaw ready for a home version of Deep Throat. The movie, not the Washington Post informant.

* Fall book fair at the local big-box bookstore - I volunteered for this a couple of years ago and really just wanted to spend the two hour time slot reorganizing and straightening up the entire store, not making small talk about what teacher wants what book. But I will go next month and buy a few books.

All in all, you do a great job. But please consider that some of us have a career that involves leaving our houses every Monday through Friday, and that some of us don't make the kind of money that I suspect your husband makes. And also consider that some of us are involved in the athletic association, and so we know what kind of little dirty games you play. Oh, yeah, and stop being so perky. Your ass is too big for that.

Best,

A Nearby Parent

Cranky

I am feeling pret*ty goddamn cranky tonight. Perhaps it's because it's 10:51pm and I'd like to be reading a trashy book in bed but instead I'm waiting on the clothes to finish washing because I need to pack up football and cheerleading stuff for the weekend, perhaps it's because I haven't sorted through the shit on my desk in a week, maybe even it's because The Ex deemed himself an involved enough parent to sign off on parental shit from the school tonight. My football picks from last week sucked complete ass, my house is a mess, but I'm really trying to look at the bright side of things. Here goes:

* I've decided that I will start calling everything old 'throwback'. So when my girlfriends hook back up with old hook-ups, I'm just going to call that a throwback hook-up. Maybe when I get a bill for something that happened last year (like medical companies like to do), I'll call that a throwback bill, which is different than when you just don't pay the bill and they keep sending you notices. Which has never happened to me. American Express.

* Despite a major fuck-up at work in the spring and a couple of minor fuck-ups, along with several panic attacks, I still got a great yearly evaluation. I straight up told my boss she was being overly generous. But, since my evaluation doesn't get me any more money, it's just generous in the most verbal of all senses. She told me, correctly, that I am my worst critic. I guess cheers for being accountable and being willing to publicly blame myself for my screw ups.

* I am spanking several different asses on Words with Friends. Want some of this? What what!?! Hit me up on superfreak929. Yep, that's me.

* After this week, cheerleading will slow down. If either one of my kids don't want to do cheerleading next year, it's no skin off of my ass. I'm quite disillusioned after figuring out that the cheer director (I'm pretty sure, but not sure enough to straight make the allegation to anyone in authority) most likely falsified the ages of some of the girls on the cheerleading squads for the competition, and when I almost painted her into a corner about it, she then had to go back and do double cover-up lies to make things right. Except they aren't right with me, and you can't go back and fix that, as far as I'm concerned. But next week we only have football practice, thank god, and I'm hoping that might get rained out.

* I'm working on an open (and anonymous) letter to Mrs. PTA President in my head. Expect to see it in writing within about a week or two.

* I finally got my children scheduled to see the eye doctor. My insurance only covers every two years, so I am hoping my older daughter's placement YET AGAIN in remedial reading club is strictly related to the fact that she can't see the words, not my suspicion that there's a slight reading disability in there somewhere. But the good news about that is that she's been placed in reading club before the parent-teacher conferences this year, which means I can find out what in the hell is going on a little bit earlier in the school year. And, there's a new reading specialist this year, so I am going to pursue again trying to get her tested without me having to take her to a private tutoring company for the tests.

* She and I had a good talk last night, and what I thought was anxiety about her father's wedding is actually fear about her upcoming tonsillectomy. She's upset that she won't be able to talk for a week. I love my children with all of my heart, but I can actually do with half the chatter, and besides, that's one week she won't be able to argue with her sister. I hope. God only knows what will come out of that week.

* Lots o' quality time with Guy #1 this weekend. Definitely looking like a highlight of the week.

Vacation

My kids went on vacation today. I am so incredibly annoyed about the whole thing I can't even begin to put words to it.  Of course, they went with douchebag and The Girlfriend. I'm pissed because for ten years of being married to that complete asshole, we went on exactly two vacations, both times to the beach, and he bitched and moaned the entire time, because he hates the beach. We went on vacation for our honeymoon, which was to the Outer Banks, because I refused to fly anywhere. He wanted to go back to the place he had his first honeymoon and then pouted for weeks when I refused. Maybe the honeymoon would have been more enjoyable if we had taken separate vacations.  And then, fast forward to 2009, we took our first family vacation, and he bitched and moaned about that one, too, even though I had found a completely decent house to rent a block and a half off of a beach access during high season for $600 a week! Tightwads of the world, unite!

I'll assume he didn't hate the beach but just hated me. Well, dickface, it's mutual. I sent him a text today and told him that I needed the address where the children would be staying for the week, well, because I need to know where in the hell my children are. He texted the address back and I didn't bother to acknowledge it or to say "Have a great time" or any of that nice shit. Nope. Nothing from me. Simply because I know how much it pisses him off when I don't acknowledge his texts. So right after work I came home, hopped on Google Maps and googled that bitch. Yep, because that's what any self-respecting, sometimes bitter ex-wife would do. I'm pleased to report they are staying at a condo development about five miles from the beach. I can't find any real estate rental information about it, other than it's owned by some guy in New York, so I'll have to assume it's some sort of time share. I hope that my kids have a great time and I hope he has a miserable time and gets sunburned on his nasty furry chest that he refuses to manscape. See, I'm already feeling better.

My vacation starts on Saturday. Guy #1 asked me to go back to his hometown in Indiana and meet the family. I didn't realize what a big deal this was until all of my guy friends started weighing in with their opinions. Apparently, meeting a guy's family IS A BIG DEAL. How the hell would I know this? I've never had to travel to meet anyone's family before, so this is new. Dating is still kind of new. Dating someone with kids is still kind of new. Traveling with a kid to meet the family is new. Traveling with a kid and the dog to meet the family is new. I'm just a tiny bit antsy.

I don't travel well, and this is probably because I never do it. In my adult life, I've taken one honeymoon, one family vacation, one weekend trip with a girlfriend to the beach (for which The Ex gave me shit about for three months afterward) and one trip to Illinois to take my grandfather to his World War II reunion, so that didn't even count as a vacation. I've gone out of town a few times for a couple of conferences and I hated that and I'm already working on my excuse to get out of the next conference. But when I say I don't travel well, I mean, I don't travel well. I'm like that purebred Afghan hound that alternately howls and pukes the entire trip, all the while trembling and shaking. Seriously. This is why I've never moved far away from my family, and this is why I have an aunt who lives in Seattle who I haven't seen since 2003. And I have no intention of seeing her unless she comes back to Virginia. She's kind of a weird, left-wing, spinster aunt whom I've never really known beyond Christmas cards and I already told my mom when my aunt dies she's on her own to get my grandmother's stuff back to Virginia. I also have a stepsister in Alabama that I see exactly once or twice per year, when she comes back to Virginia. I'd like to think I'm that kind of person that doesn't come to you, but you come to me. Like the Godfather.

So Saturday morning, Guy #1, his teenage daughter, dog and I will be loading up in the car for a nice 15 hour drive or so to Indiana. Yeah, mapquest says 12 hours and some minutes, but with a dog (and me) it will be about 15 hours. I know this and have told him this, but he doesn't believe me. I am guessing that by the time we hit mid-Kentucky all four of us will want me to be riding in the trunk. Bound and gagged. And then, after we finally get there, I get to meet his ENTIRE family. Which will not be stressful to me *at all*. Not at all. I feel kind of like I did when the people at work gave me employee of the quarter and I guiltily felt like I had bamboozled them and then felt obligated to work about three times harder to make them think they hadn't made a bad decision after all. Which I am still sure that they did, because the quarter after they gave me employee of the quarter I got in trouble with one of the big wigs at work which resulted in me having to write a letter of apology and sitting in my office sobbing for hours at a time.

So given that experience, God only knows how this is going to go. I'll assume a few months after this trip I'll end up having to write someone a letter of apology. I've unfortunately heard all these great things that Guy #1 has told his family about me on the phone and I'm like, HOLY FUCK! I have got to go to another state and pretend to be fucking phenomenal now! OH MY GOD, the pressure is on! I can fake being phenomenal in the next county, but I've never had to do it in another state. I've got exactly one week to live up to all of this shit he's told his family about me! And so, arriving in Indiana sometime Saturday night will be the Stephanie version of Betty Crocker meets Carol Brady meets June Cleaver meets Claire Huxtable (except I'm not black) meets Cagney and Lacey (just because I thought they were tough as hell when I watched them on TV) meets Daisy Duke meets Wonder Woman. Which is a joke, because most people know me more of a Roseanne kind of person. Minus the factory job and polyester pants. And then, because I do have some semblance of manners, I'll feel obligated to be on my best behavior the whole time and be the best and most unobtrusive house guest there ever was. I won't sleep in the bed, I'll just sleep under it. I'll scrub the bathroom down every day and fold my clothes and zip my suitcase back up every morning, I'll go to bed at 7:30pm and stay in bed until 7:30am, and I won't eat more than an anorexic teenage girl. I'll set lots of other rules to follow (and I'll write them down and carry them in my wallet just to make sure I'm doing everything right). Because really, who the hell wants a sloppy house guest who just makes themselves at home? Not me, that's for damn sure. This is also why I don't allow people from out of town to stay with me, either. Get a room, for chrissakes. I am not going to be your fucking Courtyard at the Marriott.

And then, we will make our way to Chicago where we will stay with other family members and I get to pretend all over again, and blissfully, on Saturday morning, I get to face one of my greatest fears when I hop on a big, old jet airplane to fly back to Richmond (well, let's hope the jet airplane isn't old). My kids are moving back home that weekend and my work schedule isn't workable for me taking Monday off. I shall decompress at the Chicago O'Hare bar bright and early Saturday morning, and then I shall visit the Philadelphia airport bar as well, because the plane that's taking me from Philadelphia to Richmond is kind of small. At least this trip makes geographical sense and not like the time I flew to Atlanta from Richmond, because obviously the most direct route from Richmond to Atlanta is through New Jersey. The last time I flew I almost had a panic attack when we started backing away from the terminal, so I'm not sure how this one is going to go, being post-9/11 and all. I can only hope my TSA fondler is a good looking dyke.

I'm pretty sure Guy #1 still doesn't realize how high my level of maintenance can go. He probably will after this trip. If he's still speaking to me.

Frustrated

I am behind at work. Behind in my work load to the nth power. Okay, not that much, but definitely cubed. And that little bit of algebraic expression has taxed my mathematically retarded brain, so no more math stuff. I'm incredibly frustrated with work because I'm so behind, and when I'm out, no one really helps out. The work just piles up. After missing most of March due to other work stuff off-site, me having the flu, my older daughter being sick and both of my children having appointments scheduled at their various places at least once per week, I didn't have the courage to listen to my voice mails. The little red light on my phone keeps blinking ugly, mean blinks at me, but I just couldn't bear to listen. Because I write every message down and then log it elsewhere, and I work with people who will call me three and four times a day if they don't get an answer. No, I don't work with salesmen, though I could certainly see that correlation occurring. And no, I'm still not telling where I work and what I do. I will continue to be vague about that, because this is the www.place and who knows who is out there?

So yesterday I finally got up the courage to listen to my voice mails. I hadn't checked my voicemail since March 4th, and I really only checked it yesterday because someone told me they tried to call and leave me a message and instead got an automated message that said my voicemail was full.

127 voice mails.

Are you fucking kidding me?

And that's what was there. Who knows how many other people got the voicemail full message. So in about 37 days, because I get calls every day of the fucking week, even though I'm only there Monday through Friday, I figure that that's exactly 3.4 voice mails per day. Except it's not working out like that, because I'm down to about 79 at this point, and I'm only to the 17th of March. So, 127 - 79 equals 48 voice mails in 13 days. That's 3.6 voice mails per day.  Actually, this math isn't working out like I thought it would in my head, which really happens a lot. There's real math, and then there's Stephanie math. Stephanie math is fraught with illogical and nonsensical fantastical mathematical formulas that make complete sense when I am explaining them but then don't hold up when it goes on paper. I was thinking that my math above would work out to be about 11.87 voice mails per day in that 13 day period because that's sure as hell what it feels like when I'm listening to that shit.

I've stopped apologizing to people for not calling back for a month. I've learned if I don't offer an apology, then that puts the burden on them to comment on why I took so long to call back. Being that this is the South, I know that that's kind of tacky, and so most people won't ask why in the hell it took me a month to call them back. And if they do, I will sometimes give them a half-ass apology and tell them I've been out and I'm still catching up. Other times I will ignore the question and just move on with my side of the conversation. Customer service is not my forte, as you can probably tell.

So anyway, I've been behind for quite a while at work. I was last caught up at work in January of 2010. Seriously. I'm not kidding. Here's what happened.

January 2010 - Caught up with monthly workload. But uh-oh, I dropped the divorce bomb in the very end of the month.
February 2010 - My-marriage-is-ending-and-it's-all-my-fault guilt and excessive anxiety.
March 2010 - I need to find a house to move into and this motherfucker needs to give me my money from this house that I've spent nine years of paying half the mortgage. Did I mention there was a domestic disturbance call in the latter part of that month? Yeah, that will certainly mess with your productivity.
April 2010 -  House closing stuff, house moving stuff, house settling stuff, need to get the carpets replaced, need to call a contractor, need to get a plumber over here, need to wait for the cable guy. All of those were days off. Plus I took spring break to pack up the rest of my stuff and see exactly how high my level of hate for someone could actually spike.
May 2010 - Yes! Done with all of that moving stuff and now I can catch up! Yay me! Until May 4th, when another co-worker was reassigned to another unit and I had to pick up half of her workload. And her workload was in even worse shape than my workload. A mandatory holiday and furlough day don't help my situation.
June 2010 - They are going to hire someone to take the reassigned co-workers workload. But this is the guv, that will take at least four months.
July 2010 - I spent this month trying to figure out how to squeeze 60 hours worth of work into 40 hours. Worked late and gave the guv some of my time.
August 2010 - Oops, cheerleading starts and I'm coaching. How did that happen? Sorry, can't work late every fucking day anymore.
September 2010 - Oh, thank god, they've finally hired someone to take on this extra fucking workload that.is.killing.me. Oh, shit, the new co-worker doesn't start until October and then won't be done with training until late December. Absolutely no more working late because the children are with me full time again.
October 2010 - This new and untrained co-worker has most of the work dumped on him, although thanks to me most of it is straight. I don't even care if he gets some messed up stuff. Just get it off of me. Oh, and other co-worker goes out on early maternity leave due to life threatening pregnancy situation. Are you kidding me? Get some of her work. I feel sorry for ME. Plus, I did spend a fair amount of time checking my email and in-box from the dating site I joined.
November 2010 - Still laboring under excessive workload. Older daughter gets sick and I miss time for that, plus missing time for mandatory holidays of Veteran's Day and Thanksgiving.
December 2010 - Both children get sick, although not at the same time. Fuck! Mandatory holidays of Christmas and New Years. The holiday season always gives me something to blame. "How can I get all this done I'm off for all of these freaking holidays?" Have to leave early at least once a week for cheerleading practice and a couple of weeknight games.
January 2011 - Pregnant co-worker returns and I'm glad that baby is healthy because I need to get some of this extra work off of me. But I'm so behind I'm not sure where to start. More holidays. I am named employee of the quarter for the last quarter in 2010, except I know how behind I am with my work and feel guilty that I've just managed to bamboozle everyone and not actually earn it.
February 2010 - Gearing up for work-related non-profit stuff that I do. That's non-work at work, sanctioned by work.
March 2010 - Biggest month of the year for the non-profit. Miss a week of work for that, and then immediately get the flu. God, can you blame me? Miss another week of work for that. Thanks for helping me out while I was out for two weeks, co-workers. Not. Additionally, it seems like one of my children has a doctor's-dentists-orthodontist-psychologist appointment per week.
April 2011 - Older daughter gets sick, and I'm trying to wind up the non-profit stuff which is just really holding me up from doing real work for the people who actually pay me. My desk has a two and a half foot tall stack of shit on it, there are papers scattered on the floor and my office smells like ass and I don't know why. Maybe that's the scent of stale anxiety. I'm overrun by work and another co-worker tells me that my boss wants to take some of my easy work away from me (yay!) but I get more complex work in it's place (huh?) so they can give the easy work to someone who could probably do the complex work but she played the cutesy card. I hate myself for being overly competent and having standards for myself far above those outlined on my yearly evaluation.

Plus the work I've brought home on countless nights and weekends only to have it sit on the kitchen table untouched because I can't bear to actually do the work at home, and the fact that I'm on 24-hour call in one week increments every six weeks. Oh, and I've snuck in and worked on some weekends that I don't have the children and work late twice per month, maybe more if I can get my mom to babysit.

Did I mention I'm taking three and half days off next week for spring break next week?

And a quick list of words I am fucking sick and tired of hearing at work:

Training - I will sit for four to six hours in a classroom setting and learn absolutely nothing from someone who is not qualified to do my job. But they know everything.
Meeting - I will sit for one to three hours and discuss shit that will never change.
Task force - A higher level of a meeting, except you get a fancy report at the end of it.
Strategic planning -  I will sit around for two to three days and discuss shit that we'd like to change, but we know it won't.
Reception -  I will stand around for a period of time and eat niblets of food and discuss how we can really work hard to change things.
Evidence based - Some overly educated asshole has found research and statistics on the internet to prove their point. I bet the end result is that I won't do a goddamn thing differently, but I'll pretend to.
Organizational goals - Ummm, how about not sticking it to your really dedicated people so much?
Stakeholders - People who have a vested interest in whatever the project is, but couldn't do my job.
Human capital - Okay, this one is on the way out but it always pissed me off. I am not human money, so don't treat me like I am.
Merit raise - This hasn't happened since 1994, which I missed out on due to a 'little incident' at the place where I was working at the time.
Cost of living raise - Haven't had one of these since 2005-ish, and won't get one any time soon.
Reimbursement - What's that?
Management - Talking heads.

Oh my god, it's only Wednesday. I need to get laid and get some alcohol in me. And soon.

Blah Blah Blah

That's me tonight. Blah blah blah, because writing in my blog will help me to procrastinate better when it comes to paying my bills. This is more fun, anyway. Day two of the TV ban, and I'm not jonesing quite as bad as I was yesterday. Not quite, but almost. Fuck. I am glad my children will be at their father's house this weekend, because I need some mindless Cake Boss in my head. Since I haven't been able to either make it work at all for part of the month (thanks conference, flu, and strep throat) or make it to work on time or work an entire day (thanks orthodontist, dentist, child psychologist, and after school arts program), I had planned on working late tomorrow night to try to make up for some of that time, and besides, Guy #1 has to work tomorrow night, so I might as well be productive at work, too. But now... I'm thinking I am going to come home and lay my ass right on the sofa with remote in hand. Even if I haven't read that much this week, I've written some, and that counts, right?

Mrs. Second Grade Teacher sent extra homework home with the older daughter today, and gave us the whole weekend to get it done. Yay! So now I can send that homework over to her father's house where it won't get done. And we will get to do tons of homework on Sunday night. Really, I need to figure out where this woman lives and go shit on her front porch. Seriously. With copious amounts of liquor this can happen. Actually, I'm such a lightweight these days it would only take a couple of shots. And I would do it naked, too, because liquor makes me take off my clothes. This would go back to why I'm a lightweight, which is because I've learned that I can't just be randomly getting drunk and undressing. And the whole stretch mark thing.

I am also now annoyed with Mrs. Kindergarten Teacher, because I paid money to get a class photo of the younger daughter's class. Pictures came home this week and the older daughter got her class photo, but nothing for the younger daughter. I very nicely wrote a note to Mrs. Kindergarten Teacher and asked her to send the class photo home this evening in the bookbag. I get home, open the bookbag and nothing. No class photo and no return note. Unorganized bitch. As I was writing the note this morning, I wondered if Mrs. Kindergarten Teacher and Mrs. Second Grade Teacher are friends, but decided they can't be lunch buddies because they go to lunch at different times, unless Mrs. Kindergarten Teacher goes down to the Teacher's Lounge to eat lunch during kindergarten resource time, which is probably pretty close to second grade lunch period. The intricacies of being a bitch to one teacher without it rubbing off on her teacher friends is working out to be somewhat complicated. At any rate, if I don't get a class photo after tomorrow, then I will be moving Mrs. Kindergarten Teacher up on my shit list.

My shit list, you might ask? Ahhhh, the ever-evolving shit list. Currently, here are the standings. If I were a math geek and could keep track of all of my shittiest interactions, I would attach some statistics to this, but I took remedial math all the way through college, so there won't be any statistics. Here goes:

1. Mrs. Second Grade Teacher - have you read my blog?
2. The Ex - just general principle on this one.
3. My former neighbors, but not my Other Mother - imagine me singing the word assholes, because that's how I like to describe them. The Ex and the next door husband had hooked up routers and connected to each other's Limewires a few years ago, and so we could see what each other was downloading. The Ex and I were downloading music and concert videos (U2 at Red Rock is THE BEST!) but the husband next door? Porn, porn and more porn. What a freak show. I came to the conclusion that he.does.not.get.any.ass. which I thought was awesome, because if I were that guy's wife, I wouldn't give him any either. I am NONE TOO HAPPY that The Ex has arranged for the children to have a slumber party as their house tomorrow night because he's got some stupid band thing. Way to arrange your life around your children, dickface. I am confident the band thing will end up being gay and at the end of the night, after a successful set list and a bunch of half-drunk forty-something women panting all over The Ex, he and I will both know his dick is still small and he won't take his cholesterol medication. Okay, that even made me laugh.
4. A couple of people at work I don't like who won't quit sending me emails about shit I haven't taken care of. Really, the more you bug me the longer it's going to take me.
5. The elementary school room mothers for both of my daughters - Would you please stop being so fucking chipper. It's grating.
6. YMCA summer camp people - I am still pissed off from last summer. It's a slow burn.
7. Estranged family members - I suppose they wouldn't be on my shit list if they weren't estranged, now would they?
8. Mrs. Kindergarten Teacher - Either I need a class photo pronto or my eleven dollars back. That eleven dollars can buy me 2.3 gallons of gas, dammit. She might still be mad that I pretty much ran her off the road a couple of months ago, but jesus, lady, learn how to merge. It didn't help that my younger daughter was in the backseat frantically waving at her as I saw her out of the corner of my eye white knuckling her steering wheel as she was forced onto the side of the road.

And there we have it. Today's shit list. I wish I could figure out how to do the little up and down arrows beside each one, like they do on the music charts in magazines and such. Maybe I'll make this a weekly thing. Or maybe not. I'll probably forget in a week, or maybe next week I'll do the Not Shit List.

Trying To Get Unstuck

I have gone back and re-read some of my old posts, looking to perfect them, as usual, and I am struck by some of the negativity and bitterness that I seem to be emanating. I need to find my humor again, and not get so wound up in I-hate-my-ex-husband bullshit and all of that. I need to get unstuck from this blackness I seem to be toting around, which is hard, considering I'm laying out of work for the third day straight on sick leave and the guv people I work with don't seem to understand how my sick leave works (old school, baby, which is I call in sick, and then I use my sick leave in eight hour increments without needing to report to other guv people because I have 800-plus hours of sick leave, but whatever) and also considering I'm watching something on TV about the black plague (should that be capitalized?) because I just don't want to watch Beverly Hills, 90210 again. Holy god, I must be sick if I can't bring myself to watch that. I was sick enough on Tuesday that I let my older daughter watch two full hours of The Real Housewives of Orange County, but I justified that to myself by watching it with her and then explaining that's not a very nice way to act. I also justified that by saying to myself that at least it wasn't the Bad Girls Club, or whatever that show about Hustler-Beaver wannabes is.

I need to enjoy that spring is upon us, spring is sprung and my ornamental cherry tree is blooming, and my dogwoods will be blooming and I'll finally know what color the blossoms are, since they had already bloomed and dropped their blossoms when I moved in last year. I need to be grateful that I don't have to pay taxes after all, and that I have sick leave to begin with. I need to be grateful that I have food in cabinet and food in the refrigerator, and that I have health insurance. I should be grateful that after a pseudo-start to my diet, this stuff I have seems to have knocked some weight off of me. Of course, driving my children around with an empty plastic grocery bag on my lap in case I puke is not quite the way I pictured my diet going, but I decided I would just pretend I'm bulimic and that kind of made it all better. Except I didn't binge beforehand because the thought of food makes me want to puke in and of itself. Maybe I should pretend I'm anorexic, then. I know if I drink any more Gatorade I'm going to die. I didn't like Gatorade to begin with - I like it even less now.

I need to quit whining and bitching and just get my ass unstuck and find my funny again.

More Stupid Stuff In My Head

Procrastinating about going to sleep, because, well, if I don't go to sleep then I won't have to get up in the morning and then I won't have to do all that shit that I need to do tomorrow. Like pack a bag to go to a conference and send my children off to my mother's for the night. But I'm only staying one night because the thought of being away from my children on school nights is giving me anxiety. I feel like this routine I've worked so hard to perfect since late August will be totally blown out of the water with if they spend more than one night with my mother. Or anyone for that matter. I'm totally fine with them going anywhere on the weekends, but week nights? School nights? I think not. I also think the separation anxiety I am having from being away for one school night is exacerbated by thinking they will have separation anxiety from me, although, I know realistically that's not it. What's really going on in my head is that I feel like their father has already fallen down on so many promises that if I am not there, they might worry I'm crapping out on them, too.

Taxes. How the FUCK did I go from being married and getting THOUSANDS of dollars back each year at tax time to owing the feds? How did that happen? I have six months of mortgage interest to claim, one child, daycare expenses, medical expenses, sales tax, anything my mother could find to itemize and I STILL OWE????? I am so incredibly pissed at myself for agreeing to let The Ex claim our younger daughter that it's not even funny. Greedy bastard. I guess that's the big fuck you I get for agreeing to him not paying child support, though in his defense (why do I even bother to defend him?) he does pay the younger daughter's child care and some other lightweight kind of stuff. But I'm still mad at myself. I suppose that's what ten years of being mistreated, harassed, stalked and condescended to will do to a person's willpower. I hope he catches gonorrhea.

My mother finished up the taxes yesterday and I signed the paperwork and was getting ready to slide the form in the envelope, seal it up and mail that puppy off. My mother says, "Um, you need to put a check in with that." I was like, "What?" She said I need to mail a check in with what I owe in with the actual tax filings. Huh? That is not how that was working in my head. In my head, I was going to mail the filing in, the guv people were going to review it for accuracy and mail me a bill for what I owed. I was then going to call the 1-800 number on the bill and work out a payment plan with the guv. Kind of like my student loans. I mean, they certainly didn't expect me to pay in full upon my college graduation. Why would taxes be any different? But apparently it is. So fuck again. I just won't mail that one in right now. We're not to the deadline anyway. But I did change my withholdings today. I changed from six exemptions to five, because I've figured in order to have money to feed my children, I'll have to crawl it back each year by one. I don't even know how I ended up with six exemptions to begin with, because I got a copy of my withholding form last week at work that I filled out back in 2005 after the younger daughter was born, and all of the numbers were right. That's the guv for you. Funny math and all where none of it adds up right on one form and all of it adds up right on another form and the two forms don't match when it's time to make the forms match.

I put a profile pic on my blog. It always pisses me off to read a book and I flip to the back cover to see what the author looks like and there's no picture. Hello, I want to know what you look like. Don't be recluse. I guess I need to do that, too. So until I change my mind, freak out and take the picture off, which might be tomorrow, here's what I look like, for that one person who reads my blog who might not actually know me personally.

The suspected East Coast Rapist has been caught. I got a little panicky last week after I saw one of the giant electronic billboards on I-95 with the profile up and I came home and looked it up on the web. I'm still on my news boycott, so I don't know much of what's going on if someone doesn't tell me or I don't see it on facebook. But panicky... I came home and immediately checked all of my windows, because my bedroom windows are low enough that when my children locked me out of my bedroom this past weekend, I ran around the back of the house with a screwdriver, popped the screen off and hoisted my younger daughter through the window to run and open Mommy's bedroom door. Thank god the window itself was already open because that would have required some additional effort on my part. But dropping my child in through the window... I didn't even have to hoist her up on my shoulders, I just lifted her up and dropped her in because the window is that low to the ground. I could have climbed in myself, but the neighbors were in their yard and I didn't want anyone to see how that worked. Of course, if the morons who lived in this house before me hadn't put an actual exterior door knob and locking mechanism on the master bedroom door, this would not have been an issue. My children already know simple lock picking, but we haven't gotten to the exterior locks yet. I was waiting until middle school to teach them about the tumblers.

But after I read about this East Coast Rapist, and I knew that however many victims they know about can probably be multiplied by two or three for the real count, I got a little panicky and rushed around and checked all of my doors and locks. Even though the chances were slim he would select my house, I know that there's another one right around the corner. Maybe literally, but I hope not. Kind of like when people get all riled up about school safety and scanning ID's of people going into the schools and oh my god, it could be a sex offender. Yeah, it could be. Probably won't be, but it could be. I always tell people that they don't really need to worry about a registered sex offender trying to get into a school because there's probably already one with full access to the school WHO HASN'T BEEN CAUGHT YET. But the stay-at-home moms and administrators never really like to hear that and their faces get all tight and squinchy when I say that. That's okay. I know it's true. Jut like all of the parents like to say there are no gangs in Midlothian. Sure. Maybe not like what you see on Gangland, but if there are no gangs in Midlothian, then who put the Gangster Disciple graffiti on the big Electric Company substation box across the street from the fancy new hospital with the bell tower and the marble lobby? Oh, wait, I forgot. GD stands for Growth and Development. My mistake.

And now, I've managed to waste an hour. Time to go pack up for this shindig tomorrow and try to make it through til Friday, when Guy #1 will come over and help me paint the kitchen, which was my big weekend project, except I'm so tired of running around doing shit for cheerleading that I really just kind of want a weekend of nothingness, interrupted only by the cheerleading and basketball banquet on Saturday afternoon that I need to finish making the Pie Sale signs for and bake some desserts. But if I go the painting route, which I won't because I just made up my mind I won't, I'm thinking I can paint and he can sit and watch because I'm kind of anal retentive about painting. Or maybe we'll just hop in the sack at three in the afternoon and see what shakes out. Holla!

The Drama of Cheerleading

When my daughters first said last summer that they wanted to do cheerleading for their fall activity, I had no idea exactly how much of an undertaking this would be. I didn't plan on being a coach, I didn't plan on spending two nights per week during the summer at cheerleading practice and for some stupid reason, I just didn't even think about the fact that I would spending three plus hours every Saturday at a football field. I also didn't know that basketball season would see me driving to three separate games every weekend for two months. I didn't know that little girls could have so much drama to them. Well, okay, I knew that part. But I didn't know about the whole social aspect to it, the alpha female jockeying that my older daughter would engage in, and that there was a whole other social game being played by the moms, the coaches and the cheer director. I just thought we would all go out there, whether it be at practice or at the games, do what we had to do, either as coaches or parents, and that would be that.

I forgot that any time you have four or more women together the possibility for drama is increased exponentially. Actually drama can happen if you have the wrong mix of two women together, as witnessed by every reality show since the early 90's. Now, I feel like I'm fairly intelligent. However, there are just some social nuances that I am completely oblivious to, and the drama created by some of the women in this cheerleading organization has been one of them, at least until basketball season. I've been oblivious to this kind of stuff  in my career and personal life as well, and I'm always somewhat astounded that all of this drama is going on. Now, as a disclaimer, don't get me wrong. I've started plenty of my own drama and sucked many other people into it, but I find that as I get older and more mature, it's largely just bullshit that isn't that enjoyable and takes my focus away from my kids or whatever the job at hand is. Like my job. But that's only if we were talking about work, and I'm not.

Since we've moved into basketball season and I'm not coaching, I've had the opportunity to really sit back and watch the dynamics of all of these women. I think the reason I didn't notice any of this during football season was that I just didn't have time. Too tied up with trying to figure out what the fuck I was doing and which little cheerleader had their skirt twisted around the wrong way. So here are the women I've been dealing with and assiduously watching, though not in that creepy stalker kind of way:

The older daughter's coach - I first got to know this woman during football practice. Imagine my surprise (consternation?) to find out she is the older sister of The Ex's best friend, so she's known the bastard longer than I have. Hmmm, there's a mole on the team. That was my first impression, so I was very careful about what I said to her. But over the months we've developed a loose kind of friendship, all of it revolving around cheerleading and I've gotten the impression that she's about as unimpressed with The Ex as I am. She and The Ex were voted in by the association as co-chairs of the Ways and Means Committee, and now he's giving her the run-around about some fundraising stuff. I am glad that he's spreading the joy of his bullshit around. I feel vilified when she bitches about him.

The older daughter's team mom/assistant coach - This is also the mother of my older daughter's best friend, and she and I are good. She takes no shit off of anyone and doesn't mind the drama queen that is my older daughter.

The younger daughter's coach - This woman was my assistant coach during football season, but then said she would be the coach for basketball.  Knock.Yourself.Out is what I told her, because I needed a break and was relieved that someone else was willing to step up to the plate. I've since realized that this woman can stir up shit like no one's business, and I probably disappointed her when I didn't fight and argue over who was going to be the coach for basketball season. She's stirred up shit with the basketball director, the older daughter's coach, one of the mothers of the cheerleading squad, the athletic association in general, and is probably going to work on the new cheer director and the football director. I've come to the conclusion that most people who engage in such a high level of shit stirring generally have miserable lives. The fact that this woman's daughter still poops in her pants kind of drives that point home. And yeah, the daughter will be six this year. I really feel more sorry for the daughter than for anyone else. But whatever, I've learned to give this woman wide berth and make no comments about anyone around her.

The younger daughter's assistant coach - She stepped up in basketball season and then shared that she was a cheerleader in high school. Uh, why the fuck didn't you step up in football season then? She has taught the girls some cute cheers and knows all of the movements, but I think her personality is too gentle and kind for a complete bitch like me to ever really like her completely. For some reason I felt like she was extra soft and sensitive with the girls to make up for the fact that I was a complete drill sergeant with them. "Peanut butter, jelly, spppppprrrrreeeeeaaaaddddd out!!!!" versus me yelling, "Stop talking! Spread out! You don't need to be touching each other!" Whatever. They knew how to stand and walk in a straight line (kind of) and some level of cheer etiquette by the time they got to her. Boot camp always the worst part, but it's the part you remember the best.

The outgoing (or outgone) cheer director - This woman makes me look like an organizational genius. Which I am and all, but really. My younger daughter could run a tighter show than this woman. And stop sending me Flicker invites, or whatever they are. I don't want to join to look at pictures of your daughter.

The incoming cheer director - I still haven't felt this woman out yet. She recently sent me an invite on facebook and I accepted, after actually giving it some thought, because my first instinct was that she wanted to spy on my life. But then I wasn't quite sure if there would be repercussions for my daughters if I ignored the friend request, so I went back through my comments and deleted a few of them regarding cheerleading because in retrospect they seemed a little catty. I then went through the comments on the older daughter's coach's facebook and her comments about cheerleading were way worse and I felt better, especially when the older daughter's coach didn't delete the comments on her page before accepting this woman's friend request. facebook can really complicate some shit, but I keep going back obsessively.

The clique-y moms - I am not in this group, because I haven't been invited and if I were (it's always "if I were", right?) I wouldn't want to because I feel like this group is a little too gossipy and I'm just not involved with the whole athletic organization to gossip. When it comes to gossip, I'm a taker and not much of a giver. I consider this to be me having finally refined the whole gossiping thing. When I say I'm a taker, I'll listen to anything and make sympathetic noises. But I don't put much out, unless it's something I wouldn't mind saying to that person's face. So about the gossip, I have a few people (and none of them affiliated with this athletic organization) that I will get down and dirty with, because those are the people that I can trust to either not repeat what I've said or at least not attribute it to me. And my skill at this, yep, this is how I know so much of what's going on in my workplace. Making sympathetic noises and mmmm-hmmmm noises is what it's all about. I've determined that this skill alone would take me at least halfway through a reality TV show. Skillz, baby, skillz.

So we have three championship games tomorrow and the girls are cheering at two of them. Lunch will be served in between the games and I plan on sneaking the three kids I am in charge of (two of mine plus one more) outside after lunch and very sneakily giving them some Coke as a bribe to behave and cheer nicely for the second game, too. We have our banquet next weekend and cheerleading will be over. I bitch about it incessantly, but for real, I've really enjoyed the whole thing. Even if my daughters don't do cheerleading next year, I'll be doing the whole athletic association thing and dragging them along with me to the games.

Freakshow of the Day: Another Trifecta

Sometimes, there's nothing unusual on craigslist, just the normal tripe, which really isn't that interesting. And then other times... I hit the jackpot. Another trifecta tonight.

Looking for a females make friend with between 30 to 40 with some cultural heritage with the exception of American. A person who like and respect other cultures, bilingual, outdoor enthusiast and is bored like me. No stupid girls or spam please….

This post was titled "Females hipanic, indian, asian, cuban except american". Okay, if that's what this guy needs, then he should probably move to South American, the Caribbean, India, Asia, somewhere like that. In fact, he should join the military and they might just send him there for free. If he doesn't end up in one of those exotic locales, he'll certainly end up in Germany or the Middle East, where he can develop an affinity for Arabic women. But he's not going to do that, because that would probably require he do some work. Instead, he's just going to be lazy and put himself out there on craigslist and wait for the women to come to him. And really, he's not looking for a woman who is truly Hispanic, Indian, Asian or Cuban, he's looking for an American woman who is perpetrating to be something else because he's had such bad luck with American women and because he's just a typical lazy jackass American man who likes to drink beer and look at porn. Wait, this could be The Ex. Nah, can't be. He's too much of a close-minded asshole for this.

I'm SWM looking for a SWF that is looking for a great guy. I'm 5'9", dark blonde hair, blue eyes. I'm not the type of guy that is going to be all over you, and have to know where you are at all times. I'm not a control freak. I like my independence just as much as you do. I have my self together. I have my own vehicle, I have a job, and I have my own house. I have a life that I like living, and I'm just looking for someone to share it with. I can't tell you what type of person that I am because there is no way to define it. I have a very wide range of likes and dislikes. If you are interested in getting to know a really unique and very caring guy, then email me. I could go on and tell you how I treat women, but all they are are just words. I like to let my actions do the talking. What am I looking for? Someone who will care for me as much as I will them. Someone who is attractive in my eyes. Good conversation. The most physical things that can draw me in are beautiful eyes, and a smile that can light up a room. Please send a picture so that I know who I am addressing. I will send you back a picture in return. Also, please put the phrase "Just A Dream" in the subject line so that I know you are not a bot. Thanks. PS - Don't be afraid to email me if you have a child. I love kids.

And what we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a child molester. Seriously, what man without kids seeks out women with kids? The child molesting type, that's who. I was going to cut out all of the shit in the middle of the ad, but I thought that would detract from the whole package that is this child molester. Watch out, girls, this guy will be your best friend. He'll suck you right in, love you, love your kids, show up to do yard work for you, fix stuff around your house, will want to do weekend daytime dates with you so the kids can come along, will wine you and dine you, will offer to babysit, become your dream man, so on and so on. It's called grooming, and he's off to a good start.

Of course I saved the best for last.

Titled "How much do you like your dog??"  The title says it all babe... I want to watch and play with you as you play with your best friend...Yes this is real, for those of you that know what I'm talking about get back to me?

First of all, I feel lucky to have stumbled across this one, because it's ripe for the flagging. I mean, are you fucking kidding me? A girl and her best friend? Ohhhhhhh myyyyyy godddddd, that is so disgusting. So this jackass wants a threesome with eight legs. Yeah, work that out in your head. I rock second grade math! I only have to use my fingers to subtract half the time! Hell yeah! I almost can't even believe this got posted, but then I wonder if it's some kind of joke posting from an afternoon of football drinking gone awry in the waning night that is Sunday. I feel like this might have originated in a dorm room and it's all about the laughs and seeing if you can get an action picture out of whatever sorry ass woman responds or seeing how far you can take this thing before you just get grossed out and insist to your dorm buddies and suite mates that chickening out on a girl and her dog isn't being a pussy, it's being grossed out and they just need to shut the fuck up or call her themselves.

Shit talking amongst friends is a bitch. It's more of a bitch than date-shit talking, because you can remove the date person from your life if that shit talking goes bad. It's harder to eliminate your friends from your life if the shit talking goes bad, because they just keep popping up randomly to remind you of your shit talking epic failure or to engage you in with a new topic (and that person would generally be me). Kind of like a buddy of mine at work who brings his girlfriend's lunch bag to work. It's one of those neoprene kind of lunch bags, except it's super cute and obviously designed with a girl in mind, considering the amount of pink on it and the fact that it looks like, well, a purse. The look that he gives me when I stroll into his office and see the lunch bag, and then make the inevitable comment, "I see you brought your purse to work today. Nice." And then I duck out of his office real quick-like, once the cursing has begun, and if I'm feeling extra cocky and full of caffeine, I'll make that one last comment. Because like all cocky shit talkers, I need to get the last word in. Getting the last word in is like shit talking crack, what you really talk shit for to begin with. So I might get the last word in, and if the response is either "Fuck you" or "Shut the fuck up", then I know I've won. No further conversation necessary. And I'll say, having lost my share of shit talking battles, having to say either of those phrases is physically and psychologically difficult, as it's the verbal equivalent of throwing in the towel. Either way, both parties are probably going to laugh, one sheepishly and the other confidently. There can only be one winner when it comes to shit talking. So regarding the guy who wants a bestiality-tinged threesome, either this is one sick dude, or this is some shit talking that's getting ready to go awry but he can't cry uncle yet.

Slow Burns

I decided when I started this blog, I wasn't going to spend a lot of time blathering on about politics and religion and news-item types of shit. Quite frankly, I can blather on about my own stupid shit without needing to resort to that kind of material. Other than my craigslist material, I've been fairly true to my word about not getting all involved in that. But today, I just have to say this: mad, mad, mad props to Karen Owens, the brilliant author of the Duke Fuck List. A girl after my own heart. And mad props to my buddy at work for showing it to me, because I don't watch the news, read any news shit online anymore, no nothing. I find it's actually easier to be totally ignorant because there's not much of anything good out there. I mean, I'm not totally ignorant altogether, but I just need a break from all that stuff every once in a while. So I have come to rely upon my friends to get the news out to me or for it to come out on facebook.

I read the DFL, written by a girl who is DTF (yes!) this afternoon. The damn thing is so big I could only get Subjects 8 through 12 to load, but damn. Can I go to Duke? Is it too late for me? I think she slept with 12 guys between her sophomore and senior years of college, which would be about four guys per year on average. Except from the little bit I read it seemed like it happened much closer together, like all 12 in one year or something. Whatever. I don't care, because here's a girl who is out to have some fun and tell a few friends about it, because some of us girls like to brag about our conquests. I would be one of them, if I had any conquests to brag about. But again, I've put no effort into making this happen, so I can only blame my own lazy ass. 

So my girl Karen does her thesis and then sent it to a few friends to show them, because she's a writer at heart and wants to show them her shit and because she obviously put a lot of time and effort into her thesis. This is what she labored over, what she spent years researching. My god, can I be her research assistant? Karen, are you hiring? I might be able to corner the market on 30 and 40-something divorced guys for you. But uh-oh, her friends thought it was so awesome they forwarded it. From there, exponential forwarding. And now, the national media. It has, if you will, gone viral. In the most viral of viral senses. Boom! The morality of the media and the country at large is bearing down on Karen. Karen, sweetheart, stand strong. Everyone wants those kinds of hookups, at least with some of your subjects, like the guy who was rated at 12/10. Hell yeah!

But now there's discussion of legal problems, being sued because I assume that some of those guys who didn't score so well on those handy-dandy graphs are kind of upset, because no man wants it known that he sucks at THAT. Most of them can't even admit it to themselves, although we women know. We know, and we tell each other. Hence, the thesis. And here's where Karen went wrong. It's totally cool to screw all those guys; I'm fine with that. But you have to keep your subjects anonymous. No pics, no names, no identifying features. Just go with Subject 4, Subject 9, so on and so forth.

I think I've done a pretty good job at keeping my blog fairly anonymous. I haven't told any of my co-workers, not because I discuss work in great detail, but because I don't want this to become the water cooler discussion of the day, or have people at work try to engage me in conversations in hopes that I'll write about it later on. I hope that I can't be swayed that easily. I haven't told anyone in my family, other than my cool aunt, because no one else would get it. My mother would be mortified, and god only knows what the rest of them would say. My friends whom I trust know about it, and then whomever else has stumbled across it on the web or the few sites I'm linked at. I got linked on this Russian site last week and had a pretty good amount of hits off of that one. I checked out the site and I think it might have been soft porn. I don't know; I can't read Russian. I think it goes unsaid that I obviously haven't told The Ex or any of his friends.

I also haven't provided any names. I haven't named The Ex, the children, my family, my job, my bosses or any of that. I've mentioned where I grew up and where I live now, and the first half of my first name. That's it. No more than that. This is for two reasons: to make some kind of an attempt at remaining anonymous, and because I don't want any names polluting my blog. I want the people in my blog to read about who is in my life and be able to form their own opinions. Sometimes that's hard to do if we name names, because everyone's got memories or baggage attached to names. Read about my unnamed children, and maybe they will become your children too, or at least just like your children. Maybe my mom is your mom, and my Mothbrain - well, you have a Mothbrain just like her. As for The Ex, hey, ya'll can have his ass. Just take him, take that motherfucker right out of my life. Send me your address and I'll arrange to have him show up. I'm not kidding.

My future conquests? Yeah, they won't be named either. In fact, they might not even be discussed, especially if they know about my blog, and they will probably not be discussed while I am deciding if I like them enough to keep them around. If I don't like them enough to keep them around (in my bed), then I'll have at it. But no names, because that's not cool. They will be named after whatever exploit I will use to describe them. Hence rugburn guy, lazy fucker, smacked my ass guy, electric fence guy, Army barracks guy, etc. I'll respect them enough to keep them anonymous, because I can respect the hookup. Even if it was just a hookup, it was two people liking each other enough to arrange to have their genitals touch. Maybe it was two people liking each other enough to have their genitals touch a lot. Maybe it went beyond genital touching and turned into heart touching. Who knows?

On the surface, I'd love for my blog to go viral. Who the hell doesn't want everyone in the English speaking world fawning all over their shit? And yeah, I know that criticism will come with that, but you have to take the bad with the good. For real, though, going viral is the equivalent of a flash fire. It's an internet flash fire that usually ends up with the writer self-combusting. And then it's on to the next flash fire, the next viral sensation. So going viral really isn't a good thing. I want to be a slow burn. The kind of slow burn that you see in peat fires, the fires that burn for years and decades and that you just can't get rid of, and the fires that everyone knows about and accept because that's just how life is. That's what I want to be, because that kind of writing is how you make it out there. You hang in there, through the good times and the craigslist, you go with what you've got and sometimes you make up shit when you don't have much. But you stay.

Actually, I think that's the kind of hookup I want, too. The kind that's not a hit-it-and-quit-it, but a long slow burn that just keeps on burning. The hookup that turns into something more because of the smolder, the passion, the ignition.

Slow burns = good stuff. Karen, thanks for teaching me a lesson in all of this. I owe you one, and will raise a glass to you tomorrow night at the bachelorette party I'm going to, right before I get off of my lazy ass and work on a conquest.

Jimmy Covers

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.