Liz's Fun Time Happy Hour

Waiting for magic...

2012-01-22T23:31:00.002-06:00

I have been out of the hotel and back in the house for just about a month now, and while some progress is made every day, I have to say that while progress is made most days, I just keep waiting for some magical wizard to come along and wave his magical wand and everything will suddenly be unpacked and where it needs to be... But I'm not 5, and so I know that wizard is a work of fiction and won't be coming to my door any time soon.

So I continue another grand excavation of the nonsense, trying to figure out why half of it was ever acquired and retained in the first place. Hauling boxes of books up three flights of stairs isn't enjoyable either.

And while I do still have a gaping hole in the ceiling of my breakfast room, the leak hasn't shown up again, so I haven't had another midnight emergency clean-up, and I'm hoping the plumbers will be out to redo the pipes in the next week or two, and then my contractor can come and close up the ceiling shortly thereafter, so I am optimistic and looking forward to the day when it is all settled and back to normal!

Its a process.

Here it is! The long awaited Vegas spectacular(-ish)

2012-01-09T01:55:00.001-06:00

(This is going to get fairly long and complex... maybe even a little rant-y, so go potty, grab a drink and come back to me when you're ready for a novella on these shenanigans.)

Ready?

Really? Last chance to go take a lap before we get this cookin' with gas.

Ok... So the last trip to Vegas was just over the top and ridiculous, and frankly the bar was set obscenely high. This trip did not live up to its predecessor, but like any respectable Vegas trip was still a pretty damn good time... Especially considering that we are in a recession, and the lifestyle experienced during this trip is not something experienced by 99% of folks even during the best of times.

First off, please let me say, that given my personal budgetary constraints, this trip is one of those magical events that takes years of careful planning. From my perspective, it is never taken lightly and critical decision making processes are crucial.

Let's begin with a little backstory so you know how all of this works:

I have a wealthy cousin who regularly entertains clients in Vegas, the combination of his wealth and regular visits to Vegas with clients means that when he deems me worthy of the table scraps of what he considers a throw-away Vegas weekend, I know going in that it is going to be one of those few rare rockstar-style events in my life. (I should note that not all of the cousins in the family get those throw-away weekends of VIP awesomeness, I get it because I am awesome, hilarious, and intelligent enough to keep the wit coming even after we're several drinks in... Also because I am untethered by a spouse or children, and I have friends who have a similar lifestyle and mindset.)

So the last time we went to Sin City, I had no idea what I was in for. I had no concept of what this trip entailed, or how incredible it would be. I was simply told, "Hey, you want to go to Vegas? Grab a fun friend. Touch base with me to pick a weekend. You and your friend will need to purchase your airfare and either be on the same flight as I am, or land before me, because once I get there, this show is getting on the road."

I did exactly as I was told. I grabbed the one friend who I knew would be up for anything, my bestie since college, The Admiral, and we got it all set up. --Now there are many reasons that The Admiral is my best friend, and these are coincidentally are some of the same reasons that I knew she was going to be the perfect selection for this new adventure... For starters, the girl is smart, but not just in a bookish way. She is book smart, witty, quick as a whip, and socially aware. She is adaptable and generally ready for anything, because like me, she usually has to plan for the worst case scenario. Also, girl can party. There was no question that she was going to be an all-around, homerun-hitting all-star on this trip. NONE. But that first trip was more than three years ago... She now has a husband and a child, so she was not as readily available this time around.

We got there, we had an over-the-top obscenely good time. We rode around the strip in limousines, we shopped, we gambled, we ate gourmet meals, we drank with reckless abandon, we lounged by the pool, we were massaged by masters of the trade, we danced, we laughed until we cried, and then we got up and did it all over again the next day. And again the day after that... And when it came time to rejoin reality, we became indignant at the idea of having to wait in line at the airport because we'd had VIP access to everything and that level of treatment goes to your head remarkably fast.

Knowing the intense awesomeness of what had transpired, when my cousin asked me if I was ready to go back I leaped at the opportunity and began sorting through suitable travel companions to make this trip as awesome as the first... It was a remarkably short list, made ever shorter by friends who neglected to call me back to take me up on the offer, or declined on the basis that they were in relationships and were uncomfortable going on a trip to the city of sin that was bankrolled by a man that they weren't dating. That list was dwindling to a tiny little handful of elite candidates. Those candidates were carefully vetted on multiple salient criteria until only one remained.

It was a girl that I had worked with during my poorly-chronicled adventures in the Deep South. She was adorable and sweet, but with an unconventional wild streak, and she had gotten divorced from her douche nozzle husband only a few months ago, so by my calculations she was pretty much fully primed for a wild weekend in Vegas. I gave her the primer for this trip, telling her that copious amounts of alcohol were the status quo, so if she wasn't already drinking regularly to get her liver ready for the abuse it was about to take, she needed to train up. I told her to bring clothes suitable for running around in the casinos during the day, and hot party clothes for gourmet dinners and ass-shakin' in the clubs at night. I recounted detailed stories of the previous Vegas trip so she would know what to expect... And I told her in no uncertain terms that there were certainly expectations that needed to be met. She agreed to come in hot and heavy and ready for action. (I should note that the expectations were pretty low. Drink like a fish, flirt harmlessly with the guy footing the bill, and have a great time living like a rockstar.)

... And then we got down to the day before the trip.

I touched base with her to make sure she was really ready, and gauging her excitement level from our phone conversation, she seemed to be chomping at the bit. She was packed and ready to catch her plane and meet us in Vegas.

So I drove to the airport to meet up with my cousin. Our flight was canceled so we were bumped to the next direct flight. In addition to giving me a feeling of impending doom, this delay gave us a few hours to kill and we were arriving a couple hours later than initially planned, but in the grand scheme of things it was a minor adjustment. Her flight went off as scheduled, so she was going to be waiting for us to arrive for about an hour and a half... A really small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things when you know what this weekend really entails. So during our downtime, I gave my cousin the basics on my friend. So far so good.

So we caught our later flight, and sat behind a bachelorette party of girls who thought they belonged on some reality show about spoiled housewives who complain about how horrible their lives of leisure really are... There was an obnoxious dude who hung out in the aisle hitting on all of them during the whole flight while mentioning his 4 children. Basically, the guy had no game, and no chance, but he was trying anyway and while I would've been really annoyed under other circumstances, I was headed to Vegas, and nothing was going to rain on my parade.

We landed, collected our luggage, I found my friend, made introductions, and we found our limo driver who was already waiting for us. Everybody was all smiles and ready for action.

We arrived at our fancy hotel, and checked into the penthouse suite. Keep in mind that this is probably a $2000 a night suite in a brand new NINE BILLION dollar hotel and casino. This is one of those ridiculously posh rooms that you see on travel channel shows featuring the best of the best. The curtains, the TVs, the lighting, the temperature, the sound systems, hell... even housekeeping and other hotel services were all controllable from a little bedside touch panel. And that's not mentioning the fabulous appointments of the bathrooms, or the actual beds. (During the trip, I think I actually described the bed as being like, "...sleeping on a cloud, while being softly serenaded by choirs of sweet cherubs, as unicorns frolic in the meadows..." (Yeah, it was that good... But we've got a lot of ground to cover, so enough about the room and the beds!)

So we quickly changed clothes and went down to dinner at an Asian-fusion restaurant in the hotel. We had a couple of mojitos, and dined with a little friendly getting-to-know-you chatter, with me as a helpful facilitator during any lulls in the conversation, and everything was proceeding exactly as it should.

And then we went out to one of the ridiculously-long-line-ridden hot nightclubs of the moment, where we were rapidly escorted directly around the long line to the VIP area for bottle service and the royal treatment... This is roughly where things started to go off the rails a little bit.

We were seated in a great little VIP nook with two other tables, and initially we were the only VIPs in this particular little section in the otherwise packed club, but that wasn't to last. We got situated with our table, our cursory alcohol in obscene quantities for a three person party, and we chatted a bit while techno-heavy club music pounded around us. The club was already pretty full considering we had gotten such a late start, but since we were alone in the VIP nook so far, we had personal security escorts to the ladies room which my friend needed to use roughly every 10 minutes, much to my annoyance, since she seemed incapable of going alone even with the benefit of the security escort... But again, I tried not to be too put out, because it was her first time there, and her first night, and after all, I was in Vegas, what was an extra trip or two to the restroom when everything else was so awesome.

Throughout the night, the trips to the restroom got a little ridiculous though, seeing as my friend was scarcely drinking at all, meanwhile my cousin and I were both knocking back drinks and doing the shots placed in front of us like we were had just spent a week lost in the Mojave. Of course, as far as my friend was concerned, she was nursing her one drink like she could only get grey goose on war ration coupons and any time there was a shot put in front of her, she not-so-subtly dumped it into the cocktail she had barely put a dent in and proceeded to ignore the task of consuming it like it was her job. (Really, that was her only job during this trip... Drink like a fish and flirt a little bit with the guy who is footing the bill. That's it, and neither one was done.) It should further be noted that she wasn't abstaining because she doesn't drink, I've seen this girl put it away and need to be carried home... She just wasn't drinking.

My cousin tried to loosen things up by periodically throwing bottle-service chocolates at us, aiming either for our mouths or cleavage, (aim was debatable). And that provided a few laughs, as did the giant electronic glow sticks that were distributed into the crowd by the club staff... And the rest of our laughs came at the expense of the other two parties who were seated on either side of us now in our little nook.

To the left was a group of about 7 twenty-something European men who had NO GAME WHATSOEVER, (more on that in a moment,) and to the right was a group of roughly 5 standard American douches who CLEARLY were in over their heads financially when it came to the commitment involved with being in VIP. (This was indicated by lower-level alcohol selections on their table, the fact that they tore through them, and then sat with a dry table, periodically passing out on the bench seating, before stiffing the waitress... And the fact that at one point they actually told my cousin that they were strapped for cash just to get the table and tried begging him to keep them supplied with alcohol.) The European contingent tried using the VIP seating to their advantage, as is customary for a grouping of men in VIP... So they lured in a bevvy of hoochies and club rats with the promise of a free drink. They danced with the girls and apparently within about 15 minutes of hooking them in, directly asked for blowjobs and other sexual favors... Not even the Vegas club rats were falling for that nonsense, so the ladies cycled in and out fairly rapidly with their free drinks and that put a rather sizable dent in their limited table service supply, so they were out fairly quickly as well. (I should note that at some point during all of this, it was noted in our conversation over the thumping club music that it takes genuine effort to get arrested in Vegas... For real. You have to try hard to end up being arrested... This isn't so important now, but it becomes important later.)

After they were through, a gentleman in early fifties and his twenty-something companion in a sequined getup were seated in their place... They alternated between sucking face, and her intensely ignoring him while perusing the club, presumably for more age-appropriate companionship. But by the time they were seated, we were winding our party down. My cousin and I were drunk and my friend had done little more than make unnecessary bathroom runs watch the ice in her drink melt, so I assume she was still sober.

We headed back up to the suite with our glow sticks and our inebriation and called it a night. I had a long steam in my fancy shower, and crawled into the cloud bed to sleep it off until morning.

Saturday morning rolled around, and I was a little hungover, but not unbearably so... and after a fantastic room-service breakfast in the cloud bed, we decided to do a little shopping since my friend, (henceforth to be known as the wet blanket,) determined that the clothes she brought were not sufficient for the level of party we had going on... This despite my directly telling her what she needed to bring. So we dressed, got in a limo, and headed out to the forum shops at Cesar's Palace to see what we could find. She spent more money than she wanted to (and she wasn't shy about letting me know it) on a dress and shoes that were club-appropriate, --a completely avoidable expense if she had bothered to listen to me when I had told her in advance what she needed to pack... Once that was done, we met up with my cousin for a late lunch at KGB where I had what was probably the single most delicious burger I've ever had, even though I could only eat half of it. We walked around on the strip for a little bit, so that the wet blanket could get a feel for the real grit of the Vegas strip. (I was hoping that this might inspire a little gratitude by showing her just how good we really had it on this trip... As compared to a trip spent playing the nickel slots eating bad 4.99 rib-eye at the cheapest all you can eat buffet we can find, while constantly having flyers for hookers and a free lapdance at the Spearmint Rhino thrust at us from all directions as we walk to and from a tiny single room at a Holiday Inn... You know, just for the sake of argument.)

So we got back to the hotel, put away our shopping bags and started planning our evening and had a quick little nap. Dinner was to be at Shibuya at the MGM Grand. (Keep in mind, the EPIC trip to Vegas we had the last time, we stayed at the MGM, and the casino host who handles my cousin for the MGM took a shine to me, so any venture over to the MGM meant we would be seeing said casino host, who still has the hots for me.) Dinner consisted of a 7 course gourmet sushi and Kobe beef tasting menu that was just insanely good... I would try to explain it course by course, but it was all just melt in your mouth little bites of heaven that defy description.

After dinner, we went to Studio 54 and were seated in an odd little setup in the VIP section that was away from all of the other tables and right ON the dance floor and roped off from the rest of the public. (Trust me when I tell you, this was not what I would consider an ideal setup when dealing with the dance-floor-going public of Las Vegas, Nevada... But I wasn't the one sponsoring this shindig, so far be it from me to complain.) So we were dancing, my cousin and I were drinking, and the wet blanket was continuing her ridiculous sobriety challenge in typical wet blanket fashion.

Being that we were only separated from the main dance floor by a thin black rope on three sides, we had people pretty consistently leaning over trying to get the invite to sit with us and have a drink. I was repeatedly approached by the same skeezy creeper and I continually gave him the brush off, (not because I felt superior at all, but because he gave me the creeps and again, I wasn't paying for this shindig, so it wasn't my place to go inviting people in). The guy tried me repeatedly, tried the wet blanket a couple times, and even tried to get in good with my cousin, perhaps hoping for a male-bonding moment. Fortunately, my cousin wasn't buying into that creeper's creepiness either, so he took to kind of dancing off to one side hoping another opportunity to get in would present itself. So we kept dancing and drinking, and the wet blanket danced a little in the outfit that she had spent too much on earlier in the day, and continued avoiding consuming much alcohol at all... (Seriously, if I'd had a baby bottle, I'd have just poured her drink in with no qualms whatsoever.)

So while my attention is focused on the non-drinking efforts of the wet blanket, I see that my cousin is in something off an across-the-VIP-rope-tussle with creepy guy and what seems to be creepy guy's friend. In a surprising turn of events my cousin went into super-alpha-dog-if-someone-doesn't-stop-me-I'm-gonna-rip-your-face-off-mode... (It should be noted that while my cousin has what I would categorize as a large and colorful personality that occasionally rubs some people the wrong way, the vast majority of the time, he is a very mild mannered guy. He is not one to get into fights or start up drama that is unnecessary. He keeps his cool better than I do, and I'm not known to fly off the handle without REALLY significant provocation.)

Seeing as we were in VIP, our account of the events apparently carried more credence with the club security who was on the scene in no time flat and promptly put creepy guy's friend in cuffs and escorted him out of the club with no questions asked... Or at least that's how it seemed from my side of the table...

I had no clue what had just happened... We went from zero to 6 security guards in no time flat and within a couple of minutes we were back to enjoying ourselves and the two creepers were gone, so I carried on, completely unconcerned with what had just transpired.

(For the sake of continuity, I will go ahead and tell you now what happened, even though I didn't get all the facts for another 24 hours)

Apparently the creepy guy and his friend were trying to get into VIP by chatting up my cousin, and he was being fairly cordial until the creepy guy's friend (Creeper #2) decided to make a statement that upped the ante, so to speak. Apparently Creeper #2 decided to tell my cousin, "I'm going to fuck your friend." To which my cousin replied, "Oh, really, which one? Because I haven't seen either of them talking to you." And Creeper #2 pointed to me and said, "Her, and it doesn't matter that we haven't talked... I'm still going to fuck her."

Yeah...

So now we know why my cousin went all alpha dog and didn't tell me until WAY after the fact. He was being all protective of me, and didn't want me to worry because he wanted me to enjoy my evening. (While the rape threat is certainly concerning, the protectiveness and concern for my enjoyment of the night out certainly gave me a big ol' case of the AWWWWWWs!)

So after more ridiculous dancing and drinking for my cousin and I, and more mysterious non-drinking from the wet blanket, we pretty much closed down the club and then headed back to our hotel to crash for the night.

The next morning my cousin and I were pretty hung over, and so room service breakfast was really all we could muster the energy for... He went back to bed, and proceeded to spend his Sunday betting on the NFL games from bed. Meanwhile, the wet blanket and I went in search of souvenirs for all the suckers back home. We were gone for most of the day, but upon our return, I was not surprised to see my cousin still in bed, nursing that hangover and streaming two games to his computer with another 2 games on the TV. We chatted for a bit, he mentioned that he had a 90-minute "man facial" down at the spa later, and that we should plan on dinner after that.

So the wet blanket and I got a quick nap in, cousin got his "man facial" at the spa, and we got ready for another night out.

We headed out to Julian Serrano for a dinner of assorted exquisite tapas and the second best mojito I've ever had. Over dinner we discussed the plan for the rest of the evening. My cousin informed me that we were going to make a quick trip to a club which signified how the wet blanket felt about him... So we headed off to "-5" which is a club constructed entirely out of ice. (He and I thought it was quite funny... The wet blanket didn't seem too fond of the joke.) So we get to -5 and are instructed to check our shoes and evening bags, and suit up in big boots, gloves, huge fur coats, and we were given souvenir "trapper-style" hats to keep our ears warm. And then we went into this strangely small "club" where there was music playing, a bar made of ice where a bartender took our orders from a limited selection of over-sweetened drinks which were served in glasses made of ice... While we waited on our drinks, we were told to go ahead and have a look around at the rest of the place, which consisted of several ice sculptures, walls of ice that were lit from within, and, an ice luge for shooters if we were so inclined, and several seating areas all constructed from ice. It was neat, and it made for some really cool pictures, but it was clearly not someplace where anyone not on staff was intended to spend a large chunk of time... It was really more of a novelty bar than one designed to get you in and keep you there and spending money.

We took a few pictures, drank our overly sweet drinks and moved on.

At that point we went to the Cosmopolitan and did a little gambling at the blackjack tables. It would seem that luck was not with us, as we proceeded to watch our dealer turn more 20s and 21s than I ever would've believed possible. Shortly thereafter, my cousin left us to play the slots for about 45 minutes while he tried his luck in the high-roller section. After which time we regrouped and he sent the wet blanket and I off to the hotel while he sorted something out with his casino host at the Cosmopolitan, noting it shouldn't be long and we would decide what to do when he got back.

So the wet blanket and I took a cab back to our hotel... which was really within walking distance, but seeing as it required crossing several lanes of Vegas weekend traffic, we took a cab. The cabbie was pissed because apparently he had been waiting in the cab line for something like 20 minutes and since we weren't going far, we weren't going to be a big fare for him, so he audibly groused for the approximately 3 minutes we were in his cab. As we got out and I paid the fare, I told him he'd have gotten a real tip if he hadn't complained about doing his job, but since he made such a production of his displeasure, I was only giving him a minimal tip by rounding up to the nearest dollar. I probably didn't teach him a lesson, but at least he knows he cost himself a real tip (which would have been double the fare).

So the wet blanket and I are back at our hotel. She proceeds to go to bed because she's a wet blanket, and that's what we blankets do. I stayed up because my cousin was only about 30-45 minutes behind us and I was under the impression that we still had further plans... And had the wet blanket held out, we did, but since she went to bed early, when my cousin got back and he said he'd have felt bad about leaving her alone in the room, he and I just sat up and chatted for a while. (It was at this point he informed me about the tussle in the club the previous night.) We reminisced about how much more fun we'd had with The Admiral when she'd come along on the last trip. I repeatedly apologized for the Wet Blanket and he told me he would give me a mulligan on this one, and while there is still the possibility of future trips, a repeat of this shit show better not happen again... And since we weren't going anywhere with the wet blanket in bed for the night, we both decided to just call it a night so we would be minimally fresh for flights out the next day. He had an early flight, while the wet blanket and I were on afternoon flights. He left in the morning without a word, and after another room service breakfast, some gambling on the slots at the Aria, and packing our bags, the Wet Blanket and I checked out and headed to the airport.

Incidentally, the Wet Blanket and I were on separate flights about 30 minutes apart with a layover in Chicago. She asked the airline worker at the counter if it would be possible to put us both on the same flight but her flight was full so she wanted me to ask the same about my flight when I got to the counter. I told her I would, but I totally didn't because I admit to some seething irritation on my part, and frankly at that point I was ready to be rid of her... It didn't matter anyway. I was soon to learn that I was on a full flight as well, and that it was to be the worst flight I've ever taken... (And before you ask, it wasn't bad in the "Oh my god, this flight is going down, we're all going to die!" kind of way... Get ready for this.)

So after a long weekend of living it up like a rockstar in Vegas, (with my seething irritation for the Wet Blanket in tow,) I admit that I was tired and a three hour flight from the rockstar lifestyle back to reality was going to be less than awesome just on principle.

While boarding, the airline staff announced that the flight was going to be 100% full. Naturally, I figured since there was no chance of landing in a seat with an empty seat next to me, I figured I might as well just find a seat relatively close to the front of the plane where I would be able to get off the plane in a reasonable amount of time, and preferably not sit next to somebody who was going to drool on me, or talk my ear off, or otherwise be a bother... So I found a row occupied by what appeared to be a bitchy Jersey girl in yoga pants, with hair as fake as her busted up Louis Vuitton bag. Judging by the fact that she hadn't moved said bag into any kind of storage, rather than the seat next to her, she seemed more interested in her magazine than listening to the announcement that the flight would be full. Ok, so she's going to keep to herself... Good enough. I asked politely if the seat was open, already knowing the answer... But she was being every bit as bitchy as I pegged her to be, and trying to make a stink about having to put her fake-ass bag under the seat in front of her. But at least I had a seat pretty close to the front, and would be able to sleep during the flight... Or so I thought.

WRONG.

So about 5 minutes later, as boarding continued, some random couple asked her if she would move to the row in front of her so they could sit together. She pitched a fit for a few seconds and then moved. Since I was on the aisle, I had to move so she could move and they could get in, which made no sense at all, whatever...Ok, so now I'm sitting next to this random couple... WHATEVER. The couple gets situated, I sit back down, boarding continues, etc.

As the boarding line wraps up, some random businessman with an enormous carry-on bag full of what I assume to be very important files, a computer, some gold bricks, and maybe a Prius, saunters onto the plane and decides that even though there are no seats in my immediate area, he has to hoist this gigantic carry-on into the bin over the row in front of me. But maybe the balance and alignment on that Prius were all wonky because he lost his grip on the bag mid-way through stuffing it into the bin, and ended up dropping it directly on my head... And while I did suffer a blow to the head, I did recall the audible gasp from my fellow passengers as the Prius-laden bag tumbled onto me, and I do recall all the other folks asking me if I was all right, while the douche nozzle that dropped the damn thing just tapped my shoulder, said, "Oh, you're fine," before a second wobbly attempt at hoisting the bag, and then meandering down the aisle to wherever an available seat was located.

Awesome.

So I had boarded the plane just wanting to snooze, now my head is killing me, and every EMT school dropout on board thought they should give me a concussion exam before allowing me to have a nap. So that chews up the first 30-45 minutes of the taxi and flight. Once all of the other passengers in the seats around me were sufficiently convinced I didn't have any diagnosable concussion symptoms or brain hemorrhages, they left me alone. A short while later, I'm guessing about 15-20 minutes later, I finally fell asleep... Only to have that slumber interrupted when a flight attendant dropped a whole box of those little bags of peanuts in my lap. DAMMIT.

So, again I try to get a little nap in... Only now the random couple sitting next to me has decided to whip out the portable DVD player and a comedy flick, and proceeded to cackle obnoxiously at random intervals. Eventually, (I'm guessing about an hour in to their movie,) either the comedy fizzled, or I just got better at tuning it out because I was able to doze a little bit... Until the turbulence kicked in. So then I was awake again... With little hope of sleeping as there is continual jostling, I fruitlessly tried anyway.

Once the turbulence died down, there was about an hour left in the flight, and I finally dozed off one more time. (But don't worry, it didn't last!)

So I guess to signal the start of the final hour in flight, another flight attendant begins to tour the aisle with a tray of coffee. (The more perceptive readers out there can already see where this is going.)

I don't know if the flight attendant merely stumbled, or if there was an air pocket, or what, but as I am just sitting in my seat with my eyes closed, and suddenly there is hot coffee all over my lap and running down my leg... GOOD LORD.

"Oh, did I get you?"

"Uhh, yeah... A bit." (Please note this was DRIPPING with sarcasm, as it was abundantly clear that she had "gotten me")

"Oh sorry. I'll bring you something."

"Yeah..."

"Here is a towel... it just has sparkling water on it, but that should do it, right?"

"Whatever, fine... I can't catch a break on this flight anyway."

"What do you mean?"

"All I wanted was a nap, and all I've gotten was a giant bag dropped on my head, a box of peanuts in my lap, a whole lot of turbulence, and now hot coffee all over me."

"Oh. Well, um, sorry."

"Fine..."

So the last 30 minutes or so of the flight was unremarkable, so nobody had to die, but of course, once we landed my fellow passengers thought it would be fun to razz me about how awful my experience was as we all waited to deplane.

"Heh heh, bet you can't wait to get off of here..."

"You think?"

"Yeah I hope nobody else drops another bag on you... Since they've put the coffee away."

"Man, you're hilarious."

Seriously, what ever happened to human compassion? When you see someone is already having a really hard time of it, it is considered kind of rude to give them a hard time over what a hard time they are having... Seems a little like kicking a man when he's down... But like I said at the outset, WORST. FLIGHT. EVER.

EVER.

...And the hits just keep on comin'

2011-12-31T02:19:00.002-06:00

Well, it has been a week since move-in day, and while I busied myself with the task of hanging new drapery hardware and drapes, sorting through my wardrobe to determine what survived the fire and what didn't, and dragging broken down boxes and other move-in trash out to the curb, it would seem that my home has been plotting against me.

While taking a break from the aforementioned tasks, I headed down to my darkened kitchen at about midnight. While grabbing a beverage from the fridge, I hear a very slight, but very distinct tapping noise.

Water is dripping somewhere.

I check the door dispenser on the fridge... Nothing. I check the kitchen sink, and the connection to the dishwasher... Nada. I turn on the light in the breakfast room where there is no reason to hear any kind of dripping. The floor is wet. The boxes stored in there are sitting in a small puddle. The ceiling is leaking. CRAP!

That ceiling is immediately under the only full bath in the house, and nobody has showered since yesterday afternoon. CRAP.

After placing a cooler under the drip, I shut off the main water line to the whole house, and called the plumber and was told I did all that there was to do for tonight, and that someone would be out to assess the damage in the morning.

I have no idea what I did in this or any past lives to get this kind of karmic backlash, but whatever it was, it must've been a real doozy of a malevolent misadventure.

Basically, 2011 keeps kicking me, and it couldn't resist one last opportunity for disaster before packing it in and calling up his brother, 2012.

2011 can suck it.

I am hoping that 2012 is a much more upbeat and positive year for all our sakes! (Because lord knows I can't handle much more of this crap!)

Moving day!

2011-12-21T20:51:00.002-06:00

It is finally here! After 5 long months, moving day has arrived!

My house restoration is complete (well, there are a few minor little touch-ups but those can wait,) and I can move back in!

Tonight's load included all of the clothes in my hotel wardrobe with the exception of my pajamas and fresh t-shirt and jeans combo for tomorrow's labors, all of the books I purchased while I was here, all of the new bedding, even though there are no beds there yet, and some miscellaneous odds & ends that just packed up nicely with other stuff. It seems like a pretty minor thing (and when faced with the task ahead, it is pretty minor,) but hauling all of that crap out of my hotel room, loading it into my car, and then unloading it and hauling it to second floor bedrooms, along with the new TVs and other items I'd squirreled away in a corner of the basement (adding another flight of stairs to the mix) is quite a feat! I am happy to have the help of movers to bring all of the rest into the house, but unpacking it and putting it where it belongs is going to keep me plenty busy. (I am so glad that I have fully recovered from my illness, or this would be literally impossible and I would have to Christmas in the hotel, EW.)

So then comes the hard part. After everything is unpacked I will have to determine what has gone missing, or was damaged and needs replacing, locate a suitable replacement, purchase it, and get it where it needs to be... You'd think that shopping for all new stuff would be fun, but on this level, trust me, it is a huge chore and I don't look forward to it!

Wish me luck! I fear I shall need all I can get!

Delays delays delays...

2011-12-19T01:53:00.002-06:00

I've been working on the Vegas novella post, but I've been sick for the last week... And for the record, I don't mean I had a sniffle, I mean I had a nasty flu bug that rendered me useless and bed-ridden for the week. I literally only got up long enough to get an occasional drink of water, go to the bathroom, or puke that drink of water back up so hard that I peed on myself. (Really... I have no shame at this point.) I am not talking just a little tinkle like if you were to sneeze really hard... I'm talking puking my guts up so hard and continuously that I made a puddle... It was ugly.

And this week's delay is that I get to move back into my house on Thursday! So my efforts will be focused on getting some extra real work done so that I can devote home time to unpacking my life and resettling into reality outside of this stupid hotel.

...But you know me, I won't leave you totally high and dry! Here is the official video for a song that I am totally obsessed with at the moment. (The video is pretty awesome in my opinion as well.)

I'll get back to you when I can.

Back in action.

2011-12-02T02:23:00.002-06:00

Before the break, I informed you that I was headed out to attend the funeral of a family friend. His viewing and services were the Tuesday and Wednesday immediately prior to Thanksgiving. When you're talking about the untimely demise of a young and seemingly healthy friend who was like family just days before a very family oriented holiday, and watching him be buried in the plot immediately above the sister you lost just over a year ago, you know it probably isn't going to be one of those holiday events that is memorable for its enjoyment, laughter and togetherness. It's far more likely that this is going down in the books for being memorable for all the wrong reasons...

Well, yeah...

So that is pretty much what we expected going in. And even those expectations were exceeded in all the wrong ways.

You see, after Cole's services, we went out to a family dinner because nobody wanted to be bothered with the effort to cook, and we knew we still had to do all the meal preparation for the traditional Thanksgiving meal that was planned before any of this transpired. We all came home from dinner. We all changed out of out mourning clothes into more comfortable attire so that we could do the meal prep in relative comfort. As we are doing the mixing, chopping, and pre-heating, suddenly the family dog starts making loud strange noises. We all go to see what is going on. The dog proceeds to have a massive hour-long seizure and expires.

Yeah... You read that right, the family dog had a massive seizure and died. Because, really, when it rains, it pours.

(I wish I could make this stuff up.)

And that was how this year, Thanksgiving became known as the "S----- Family Holiday Craptacular!"

I've been catching up on the work I missed when I left town unexpectedly to participate in the Craptacular, and I've been working on the Vegas recap for you. I haven't forgotten.

Keep it breezy.

On a break until after the holiday...

2011-11-19T14:08:00.002-06:00

I got a call last night from my little sister telling me that I never saw coming. It started with the words that start so many horrible conversations, "...Are you sitting down?"

While growing up, there were 6 of us kids. Five of us were legally and biologically related, and the sixth was a family friend and only child who we regarded as a brother for all intents and purposes. From family vacations, major and minor events, holiday plans, weekend movie nights, to the mundane little errand running and grabbing a quick lunch, the sixth man was always a factor.

Last night, only one day after his 30th birthday, we lost our friend and brother, Cole Spinner.

Only a year and a half ago, when we lost our sister, Kim, Cole was the one who had provided the appropriately inappropriate laughter. He made us smile and laugh in the darkest moments and it was the last thing that any of us thought was possible. But that was Cole; when there was nothing to laugh about, no redeeming moment in sight, Cole made it ok to be ok for a moment. Cole was the glue that held a lot of us together, and while we are better for having known and loved him, the world is a worse place without him in it.

I will be on hiatus for Cole's services, and the holiday. I hope that you and yours have a wonderful holiday, and that you hold tight to the ones you love, and that you don't take them for granted. Be thankful that they are there, and that you can hug them, and that you can tell them that you love them even when they pester you and make you want to tear your hair out. There will come a time for all of us when that can't ever happen again... Make the most of it while you have the chance. Celebrate your family and friends, and friends that might as well have been family. Love them for who they are. Cherish the moments you have when you have them. In the blink of an eye it can all change and I don't want anyone to miss it.

I promise you! (FOR REAL!)

2011-11-17T23:33:00.002-06:00

You already know that I went to Vegas. What you don't know, (because up until now, I haven't told you,) is that I am back.

There is a post coming on the topic, but it took me a couple of days to recover, a couple of days to process my experiences, a couple of days to house/pet sit for my brother, a couple of days to strip 70 years of paint off of some doors in my house, (because the contractor was wanting to chuck them and replace them with some non-matching modern doors, because he didn't want to "waste time" with stripping them... And I was having none of that, so I did it myself) and it is taking a few days to put this post together because it is epically long. If you want it in installments, I can break it up and post what I've got so far, but I think full comprehension and absorption requires a dedicated mini-marathon of reading the events in text... It might be spectacularly boring to you since you weren't there, but you can stop any time. I won't even be offended, in fact, I won't even know! That's the beauty of internet anonymity!

Basically, this post is to let you know I survived Vegas, there is a post coming, but it is taking some time because I'm trying to make reading it even a little bit comparable to experiencing it, and that takes a little extra effort.

Sin city bound!

2011-11-03T22:26:00.002-05:00

I leave for Vegas in the morning.

Basically, I am cheating on the hotel I live in with a better hotel that I only see when I take fancy trips out of town... And I have no remorse.

I scheduled this trip before I knew the misfortune that would befall my home, and after living in a hotel for more than three months, you would think that driving to the airport, hopping on a plane and going to stay in another hotel is the last thing I would want to do. You'd think that I would just want to go home and be done with it... And while there is some truth in that, the fact is that I know that there is no going home this weekend anyway, so I am going to live it up in the desert for a few days.

And it is going to be fantastic.

Don't worry, I still love you, and I'll take plenty of pictures and come back with great stories... Of course, seeing as this is Vegas we're talking about, there is a good chance that I won't be able to tell most of the best stories, but still, I will have stories... and surely at least one of them will be worth re-telling to you, and yet safe enough that we don't compromise anyone's confidentiality, because we all know what happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas.

See you in a bit... You'll probably never even know I was gone.

This is the worst trip I've ever been on...

2011-10-21T00:01:00.002-05:00

So nearly three months ago, my house caught fire... and for nearly three months I've been living in a hotel.

There is surely a contingent out there among the masses who believe that living in a hotel for three months would be totally awesome... Those people would be wrong.

The fact is that hotel living is not without its perks. I mean sure it is essentially like living in a furnished apartment. And sure there is a housekeeper on staff to do most of the menial housework like changing sheets, making the bed, vacuuming, taking out the trash, and wiping down the bathroom to prevent unsightly soap scum buildup. Then there are additional perks like the pool and hot tub, which I don't have at home. And all of that is on top of the fact that I can run the heat or the A/C as much as I want without having to worry in the least about the utility bills, while the A/C and furnace at home are both turned totally off, keeping the actual utility bills down to levels so low that the utility company actually called to ask if they could check the meter because the usage was so minimal. That's all lovely and all good... But let me illustrate for you the flip-side of this situation... At least the flip side as I see it... (Because I admit to some quirks that not everybody out there would totally agree with.)

First off, I can't cook a decent meal. That's not to say that I don't possess the skills to assemble a meal. I'm saying that the cooking setup going on here is worse than what I had access to in college. I essentially have a microwave, a fridge, and a hotplate. If you can't nuke it or cook it on a cruddy heated coil, you are going out to dinner. Sure the prospect of going out to dinner every night seems pretty sweet, until you actually have to do it... See, I actually like to cook. I like to bake, roast, and broil. I like to steam veggies, I enjoy grilling out back, and I find a certain relaxation in doing so... Also I derive a certain gratification from knowing exactly what is going into my meals. The control over the ingredients of a restaurant meal is minimal at best... I mean sure I can go to a sit-down joint and order a specific meal off the menu telling some baked out high school junior no salt or no mayo, but it never comes out right, and sure it will probably taste pretty good, but I can promise you it won't be prepared in the way I would prepare it, and that in itself is always a letdown. (I can't tell you how many different restaurants I've been to and found broccoli as a side item only to be completely disappointed when I actually get it in front of me... TOO MANY!) Mind you, the bills for all of the dining out have to be paid at the time of service, and the insurance company seems fine with letting those bills stack up so that they can just settle up when all of this is over in one lump sum... Personally, I'm not a fan of overspending on foods that I could better prepare to my specifications and awaiting remuneration at an undisclosed later date. Just give me a full kitchen and a full setup of proper utensils, and call it a day.

Then there is the fact that I actually enjoy a little light housekeeping... I am a stress-cleaner. I get a special kind of relaxation/zen thing going when I am scrubbing bathroom tile, or sweeping the floors. I like changing the sheets and wiping down counter tops. Its not that cleaning is the greatest thing ever. I am not compulsive about my cleaning regimen, but I admit to a certain level of gratification in revealing glossy clean surfaces which were previously soiled or cluttered with nonsense that should have been put away... But I also enjoy REALLY rocking out when I do it, and blaring the music here isn't really an option... This neatly dovetails into my next complaint.

These are not the thickest walls around. If the neighbors can hear me blaring the music, it also holds that I can hear the guest in the next room who happens to snore like a lumberjack, and I can hear the little high school girl upstairs who is practicing all of the jumps in her latest dance routine and the yappy dog going batshit crazy as its owner drags it down the hall umpteen times a day.

I could go on, seeing as I don't have access to any of my personal belongings, aside from the new items I've purchased since the fire... (Items I'm not overly attached to, unlike all of my stuff that has been stored away while the contractors continue to take their sweet ass time getting things done.) I have this weird bed that gives me a back ache because now I'm old and it partially moves off the box spring all the time, and crinkles because of the weird mattress protector they put on it, and all of the pillows suck, and well, I just want my own damn bed and my sheets and pillows and a mattress of an agreeable firmness... Clearly I'm starting to go off the rails here, so let's just say I'm ready to go home.

FOR REAL.

The task that never ends has ended... but you'd never know it!

2011-09-23T23:18:00.003-05:00

So after a few weeks of logging, tabulating, and sorting, and spreadsheet-making, the inventory was completed. It was then submitted to the insurance adjuster, who promptly managed to sit on his hands and not do anything with it in the last several weeks. (Thus, I have had little to report.)

After meeting with him earlier this week, he finally admitted that he hasn't really been proactive about dealing with the 23 page single-spaced inventory. He did approve the expense for the new furniture that had to be ordered, (and not a moment too soon because the furniture has been selected for a couple of weeks now, and we've been waiting on approval to order it, because I don't know if you've priced out quality furniture lately, but that stuff ain't cheap! And apparently it takes 8 weeks for construction and delivery... So the earlier that order was submitted, the better!)

The adjuster also cut the checks to our contractor, so progress on the house has proceeded nicely. He did mention that the Christmas deadline might have been a little long, and that at this point it is looking like a Thanksgiving housewarming at the latest. The roofing, re-framing, electrical work, and insulating is all done. The siding and new trim on the upper portion of the house is mostly complete, and the sheet rock has all been delivered. That really only leaves hanging the sheet rock, painting, hanging new light fixtures, refinishing the floors, and moving all of the furniture and nonsense back in... And unpacking everything. I have been slowly assembling a workable wardrobe with what little money the adjuster has elected to throw my way so far and I am uncharacteristically optimistic about how things will go from here on out. I wholeheartedly admit that while the insurance adjuster has dragged his feet so far, he has been good in every other regard and even told the furniture store to just let him know if there is anything else we might need. He has had a pretty good sense of humor and been pretty willing to be reasonable on most any request that comes to mind. (Taking care of the hotel expense directly, handling questions from and paying for the crews that did the emergency work of collecting all of the clothes and other soft goods for cleaning the day after the fire happened, etc.)

I have busied myself with shopping, (a task I used to enjoy, but now find to be a bit of a chore,) office work, and clearing out the crap that was left behind in the basement... (Probably left behind because pretty much anyone can see that it really was crap.) Hauling damp boxes and moldy fabrics up out of the basement and out to the trash has been a nasty pain in the ass, but it was something that needed to be done even before the fire, so now that a lot of the nonsense was cleared out for treatment of smoke and water damage, it has been just a little easier to work with the extra space on hand.

That's really all that has been going on... Sorry it isn't more interesting or amusing, but that's my life at the moment.

The task that never ends...

2011-08-22T06:08:00.005-05:00

So in my last post, I complained about my inventory, among other things. As the title here might imply, it is an ongoing challenge and just when you think you're over the final hurdle, the race officials hand down a ruling that says you've got to take another lap or two.

I should note that I'm not complaining about my plight as a means of generating pity. There are few things I find so loathsome as being the object of other people's pity. Even when my situation is bad, and even when I complain about it, it isn't ever for the sake of getting people to feel sorry for me. (I'm the first to admit that there are many people in far worse situations, and that in the grand scheme of things, I have a lot working in my favor.) The primary reason for my whining is generally to inform other people what I've been up to, and why I might be in a foul mood if I should happen to take a harsh tone at some point in our conversation.

So the latest update to the tale is that since the original tally of all the items in the house was completed, the next step in the process has been to take all those hand written notes and convert them into a readable format so that the insurance adjuster can actually decipher and dissect the list, and then decide what is going to be covered when all of this is said and done. A simultaneous hurdle in this step is that as I am typing up the list, I also have to figure out where to find all of the items were when they were damaged, where a suitable replacement can be found, and how much that replacement is going to cost given local market pricing. (Local market pricing means I have the dubious honor of going out to local stores and tracking down items one at a time and listing the cost plus local sales tax.) This is a particular challenge in a house populated not only with my more modern items, but also with a bevvy of antique items owned by my grandparents prior to my arrival. Pricing all my art supplies made me remember just how expensive all those art supplies were in the first place! (For some classes, I now realize that I spent more on art supplies in one semester for a single course than I spent on all of my other course materials for the same semester combined!)

I also get to talk to contractors about the repair process... What I want, what I don't want, what I would like to change since we've ripped out all of the plaster and have to re-frame the roofline and half of the upstairs anyway, might as well make any reasonable changes while they are at their least expensive and most hassle free!

Aside from the list, my life is boring. I pretty much do nothing but work on the list and other fire-related crap every "spare" waking moment. Nothing else to report. Hope you have a great day!

Just a quick update...

2011-08-12T02:10:00.002-05:00

So after the recent events, there is not a great deal of new information to report, but here is what I have to offer, most of this is going to be fairly obvious and straightforward, but at this point, that's really all I've got left.

Living in a hotel sucks. A lot.
Living in a hotel that doesn't include the two channels I watch the most, (Comedy Central and CNN) because they are not deemed "family friendly" and having to get my daily fix of both real news and fake news solely through online outlets REALLY sucks. A lot.
Completing a line item inventory of everything you own so that you can submit it to an insurance adjuster for approval SUCKS. A LOT. (Side note: I don't care who you are, or how you live, but I can guarantee you that until you have to do an inventory of everything one item at a time, you have NO IDEA just how much nonsense you actually own.)
Completing said inventory in a house where the temperature hovers somewhere around 125 degrees because it has been taken off the power grid so that it can be entirely re-wired (it was an electrical fire, after all,) while the house is full of generator-run heaters and heat circulators in an attempt to dry out the plaster, in the middle of a summer heat wave is more than a little sucky as well.
Finding out that the plaster couldn't be saved anyway and had to be ripped out the day after the inventory was done is more than a little irritating.
Finding out that the contractors have ordered up a full-blown crane so that they can just cut off the entire roof and put it in a giant dumpster in sections is a strange combination of fascinatingly cool and horribly disconcerting.
Watching all of the work that I've put in over the last 6 months be utterly destroyed by the fire, the firemen running in and out, and the water that they used to put out the fire was horribly depressing.
Homeowner's insurance seems like an expensive hassle... Until you need it... At which point it becomes TOTALLY AWESOME. Spend the extra money on the mack daddy of insurance available to you, because if you ever have a claim of any real magnitude, you want to be able to know that in the end it is all going to be ok!
That said, knowing that my house is going to be re-wired to current code, re-insulated to current code, having almost all of my home repair and upgrading projects handled as a result of this incident, (from a new roof, new siding, new plaster, paint, refinished hardwood floors, etc... The list goes on,) is TOTALLY awesome.
While it might seem kind of awesome in theory to get to shop for all new clothing, fixtures, and furniture, in practice, when it has to be done ASAP, and all at once, it is a huge headache and becomes a chore much more rapidly than you think.

So that's the update. Now you know.

Well, that certainly fits...

2011-07-30T23:00:00.002-05:00

I have long believed that my life was some kind of grand experiment with Murphy's law. I don't think so highly of myself in a religious sense to think that my life is comparable with that of Job, but I do adhere to the premise that most of the time Murphy's law is in full effect, and he is usually lurking around the next corner, waiting to catch you off guard, trip you, and laugh at you as you lay bleeding on the ground.

The latest adventure in the life of Liz is very much in keeping with this lifelong theme.

So what happened now, you ask.

Well, two weeks ago, I went on a nice little vacation to visit my best friend and her new baby for a week, and to help her in whatever way I could. It was a great little visit and a lovely little vacation. At the end of the week, I went to the ranch for my annual family reunion, and it was a great time as always. I came home, returned to work, returned to working on my house, priming the plaster that was installed in my kitchen while I was away, and generally got back to business as usual.

Thursday afternoon, everything changed.

As I was working on some paperwork for my boss, I noticed that the room was getting a little hazy. Knowing how hot it has been here in the Midwest, and that my ceiling fan is not only old, but also had been running for multiple days on end, I figured that maybe the motor was burning out. I went to open a window to vent out the room. Upon my arrival at said window, much to my surprise I see that there is fire in my gutter and on my roof-line just below that window.

Yeah.

Fire.

I grabbed my computer, my wallet, and my phone and I ran out to the front yard. Five fire trucks and four hours later, the upper floor of my home was a charred, steaming war zone, and the lower floor of my home was thoroughly soaked and continuing to drip heavily on pretty much everything that the fire spared. And with that, in addition to a large chunk of my home's structure, a lot of my stuff and 6 months worth of lovingly completed renovations went down the drain.

The fire department determined that it was the result of an old junction box that was over-taxed by the heat. Of course, the insurance company knows that such a ruling would mean that they would have to cut several large checks to contractors and me, so they brought in their own investigator who still hasn't issued his ruling.

So here I sit, in a hotel, in newly purchased clothing, because everything in my wardrobe is either a loss, or stinking of smoke. I will likely not be back in my house until Christmas if the initial time line that I was given holds.

Don't you wish you had my awesome life?

Father's day selections from the internet...

2011-06-18T23:02:00.002-05:00

Sunday is Father's Day. Since I don't have any kids, I have no baby-daddy, so this is a holiday spent reflecting on my experiences with my own father.

Sure over the years we've had our differences. We've had big fights, harsh words, and ugly times in our past, sure. Hell, when it comes to politics, we pretty well just agree to disagree and try to avoid the topic altogether. When it comes to disagreements we've pretty well reached a quiet detente. We both pretty well know when to leave well enough alone. We still talk on the phone fairly regularly, we see each other as much as our busy schedules and geography will allow, and when we hang out, we sit down and chat over a few cold beers while I tell him about my latest home-improvement projects, and he tells me about his latest interim-administration job and where his new post has taken him this time around, and then we start talking about the good ol' days and he repeats some story about his childhood that I've already heard 900 times, but it hasn't lost its charm, and it makes him so happy to tell it, so I sit and listen, waiting for some new detail that inevitably appears with each retelling.

So this post is for the dads out there.

First off, a video that I cannot recommend highly enough!

We all know that Samuel L. Jackson is the baddest motherfucker out there, and so when it comes to finding a voice provide the audio track for the greatest adult-children's book ever, OF COURSE he was the only logical choice.

And secondly, a selection that I find amusing because I see my dad in so many of the pictures on this site. The only thing that prevents me from submitting pictures of my own father is that I have so many quality shots to choose from, and it hurts my brain trying to winnow them down before deciding what to submit for consideration.

So here's to all the dads out there, including my own... Throw some meat on the grill, sit back in the La-z-boy, crack open a cold one, and enjoy your day... And just know that we remember what you always told us, you brought us into this world, and you can take us out... We know... But I'm pretty sure we can all outrun you now... Not that we'll need to!

So this explains it...

2011-06-17T01:41:00.001-05:00

"I don't know why I started writing. I don't know why anybody does it. Maybe they're bored, or failures at something else."
— Cormac McCarthy

Another day, another insultingly sexist conversation...

2011-06-05T23:31:00.002-05:00

So, since noticing the pattern of sexist conversations I've encountered lately, in an effort to start ridding the male population of their sexist views, I have made a conscious effort to present a decidedly overly-feminine consumer image when engaging in typically more masculine shopping situations. I put on a reasonable amount of makeup, but make special efforts not to OVER-do my face or hair. I sport more girlish clothing, so that there is no mistaking that I care about my appearance, and there is no mistaking me as anything other than decidedly, solidly female. I do own a few skirts, dresses, flouncy tops, and one or two shirts with reasonable, (read: tasteful) sequin embellishments.

Now, to be clear, we're not talking anything over the top... I'm not going to Home Depot in a ballgown, nor do I own anything "bedazzled" with jewels. We're not talking flashy, whorish apparel. But I admit to deliberately playing up the feminine factor for personal research purposes.

I peruse the aisles of the auto parts stores, or head to the hardware department, and deliberately don't ask for help if I don't need help. Basically, I will go in, get what I need to get, and browse if I feel like browsing, but I don't make a big production of looking like I'm helpless and need guidance. Now, having worked in retail, I understand that many of these retail establishments have established customer-service-based policies that their employees are directed to follow. (Basically, if the workers aren't actively engaged in a project, and they see a customer who is not actively being assisted by another worker, they are generally at least supposed to ask if the customers need help with anything. I get it... That's why those interactions don't count... Unless the worker persists after I have waved them off... THEN IT TOTALLY COUNTS.) The latter is exactly how my most recent insulting interaction went.

While mowing my lawn, I found that the blade was not cutting to maximum efficiency... Seeing as I don't know any tinkers who sharpen mower blades instead of simply advising folks to just buy a new one, I just went to buy a new one. (Blade, not lawn mower.) I went to the establishment where the lawn mower was originally purchased. (The hardware department of a large department store.) Seeing as I had just wrapped up mowing the lawn, I was wearing nothing more feminine than flip-flops, jeans and a more female-friendly-cut v-neck T-shirt. I walked straight over to the area where the mower blades were kept. I grabbed the blade that I needed for my specific mower. I proceeded to walk away from the display and towards the nearest open cash register. Before I could make it more than three steps, a rather rotund store employee stopped me... The following is a very real transcription of the encounter.

The rotund male simpleton approaches all too ready to lend an unwanted helping hand.

"Can I help you find something?"

"No... I just needed a lawn mower blade. I found the one I wanted, now I just need to find an open register."

"Oh. Well, are you sure it is the right one?"

"Yes. I am sure. I double-checked the part number and everything."

(Note: the encounter should have ended right then and there, but judging by the next statement, it rapidly became clear that this guy was gunning for total evisceration.)

"Well, are you really sure? That particular blade isn't a big mover."

"Yeah, I already told you I was sure. Was I not convincing enough with my delivery?"

"Uhh, well, you know that's for an electric mower, right?"

"Well, call me crazy, but I figured it would work just fine for me considering it is the right size AND exact part number for what just so happens to be the electric-powered mower I use to lower the height of the grass growing in the little rectangle I call my lawn."

"Oh, so you have an electric mower?"

"Pretty sure I just said that. I mean I tried just throwing down more dirt to make the grass just look shorter, but I found that this is much more cost-effective, and I don't have to keep elevating the flower beds."

"Well, it's just that most people use gas mowers."

"And between rising gas prices, the push to go a little greener, and attempting to avoid unnecessary carbon emissions, I am pretty sure that my electric-powered model, while a bit of a hassle is equally effective at removing the unwanted portion of my lawn. I still have a rotary mower with no power supply at all, too... I tried getting a goat, but being inside the city limits the neighbors complained, plus he snored too loudly in bed."

"Well, a goat wouldn't really be all that effective at getting a consistent length over the whole lawn."

"And I see you don't understand sarcasm. Don't sweat it. It's new."

"Uhhh..."

(Around this time, what appeared to be a well-intentioned trainee approached from stage left. Based on my interaction with this second fellow, I think he was prime management material by comparison to that first doofus who had no business interacting with anyone... EVER.)

"Are you ready to check out, or is there something else we can help you find?" says the trainee.

"No, I think I'm ready to leave this establishment."

"Do you need any assistance with this product, or need help installing it? We have a service department here!"

"Well, thank you, that is the most constructive thing that anyone has said to me since I got here. I think I can handle the installation, but I admit that before I came here, I was having some trouble removing the old blade."

Doofus really thought this was his opportunity to shine!

"WELL... just remember, it is 'righty-tight-y, lefty loose-y' and you should be fine."

"Yeah, thanks. I know how nuts and bolts work. My problem is that the locking nut won't turn without also rotating the drive shaft, and my crescent wrench doesn't fit between the blade and the underside of the mower when attempting to grip the shaft... and there is no way to lock the drive shaft on this particular model of mower."

"Oh... UHHHH...." Doofus said while vacantly staring at my chest.

"Yeah, see, in addition to knowing which way to turn a nut, I also know those fancy mechanical words." I sharply retorted to Doofus, my words dripping with derision and disdain. Turning my attention to the more helpful trainee, I asked, "Any ideas for that particular problem?"

"Oh, well, if possible, try pinching the drive shaft with some pliers, maybe needle-nosed pliers if standard pliers won't fit. If that doesn't work, or you can't fit any kind of pliers under the blade, I'd say bring it in to the service department and see if they have any ideas."

"Thank you. That was the least insulting thing anyone has said to me since I entered this establishment. You have been very helpful... I hope that if you are on commission that you get credit for this sale."

"I'd be happy to ring you up right over here."

The trainee and I walked to the nearest register, with Doofus in tow, most likely to 'supervise' the trainee in the actual monetary transaction.

I got the new blade home, managed to get the locking nut off unassisted, and installed the new blade. Since then, my lawn is looking as lovely as ever... No thanks to Doofus the incompetent.

And while I have no doubt that Doofus is incapable of learning from this experience and checking himself before speaking to, and thus insulting ... well... ANYONE, I can only do my due diligence to present valuable learning opportunities whenever possible.

...And people wonder why I walk around being so continuously perturbed so much of the time.

Hello, ye olde interweb!

2011-06-01T21:14:00.002-05:00

It has been a while. I admit that I have been lax in my duties as the gatekeeper of awesomeness known as the Fun Time Happy Hour. I will buy you all a round the next time we hang out!

So... The world has carried on, as it has been known to do, while I have been away, toiling and plotting my scheme for global domination. It is so nice to know that the world can be counted on in that regard.

I have once again asserted my power and awesomeness by fixing my own car ...again. (Note, this was a second problem, and not a failure of my previous fix.) This time it was the air conditioning. Seeing as we have come to the official start of summer, I figured it was high time to get my A/C up and running again. In fairness, it has been broken for well over a year, and since I don't typically mind rolling the windows down, I just didn't bother with it... I mean the heat still worked through the fall, winter, and early spring, so I was ok for a lot of that time... But remembering how I had to sweat it out all last summer, I figured I should probably just go ahead and do what needed to be done.

You might recall from my previous posting about fixing my own vehicle, you probably have a vague recollection of what was going on... If not, here's a refresher.

Almost 2 years ago, I was driving back down south after a trip to visit my mom, and about halfway into the trip my A/C stopped working. Ordinarily, that wouldn't have been a HUGE problem, except it was mid-afternoon, mid-August, it was the South, and oh yeah--my windows wouldn't roll down at the time either... and I still had a good three hours to go in my road trip. I had no choice but to sweat it out that time. And upon completion of that trip, the ability to roll down my windows was far more important to me than the A/C... Besides, with the A/C not running, I enjoyed better fuel economy, which was fine by me! So I fixed the windows. Not long after that trip was when the engine mount said sayonara, and we all know I let that go on rattling for WAY longer than I probably should have. But while I was having an oil change, and the mechanic was telling me about the engine mount being a serious problem that he wanted me to dump $500 on, I mentioned that my A/C had died, and that I wasn't sure if I'd just thrown a belt or if I had something more serious going on. The guy looked at it, and said yes, I'd thrown a belt, but it was because the pulley wheel was locked up... So that'll be another $300 to fix. HA! Isn't that cute!

I told him I wasn't interested in either fix once we got down to brass tacks, and I let both problems persist for a long time. Well, that engine mount is still fine, so my car is still purring like a kitten, and on Tuesday after work, I decided that I wasn't going to sweat it out for another summer... I mean I wasn't going to drop three hundred bones on paying someone else to fix it, but if I could fix it myself, I would happily pay for the new parts and get that shit handled. So, riding on the ego boost from my last fix, I waltzed into the auto parts store in my bright pink shirt, and the grizzled character behind the counter asked me what he could help me find as I browsed the shelves looking to pick up some WD40 while I was out.

"Hey, can I help you find something?"

"Yeah... I'm looking for some WD40 over here, but you..."

"Oh it's right ove..." He tried talking over me, but I had already grabbed a can and proceeded with completing my sentence.

"Yeah, it's right here... I was saying, while I was looking for the size I wanted, you can go ahead and pull me an A/C compressor belt and a new tension pulley wheel for my Nissan."

"OH!? ...You need a pulley wheel?"

"Yeah, and I need the belt that runs on it. Is that a problem?"

"Well, no, but how do you know that you need a pulley wheel?"

"Because I know that the one I have now is locked up, and would throw a belt... Which is why I need BOTH."

"Oh... Well, I mean do you know it's the pulley wheel that is locked up, and not one of the other wheels?"

"Well, the other wheels are attached to the drive shaft in my engine and the compressor in the A/C unit. The A/C unit wheel, I can still turn by hand with ease. And if the one attached to the engine wasn't working, my car wouldn't be getting really far, and I'd have bigger problems, wouldn't you say?"

"Oh. Yeah, I guess so."

"Was it the pink shirt that threw you?"

(Crickets chirped as he stood there dumbfounded.)

"So, about those parts..."

"Coming right up."

After this rather insulting exchange, and the bargain price of $55 bucks for the pulley wheel, the belt, and the WD40, I went home, laid down in my driveway, and fixed that shit like it was nobody's business... So now my hot ass is only hot in the best possible way.

And as I write this, it occurs to me that I have these intensely sexist and insulting types of conversations a lot lately... While I do have a problem with the remarkable frequency that I have to bitch slap a guy and put him in his place, I admit, it is kind of fun to verbally kick these guys in their teeny tiny junk, and take them all down a peg or two... It's either that, or I'm going to have to get my hair cut super short, stop shaving my legs and armpits, and make a concerted effort to embody every other insulting stereotype that would lead these fellas to believe that I'm not the delicate flower they take me for.

I thought this was the highlight of the evening.

2011-05-02T02:01:00.002-05:00

With all that has gone on over the weekend, I thought this was really the highlight.

I was markedly less impressed by the fervor over the royal wedding, which I couldn't have cared less about, and the storm damage in Alabama takes the cake for the low-light of things. Fortunately all of my friends and family are safe, though I did have 2 friends who survived the storm by hiding in an interior closet while their upper floor disintegrated, and the rest of their house was reduced to rubble around them.

I was also unimpressed by the uproar in the streets over the late-breaking weekend announcement of Osama's demise. I mean I am glad that the world is rid of him, but by no means am I dancing in the streets in jubilation. Political assassination is not something to be cheering about, no matter who's agenda it serves. We're not a bloodthirsty country that rejoices in the death of others, no matter how loathsome... Simply staying at home and quietly nodding in justification is celebration enough. Sure the stock market will surge on Monday as a result of the news, but I still won't be able to carry my deadly nail clippers on an airplane, and I'll still have to take my shoes off at the security checkpoint. If anything, this will only result in greater resolve of people who hate everything the U.S. stands for... And the celebrations will only fuel the fire of their hatred.

I guess I'm just trying to see the big picture here, and it's not all as cheery as the reveling would lead folks to believe... But maybe I'm just a pessimist.

Let's do the booby dance!

2011-04-28T01:40:00.001-05:00

Let's chat about a really strange headline for a moment...

2011-04-15T02:49:00.002-05:00

Please take a minute to read AT LEAST the headline of this article... The rest of the article is optional, but the headline should be enough to at least draw you in on a decent "WTF?!? factor"

Here it is!

While I am curious how exactly this transpired, I am exponentially more curious about what Pat Robertson has to say on the matter. I mean I know where he's going to stand on the topic in general, but I really want to hear the Pat Robertson soundbite associated with story.

It's over, and it begins!

2011-04-07T19:24:00.005-05:00

So the most ridiculous March Madness tournament in recent memory is over... And with it begins spring and my official start on endeavors in fixing up this ridiculous house.

Springtime means more than just working out in the flower beds and mowing the lawn. (Fun work by comparison!) It also means going through all the knick-knacks in this whole house, clearing out the closets and getting serious about what stays and what gets put out in a yard sale. Of course, when you move into a home owned by a previous generation of family, putting anything in a yard sale means consulting the rest of the family with a rather sizable inventory of items to see if anyone wants anything prior to the big sale. It gets rather convoluted and ridiculous to say the least. The basement has yet to be touched in any really productive regard... It has been consolidated into a relatively small area, (which is to say it has been boxed up and stacked in a rather ridiculous fashion in a lesser area of the basement instead of being spread more thinly across the basement as a whole... Of course, consulting everyone else in the family on this stuff means unpacking the ridiculous boxes to inventory so that everyone else can see what there is to see and going from there).
You see what I mean when I say that this gets convoluted?

It keeps me busy when I have an otherwise idle moment, and I keep telling myself that the worst of this process only has to be done once. Unfortunately, doing it once is MORE than enough.

I am hoping that the giant yard sale generates enough cash that I can spend the proceeds on replastering the kitchen and breakfast room... If there is anything left after that, the kitchen floor NEEDS replacing, and that's not going to be cheap... Especially if it is done right, (in proper tile,) as opposed to just a temporary fix in the form of a cheap sheet of textured vinyl like what is in there now. (I really don't think that we're going to generate that kind of cash, but hey, a girl can dream!)

So, sorry if you feel neglected. I am hoping things will calm down soon! I have no timeline on any of this because I have learned that the minute that I think I've almost finished with a project I discover a new curveball bearing down on me... It's a process. I admit to playing it by ear and learning as I go, but I think I've got a pretty good handle on what needs to happen.

Nicknames

2011-03-29T01:51:00.002-05:00

Several months ago, I was chatting with my BFF, The Admiral, about some things and the topic of nicknames came up. We talked about how she had maintained her moniker over the years, and dearly loved the title, and as the conversation progressed, we realized that neither of us could recall the reasoning for her being deemed "The Admiral" but no matter what, we knew that it didn't really matter anymore.

In recent months, The Admiral has found herself in a family way. To put it bluntly, she got herself all knocked up, and we here at the Happy Hour couldn't be happier for her.

So she and I were having a chat over the weekend and I decided that despite her changing family situation, rather than adopting a new, more maternal nickname or title, she would be allowed to maintain her current nickname. The reason for this being that as a mother and breadwinner, she would be the commander of her familial fleet. This reasoning was met with approval.

I further noted that since I had not been assigned a real nickname over the course of our friendship that I was taking matters into my own hands and appropriating a moniker of my own.

Generally speaking, I frown on the concept of self-assigned nicknames. They seldom have the genuine resonance to catch on the way you want them to, and often if they manage to catch, they wind up getting all twisted around and misused. So I ran it by her first. I wanted an official sign-off from The Admiral stating that she was on board before I made anything official.

Seeing as she has managed to grow up, get married, and start herself a little family, while I have managed to avoid most of the trappings of genuine adulthood, I selected, "The Artful Dodger" as my new title. It has further roots in my artistic pursuits, and that other aspects of my life are somewhat Dickensian in nature. It really is quite fitting. (And The Admiral agrees.)

So, with that, I became The Artful Dodger... And I invite you to give me any thoughts you might have on the matter.

Shot all to hell...

2011-03-28T00:35:00.003-05:00

Let's get right to it. I LOVE March Madness. Every year I spend my winter Saturdays watching men's college basketball because I love it, and as I watch I hope, (though often mistakenly,) that the games I watched will provide some relevant insight when March rolls around... In the end, the games I watch don't matter. They never matter come March. I know that... And I still love it.

This year, the teams invited to the big dance have provided me with some SERIOUS entertainment. I mean we've had more nail-biter outcomes, ridiculous upsets, and just-squeak-by games in this tournament than any in recent memory. Sure my bracket has been shot all to hell, but let's be honest for a minute, with this year's final four lineup, SO IS EVERYONE ELSE'S! And since we're all up shit creek together, let's all just hug it out and acknowledge that even though we would have been better off burning that money we threw into the friendly tournament pool, but if nothing else, we have watched some SERIOUS basketball this year!

I mean sure, I still have BIG problems with the play-in system that they implemented this year, and I know I'm not the only one. And I am even more bothered by the fact that by making the final four, VCU is lending validation to the misguided system. But no matter what, all of the 68 teams came to play! (Except maybe Tennessee, but that is a whole other speculative matter.)

I know I'm not breaking any shocking news, but let's face facts here. This March has been full of surprises and even though my bracket looks like it belongs to someone who entered a pool despite never having watched a single game of basketball in their entire life, and who picked their winners based on something irrelevant like "better mascot" or "more appealing team colors" it must be said that I wouldn't have it any other way!

Man, I love this stuff!

In case you forgot...

2011-03-23T23:11:00.004-05:00

I find it rather important to remind people from time to time just exactly how awesome I am.

Today I just got a somewhat more awesome. (Admittedly, I even amazed myself a little bit on this particular occasion!)

First, some back story.

A year and a half ago I was having some car trouble. My air conditioner stopped working just as summer was transitioning to fall... Seems easy enough to cope with, you say, the season is about to change, just roll down the windows when it gets hot... Yeah, but the master switch that controlled all the windows had been wonky bordering on non-functional for roughly 6 months prior to that. Incidentally, the air conditioner decided to crap out for real about 2 hours into a 6 hour road trip... in the middle of the day... in August. So basically it was really frickin' hot out, the A/C had just died, and I couldn't roll my windows down, and I had 4 hours left in my trip. UGH.

Not knowing where to go for a quick fix while out on the road, I struggled through the remaining 4 hours, sweating my ass off the whole way. Upon getting home, I figured it was time to replace the window switch at the very least. Being a thrifty gal, I went to the internet, did a little homework saw that it was an easy fix involving a little more than a screwdriver and a replacement switch, so I figured I could do it myself. I then ventured to the auto parts store got the part I needed and I changed it out. That was too easy to warrant mentioning. But fixing the A/C was a little more involved... I was due for an oil change so I went to the pros... Mind you, changing the oil is easy too, but since I had other issues, I figured the pros could diagnose it while they were already under the hood.

They looked at it, told me what was up, and so I know what's wrong with it, but I never did anything about it because I prefer to roll with the windows down anyway.

Skip forward in time about a week. (Still roughly 18 months ago.) I start hearing a rattling sound. Crap...

So I take it back to the pros attempting to pass the buck onto them saying, "I was just here, now I've got an unsettling rattle going on here... WTF?"

They took a complimentary look, to appease me, (and to cover their asses,) and 45 minutes later, told me that I had a bad engine mount.

"Yep, your engine mount is bad."

"Engine mount? As in, the thing that holds the motor part of my motor vehicle in the place where it needs to be? You mean that kind of engine mount?"

"Yeah... That about covers it."

"So, clearly this is an important part, what would that cost to fix?"

"Well, let me get an estimate written up."

[about 30 minutes later... I am incensed as they clearly know what is wrong, and how to fix it, and they are keeping me waiting for their own amusement... Also I had somewhere to be, and they were making me later and later by the second.]

"Yeah, so here's your estimate."

"FIVE HUNDRED SIXTY THREE DOLLARS!?!? WHAT?"

"Yeah... New parts plus 3.5 hours labor involved. That's the going rate."

"Ok, well, I have to be somewhere. In fact, I had to be somewhere 30 minutes ago when you went to get that estimate. So I don't have 3.5 hours or five hundred sixty three bucks to spend here at the moment."

"Oh, that's ok... We're getting ready to close anyway, there's no way we would get it fixed today."

"So, you have no intention of fixing it now... Interesting... (After a thoughtful pause to consider the exact subtext of the mechanic's previous statement, I continued) Ok, so, I get that this is an important part of my vehicle... But you're telling me that you're closing up, and don't plan on fixing it now anyway... So, are you implying that this is not a part that is so far gone that it is absolutely critical to fix tonight, and that my car is essentially more or less temporarily ok, as long as I can deal with that rattling?"

"Yeah, I mean it isn't un-drivable, you'll be fine for a while."

"Care to define 'a while' a little more clearly?"

"Nah, no telling really... You could hit a pothole tomorrow torque things all out of whack and be way worse off. Of course, you could be fine for a lot longer, as long as you're ok with that rattling, but I wouldn't advise any off-roading."

"It's a paid-off, ten-year-old four-door sedan... Not exactly off-roading material. As for things that could happen tomorrow, I could be hit by a bus, or consumed by a pack of wild dogs... I suppose I will have to take my chances at least until I can pay for the job."

"Ok, well, we'll see you then, I guess."

"MMM-HMMM..." (Which literally translated to, "At the rate you charge? Nope. Not a chance in hell.")

So skip forward to this past weekend. 18 months later, I am bothered by the rattling every day, and yet I have done nothing about it because I am fine with avoiding potholes if it saves me more than five hundred bones. I took a short road trip to visit my dad. As I pulled into the garage the rattling seemed to noticeably worsen. CRAP.

So I did all my visiting with the family, and drove home, paranoid about the worsening rattling. I parked my car, left it alone, did a little more homework on the old internet, and decided that surprisingly, it looked pretty easy, certainly not 3.5 hours worth of work, and if nothing else, it was worth a shot.

Not to bore you further, but I took out that old engine mount, (BTW, it was TOTALLY SHOT ALL TO HELL!) and replaced it with a spankin' new one. And BAM!!! My little vehicle is purring like a kitten again!

A fabulously timed ego-boost for me, because I fixed that shit all on my own using little more than google and a wrench!

So that fix cost me not $500, not $400, not $300, not $200, not even $100! It cost me a grand total of a glorious springtime afternoon spent working outside, a bruised palm, a cursory amount of frustration over some oxidized bolts, and $52 bucks for the new part.

So, yeah, I am a badass.

I am a reasonably attractive, intelligent, sports-loving, home-improving, car-fixing, badass, handy-dandy jack-of-all-trades marinated in awesomeness... Combine that with my fantastic sense of humor, classic aesthetic tastes, the fact that I can cook, and it kind of goes without saying that I'm going to make some man incredibly happy someday... Which is why I can afford to be picky.

In short, I am kind of a big deal...

BELIEVE IT.

Bust...

2011-03-15T02:30:00.002-05:00

So the Awesome post yielded no awesomeness. And that last post featured a video removed for copyright issues, so in short, the last two posts were total busts.

Sorry.

But buck up everybody! It's the most wonderful time of the year!

No, it's not Christmas... That's a wonderful time too, but I'm talking about something even greater!

It's the time of year where I dedicate time, energy, and attention to one fantastic end. I commit hours in advance to consulting by phone with my best friend so that we can mutually hem and haw over things that ultimately don't matter in the grand scheme of things. At this stage of things, let's face it... It is a quality diversion from all the horrible crap going on, you know, like the impending nuclear meltdown.

What is this wondrous event, you ask?

IT'S MARCH MADNESS!

I'll get back to you after I have taken in countless hours of NCAA hoops, sweating over the outcome of my predicted upsets, cheered for Cinderella teams, even though it will jack my bracket up, and essentially gorged myself on enough college basketball to hold me over until football picks up in the fall... You, know, if we all haven't perished in the looming nuclear holocaust.

In the meantime, I will be behaving like a raving lunatic, frothing at the mouth, and crumpling my bracket in frustration only to uncrumple it 16 seconds later to see if there is any mathematical chance I can salvage my dignity, sanity, or hopes of winning the family pool... I expect that you will either be engaging in the same foolery, or you'll be behaving like a normal person...

Of course, there is also the possibility that you will be quietly quivering in a corner, not far from a pile of your own excrement, praying that the nuclear-meltdown-generated zombies spare you in their quest for global domination... Or something.

WANT

2011-03-12T00:37:00.002-06:00

Despite the fact that this video excerpt is essentially an acid trip on my favorite television show, and that the message is essentially counter to my entire personality, I do still kinda want it as a ringtone... And by kinda, I mean REALLY A LOT!

Awesome things...

2011-02-20T20:24:00.003-06:00

So I was made aware of this other blog where people are outlining 1000 awesome things. That is pretty awesome in itself... Makes it easy to locate a little awesome in the mundane any time I feel like I need a little more awesome in my day... Well, that page and this one... Basically they make me feel a little better about life. (Which is totally different than feeling better about yourself by pointing out the utter folly of others like this site, or maybe this one.

I've got a few things that I think are awesome in everyday life that they haven't covered:

1) When the shuffle mode on the iPod goes on a really great run of songs that just perfectly suit your mood or lift you out of a funk... Sure you can continually skip songs to get to the ones you want to hear more, but every once in a while, you pop that bad boy on, hit play, and BAM, instant musical success that just keeps getting more awesome as it progresses. For those of you old enough to remember tapes, think of it as the REALLY REALLY superior mix tape. You know what I'm talking about. The one where it was really evident that the tracks were carefully considered and arranged in a great order to maximize their awesomeness. (Yes, there are also plenty of great mix CDs, but it began with the tape dammit.)

2) That one day that comes along every season where you can officially recognize that the season is changing. You might not always recognize it, but when you do it's AWESOME... You step outside one day and you come to the realization that the new season is making its annual debut. Sometimes it's that first really genuinely sunshiny day after a long gray winter, or the first day where it's genuinely hot enough that you know in your bones that summer is here. And then there's the day after roasting all summer that you realize that it's sweater weather again and that you're about to spend weekends raking leaves and watching football (if that's your thing,) and as the temperatures drop, you can leave the windows open and shut the A/C off. Winter is a little trickier, because a little frost isn't really a strong indicator of winter... Winter is a seasonal change you can smell... It smells like firewood and even that is unreliable depending on how quickly the neighbors decide to get the wood-burning fireplace going... But there is a day in there where you just know. AWESOME.

3) Getting hit on (or complimented) by someone who you thought was out of your league... Married folks, this still applies to you. Nothing ever has to come of it, and yeah, that hottie might be turn out to be a total douche nozzle, but every once in a while somebody just hits on you or gives you a really great compliment, and it just lifts your whole day and makes you think, "Yep, I've still got it..." or if you're more humble, "Wow, I never knew I had it, but I guess I do." AWESOME.

Feel free to leave your own awesomeness in the comments... (Keep in mind I only worked up the ones I didn't see on the already REALLY long list, there is plenty of other awesome out there!)

If being me is wrong, I don't want to be right...

2011-02-17T06:04:00.002-06:00

So I am going to keep this brief.

I don't want to be a grownup. Not at all!

Unfortunately, I think that's what is happening.

The other day, I got a valentine card from my dad. Sweet.
The card had $20.00 in it. VERY sweet!

Since I operate on a debit card based system most of the time, I don't make a habit out of carrying cash. The next day, I could feel that crisp $20 bill burning a hole in my pocket. So I went shopping! You want to know what I bought?

1 giant box of kitchen trash bags
1 bottle of conditioner
2 different kinds of bathroom/ multi-surface cleaner
4 rolls of scotch tape

Yeah.

As I walked out to my car, I realized what had just transpired, and I immediately drove myself to my mother's office.

"Feel my forehead!"

"Ok, why? Are you ill?"

"Maybe, just feel my forehead! Am I feverish? Do I have some horrendous disease? Am I going to have to move to a leper colony?"

"You feel fine and you look fine to me... Why are you here? Why do you think you're ill?"

"I just bought trash bags, cleaning products, conditioner, and tape with the money dad sent me as a valentine... I must be ill! Because I KNOW there is no other reason I would ever spend gifted money like an adult!"

"Sorry, kiddo. THAT. JUST. HAPPENED."

"CRAP! I DON'T WANNA BE A GROWNUP! AND YOU CAN'T MAKE ME!"

And with that last statement and a little stomping fit, I felt just juvenile enough that I was able to carry on with my day.

...And then I went and spent money (that I actually earned myself) on books, which is an age-neutral activity for me, but still improved the day as a whole.

Starts and fits...

2011-02-05T15:29:00.003-06:00

So I finished painting in the office. And upon moving the bookshelf into the corner where I wanted it, I would have felt a reasonably warranted deep sense of accomplishment, but then I took a minute to look around.

My god! Is this my house? It looks like a bomb went off in here!

I surveyed the damage and essentially came up with the analogy that the place looked like I imagine a house would look if you left an 8 year old home alone for a week, only instead of hot wheels and sundae sprinkles strewn about, it was apparently the home of an 8 year old with a propensity for junk mail, bills, receipts, and dust.

I should note that I don't lend much credence to the idea that we should all be living in homes that are cleaned and polished to the point where they are ready for a professionally-styled photo shoot for "Better Homes and Gardens." I'm all for a home having a lived-in look where you're not afraid to touch anything, but good lord, being able to find a chair somewhere on the main floor that isn't within a foot of a pile of miscellaneous crap might be nice... And I couldn't do that. There was literally crap EVERYWHERE.

Apparently when I set my sights on one task, it applies blinders to every other household chore until the main task is complete. I mean sure I take the trash out before it starts to stink, but I can't really remember the last time I swept the kitchen floor.

And so, today at roughly 2:45 central time, it mentally hit critical mass. And as I attempted to pull the broom and dustpan out of the pantry, and was promptly assaulted by a falling griddle pan, it quite simply caused a mini-mental-meltdown. (Whoa, alliteration.) And this meltdown came at one of those inopportune times when I really would have rather been watching all the college basketball that was on, because its Saturday, and watching college basketball is what I DO on Saturdays in the winter months.

As I swept and mopped, I cursed myself for letting it all slide so much. I am usually so on top of cleaning up after myself as I go, not letting things get so out of hand that a meltdown is necessary, but today, at the expense of my preferred Saturday activity, I did chores like a real grown-up. Laundry is going, the bathroom isn't unsightly, the kitchen floor has been swept and mopped, (though the kitchen still looks like crap until I can get the rest of the bad paneling ripped out, and the walls replastered and painted.) And so the meltdown was quelled to a degree, at least momentarily. (The kitchen floor will be redone at some point in the not too distant future too, but in lieu of replacing the whole thing today, at least the existing surface is reasonably clean.)

I am so glad that I hate the commentator staffing the better games today, so that I can watch hoops and run the vacuum cleaner at the same time!

Every nook and cranny...

2011-01-31T00:54:00.002-06:00

So I've made no secret of all the projects I've been working on around the house. I've cleaned out years of clutter and outdated items and papers. I've scraped and patched and painted and rearranged furniture. I've updated window treatments, and shower fixtures. I've scrubbed years of normal use off the items that I intend to keep around. I've moved furniture again. I've scrubbed soot off the stone face of the fireplace. I've pretty well exhaustively handled most of the visible areas of the house to optimize the fashion and function of the spaces on my extremely limited budget.

What haven't I done? Well... The less visible areas leave something to be desired. If it is an area that I have less-than-daily interaction with, it has admittedly taken a bit of a back seat. Sure, I cleared out the kitchen cabinets and drawers. Sure, I cleared all of the unusable nonsense out of the bathroom cabinets. And yeah, in a kind of fluke move, I did really clear out an area of the basement that can function as a bedroom in a real pinch... I mean there is a bed there, (two in fact,) and there are some shoddy paneled walls and a ceiling covering the pipes, wires, and duct work for the rest of the house, but it is still undoubtedly very much a basement, and not a long term solution for a guest room situation. That really only leaves the rest of the basement, the ACTUAL guest room, and most of the closets.

This became particularly salient to me when I went in search of my old yoga mat... I knew I had seen it in the office a little while after my initial move-in and settling period. I remembered seeing it leaning against the bookshelf after I moved the book shelf in there. I knew it was in the house. I looked in the office. (Mind you the office is in a particular state of disarray at the moment, as the office became a catch-all for spring yard sale items, and for my tools and supplies during previous projects, and all of that is also in a particular state of confusion as I have repeatedly moved much of the already confusing contents because I've also been patching the plaster and working on repainting in there too...) After nearly two hours of what I thought was a relatively exhaustive search, looking around the office, my bedroom, my closet, the entirety of the basement, even the trunk of my car. No luck.

During my initial survey of the office, (where I focused much of my attention since I couldn't remember moving it out of there in the first place,) I looked in the closet in there. I shifted around box fans that haven't been used since late summer. I lifted old coats that had been relegated to that closet to keep them out of the way until I can get rid of them properly.

After 2 hours and three re-checks of that closet, I found the missing mat in a box with the wrapping paper that I didn't pull out to use at Christmas time.

This all really just renews my need for the wintry nonsense to hurry up and get it all over with, so that I can have a yard sale and get all this crap out of here!!!

I know this post was boring. But come on, its either this, or we go back to dead air... Something has got to be better than nothing, even something this spectacularly dull.

Dear Mother Nature, (an open letter)

2011-01-25T23:28:00.003-06:00

I know that you hear the same grousing every year... "Oh, it's too cold in the winter!" and "Oh it's too hot in the summer." I know you must get tired of everybody giving you guff for the standard weather of a given season. I'm sorry about that... Take it for what it is worth and write off most of it as people being too lazy to be bothered with living in an area that has a climate that they find more agreeable. That's usually the case.

As someone who has lived in areas of extreme cold in winter and relocating to areas of extreme heat in the summer, as well as growing up in a land of reasonably balanced whole seasons, I'm not going to bother with such a petty complaint. I know you've got enough on your plate trying to convince the non-science-minded conservative politicians that global warming is real, and that it really is all our fault.

I'm not going to ask you to up and change the system that has worked for you for eons. I am however asking you to cut me a friggin' break when it comes to this snow! I mean, yes, it's winter, and I live in a climate that enjoys all four seasons and winter has its place. It's supposed to be cold. It's supposed to be dreary and gray. It's even supposed to have snow and ice. (And I'm sure you love watching all of the little kiddies rejoice in a day off from school so that they can go sledding on the nearest hill.) I'm fine with all of these things. I am just asking for a break on this snow thing... Sure it can snow. Sure it can be cold. But can you do me a slight favor and let me go a week without the snow? Can't you just double up a couple of these weather systems that are only doling out one or two inches and give me a week or two off? I mean if it ends up translating into dumping 4 inches all at once, that's fine with me. I just want a morning where I don't have to sweep off and scrape down my car. Clearly I don't mind the snowy driveway, or I'd have had it shoveled myself long before that punk kid came around to wake me up on a Saturday morning wanting me to pay him to do it. I'm ok with one or two REALLY BIG snow events where the kids can celebrate an early spring break and have a whole unplanned week off, I'm even ok with several small to medium snowfalls, but this piecemeal, a dusting overnight, an inch here, an inch and a half there, bullshit has to stop!

You're just teasing the kids with, "Oh it's snowing at bedtime, maybe you won't have school tomorrow," only to let them down when they wake up and see that the roads are clear and the lawn is covered with just enough of a dusting to piece together a piss-poor excuse for a two-foot-tall snowman. Either really lay it on thick so that we can really build a truly proud giant snow penis on the local university quad, or just don't bother. You don't have to hustle spring along or anything. The cold and gray days can stay for their seasonal duration, but just quit jerking us all around.

Thanks for your time, I hope you take this under advisement.

Lizzle

A bleary-eyed Saturday morning rant:

2011-01-22T10:26:00.002-06:00

To the kid who woke me up wanting to shovel the driveway, a few customer service pointers:

1 Don't show up before noon on a Saturday, its a weekend, people want to sleep in. Furthermore, you're 2 days late. The snow showed up on Wednesday night... If you really gave a crap about making any cash, you'd have been out on Thursday and Friday. (and don't you give me that, "But I was at school" bologna, I saw the local news, and we both know that you didn't have shit else to do either day because school was cancelled!) And further still, by Saturday morning, the folks who want their driveway shoveled have either shoveled it themselves, given the job to the other annoying teenager who had the brilliant idea to come out shortly after the snow quit, or have driven on it repeatedly turning it into ice, and thus something that you want no part in attempting to shovel.

2) Under no circumstances are you to pound on my front door like you're the police. Do you have a gun and a badge? No? Oh, you say you're only 15? Then quit pounding on my goddamn door like that! The only reason that the citizenry allows the police to pound on doors like that is that they are armed... And for all you know I am armed. frankly you're lucky I opened the door at all, let alone opening it without some manner of weapon in my hand, a la Clint Eastwood telling you to get off my lawn.

3) If I didn't answer the door after the first ring of the doorbell, three more isn't going to make me move any faster. One ring is sufficient. Those who intend to ignore you are going to ignore you anyway, those folks who intend to answer the door after the first ring will not respond kindly to your repeated and overzealous assault on that poor little doorbell button, and my last nerve... You're going to make more money and piss off fewer customers by learning to knock rationally or ring once, WAIT for a few seconds without continued knocking or ringing and when it is prudent to do so, just move on!

Oh and don't come back in the spring you little pissant! I mow my own lawn, and frankly, I don't trust you anywhere near my garage. Now seriously, BEAT IT!

I'm siding with the Admiral on this one...

2011-01-19T16:51:00.002-06:00

The Apocalypse is totally imminent!

Now it's not just birds and fish... We've upped the ante to large mammals!

Hope you have a nice day!

A new week, a new project...

2011-01-18T00:08:00.003-06:00

So last week, I busied myself with installing a new rain head in the shower. To anyone who has ever installed a shower head, I'm betting you're thinking to yourself, "Why on earth would that take someone a week to do?" Well, I'll tell you...

I initially found the aforementioned rain head while actually out shopping for other things... (Namely, a vacuum cleaner that actually sucked things up and didn't overheat in the process of doing said sucking, and thus didn't end up causing my house to smell like a slaughterhouse populated solely by dust and death.) So while I was perusing the aisles, I happened upon a rain head that was drastically marked down. (I assume that most of you have never priced rain heads; I assure you that they don't typically sell for anything near what my tight budget would normally allow.) So, having found this bargain, I snatched it up without a second thought. (I also got a new vacuum, and I have to admit, it is kind of badass since it winds it's own cord up when you're done!) Anyway, back to the reason my project took as long as it did. Upon getting home with my new treasures, I immediately went into the bathroom to install the new shower head. I was excited to give it a whirl!

Upon completion of the installation process which took a mere 5 minutes of my precious time, I remembered what I discovered the last time I installed a shower head in this particular bathroom. (I installed my other shower head pretty much as soon as I moved in because the grandparents were still using an unsightly variable spray head that looked like it had just stepped out of 1976, and based on the calcium deposits that made it spray every direction except onto the person standing below it, I found it likely that it had not been properly cared for or cleaned since it was installed all those years ago. But I digress... The lesson I learned upon installing the predecessor of the rain head was that apparently when this house was originally built, Midwesterners were considerably shorter than they are today. I figured this out because the shower arm, (the bit that pokes out of the wall through all the original tile that I don't want to go to the trouble or expense of ripping out and/or replacing,) sticks out through said tile at about 6 feet in height. If it stuck straight out, relying on a shower head to provide an angle, that would be fine by me. I'm shorter... and if I were to have tall overnight guests, they would have to be content to bend down to get their hair wet or pay for a hotel stay... entirely up to them. But the shower arm doesn't just stick straight out. It sticks straight out for about 6 inches, and then it has an unreasonably steep bend so that the end of the pipe comes out around 5'8" which is more problematic. Furthermore, if you add the drop of a couple inches so that a shower head can occupy actual space once attached to the end of the pipe, we end up right around 5'5"-ish, give or take. At 5'5"-ish, we're low enough that EVEN I would have to duck under it to get my hair wet, which is wholly unacceptable. (Especially when you want to get the full effect of showering under a rain head.)

So, I did a little homework. I figured out exactly what I needed to do to remedy this situation. (I even asked a plumber friend of mine about my options!) Upon completion of my research, I determined that a simple solution could be found at my local home improvement store in the form of an adjustable shower arm extender which affords me the opportunity to change up the height and angle of the original fittings.

Unfortunately we had a 2 day break in the action due to inclement weather and shoddy road conditions... Upon determining that the roads were sufficiently passable, I ventured to the same poorly organized home improvement store mentioned in previous posts. I found the part that I needed with relative ease. (Nothing like the tape and toilet seat debacle!) So I purchased the item at a reasonable price and went back home where I promptly installed it.

You would think that would be the end of the story, wouldn't you?

Yeah, you would be wrong.

After completing the installation (roughly a 10 minute process,) I turned the knobs on the extender to adjust the angle of the arm... And though I am not typically possessed of super-human strength, I managed to turn the knob so hard that it just flat out broke off. Knowing that I just bought the damn thing, and that for all I knew it was a freak occurrence due to a flaw in the metal, I returned to the store and exchanged it for a new one. Upon returning home, I installed the second one. I adjusted it, and had no problem. I then showed my mother how I had spent my day, and her inspection yielded a nod of approval. She then wanted to see it work, so she attempted to adjust it. And then SHE twisted a handle off.

Clearly this was a design flaw and poor manufacturing. So I took it back to the store, got my money back, and looked at a different home improvement store only to find the same poorly made brand. At that point, I said to myself, "I'm not operating on the 'third time is a charm method' I am going to look at reviews online and purchase one that is built to do the job right." And that's what I did.

Then I was abducted for three days worth of "we're going to improve your sour jobless mood with some sponsored retail therapy" shopping trips and lunches with momma, so yeah, the shower head was my only project last week.

This week's project: the office and all the horror that that entails! (The office has become a scary catch-all kind of room during my other projects, and was densely populated with odds and ends even before my other projects began.) So this week will be dedicated to clearing out the nonsense, repainting the white walls a far more interesting shade, and then putting the items back into the room in a more amusing and functional fashion.

You know what they say about idle hands!

Quote of the day:

2011-01-06T00:04:00.002-06:00

The Admiral and I were talking about the recent mass-deaths of birds and fish, in Arkansas, Louisiana, Chesapeake Bay, and Sweden:

The Admiral: "I'm not buying the New Year's fireworks theory. I don't care what anybody says... Crows are some smart fucking birds. They didn't all of a sudden get confused by the fireworks of a podunk town! I have never heard of such an event around fourth of July, and there are a hell of a lot more fireworks going on then! ... Basically, I'm not buying into any theory that doesn't involve aliens, time travel, or the real answer of the apocalypse we all now know is apparently coming."

Adventures in the home improvement stores continue...

2011-01-05T14:04:00.002-06:00

So last week paint was on sale... So being the natural penny pincher that I am, I went shopping when the bargains abound.

And anyone who has ever bought a can of paint and intended to use it themselves knows that they shake it up in the store for a reason. The pigments are not an original part of the paint, so they can settle out, and they can settle themselves out faster than you might like. So in an effort to prevent a color-matching disaster, I have been very busy getting that mess up on the walls!

But back to the home improvement store adventures. I learned a couple of things about my local stores.

First off, they are not as intelligently organized as you might think. For example, when I went looking for new toilet seats to put in my newly refinished bathrooms, I went looking near the toilets. Mistake. The toilets are over by the bathtubs, I guess it's the porcelain connection. Not finding my quarry there, I figured ok, maybe closer to plumbing supplies? Nope. Not there either. So I passed by all the aisles of various pipe fittings... Hmm, maybe they are near the shower and faucet fixtures? Nope. So much for that idea. ...Now, I know what I'm after, and I know I am in the right store, and I know that the aforementioned store is a profit seeking entity that earns that profit by having the products one needs in this particular situation readily available to the masses. I don't want to look like an idiot having to ask where they keep their toilet seats, but hell, even if I did, I can't find anyone around to ask... So after a few minutes fruitlessly scanning the aisles, I found them. Where, you ask? Why, a mere 6 aisles away from plumbing and related fixtures, well past the electrical section, right near the water filtration units, of course. (The water filtration section including units intended to be installed under the sink, which, if you ask me would be better marketed if you put them near the sink and faucet fixtures... But what do I know?) So I am scanning the aisle of toilet seats and water filtration units, and I find an appropriate and affordable option. Mind you, I also ran across a significantly not-affordable option too. Did you know that there are toilet seats that are not encrusted with gold and jewels and yet still cost upwards of a thousand dollars? A THOUSAND DOLLARS! FOR A TOILET SEAT! JUST THE SEAT! NOT EVEN A WHOLE TOILET! Now sure, it will also function as a bidet spritzing your naughty bits with perfectly warmed water, but COME ON! OVER A THOUSAND DOLLARS? If I am buying that, I'm certainly not the one going out to the home improvement store and buying it myself or doing a do-it-yourself installation. If I am dropping more than a grand on a toilet seat, I am going to call some professional up, and they can get it themselves at some contractor's depot at half the cost and then mark it up to over a grand... INCLUDING INSTALLATION! (Though who would you call for that? There are electrical components involved for that bidet water to be warmed, so am I looking in the yellow pages for a plumber or an electrician?)

The second thing I learned in the home improvement store is that the products we have come to know and love have apparently been appropriated and renamed. For example, did you know that masking tape is no longer masking tape? It is now all considered "painter's tape." I learned this when I was in the paint department and asked where I would find the tape...

The clerk looked at me quizzically, "What? Like electrical tape?"

My impulse was to reply, "I am in a home improvement store's PAINT department asking for tape, and you instantly think 'electrical tape?' If you're that idiotic, you deserve your lot in life as a home improvement store clerk." Being that we just finished with the holiday season, I quieted my impulse and said, "No. I need masking tape... I'm not looking for the over-priced blue painter's tape though... I just need standard masking tape because I am not dealing with any delicate surfaces."

"Uhh... I don't know, but all of our tape is in that aisle down the way... See where the guy with the hat is?"

"The guy in the hat that is 30 yards away and walking toward us? Yeah, I see the guy in the hat."

"Well, it's down by him."

"He's walking down a main aisle here. Is it down by where he was when you pointed him out, or closer to where he is walking now?"

"Umm, well, sort of where he was before... But on the other side."

Impulse control fading out now, "Ugh... Never mind. You just don't worry your pretty little head and go back to leaning against that display there, I will find it on my own. You're doing a great job though... Who knows how long that display would have managed without you leaning there!"

(Now in my retail days, we were instructed to address product location questions by walking the customer to the location. Not by pointing to an area vaguely near where we're talking about, and certainly not pointing to someone who is in motion and who may or may not be near that location when the customer gets to the right area. Seriously... He deserves his lot in life.)

So I passed the guy in the hat. I kept going. I scanned the aisles and eventually found the right one, and there was plenty of tape. All the standard varieties, electrical tape, (strangely not in the electrical department, but that goes back to organization,) the over-priced blue painter's tape I expected, duct tape in colors I had not previously imagined, plumber's tape, (again, not in plumbing,) packaging tape, paper tape, and masking tape! VICTORY AT LAST! And as I examined the various widths of the masking tape, and the ridiculous pricing for the masking tape, and the packaging of the ridiculously priced masking tape in assorted widths, I kind of understood where the clerk got confused. Apparently now all tape previously known as masking tape is now packaged and sold as painter's tape. I must have just confused him by excluding the blue variety and referring to it by it's old name. Silly me.

I will likely post pictures of the improvements once things are closer to being finished as a whole... Right now everything is just a mess!

Mission: Accomplished.

2010-12-27T23:24:00.002-06:00

So my Christmas wish was to wake up on Christmas morning and find that there was nothing left to do in the bathrooms but stare at what I'd accomplished... And that wish came true. Mind you, I was a VERY busy bee in the last couple of days before Christmas, but that's really nothing out of the ordinary. I am a project-motivated person... I like being busy and I like achieving my goals in time to sit back and relax for a weekend before tackling another new project.

This week has been about the holidays. Obviously. But in the evenings I have taken to shifting around bedroom furniture trying to find something that better suits me than the configuration my grandparents had for 40+ years. It's an ongoing process... moving a few things around, seeing how it functions for a day or so, and then shifting things again as needed.

I would keep going on about all of this but I think I have even bored myself with this post. (If you started reading this only to find yourself picking your face up off of your keyboard, hoping you didn't drool on the keys, and having lost a couple hours with this giant snooze of a post, I apologize.)

Bathroom follies... (UPDATED.)

2010-12-21T15:04:00.004-06:00

Ok, this is not a post about what typically goes on in a bathroom. This is about what is going on in MY bathroom lately... And don't worry, I'm not going to tell some horrific story involving explosive diarrhea.

So I have pretty well finished the downstairs bath. And a few problematic touch-ups on problems created by previous owners aside, it looks awesome. May post pictures soon. The upstairs bath should be done by Christmas if I get my ass in gear... Though I admit that lacquering the light fixtures is taking longer than I had initially planned on... I think it's an issue of humidity making the dry time longer, and as a result we are experiencing undesired texture issues in the finish. The former electrician who originally wired those things was SERIOUS about not having anyone undo his work, though I must say with regard to the mountings, he did a shitty job. (The wiring part I will approve though.) So I've had to re-do the mounting brackets and because that electrician was so protective of his wiring, I spent more time than I should have needed on undoing the wiring. (Re-doing it should be a snap though!)

I will say this; thank god I haven't run into anyone I know lately while out running the odd errand. Because I've been constantly dressed like a schlub, never wearing makeup, and either had wallpaper scrapings stuck in my hair or was covered in some form of paint or plaster pretty much every day for the last few weeks. It's not a look I expect to see strolling on the runways of Milan in the spring.

And with that, I will leave you because I've got to get back to my task if I want this thing done by Christmas!

Oh, and P.S. - Whoever thought it would be a great idea to have swivel brackets on these stationary light fixtures, YOU WERE WRONG! (SO INDESCRIBABLY AND HORRIBLY WRONG.)

We're working on it...

2010-12-16T00:14:00.003-06:00

Template changes are clearly underway. I'm not sure if I am sticking with this theme, but I rather like it SO FAR. (It is a work in progress)

I have lost the links in my sidebar, but I think I will be putting updated links in there at some point in the near future.

In the process, I also lost my comments because I used a comment gadget other than the standard blogger comments. So please feel free to re-comment as you like.

More changes to come, ...I think.

Here's what we're going to do...

2010-12-07T23:57:00.002-06:00

I understand that I have a rather limited audience these days. I've gone through too many starts and fits to expect otherwise, and frankly blogging is becoming passe, so I'm not attracting new readers through word of mouth, and linkage the way I used to. An episode of my current favorite TV show, "House," (the only show that I block off time for,) recently did an episode about a blogger/patient, and the writers made some salient points about the concept of blogging. I won't bore you with all the details, but until I can find someone else who wants to publish my writing for a mass audience, this is my outlet.

That said, I'm remodeling my home, so I'm remodeling my blog as well. There will be a template change, as the current model is a little outdated for my current lifestyle, (I'm no longer the drinker and party girl I once was) and so, like a predictable girl after a bad breakup, we're getting a new look. I am going to take some time to find exactly what I want, so the change might not be immediate, but it is impending, and it will be rather sweeping.

All of that said, and knowing I have a limited audience, I am turning the reigns over to the readership for a bit.

You tell me what you want to know, and I will try to spin it as only I know how. The subject matter around here has been pretty boundless for a long time, and I don't see that changing... So if you've got a question, and you want my opinion, let me know and I will try to accommodate you. If it is personal or lengthy and you don't want it all out there in the comments, feel free to send an email to thebartenderspeaks@gmail.com and I will sort out the details and then post a reply. If it is something simple and you just want an expansion from my point of view, leave it in the comments and I will find it there too. If it is something I don't feel comfortable answering for whatever reason, I simply won't answer it. (But there isn't much I'm not willing to take on here, so have at it.)

Don't get me wrong here, I'm still going to inject my own topics and interests, and daily misadventures on a regular basis, but in an effort to be more accommodating to the few readers I have left, I'm essentially opening the floor for a little Q & A time.

Ok, so now it's your turn!

I should write them a thank you note!

2010-12-06T22:40:00.003-06:00

After that tirade about the peeling of the wallpaper (2 posts down) and the painted wallpaper, (which, in my opinion, should be considered a treasonous act of hostility against all future possible owners of a property, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of laws yet to be written,) I did a little homework.

I went to the websites of the assorted home improvement stores. I googled effective removal methods. I even searched for reviews of the products I found. The mixed reviews of the "Paper Tiger" seemed to indicate, (often in broken english -- which led me to believe that the users who wrote some of these reviews didn't possess the literacy level necessary to comprehend the directions for proper use,) that this was the tool I needed.

So I dropped by ye olde home depot. I looked through the aisle alongside the zip-strip and fancy $30.00 scrapers. (For thirty bucks, that shit better have an ivory handle and do half of the scraping by itself while you're on the couch clutching your third martini!) And there, on a peg not 6 inches from the floor of the aisle, (well out of range of the headliner products that the store REALLY wants you to buy and thus puts them on shelves at eye-level). It was seven dollars and forty nine cents. And as far as this home improvement project goes, it was easily the best seven and a half dollars spent so far!

I returned home with my new-found toy and restored hope, and idly gave it a quick twirl in a small area on the wall. My mother, drawn in by the curious noises produced in said twirl, came to observe.

For those of you not familiar with this product, it's a small dome-shaped tool that fits easily in the palm of the user. Under the dome are two small wheels with teeth set at an angle that tear tiny perforations into the surface of the offending wallpaper... and if used correctly, not deeply enough to damage the wall surface below. Admittedly, it makes a horrid screeching noise as you twirl it over the wall, because the edges of the dome are dragging on the wall surface, but that is a small price to pay when faced with the prospect of slowly and painfully scratching through and lifting away painted wallpaper one square inch at a time. (After all, with the benefit of an ipod turned up to eleven, you're not going to notice the screeching nearly as much.)

My mother was amused by patterns left by my screeching new toy. She readily encouraged a brief foray into using it to graffiti by scratching out our names onto the wall before we got serious about using the thing to its full and honest capacity.

After a few minutes, distractions deterred me from continuing. Dinner was ready, and there was something on TV that I think I was actually vaguely interested in watching. And then I came down with a cold and felt like garbage, so the last thing I wanted to do was go to town screeching this thing over the wall... So our names remained on the wall for a couple of days. But since I was feeling better and needed a sense of purpose in my day, I got to work this afternoon, while also doing three loads of laundry, and cooking dinner, (after three days of being miserable and non-productive, I was jumping back in with both feet) I got to work showing that painted wallpaper who was boss.

After doing about 60 square feet in total, and then squirting it all with a windex bottle full of water rather than any fancy over-priced stripping product, I took my trusty old $2.00 scraper and wouldn't you know, that nonsense came off like butter! And so a large portion of the wall just needs a good rinse and wipe to get minimal glue residue off, and it'll be ready for paint! (I don't think it's necessary to tell you that at this point in the game, taping out the tile and window will be no problem and the painting portion will be tantamount to receiving a puppy as a Christmas present... Pure, unadulterated joy. (I would've compared it to getting a pony, but let's be real here... None of us has ever gotten a pony for Christmas. And if you tell me you did, I'm going to call you a liar and demand documentation from your parents and video proof that it happened on Christmas... A puppy on the other hand is far more plausible and likely.)

Anyway, it might seem like a simple thing to you, but these days I deal in little victories.

I think I'm going to get to working on that thank you note for the maker of that fine product... And a letter to my parents asking why I never got a pony on Christmas morning.

We're talking about the wrong things...

2010-12-02T23:21:00.003-06:00

(This post is entirely editorial in perspective and content.)

I have felt for a long time that we are talking about all the wrong things.

People focus on the other people. We focus on the banal concepts that give allow for conversation rather than discourse. We talk about the weather. We talk about sports. We talk about the boss' daughter's overpriced wedding. We talk about the Kardashians and other obscenely unimportant gossip of the day.

The ibid and common quote goes: "Great people talk about ideas. Average people talk about things. Small people talk about other people." And in my experience we have all become small people.

I admit that I have become as guilty as most anyone, being a regular observer of dlisted.com as one of my daily web visits. But I also ascribe to a higher aspiration. I also visit cnn.com, politifact.com, and thedailybeast.com as a point of daily ritual and intent on seeking relevant news and information for my daily input. (The latter of which is HIGHLY UNDER-RATED, and in my opinion should be high on most people's list of informative sites, as it seems to encompass most any political and social view in features and editorial pieces.)

The fact is that we as a people have become far too complacent in ourselves. We scrutinize the latest update on the impending royal wedding in England (Something that we are not invited to, and doesn't even impact the U.S. economy, aside from raising airfares to Europe for spring 2011,) and the latest update on espn.com about the most current sports scandal, (which will serve no purpose other than to be further divisive to drive up ticket prices for our chosen favorite teams). Does it impact our daily lives? NO. Does it influence how I am going to make ends meet on an annual basis? NO. Does it do anything other than inflate or deflate my opinion of myself and or my opinion of the celebrity or sports affiliations I tend to root for? NO. Meanwhile, we're not teaching people about ACTUAL civics, or math, or important concepts of language... Why just this week, I LITERALLY (YES, LITERALLY) had to take twenty-five minutes out of my unemployed day and explain to someone in their late 30s (who makes $40 an hour) how cause and effect relationships work... I'm not kidding. This person is nearly 40, and I had to spend nearly half an hour explaining what cause and effect was, and how it operates in language theory and reality. Yet, I am the unemployed idiot, and they take home upwards of 80 grand a year. (Do the math.)

Like I said right out of the gate... We're talking about the wrong things.

Politics. The economy. Money. Job satisfaction. Quality of life... If we delve into these topics on more than a surface-level basis, they are considered TABOO! We don't want to upset anyone. We don't want to rock the boat. We don't want anyone at the office to talk about their pay grade or benefits package for fear that someone else is catching a raw deal. We might imply that we are open about these things, but we're not. This politically correct atmosphere we've established as a cultural norm is something that is running us into the ground and damaging people's lives along the way.

We're not talking about the person who is assisting the dentist cleaning my teeth... she might only have a high school diploma and some limited in office training. I don't begrudge her the job she does, but I do take issue with the fact that she makes more for turning on a machine to sterilize the instruments going into my mouth and taking notes on a chart than someone with a college degree in social work who spends their days going into poop houses and supervising visits between child molesters and the kids they abused.

Think about it.

It should enrage you. I'm not just talking about dental assistants. I'm also talking about Hollywood starlets, celebutantes, agents, marketing directors, cash-flow analysts, unionized auto workers, finance magnates, celebrity chefs, Las Vegas pit bosses, and a thousand other jobs... I could very easily spend my time memorizing a script and decide I am better off improvising a few lines, or looking at a chart and saying, "Yeah, that's likely to be profitable" or saying, "I'm calling my agent and getting a cover on US Weekly about a crazy pregnancy rumor!" I could easily screw in five bolts per car on ten cars an hour. (Hell for $80 an hour, you can step it up to 12 cars an hour and I'm pretty sure I still wouldn't complain too loudly!) I could spend years in a kitchen studying the exact conditions necessary to yield a perfectly cooked steak and how to pair it with pan seared scallops and a potato puree that would make your mouth water. I could stand and watch people deal cards and decide when a player is getting too hot and costing my boss too much money that we need to switch out the dealer and the cards... And I could get paid obscene amounts of money for any of it. But I don't. And do you know why?

I didn't think it was worth tangible value. And there are others out there too!

They don't get paid obscene amounts of money for what they do because teachers and policemen, and firemen, and public defenders, and social workers went to school and decided that people were their currency. (Hell, there are greens keepers that make more in a week than a public school teacher makes in a month!)

I don't mean that they trade in people... That's slavery... Highly illegal and generally frowned upon pretty much no matter who you talk to.

I mean that we consistently culturally value the wrong things. We value the wrong things because we are focused on and continue talking about all the wrong things.

Don't get me wrong... I know that those movie stars are making $20 million a movie for their efforts at entertaining the masses while teachers and social workers are touching just a few lives at a time... But how hard are those Hollywood actors working for it? I mean how many hours a day do they have to put in to figure out that a specific line isn't working, or that their character is going to be more believable to a mass audience if they weighed 140 lbs rather than 95,(or vise versa depending on the role). That's not rocket science. You know who should be making that money? ROCKET SCIENTISTS! (Or engineers who figure out how to make a zero emissions car, or people responsible for educating the next generation to enter the work force, or UN peacekeepers...etc.)

Basically I think we need to be far more concerned with where this country is headed than the weekend box office returns, or the next new gaming system? Do you know how many hectares are in an acre? Do you know how many sides a dodecahedron has? Do you know what bodily systems are most impacted by hypoproteinemia? HELL, DO YOU UNDERSTAND CAUSE AND EFFECT? For example; The cause is, "We are culturally concerned with ALL THE WRONG THINGS!" What is the effect? -- To be determined.

Dear previous home owners...

2010-11-22T07:06:00.002-06:00

(And this is actually an open letter only directed to the folks who previously owned MY home. And I am entirely skipping the grandparents' ownership, although there is not sufficient evidence to indicate whether or not they had a hand in this too... But the parts where I get verbally abusive are not directed at my grandparents, they were good folks. That said, let's just launch into it.)

You ASSHATS!! Your cockshinery and blatant laziness is going to cost me way more time, sweat, and money than would have otherwise been necessary!

First off... I'm pretty sure that you were drunk when you went to pick out your wallpaper. How else would you be able to explain the eagle, lantern, powder horn, laurel branch, rooster, and schoolhouse pattern you seem to have originally picked? There is no excuse for that mess. NONE. And don't you dare give me, "Oh, it was just lovely at the time!" Because I am calling shenanigans on your asses! You were drunk, or you were going for some kind of "folksy-americana-traditional" or you were deliberately trying to make some kind of satirical statement with your wallpaper selection. And let me just say that if it was the latter, then you are even bigger idiots than I gave you credit for, as there are and were better ways to make satirical statements than with your selection of wallpaper in your suburban Indiana kitchen.

Secondly, it appears that in between the first and second rounds of wallpaper you decided it would be a great idea to put plaster over the wallpaper. How in god's creation you managed to get that to work is a mystery in the physics of plaster and wallpaper, but you did it. And after you did it, you appeared to leave that plaster naked and apply a new layer of hideous wallpaper over it. Turquoise floral and diamond patterned paper? REALLY? This is marginally better than your first choice, but I am pretty sure you were still a little buzzed when making that selection too.

The selections were bad enough, but then you apparently elected to paint over that mess... And somewhere along the line, someone decided that wasn't going to do, so you started to scrape at some of it. But in a consistent run of amateur moves, you scraped haphazardly, and DEEPLY gouging out not only the paint, plaster, and bad wallpaper you put up, but also the plaster walls! This leaves all future attempts at any finish other than wallpaper pretty much out of the question unless we are willing to dump god knows how many paychecks into getting this problem solved properly.

And then there is the half-bath... Good God! The bottom-most layer appears to be a shade of paint that resembles "Tiffany blue" which would be fine in small doses, but doesn't seem to pair all that well with the seafoam green tiles you have in there. You painted over that with white, which was arguably a better choice and I would have been fine with. But then you wallpapered over that with a pattern of ferns and grasses, and palm fronds... Again, I don't know how those greens ever went with the seafoam tile, but hey, what do I know? Apparently, you agreed with me at some point and painted white over that mess... And while white would've been fine, YOU PAINTED THE WALLPAPER AGAIN! Come on! Do you really hate all of humanity THAT MUCH? The white paint was then covered with a floral pattern of wallpaper... Not the worst choice, but hell, if I want to see flowers, you know where I think I should go? (Hint: It's not the bathroom!)

Basically, you can see I am very busy undoing the handiwork of the past. And when I was asked if I would rather just put up wallpaper to cover all of this, my response was, "No. I don't hate anyone that much... Kim Jong Il or Osama Bin Laden could buy this house tomorrow and I still wouldn't have the audacity to wallpaper over this shit!"

A steamer and scraper are the items I will keep close at hand for now... I am very glad that only a few rooms of this place were wallpapered. And I am pretty sure that the full bath has only the one layer... Though I haven't sufficiently peeked under the edges to verify that fact.

I knew going into this that there was work to be done, but undoing the shoddy work that lay hidden underneath all of this for so long is far more than I had initially counted on. It's going to be a LONG LONG road to redemption on this one, I'm afraid.

Per your request...

2010-11-16T20:33:00.003-06:00

I do read the comments here, and the lone comment on the last post requested that I tell you about some of the more amusing gems that have been recovered in the "big dig." Happy to oblige.

First off, let me reiterate that my grandparents were not hoarders. They did save all their letters, a large assortment of junk mail and out-dated large-print editions of Reader's Digest and otherwise, mostly things that had some general use, and loads of stuff where the use was not readily apparent to me, but still, generally speaking, this was relatively useful stuff. You're not going to find me featured on an episode of "hoarders" needing professional help with this particular clean up effort... My nomadic lifestyle has really honed my sensibilities to a fine art of spartan utilitarianism. (I do admit to being girly enough that I do love decorator items, and unique ones at that, so, I am not totally utilitarian in lifestyle, but I know going into my projects exactly what will and won't be useful.) If an item has been bested by a new technology, and that technology can be found elsewhere in the residence, for the most part, the original item goes. The exception to this is predominantly in the tool department. Yes, I admit that we currently have an overabundance of hammers and screwdrivers, but in that regard, I also adhere to the "you never have the one you need when you need it" philosophy. So the tools have remained. This also means we've got a SERIOUSLY old school lawn mower. And by "SERIOUSLY OLD SCHOOL" I mean it's one step up from a goat. It's the old rotary push mower that requires no electricity or gas,running solely on the kinetic energy provided by the person pushing, and is merely a series of rotating blades which are totally open for hands and feet to get caught in. Fortunately, I have no small children, so this open-blade variety, in addition to being very environmentally friendly, and noise pollution free, is totally acceptable to me as a kept item.

In the more amusing, and often somewhat disturbing categories of finds, I also discovered multiple home enema kits, way more glycerin-suppository laxatives than anyone other than a severe bulimic or Hollywood starlet could ever hope to need in a lifetime, and other outdated home remedies for assorted maladies that can be treated by methods with a simple trip for currently approved treatments sold at a Walgreens or CVS rather than shoving something in your back door. Those items were rather rapidly tossed, because I have no intention of using them, perhaps largely because,(call me a prude,) I think of my back door as an exclusive "EXIT ONLY."

I also found a few boxes of at-home perms that, judging by the packaging were not sold anytime after 1978, and were never used in those intervening years... Those also found their way to the dump, along with a rainbow-colored assortment of ugly hair clips, scrunchies, and cloth headbands that no rational person with a choice and capacity to exercise free will would ever sport in public.

Having taken over the master bedroom, it was also my unfortunate duty to sort through... well... master bedroom type things. Having found a tube of KY jelly very early on in the process, I knew I was very likely to encounter at least a few shudder-and-or-nightmare-inducing items. The black crotchless panties were found and discarded shortly thereafter. Admittedly, there was one piece of lingerie that made me chuckle in addition to the obligatory shudder. A pair of white bikini underwear with a lion stitched just above the crotch that was also lovingly stitched with the letters "GRRRRRR!" (Again, chuckle, shudder, trash.)

There was also a... I guess we can call it marital aid, in the form of a handbook, apparently one given to my grandparents by some member of the clergy either shortly before or shortly after they wed. It specifically noted on the first page not to let this book fall into the hands of children, or the "perverted of mind." Falling into both of these categories based solely on the timing of my birth and the social acceptability of certain things relevant at the time this little manual was published, I turned this over to my mother who found it endlessly entertaining and whom I often found in riotous fits of laughter as she proceeded to read the ensuing passages. I assume it was funny by today's standards of what is acceptable in the bedroom, (married or not,) and let it be.

Another helpful guidebook recovered from the dig was a very out-dated manual on "how to help the problem drinker" which was, rather amusingly stored in the liquor cabinet. I read the first couple of pages and laughed uncontrollably at references to drinkers in general as "sad sacks" and the recovering alcoholics as a (and this is a DIRECT QUOTE,) "group of folks sitting around singing 'how dry I am' while holding each other back from gulping down whiskey, and preaching to others about the evils of the 'DEMON RUM.'"

That one was always going to be a tough one to top, and still ranks in the top three finds, but then while clearing out the bathroom cabinets, I ran across an unopened box containing 10 individual packets, marked "LE FUNELLE!" The packets were then further marked, "For when you're out on the town and cannot sit down!" Yes, that's right, it was a funnel for the ladies to use in bathrooms they deemed unsanitary, so they could pee while standing. I laughed heartily at that, and proceeded to wrap it and give it as a gift to my best friend. I think the odds are good that I will get it back for Christmas, and that she will get it back for her birthday in the spring. It's just one of those gifts.

I also ran across a couple of decks of vintage playing cards with naked ladies on them, and seeing as I don't have a pen pal on death row who would get ready use out of those, I simply passed them along to the more appreciative men in the family, who proceeded to jokingly fight about who would get the deck featuring the blonde, and who got the brunette. (They then decided to mix the decks by suit so they both got some of each.)

That's a random sampling of the more worthwhile finds so far. I will let you all know if anything more interesting turns up!

Cut to Tom Petty singing "Refugee"

2010-11-06T00:01:00.002-05:00

Ok, so in the last post we covered the fact that I am a person who seeks geographical solutions to life's problems.

I'm not comfortable with calling it "running away from my problems" because I am not so much running to or from anywhere, but rather, rolling up the homestead, packing it in the ol' wagon, and rolling back to the roots more often than not. Basically, with minimal effort involved, my problems would have no trouble finding me.

That said, I admit that I have spent a healthy chunk of cash on u-hauls, pizza, and cases of beer to compensate helpful friends in the last few years... Much more than I would like. And yes, I have thought quite a bit about how my nomadic lifestyle has kept me from pursuing certain things, and probably a few relationships. But it has also provided me with interesting opportunities, random jobs, and some really great friendships that I would have lacked otherwise.

Living like a refugee has some definite pros and cons.

This most recent move has not only landed me back in my hometown, but in the house where my grandparents lived. This particular situation, too, has pros and cons. For example: Living in hometown - Con for night life, pro for cost of living. The house is paid off - DEFINITE PRO. The grandparents lived here for more than 50 years and didn't throw much away in all that time - MOSTLY CON, with the occasional random found object becoming just amusing enough to be register as a pro.

Yes, I could go on with that list for a while, but I have a feeling I am already starting to bore all two of you whom I have retained as readers, so I will stop.

The point of this is, when I talk to the friends I have amassed elsewhere, and they ask how the new place is, or if I have found work yet, or the other run of the mill questions you get from people who don't see you everyday, I do have things to tell them despite living like a shut-in at present.

The new place is lovely, despite being full of all kinds of crap. No I haven't found work yet, though I admit to busying myself with other endeavors instead of REALLY hunting for that next job. Essentially, I look at the job ads for a little while and then I busy myself with what I refer to as the big dig. I have spent weeks digging through every drawer, cabinet, closet, nook, and cranny of this place, shuffling through mountains of papers, photos, odd little knickknacks, boxes upon boxes of utter nonsense, and pretty much anything else you can imagine amassing in more than 50 years while living in the same house.

I should probably explain something. No, my grandparents were not hoarders. They were, however, children in the depression era. This led them to save things that were vaguely useful just in case they might be needed later. Also, they saved newspaper clippings from 1974, (and every other year,) not because they were particularly interesting, but because at the end of a full page article covering some local event in great depth and detail, my grandmother's name appeared for some banal reason one paragraph from the bottom. This would be fine if there were just one or two of those, but we are talking about tons of loose little newsprint clippings that aren't mounted for preservation because they have some great significance, but rather stuffed in an envelope, and dropped in a drawer because my grandfather ranked fourth that week in a local golf outing in 1958. Apparently this was worth remembering... Just not important enough to actually do anything with any of it.

To boot, in a world before email and that ever-so-convenient delete button, my grandparents were tireless correspondents. They retained their pen-pals from all over the place for decades. Unfortunately, they also retained every letter from every person who ever wrote them anything. I suppose as pros or cons go, this one could go either way, because some of it is vaguely amusing, but for the most part it is just heaps of crap that must be sorted one piece at a time... But now I know that my aunt had tennis elbow in the spring of '74, and that my great aunt had some money troubles back in '53, and I also know that all too frequently many of these letters contained pictures. Mind you none of these pictures qualify to compete with Annie Liebowitz, or Ansel Adams... We're just talking about the run of the mill shots of the back of my cousin's head, or my mother falling asleep at the dining room table, or some random house in Dayton, Ohio, or snow on some residential street somewhere in Vermont. (Riveting, I know.)

Don't get me wrong. Some of it is great. I do have the advantage of being lucky enough to live in a house that is paid off, so I can take the time to sort through all of this, and some of it does admittedly shine a light into the more darkened corners of my family history, but at the same time, I don't really care about the vast majority of it, and yet ALL of it still has to be painstakingly examined and sorted, one piece at a time.

You're probably saying to yourself, "Just chuck it all and start fresh!" And as far as I am concerned that would be the ideal. And perhaps this is my nomadic-refugee lifestyle piping up, but seeing as I lived without all of this other stuff all these years, having it all thrust upon me now seems silly. And if it were up to me, I would most likely give the majority of it a general once-over and chuck most of it... But you see, there is a fly in the ointment. My family knows I am here. They know what I am doing here. Some have readily embraced it and encouraged me to do anything in my power to make this house my own. Which would mean purging many of the the remnants of the past. But there are others... OH YES... OTHERS.

The others are the rather nutty (not in a good way) members of the family. The ones who essentially think that this house ought to stand as is, and essentially be a shrine to the former residents. They seem to believe that nothing should be touched or moved, or (GASP!) thrown out because at some point my grandparents thought it was important to keep.

I'm sorry, but I don't look at a user's manual for a toaster purchased in 1964 and think to myself, "This is truly a precious heirloom! It must be preserved and handed down to future generations!" (That seems to be the thinking of the "OTHERS.") Meanwhile my thinking is, "Jesus, what the hell is this doing here? It is clearly in with other manuals and instructions... Including the manual for the 1976 model toaster that replaced the old '64... (12 years is a pretty good run for a toaster if I do say so myself) And the envelope all of this is in is clearly only a few years old, so someone had to look at all of this... WHY DID WE SAVE IT? Why do we still have assembly instructions for a weed whacker? It's two screws on the handle and then you move the little lever and pop on the wire spool at the bottom... Did we save that in case one of the screws fell out and a mentally handicapped person was recruited to do the repair job? I don't think we need the assembly instructions anymore... WAIT, THERE ARE THREE SEPARATE WEED WHACKER MANUALS... WE ONLY HAVE ONE WEED WHACKER, AND IT ISN'T ANY ONE OF THESE!" Clearly my thinking, while much more long-winded, is also much more logical and rational. Upon completion of examining all the manuals contained in the manual envelopes, my next thought was, "Why was this all stored in the dining room in the cabinet with the nice table linens, and why is there also a cache of incandescent light bulbs and three rotary phones in here too?"

There isn't any real rhyme or reason to any of this, or how any of it was stored. Heap on 8 grandkids and 5 great grandkids all sending every little art project imaginable, and obituary clippings and funeral cards for anyone who you ever breathed on and you're starting to see how things add up.

You can see how I have occupied my time lately.

In the words of Shakespeare, "Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more..."

A little like the old school nintendo...

2010-10-26T01:02:00.002-05:00

So a few months ago I lost my sister. You all know that.

I admittedly retreated into my shell for a little while. Admittedly the hiatus lasted longer than planned. I will attribute that (at least in part) to a complete computer meltdown among other assorted personal crap.

But in a future post intended to detail the things that need a little fleshing-out, I plan to give you the highlights and low-lights of those missing months. Suffice it to say that I made like I did with my old-school original nintendo system, and hit the ol' "RESET" button.

Yes, as you may or may not have inferred by the very presence of this post, I have managed to reset my computer. After my own futile attempts to recover minimal function (and dubiously yet desperately hoping to recover all of my other useful hard drive information) I let my computer-nerd friends have a whack at it. No luck. I even took it to the store that I bought it from, (because for once I actually purchased a warranty...) That conversation went a little something like this:

"Hey, my computer won't work. I bought the warranty though."

"Ok, let's have a look. ...Oh, yeah, you do have a warranty, but it only covers physical damage. Clearly you've got a software issue, and your warranty only covers damages to the hardware."

"Uhh... Ok. That bit was left out of the warranty pitch. So since you think this is a software issue, and that's not covered, what is this going to cost me?"

"Well, if you want us to back up what's left of your hard drive, it'll be at least $70.00, possibly a lot more if you have a lot of data on there."

"Well, yes, there is a lot of data on there. It's primarily music though, and I can always get that back. And I email all my documents to myself, so I have backups of those. You're basically telling me that I am going to lose any extra programs, but in this case they are all easily replaced. I have the disks. So without a backup, what is this going to cost me to fix?"

"Umm, depending on the extent of the problem, $150.00 to $300.00 or so."

Astounded at the figure he just quoted relative to the cost of brand new computers chilling on the shelves a mere 20 yards away, I replied, "Believe me when I tell you that I don't mean to shoot the messenger on this one, because I know it's not your personal policy, but rather, the store's policy, but that is ridiculous and frankly your pricing is obscene!"

"I know. Sorry. So what do you want to do?"

"Give me a minute."

The more I stood there mentally fuming with (and plotting the "mysterious" death) of the asshole who sold me the warranty without mentioning the fact that it didn't at all include the all-too-common software-related crashes, and debating the relative merits of parting with a healthy chunk of my next paycheck, something dawned on me. So I called over my helpful neighborhood price-gouger, and asked him a question.

"So you're telling me that my computer is suffering from a software malfunction, and that in order to fix it, I will have to part with a chunk of cash in order to get it working, because the warranty that I already dumped a big chunk of cash on when I bought the damn thing doesn't cover a software problem? Am I right so far?"

"Yes."

"But, if I were to say... 'ACCIDENTALLY' drop it from the roof of a six-story building like the one I work in, or go out into the parking lot here and 'WOOPS!' back over it with my car, my warranty kicks in, and you fix it for free?"

"Well, yeah."

"Doesn't that seem a little asinine?"

"Asa-wha?"

"Stupid. Your policy is stupid, agreed?"

"Well, maybe."

"Trust me, it is."

In lieu of physically jacking up my computer for the sake of costing the shadily-shrewd jerkfaces at least the cost of the my warranty in replacement hardware and parts alone, I opted for what I thought was a more rational option. [*It should be noted that the next time I have a problem I am going to hurl this thing into the path of an oncoming Mack truck, to ensure that they cover the cost for maximum damages!(And for the techie-nerds out there, I had already tried running a recovery from the partition, but it had somehow managed to become corrupted.)] I borrowed a system recovery disk from my friend who incidentally has almost the exact same system. And it worked... For about three days. Deceptively, the disk I had used did manage to recover my system. But upon rebooting, it figured out that my computer was ever so slightly different from the one I used the disk from, (differing in serial number alone is apparently enough to be detected by this shit show... sneaky bastards!) And after that second breakdown, I gave up for a little while.

I didn't touch my computer at all for about a month and a half, except when it was in the way, and I had to move it to gain additional seating for guests. I didn't think about it at all when I came home from work. I traveled and visited friends and family on weekends. I got my sports scores texted to my phone. As the two month mark rolled around, and I gave notice at my apartment complex and my job, having a working computer suddenly became a whole lot more important. So I ordered the disk for my computer. Only to find that the recovery disk buffoons sent it to my billing address, and not my shipping address. Two frustrating weeks later, I got the damn thing. I popped it in, let it run, only to find that it wasn't getting anywhere.

I even let it run overnight. Nada.

I tried running a recovery using any combination of the limited options to see if any of them got any further. Let those options run every night, still nothing. (This brings us up to about a week ago.) After one simple question to an IT guy friend of mine, it was up and running in under 3 hours.

Luckily I didn't feel totally stupid though, because it was a legit question, he said he'd never seen it happen that way, and I did still need the disk to fix this shit show.

Long story short, (WAYYYY too late, I know,) I lost all my music, because apparently my backup system saved the song listings, but apparently not the songs themselves. This really wasn't a total disaster, as I do have an arsenal of CDs that I can easily reload much of my music from. The rest can be recreated by a combination of info gleaned from my as-yet-un-synched ipod, and the song listings saved from the backups that apparently ran for three to five hours at a time and yet somehow still never really backed anything up.

So The computer is reset.

A few of you, (I say that like I have more than one or two readers left,) might have caught a quick little unexplained phrase up there a few paragraphs ago. I should probably also note that I kind of hit the reset button on the rest of my life too. I quit my shitty job. And yes, I moved back to my hometown, because apparently I seek geographical solutions to my problems, and with the sister thing, it seemed like a good idea to get back to the ol' roots for a while.

No matter how desperate I get, I won't go back to the job I had the last time I lived here... Though now that I think about it, I never did finish the "Poop House Chronicles..." And I know the few of you who remain loyal to me for some as-yet- unknown reason probably want a genuine conclusion to that horrible mess. I'll see what I can do.

My ridiculous ass is back though. Hopefully this reset and return will stick for a fat minute.

It has been a very long time...

2010-07-03T16:47:00.002-05:00

I have good reasons. I know that many people have just given up on the blogging altogether lately, and announced their retirements, but I assure you, while it has admittedly crossed my mind, I am not retiring just yet.

The truth is, back in April, one of my sisters passed away unexpectedly. In addition to working through issues that were going on long before that happened, the addition of that loss, and the grief that goes along with it have occupied a large chunk of my time and attention.

Sorry.

Back soon.

I left money for pizza on the counter, and the number for where I'll be is on the fridge. No prank calls, and no playing ball in the house.

Crap.

2010-02-18T13:11:00.002-06:00

Apparently despite my best efforts I'm turning out to be a good person.

My mom called last night, and said that when she went to church she saw a girl I went to grade school and high school with. Her name is Adrienne. All through our youth she was a cute, petite little size 2 cheerleader. She was actually not a total prostitute, and strangely a very intelligent cheerleader, (that lone exception to the rule) so I had no beef with her because she wasn't interested in getting busy with my older brother (a rarity among the cheerleaders,) ... I am pretty sure she ended up going to Notre Dame… But anyway, mom said that she saw Adrienne going up the aisle to be a eucharistic minister at mass, and apparently the poor girl has gained some weight. To quote the conversation directly:

"Hey, you remember Adrienne?"

"Yeah, why?"

"She used to be very cute and petite, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I saw her at mass tonight, and that girl has got a rump on her now!"

"MOM!"

"I'm not kidding! She's got a butt on her that goes on for days! It looked like two bulldogs fighting in a bag!"

"MOM!"

"Well she does!"

"Well, I know you're telling me this to make me feel better about myself, but I never had any issue with her… I don't delight in news of her new giant ass!"

"I just thought you should know."

"Noted. Thanks."

"I mean if you both show up at your class reunion, you'll be the one who has held up better!"

"Mom, it is never about that. High school reunions are to make fun of the girls who got trapped in loveless marriages by shotgun weddings, and to poke fun at their horrible choices of 'Baby-daddies' … And to make fun of said horrible baby-daddies, and the fact that some of the wealthier classmates got cut off by their rich parents and ended up working at the deli counter in the grocery store on a long-term basis because they didn't think they'd ever have to worry about a degree and supporting themselves for real."

"At my age it's about who died since the last reunion."

"You don't ever go to your reunions."

"Well neither do you."

"We've only had one so far… and a few people in my class have died since that one."

"Well, you haven't! Which is why I thought you'd enjoy knowing that one of your classmates now has an unnaturally large ass!"

"Well, I appreciate the thought, but my ass is plenty big enough that I don't take joy from the same issues in other people. It's called compassion… Golden rule and all. AND YOU NOTICED THIS IN CHURCH! You need to go to confession. You should have been too busy praying to notice and judge the flaws of others."

"You're probably right."

"I love you, mom."

"Yeah, I love you too… killjoy."

Apologies of a misanthrope...

2010-01-12T19:17:00.002-06:00

I am miserable.

I think about updating all the time, and then I don't. Part of it is to ensure that I don't drag you through the mud and mire of my misery just to say that I posted something. I don't want to do that to you. I don't want to be that Debbie Downer, because not only is it no fun for me to live in real-time, it's no fun for anyone to read after the fact, and it's not why you come here.

In short, my job makes me hate life, and it finds new and interesting ways to do so on a daily basis. I mean I love the people I work with, but there is a lot to hate aside from that, and I'm not one to whine over something stupid like not having my own staple remover, or having to borrow someone else's scissors.

There is good news though. There is a change in the wind. A big change.

You see, my friends, I'm looking at putting my nomadic lifestyle behind me... I'm looking at buying myself a house. I know, I know... It's crazy talk for the Lizzle to speak of settling down in one place for long, and in the politically conservative south, no less! I never thought it would happen either. Mind you I'm not pregnant, nor even romantically attached enough to get pregnant, and it might be really stupid of me to go looking for a house when I hate my job as much as I do, but jobs will come and go, and I am fed up with dumping rent to pay someone else's mortgage payment and having nothing to show for it but walls I'm not allowed to paint.

Mom says I can get a puppy too! (Any she's right, and that excites me, because I've wanted a puppy for a long time.) But we're going to take things one step at a time. Because there are other things up in the air at this point, and I don't want to get in over my head... But the times are kind of exciting, though with house hunting, and other issues that drag me out of town on the weekend I am busy with things other than posting. I know that's not an excuse, because it only takes a few minutes to provide an update, but in saving for a down payment on a house, I'm not paying for internet at my apartment, so I have to leave and go elsewhere to post updates and that's a hassle, but I promise to make more of an effort to keep you updated.

Honest.

I really will try harder!

I love them... But I hate them...

2009-11-27T20:44:00.004-06:00

For the first time in years, I've gotten to have Thanksgiving with my aunt and uncle and cousins who live in my current geographical region. They didn't generally make the commute up to where I was, and I was usually either too poor, or unable to get time off from work to make the journey down to see them. And while I love getting to see the kids for the holidays, and I love getting to be with my family, I also hate them. I hate them because they invite me to take part, and when it's time for me to grab my purse and leave, they say things like, "Oh, you're taking leftovers, aren't you? We can't keep all of this! You need to take some!" And so in addition to being already overstuffed, I drive home with a back seat full of ridiculously delicious foods.

Ordinarily taking home leftovers would save me a trip to the grocery and not be a problem, but we've covered the fact that my most recent relocation saw me venture to the more politically conservative and less literate side of the Mason-Dixon line. (Fortunately my family can read though!) But this means that if anyone can't, or more importantly, won't read the cookbook version of the recipe, that they default to the Paula Deen school of thought, meaning that the conservatism shown in the political polls and overwhelming popularity of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News channel does not extend so far as to apply to the generally encouraged level of caloric intake. This is especially true on a holiday. So there are not just mashed potatoes, and giblet gravy, there are mashed potatoes made with cream cheese, a whole stick of butter, and cream and then topped with melted cheese, instead of simply being boiled potatoes which are then mashed and blended smooth using only a little pat of butter, and skim milk. Then there is even more butter dropped into the pan drippings an flour that makes up that delicious gravy. While delicious, this type of cooking, (and eating,) turns into a really unfortunate situation when it comes time to venture back to the bathroom scale.

So as if my ass-expansion wasn't bad enough, since the cousins have small children, there was discussion of the "Black Friday" ads and deals. And the more they talked about it, the more excited they got, and the more excited they got, the more that excitement was translated across the table and caught in much the same manner as a case of the swine flu... It was sneezed out all over me, and just because I happened to be sitting there, I caught the fever.

DAMN THEM.

So despite the fact that I don't have any small children of my own, and despite the fact that I didn't think there was anything that I couldn't live without, I found myself going to bed on Thanksgiving night on an overly full stomach at roughly 9 PM, only to wake up at 3 AM and go meet up with the Aunt and cousins to get some great deals with all the other crazies. And I did this in spite of the fact that I prefer to shop online, skip the crowds, skip standing in lines, and most likely end up with a better deal, even taking shipping costs into account... And usually if you're a little bit savvy about it, you can swing free shipping.

Never underestimate the power and influence of a group mentality, or how it can influence your decisions despite your better judgment. This is how riots, genocides, car-flipping, Angelina Jolie's adoptive family, and Heidi Montag's inexplicable popularity all get started... And once the ball is rolling, it would seem that we are all doomed.

So as I ventured out into the cold, dark, wee morning hours, in search of the best deal on generally inexpensive toys and other assorted goodies, I suddenly found myself thrust into an electronics department. This would not be a problem ordinarily... But when you know that there are deals to be had at this obscenely early hour, in this particular store, on this one day of the year, once again, you tend to get caught up in the moment.

This is how one ends up with an 8GB ipod that would need to be returned, when only hours later you find a 16 GB ipod for only $30.00 more... Online... Where you instinctively told yourself to start your shopping in the first place. So I went from not having ever owned an ipod, to owning two in one day. And I will hang onto the 8GB version until my real ipod arrives... Thus depriving some crazy person of their ipod ownership, because undoubtedly, when I return this one, despite the fact that I will include everything in all of its original packaging, and I will reset the memory, thus deleting all of my songs, I'm sure that the store will return my ipod to the manufacturer, to be further "refurbished" and sold as a preowned unit for a significant discount. (I know I switched from passive to active voice and back again in this little paragraph, but I really don't care enough to go back and fix it.)

In short, I should've known better. I should've just slept in, like I really wanted to, gotten the model with the larger memory, and bought it online in the first place.

Stupid family. Overfeeding me and then suckering me into ridiculous shopping with their ridiculous enthusiasm... (insert further indistinguishable grumbling here)

My brother is a married man??? WTF?

2009-11-20T21:04:00.002-06:00

Yep, my idiot brother, whom I love, is a married man. He found himself a VERY patient girl who was willing to put up with him for SEVEN YEARS before getting the ring, and then four months later, POOF! They are officially hitched!

I couldn't be happier for the pair of them. They are one of those adorable couples that you both love and hate being around. You love it because it's great to be around people who are that happy and who make each other that happy, but you hate it because they make each other that happy, and well, you know you're not that happy... Or maybe that's just me.

Yeah, my brother and new sister in-law's happiest day was one of the most intensely depressing of my life, and I've seen some doozies in my day!

And it wasn't depressing for me because I would begrudge either of them all the happiness in the world, but it was just one of those days that really highlighted for me all the ways in which my life kinda blows at the moment... And trust me, it blows HARD.

As I'm sitting here typing this, I'm trying to remind myself that I sat down with the intention of revising my resume so that one area of my life could blow a fair amount less hard... Most days lately, I've been sitting at my desk thinking, "You know, poop houses are bad, and nobody should ever have to venture into one to earn a living, but I'll be damned if I didn't land in the office-job equivalent of a poop house... Well, at least I'm not dating Jon Gosselin, or working in a sewage treatment plant."

Not good parallels to be drawing when trying to look at the bright side of your life.

Tomorrow it will be more job hunting, more poop house writing, and more... well, more bleh.

Sorry. That's all I've got.

This is it for now...

2009-11-13T23:50:00.002-06:00

I forgot to mention in my last post that I'm out of town for the weekend.

You see, my brother is getting married, and while certain other members of my family may or may not feel the need to attend, I'm damn sure going to be there.

I'm writing this post after the rehearsal dinner, which was six courses of delicious, coma-inducing fabulosity, and while I might very well lapse into the aforementioned coma, or have to be rolled into the blessed event using a hand dolly, a flatbed truck, or whatever other apparatus can be conceived on such short notice, I'm going to be there!

For the foodies in the readership, (Marcia, I'm looking at you here) let me just say that six full courses, and six delightful wine pairings later, I can't find a word to describe the heavenly meal, other than to say that I didn't know it was possible to be this overstuffed outside of Thanksgiving meals. It was all spectacular, and during a couple of the courses, I looked at my plate, groaned, ate two bites and said, "It's fantastic, but I just can't." And I'm still regretting having as many bites as I did. If I'm so inclined, I might have to post the entire menu later.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go lay down and contemplate forcing myself to vomit in order to feel better... and maybe to taste that fantastic Duck salad again... Though I'm betting it will have a less appealing taste coming up than it did going down in the first place.

No PHC today.

2009-11-08T18:51:00.002-06:00

Sorry. There is no PHC post today.

I tried. I honestly made every effort I could. You would understand if you knew the exact details of last week.

Suffice it to say that the very stable version of me that goes to work on a daily basis, and does the bulk of my daily activities, and lives most of the days of my life (the version of me that is on call 99% of the time) well, that version of me got a little worn out. And starting on Thursday evening, that version of me decided to call in sick. That left the other me holding the bag.

The other me gets rattled, is emotional, raw, and well, somewhat more combustible than the stable me. And after what had already been a fairly ugly work week, sending in the unstable me to finish things out was not good.

So as the unstable me sat at my desk on Friday, a coworker (one that I really like on a personal level,) asked me a question and then put something on my desk for me to handle. The unstable me FREAKED THE FUCK OUT. And admittedly, I snapped at my friend and coworker. I instantly apologized to her, because I knew it wasn't her fault, and that I'd just essentially shot the messenger on that one. Well, I went and took a breather for a few minutes because it was clear even to the unstable me that that was the best course of action. When I got back, I was called into the boss' office. I was instantly reprimanded for what had transpired before. I told them that I had already apologized, and that it wasn't her fault. They asked unstable me what was causing this fracas. Unstable me said that I was overwhelmed, and that I was drowning in my workload, (which is why rational and stable me took the day off). At which point they essentially implied that they had no idea what it was that I did all day, because there is just no way that what they know as my job should be taking all day, let alone overwhelming me. They further implied that I didn't do much of anything at all. (Which is funny, considering that the rational me had stayed late at work the three previous nights to make sure that things were all getting done on time... So apparently, rational me was staying late to do bonus amounts of nothing.)

At hearing all of this, unstable me suffered a brain aneurysm. I stood there with my chin on the floor unable to form sentences, let alone use those sentences to explain what I do all day, or why it takes me all day to do it. There was not a coherent thought in that room, let alone one that I could've formed into the basis for my defense at that point.

I might as well have put my hand down the back of my pants, crapped in my hand, and smeared it on the walls while laughing maniacally. In point of fact, that most likely would've served me better. But instead, I just stood there with my mouth agape, desperately trying to form letters into words and words into sentences and sentences into the explanation of what I KNOW that I do all day, and finding myself coming up short. At least with the poop on the walls, I'd have had a solid basis for a mental health leave. Whereas with the idiotic blank stare, I just looked like a vacant idiot who seemed to be genuinely every bit as incompetent as they were implying when we all know that nothing could be further from the truth.

The unstable me ended up in the bathroom crying uncontrollably.

The unstable me was saved by my best friend at the office who, despite being taken aback at seeing me so rattled at all of this that I was crying in the bathroom, was in a rational state of mind, and talked the stable me into coming in to work for a half-day, because clearly the unstable me couldn't take the pressure.

Both of me then went after work and had much needed alcohol, on an empty stomach, and had to spend the night at my friend's house. Saturday turned into a day of physical recovery from the previous night's indulgence, and Sunday was spent on retail therapy and formulating my plans for the future. And tops on the list is getting the hell out of the only office to ever reduce me to tears on the job. I mean I know it was unstable me that was reduced to tears, and not the real me, but the fact that the real me was too worn out to go in, forcing unstable me to handle things as best as I could, and that they picked that time to imply that the real me hasn't really been doing anything all along anyway... Well, clearly I'm not valued for my efforts, and it has started taking a toll on my sanity enough that I am referencing myself as two entities. Thus it might be time to move on. Which means that the previous plans have simply been accelerated.

Those mother bitches aren't going to get the best of me.

THE LIZZLE WON'T STAND FOR IT.

NOT THEN, NOT NOW, NOT EVER.

This is far from over.

Suffice it to say that the PHC post didn't get written, and I'll make every effort to get to it as soon as possible, but with work drama and personal life drama, it might take a fat minute, but I am promising that I won't let it get away from me the way that things did recently to the tune of nearly three months without anything new. The comeback of the Lizzle won't let that happen either.

...And in that moment, I remembered "THE LIZZLE"

2009-11-02T19:52:00.002-06:00

Once upon a time, I was a legend.

I could pound down drinks, laugh, dance, sing (poorly), and otherwise cavort all night... and I could get up at the crack of 10, go to class, go to my part time job where I would do my homework or reading, or play cards, and then clock out and go further elevate the legend of "THE LIZZLE."

It's been a long while since the heyday of "THE LIZZLE," and in the declining times since the pinnacle, I have admittedly let things unravel to an alarming and unacceptable degree.

This weekend, though, I found a slight glimmer of what I used to be. I was GROSSLY sleep deprived all week long... We're talking like three out of five nights with 3 hours of sleep or less. (And before you ask, no, these were not the good kinds of sleepless nights. They were way too drama-filled and in no way fun.) So by the time that Thursday rolled around, and I realized that I hadn't bothered to get a halloween costume ready, I knew that it was going to be yet another late night. So I stayed up too late again getting things on the costume just right, went to bed, and got up early to go to work on Friday. I worked late. I went from work to my place to pick up my costume, and then straight to the all-adult halloween party that my cousin was throwing. I dressed up in my AWESOME costume, I partied into the wee hours of morning, and when I got home at roughly 2 AM, I could think of nothing in the world more desirable than my bed... So I went to sleep and found when I woke up that I'd been comatose for TWELVE HOURS STRAIGHT. No kidding. I then got up, packed the costume up, made a starbucks run, fielded phone calls with assorted partners in crime, and then went to my aunt's house for a little football and halloween fun with the kids before heading off to yet another party where I wore my sweet costume, danced, drank, and played games until the wee hours of morning. (Even with the whole "fall back" thing taken into consideration.) I then went home and used my Sunday to hit the snooze button in an effort to reset before another ridiculous work week.

This weekend I remembered what it was to be young and fun again. I remembered the exploits of "THE LIZZLE" legend, and shamefacedly, vowed to work on recapturing the enjoyment of my awesomely misspent youth. I'll get back there... Well, maybe not 100% back there, but at least like a 70% version. It can happen.

It doesn't help that my current job has got me spending what little time I have for flights of fantasy plotting out the logistics of an office shooting rampage... Or at least dreamily imagining pinning a medal on anyone else who went on a shooting rampage and rid me of my boss.

I'm not really homicidal. I'm not even armed. I just actively wish for the day when I can tell them where to shove it. I knew it was bad when I started comparing the relative pros and cons of this bullshit versus the poop house.

When you compare anything to the poop house, you know things are not good.

I'm thinking that the next PHC post will be up sometime this weekend. (Provided I don't party so hard that I wind up comatose and unable to leave home long enough to hit the publish button.

An update about the me of the present... (Poop house post below.)

2009-10-18T16:29:00.006-05:00

We've been delving into my archived daily log sheets from the poop house case and re-examining the mentality I had back then. Today it occurred to me that you have no idea what is going on with me in the here and now.

At this exact moment in time, I'm parked in a starbucks because I got a gift card for my birthday, so the otherwise ridiculously priced coffee-based beverages are not ridiculously priced, and they have wi-fi... The final four words, (counting the hyphenate as one word,) of that last sentence made me cringe a little bit at my own nerdery and poverty.

Sitting here, otherwise enjoying my Sunday afternoon and the "fancy" coffee that doesn't taste nearly as good as the coffee I make at home, I realized that while age might merely be a number, I am in fact getting old. I support this theory with my overwhelming disdain for the small group of eighth graders who just sat down and appear to be dressed in a way that could really only be described as the incarnated lovechild of Urban Outfitters store mating with the ticket line for "Where the Wild Things Are." Seriously... Tie-dyed socks, silver ballet flats, tunic tank tops over long sleeved shirts, and backpacks stitched with patches or other adornments seemingly intended to be ironic or indicate some kind of apathy, but placed in the hands of children who have no idea what irony or apathy are as they sip an over-sugared $4.50 venti house blend because ordering the hot chocolate that they really wanted would've made them look juvenile in front of their cohorts who all secretly wanted hot chocolate too. No twelve year old really wants coffee. They want the appearance of maturity. Which is why I think no one under the age of sixteen should be allowed into a coffee house of any kind, nor should they be allowed to order anything stronger than that aforementioned hot chocolate from the drive through as they ride around in the back of mom's minivan.

If you're too young to work at the coffee house, you're too young to be a patron of the coffee house.

A thousand pardons, my adult bitterness has caused me to delve into an overly-detailed digression railing against the douchebags of the future.

Moving away from my hostility towards the youth that I can feel all too rapidly slipping from my once-firm grasp, I feel the need to expand the picture of my little corner of the world, which means I should probably mention my work life. Work is mind-numbing and soul-killing.

This past week I was offered a promotion, which was, in reality, more of a lateral move, meaning that they wanted to give me additional duties without any additional compensation for my efforts. My bosses were pretty upset when I pretty bluntly turned them down. (I guess they figured I was dumb enough to fall for it, or meek enough to accept it without a second thought.) It took them a little while to regroup, during which time I returned to my office, and my normal workload. About a half an hour later I was called back into the boss' office where they shot my refusal down, saying I would do it 'because they said so.' Knowing that I am not a recent lottery winner, nor a trust fund baby, and that my ability to pay my rent and buy groceries depends on having a reliable paycheck, I relented and said, "Ok, fine. Whatever you want." And as I left the room, deflated and defeated, I found that my previous inklings of displeasure were rapidly calcifying into a solid mass of anger-driven certainty that I will wait them out until December. I will collect my Christmas bonus, and I will promptly tell them where to shove it and march out the door upon securing other employment. Basically, you're not going to tell my that my refusal of your offer wasn't good enough, and that I'll do it because you say so. You're not my mom, and in case you've forgotten, I'm a Northerner. I am not all sweet and demure like the Southern debutantes you're used to dealing with. That's not the type of thing that I will take lying down. My response might take a little while to come to fruition because the job market here is still in shambles, but they sure as hell aren't paying me enough to take that kind of treatment without an appropriately measured response in kind. You can't refuse my refusal with "because I said so" and think that everything is going to be fine and dandy.

On Friday, a co-worker of mine, Bill, and I were the last ones left in the office. The bosses and the other drones had all gone home. Bill came into my office and confided in me more than he ever had previously, and more than I had ever expected. Bill currently occupies the position that they are grooming me to do. The position I am unwilling to take on fully without a raise tantamount to doubling my current salary.

Bill generally comes across as a nice, mild-mannered, sweet, southern guy who will do whatever he is told because it is inherent to his nature. So of course I was surprised when he opened up and unloaded his real impression of things.

Bill sidled up to my office doorjamb, man-bag slung over his shoulder, "Hey... You ready to train with me on Monday?"

I spun around in my office chair, "In all honesty, no. And its nothing against you, but I was told I had to, so I guess we're in it together."

"They told you that you had to? I don't get it, how did that work?" Intrigued, he slipped into my office as though he suspected that someone was watching him, suspecting him of being a communist defector in the making, even though he knew we were the last two people left.

"I told them no, and they pulled the mom-card and told me that it wasn't really up to me."

"Oh." Bill appearing perplexed, I waited for him to process what I'd just said.

"...Wait, you told them no?" The shocked tone of his voice and look on his face told me what I already knew; telling them no simply wasn't something that one did.

"Yeah, I told them that I have ABSOLUTELY ZERO interest in doing your job, and that taking on new responsibilities relating to your job one at a time didn't appeal to me in the slightest. And they told me that it really wasn't my decision and that I would do it because they wanted me to do it."

Bill's face lifted in surprise. "Wow... I think I just gained a new level of respect for you... I don't know anyone else around here that would've had the balls to tell them no. I mean, I knew you were pretty cool before, but I suddenly find myself rather impressed."

"Well, don't be too impressed, I mean, I still got shot down and forced into it anyway."

"Doesn't matter. They know you're not going to just roll over for them, you're going to at least tell them how you feel about it."

"A lot of good it did me." I said with an eye-roll.

"Well, I was pretty sure that you were cool enough to talk to before, but now that you've just told me that, I know I can safely tell you that I fucking hate it here."

"OH THANK GOD! YOU'RE NOT ONE OF THE POD PEOPLE!" A wave of excitement and relief swept over me as I found that I now had a new confidante.

"No. I'm miserable here, and I'm just waiting for my Christmas bonus."

"You're not alone in that boat."

"No, I didn't think I was." Bill shrugged, already having a good estimate regarding the head count on that boat.

"I don't know too many jobs where I've heard such vocal displeasure, and its gotten worse lately. I know I've heard Leslie say pretty much the same thing about leaving. I mean I heard a lot of grousing at my social work job, but there we dealt with poop houses, child abuse, and the constant threat of physical assault, or being stabbed with a dirty hypodermic needle. And as things got worse there, not only was I vocal about my displeasure, I quit that job in a hurry because it made me miserable and I didn't like who I was while I had that job."

"Poop houses?" The look on his face told me he had heard the phrase 'poop house' and despite the fact that it captured his full attention, he didn't really want to know.

"Another time... That's too much for most people this close to dinner time."

Bill nodded and looked relieved.

"While I know that my social work job was worse, and that in the scheme of things this is a 'cushy' office job, one of the things that I have to tell myself to keep me shuffling papers for these assholes is, 'well, at least its not a poop house,' and that's how I know things are bad enough that I need to be looking elsewhere."

"Yeah, I hate this place, and I hate what it has done to me. I am a pathetic shadow of who I used to be before I started here... Which might be why I have started taking interviews."

"If you're waiting for your Christmas bonus, you might be jumping the gun a little bit," I questioned in a more matter-of-fact statement kind of way.

"Well, maybe," he shrugged, "but with the peanuts we get paid here, I can't imagine that any Christmas bonus we get would be good enough to convince me that it was worth it to stay on... Even if it has been a record year for us."

"Its been a record year for us because it's so bad out there. We benefit from a crappy economy."

"Still... You and I aren't going to see any extra even if we are working four times as hard as the other teams. This isn't a company where they show much gratitude to the little cogs that keep the machine going."

"You don't have to tell me... They know there are plenty of cogs out there looking for work, why would they show appreciation for us when we're so easily replaceable?" I questioned as I shut down my computer.

"Another reason to get out of here. High turnover in our position, so no matter what er do, we're never really secure, and its not like there is any genuine room for advancement here."

"Yeah, they threw possible advancement in when they told me I had to take on this 'promotion,' made mention of eventually becoming a team lead."

"Really? You're the first I've ever heard that claim made to." He looked surprised.

"Yeah, but there are over 300 people working here. There are only 5 team leads. And there are a whole lot of people who have been working here whole lot longer than me who would actually want a team lead job... Whereas I can scarcely imagine much of anything more appealing to me than a quick exit to greener pastures."

"Shouldn't be too hard to find a pasture greener than this."

"From your lips to God's ears!" I said, looking to the ceiling, and raising my hand as though he were a preacher at some pentecostal church, preaching about fire and brimstone while handling snakes. I knew he was speaking the truth, and wouldn't have me drinking cyanide-koolaid.

"...But speaking of quick exits, it's after five, what are you still doing here?"

With a smirk, he said, "Milking overtime. I'm approved for five and a half hours this week. I've only got about two hours worth of work over there. But I think we're both ready to be done with today."

"Yep. I'm done with this place... I only wish I was done with it for longer than a weekend."

"Soon enough."

"I envy your confidence."

We left the office and parted ways, both a little better off, each with the knowledge that the other was professionally miserable, and ready to defect.

Combine that with the fact that I haven't been getting much sleep, largely because my upstairs neighbor seems to find unending enjoyment in playing horrible music at top eardrum piercing volume until 4 AM, even though I knocked on his door at midnight despite being in my pajamas and asked him to turn it down so that the rational and employed people of the world could be up for work at 7:30, and well, yeah, I'm a bundle of joy. The upstairs neighbor compounds my loathing for him by having guests over and not taking issue with them as they drop beer bottles off his balcony and into my shrubs, and drop their cigarette butts between the deck boards down onto my porch.

Man, I'm complaining like an old person... Next thing you know, I'm going to be buying bear traps to keep the neighborhood kids off my lawn.

Sorry if I'm all doom and gloom here. But at least I'm back, and there's a poop house post down there for you.

After far too long, may I present without further ado, "The poop house chronicles 13: It can get worse..."

2009-10-16T18:55:00.003-05:00

As I stood lecturing Mitch about his chore list, sounding not entirely unlike a broken record, Millie rolled in like an unwelcome rain cloud at public hanging, something unpleasant on its own coming along in a timely way and making an already really unpleasant situation just that much worse.

Millie bounded around with all the energy that an enraged overweight 5 year old could possibly muster. First she terrorized the animals. She selected the nearest, slowest or sleepiest feline she could find within grabbing distance, (and with the outrageous number of cats in the house, she had plenty of options…) and grabbed it in a way that made me wince. I anticipated deep scratches and yowling from the cat and tears and screaming from Millie. But much to my dismay, the cat seemed relatively resigned to its fate. It hung uncomfortably in her arms, draped over her pudge, and not seeming to mind that she was clinging to it only by its shoulder blades. Shortly after growing bored with merely holding the cat, she decided to make it dance on a pile of laundry which could only possibly be described as filthy, even if Mitch had just taken it out of the dryer, (which was doubtful). This, inevitably, pissed the cat off. And about 4 seconds into the dancing, the cat began to twist and writhe in determined attempts to escape little Millie who seemed equally determined to hold onto the cat.

With a sudden burst of unanticipated vocal rage, Millie made the announcement that she was hungry. It was an announcement made in a much more hostile and loud way than what I would’ve considered standard for a kid informing a parent of mild after-school hunger. This was worrying. Mitch told her to wait and he’d make her something in a few minutes. She screamed and stomped and made a big production. And as I stood there, mentally tabulating the reasons for this kind of aggression, Mitch just yelled back at her screaming that he would fix her something in a few minutes. Mental tabulations resolved. She simply mirrored what she had available as a role model, which was poor at best. As the shouting match continued, I stood there observing, shaking my head in disbelief at the lowest level of parenting, (if one could call it that,) which was displayed before me. After a few minutes I’d had enough and interjected that if they weren’t so busy yelling at each other a snack would’ve been prepared by now. I suggested that Millie go play in the other room while Mitch got something ready. They both seemed displeased with this, and gave me a sneer of disgust… If only they knew how mutual the feeling really was.

Mitch jumped on the first opportunity to prove that he was not the lone culprit in this pile of filth they called home, by showing me that Millie wouldn’t listen to him. He screamed at Millie to put the still-struggling cat down. Millie screamed back that she was playing with him, and didn’t want to let go. If a sigh had been possible without engaging in a deep breath, I’d have rolled my eyes and deeply sighed at this interaction, because obviously I was misinformed in my middle-class upbringing, and this screaming is the best way to communicate effectively, especially when standing about 5 feet apart. I settled for rolling my eyes and mentally cursing profusely.

When the cat finally clawed its way free, Millie screamed and stomped out of the room to chase after it. Mitch stopped her long enough to tell her to go clean her room. Millie retorted that she had to go to the bathroom. Mitch told her to hold it for a few minutes until I left because the dogs were in there and if she let them out they would proceed to bark and nip at my ankles. Knowing that the dogs were likely carrying all kinds of crazy diseases not known anywhere else in the civilized world, and knowing that Millie’s impulse control wasn’t all that great on a good day, and that having to go to the bathroom would only worsen anyone’s impulse control, I thought that was my cue to head for the door. It would’ve been a handy excuse to get the hell out of there into fresh air, only speaking to Mitch over my shoulder as I made a beeline for the exit. Clearly that exit strategy was not meant to be.

Millie then ran across the garbage and feces-littered living room, chasing after one of the cats, and upon cornering and capturing the poor creature, began tormenting it. Meanwhile, Mitch plodded over to the pantry door to retrieve god only knows what from one of the shelves. As he opened the door, another cat shot out from one of the lower shelves and bolted toward the relative safety of the dining room table which was, as previously mentioned, heaped with piles of soiled laundry. I couldn’t entirely blame it, as I turned in time to see Millie squeezing whichever of the many other cats she’d managed to capture and naturally proceeded in a clear plan of action by screaming in its face. As she turned more directly toward me, I noticed that the screaming was a consequence that we all suffered as the poor feline desperately clawed her, I hoped the clawing was as much for punishment for the squeezing and screaming, as an attempt to escape. I was admittedly surprised that she hadn’t yet taken to swinging it around by the tail. I turned the half of my attention which wasn’t devoted to controlling my shallow breathing, and not vomiting, back to Mitch who was apparently trying to satisfy Millie’s after-school hunger, I noted that he was seemingly perplexed by the pantry, either unsure of its mixed contents, or trying to dream up some kind of remotely appetizing snack using any of the ingredients he had on hand. As I tried to figure out what it was that he could make using the alleged “food products” in the pantry, possibly by covering some of them with the stocks of government cheese I knew they kept in the fridge, I had a thought. Essentially, my thought was that while I wasn’t the wealthiest kid on the block growing up, (in fact, FAR from it,) I know that my upbringing afforded me some luxuries that my client base was not privvy to, but even if I were stranded on a desert island, and I were all out of coconuts, and I had depleted all my other resources, and fished the seas barren, I still would not have ever consumed anything that was prepared in this kitchen… As this thought reached its conclusion, I noticed something disturbing, in hindsight, the thought might have been abbreviated by my noticing that the walls of the pantry were speckled black and brown, and worse yet, the speckles were, of course, MOVING.

Of course the pantry, like the rest of the house, was totally infested with cockroaches. It was folly to imagine otherwise. I don’t know why it shocked me so deeply when I actually SAW the many legs and antennae traipsing about among the household’s food supply. My gag reflex was being tested more than usual… I knew I had to make a quick exit or risk yacking all over the place. I would not have felt any guilt over the mess my vomit would’ve caused in the house, as my vomit would arguably have been the cleanest and healthiest thing to show up in the residence since the family moved in. My concern over vomiting was more related to knowing that when one throws up, the general impulse is to be crouched low to the ground, or clutching a toilet, and then gasping once the regurgitation is complete. The crouching, toilet-clutching, and deep gasping breaths were not rationally feasible here. It simply could not be done.

“Well, I know she mentioned that she had to go to the bathroom, and you’ve got the dogs pent up in the bathroom… If she’s got to go to the bathroom, let her go, I’ll just get out of here. Be sure to keep working on the chore list! And I’m going to reiterate that I don’t care if you have to wash those dishes in the bathtub, or rinse them off using the hose outside, make sure they are done by tomorrow! I’ll see you then. Bye.” I said all of this at a frenetic pace as I practically ran out of the residence, because once you have vomit backing up enough to feel the chunks rising in your throat, and you recall that freedom was dangled in front of you like that, all wrapped up in a neat little excuse not unlike a glistening Christmas present in shiny gold paper with a giant crimson bow, you lunge at it and you tear it open because you’re pretty sure it’s got to be the new game system you’ve been begging your mom for over the course of the last three to six months... Or pure and simple freedom.

I celebrated my the end of my shortened visit to the Poop House by changing out of the poop shoes, racing home with all the windows down and taking the requisite sanitize-mode shower and having a stiff drink or six with my slightly-earlier-than-planned dinner. I would pay for this later… I knew it. There is no such thing as getting off easy when it comes to the Poop House.

In hindsight, I did pay for that quick exit… Though the problems I’m about to face were in no way something that could’ve been solved by me staying longer, I knew that karmically, this was all going to keep compounding because I ran out when I did.

I suck.

2009-08-08T01:24:00.001-05:00

I suck. I know I do. I'm sorry.

I promise all of you that still come here for updates that I WILL get back into writing the poop house chronicles. IT WILL HAPPEN. I will not leave you hanging, wondering what the hell happened.

I currently hide behind the excuse that I've been very busy at work, and trying to establish myself here in my new home. I've been making friends, meeting my neighbors, and I've finally found a crew that I can hang out with and plan fun events for. (I know that sentence contains not one, but two dangling prepositions, but I don't give a rat's pink ass.)

Suffice it to say that I haven't forgotten about you all, but I admit that things here have been put on the back burner. It is only temporary. Indeterminate in length, but temporary.

Now that that's over with...

2009-06-28T08:34:00.002-05:00

I've been making excuses for a while. The excuses will continue for the time being. I don't have internet set up at my house yet, and I've been putting it off while getting ready for my best friend's wedding. Obviously I've had bigger things to worry about, like getting my dress altered, making sure I had the right shoes, making sure my bank balance was high enough to purchase airfare, trying to figure out exactly how I was going to get my bag through security without raising questions regarding whether or not I'm some shoe-bomb-toting terrorist because I have foil wrapped items and finger nail clippers somewhere in the packing.

But The Admiral tied the knot this weekend, so that situation is handled. She looked gorgeous, (as expected,) I cried, (not expected,) and we drank and danced our asses off. I'm pretty sure that when I take my dress to be cleaned, my dry cleaner is going to just look at the dress, shake his head, look at me and say, "WHAT DID YOU DO?" in that shaming judgmental tone that so many dry cleaners are known for. Like an ashamed puppy, I'll just tuck my tail between my legs and give the sad "I'm sorry" face and hope that he'll forgive me. (Yeah, I have a tail now.)

Basically, what I'm getting at is that I hope to be getting internet at home, and updating you with more horror stories from the poop house chronicles on a much more frequent basis.

That said, I love you all, but I have to go nurse my post-wedding hangover and board a plane back home now.

You kooky kids stay out of trouble while I'm gone! Much love.

Poop House Chronicles 12: Once more into the breach...

2009-05-10T23:41:00.003-05:00

I know it has been a while so we’ll give you the quick and dirty (emphasis on dirty) version of the previous PHC post, even though you’ve had ample time to review the existing posts in the absence of anything new.

Long story short, the last post examined the shitty, (both literally and figuratively,) working conditions that apparently applied to the terms of employment I somehow agreed to. It demonstrated exactly how little we were paid, exactly how much more work we were expected to do to get that pay when compared to the state social workers, and that VERY necessary mental health services that we all needed to maintain sanity, (if not sobriety,) were not covered by our health insurance plan, and were not provided for free, despite the fact that state social workers DO get free mental health services, their medical plans DO cover mental health services if they choose to see someone outside the office, and all this, despite the fact that the employer specializes in mental health services. In a word, GRAND… but just not for us.

The last post also recalled a phone conversation between the Poop House Family’s state social worker and me. It was not a productive conversation to be sure, unless your idea of “productive” includes further cementing the idea that the state social worker has got to have some kind of (pretty severe) impairment of all 5 natural senses as well as a significant overall comprehension and problem solving skill handicaps. The phone call refreshed our memory of the fact that the Poop House Plumbing was entirely, revoltingly clogged solely with the carcasses of roaches which died most likely of natural causes because the family did not appear to be taking any discernable extra steps to remedy the situation.

After the conversation with state worker Dave, I had other clients to see, and I decided to round out my day by going to the poop house last, as usual. [Sidebar: Some people have queried as to why I would wait and leave that dreadful experience for the tail end of the day. Their reasoning being that one could just power through it in the morning and then have the rest of the day to focus on all of the positives of already being done with the Poop House, and having the rest of the day to air out. My argument is this: if you have ever been to a Poop House, you know that your sole concentration from the instant you leave the premises until the instant you are bathed in purell or are otherwise sanitized and solidly getting started on getting blackout drunk, is getting to the closest possible shower and scrubbing your entire body until it is raw from the effort, and minimizing any unnecessary contamination (this is why having a pair of poop shoes is important for ventures into the poop house, and keeping those poop shoes in a sealed bag when they are not in use is equally important) … This type of showering, sanitizing, and heavy drinking is not something that most people can easily swing at the beginning of the work day, especially when you’re just going to go into other slightly-less-dirty people’s slightly-less-dirty homes and undo all the positive sanitizing efforts you’ve just undertaken for yourself.] So I went to see everyone else first. I got pissed off at several of my clients because they would fail to show up for visits, or they would fail to appear in court, or fail a drug test, or commit wholeheartedly to doing whatever they could to live up to being the ultimate failures that they always knew they could be. The clients’ total commitment to failure and my near constant pissed off mood went hand in hand, and as inseparable as they were, it should go without saying that I often let it show on my face that I was not to be trifled with on any given day. The really rare contact I had with clients who were not as committed to actively pissing me off was usually met with them saying to me something resembling, “You look mad… Who pissed in your cornflakes?” It was a just question, and was almost unfailingly answered, “Pretty much everybody but you.” This answer was not a stretch, given that I had the employer I had, the clients I had, and the fact that we were not compensated for using our own cars, even though gas prices hovered somewhere in the $3-$4 a gallon range during this time. (I know what you’re thinking, and yes, this job does find new and diverse ways of sucking, just when you think you’ve heard it all.)

At the end of my day when the Poop House was the only thing standing between me and a scalding shower followed promptly with a stiff drink, I headed over in that direction. As was my normal routine, I sat and audibly cursed for a couple minutes, put on the poop shoes, and headed in to see just exactly which circle of hell I’d be working in for the remains of my day.

As I knocked again on the once-white, now-tan-with-grime front door, I tried to control my breathing in an effort to keep my lunch down. The little pissant dogs started their incessant yapping which would not die down at any point during the duration of my stay, no matter how long it was to be. Mitch cracked the door to see who I was, (as if anyone without a professional obligation to enter this shit hole would ever set foot on the property,) and after putting the dogs in the bathroom, he let me in. As usual, I was nauseated at what I saw, and even more so by what I smelled.

“Mitch, this has got to stop.”

“What?”

“What is that odor?”

“Well… We still haven’t gotten the sink all the way unclogged, so it’s probably the food from the dishes, and the standing water in the sink.”

“Mitch, I’ve got to tell you, I don’t really care what it is you have to do, but that can’t keep going on. I don’t care whether you take those dishes into the bathroom and wash them in the sink or even the tub in there, or if you take them outside and run a hose on them, the fact is that those nasty dishes can’t just sit around out in the open being dirty.”

“Well, I think we’ve almost got the sink unclogged, so that’s why they are still there.”

“I’m thinking that the sink has been clogged for the better part of a week now, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, if there’s still standing water in there, then I’m pretty sure that it’s not ‘almost unclogged’ as you say. I’m no plumber, but I think that’s a pretty safe bet. Furthermore, I’m not an exterminator, but with the standing water and the dirty dishes, I’m guessing that you’re only attracting more roaches and then giving them a pool in which to drown. And I’m pretty sure that that’s only going to make your problem worse.”

“Well maybe, but Martha gets paid at the end of the week, and she’ll be able to get some stuff to fix it when she gets her check.”

(My internal monologue was wondering whether or not whatever they would purchase to "fix" their problems included the words "cyanide" or "atom bomb" or since they were working on a budget, even "just enough rope" would have satisfied me... but obviously that's not what Mitch meant.)

“Mitch, that absolutely cannot wait until the end of the week. And I don’t care if you have to call your landlord, and have him fix it, the fact is that this is a MAJOR problem.”

“I know. I know.”

“Don’t blow me off, Mitch. I know you’re just trying to get me to drop this, but the fact is that if anyone from the state came out here to make sure that things are going ok, they would yank Millie out of here so fast that it’d make your head spin… And then you get to start this process ALL OVER again. And I know you don’t want that.”

“No.”

“Well, between that little issue, and all the other little issues running around here and leaving their own little issues all over your carpet, you’re about 2 seconds from having that happen.”

Mitch then became visibly frustrated. He shifted his weight nervously because he could tell that I wasn’t bullshitting him.

“Well, what am I supposed to do? I can’t do everything here!”

“Mitch, I’m not asking you to do everything all at once.”

“Well I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“Mitch, I’ve told you what I want you to do. I’ve written it down as a chore list and had you tape it to the cabinet. What you have to do is work on those chores EVERY SINGLE DAY. And I know they seem big right now, but that’s because you haven’t been working them every day. You’ve been thinking that you can get by just doing the minimum while I’m here so that I don’t yell at you. But if you’re working on it EVERY DAY, and keeping up with it as you go through the day, it won’t seem like much at all. You just have to change your habits and get busy.”

“But I don’t have any help!”

“Well why not?”

“Because Millie is 5, and Martha goes to work all day.”

“Right, but neither of those is a reason not to help you. Your contribution to the house is maintaining it in general, and doing daily things like laundry and dishes, and cleaning up after the animals. I guarantee that you didn’t create this mess entirely alone… And there is absolutely no reason why Martha or Millie can’t help you out by cleaning up after themselves.”

"Yeah, like that'll happen."

"Well it definitely won't with that attitude! You've just gotta have a little discipline and make it all a prat of the family routine."

Roughly the time those last few words rolled off my tongue the Tasmanian Devil, or perhaps just THE DEVIL rolled in... Little Millie was home from school... And I was about to bite my tongue clean off from trying to withhold the urge to correct anything while Mitch was still in such an agitated state, and Millie was hell-bent on continuing her reign of terror.

But that is for another day.

Two things...

2009-05-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

1) I finally got the new computer. Therefore I will resume my regularly scheduled awesomeness and other grotesque stories.

2) You should expect a poop house post by Monday. FOR SURE... But probably before then!

Thank you, that is all.

Fear not... All is well.

2009-05-01T10:13:00.001-05:00

I haven’t died. There is no cause for worry. Do not send out the search dogs to scour the entirety of the South. So far I haven’t been assaulted by the good ol’ boys for being a liberal.

The fact is that I have settled into my new home, gotten entirely unpacked, and started to actually smile occasionally because for once things have somewhat gone my way. I mean if I all of a sudden find a guy and fall in love and live happily ever after, it will be the adult-life trifecta. I’m not holding my breath for that one… I’ve NEVER been that lucky.

However, the proverbial fly in the ointment at the moment is that my computer is totally jacked. I even took it to the office IT guy to see if there was anything he could do for me. He gave it a look and said, “Yeah, it’s totally fixable, but if you’re going to spend the kind of money needed to do it, you might as well be getting a new computer.” This is clearly not what I wanted to hear. I mean I did just drop a boat load to the folks over at U-Haul… TWICE. And that would have more than covered the costs of a new computer. But that was an investment that has paid off handily, so the U-Haul folks can keep their money, and I’ll sit here with a busted computer.

The primary drawback of all of that is that I lack internet access outside of work, (where they monitor everything,) and you don’t get the posts you so dearly love. For that, I’m sorry. Within the next few paychecks I’m guessing that I’ll have this situation remedied, but that takes time, as you know.

Once all of this is resolved, you will get regular doses of the poop house, and other posting will resume on the normal schedule. I PROMISE! I will also work on getting caught up with all of you, because in case you haven’t noticed. I haven’t made the rounds or commented on any of your pages either.

It’s all in the works. I promise. I SWEAR… I think.

Exciting news!!!

2009-04-05T21:28:00.003-05:00

Well, kids, I think I have a home!

I've been looking for the last few weeks and had found a place that I kind of liked the looks of right off the bat. The thing is that they were always closed when I was able to make time to go check out the actual living space. So I went back this Saturday, and of course they were closed again, (because who goes looking for an apartment on a Saturday?) so I called the office and left a message saying I wanted to set up a time to see an apartment.

While I was either at church or having lunch with some of my dago family members, the property manager called and left a message saying she'd be around today. (SERIOUSLY, who is closed on Saturday when the ad says they should be open, and then around on Sunday when the ad says they are closed? Is that not weird, or am I just loony tunes?) So I went and took a look, and unlike all the other ones I'd seen, it wasn't ghetto, it wasn't a matchbox, it didn't stink of recent animal inhabitants, it wasn't stupidly set up, it wasn't in a complex that had just made the papers for having a fire, the other residents that I saw walking about didn't terrify me, and the rent was reasonable. And since it had been the first complex that drew my attention when I first arrived and was able to look at complexes in person, I was pleased. What pleased me even more was the fact that I will cut my commute to work from 45 minutes to a measly 15 minutes. This means I can sleep in even later! There is also free wi-fi in the community room, so that means that as soon as I get my retarded-ass computer patched up, I'll be able to post and check in with you guys all the time! (And yes, that also means that the PHC will start up again, and believe me there is a LOT more to tell!)

As excited as I am about all of this, I think I am even more excited by the fact that I will be able to unbox all of my belongings, and have access to my full wardrobe! I'm also really anxiously awaiting the day that I can invite Traci to come down and hang out for the weekend, because I know that homegirl could use a friggin break! And we can go ca-brewing on the Cahaba river! (For those of you not up on your slang, ca-brewing is canoeing with lots of beer.)

I'm just so pumped that I'm not tossing out a boatload of cash to live in someone's walk in closet and call it my apartment. I will have all of my own stuff all around me again, and I don't have to worry about anybody else's plans, or who I've got to worry about offending, or whatever... I'm PUMPED! It's going to rock!

(Don't tell anybody, but I think we're about to witness the comeback of the Lizzle... And that should excite us all! It's been a long time since I've had this much go right for me!)

Hey there, remember me?

2009-03-30T22:01:00.002-05:00

Sorry I've been so terrible to you kids lately! You've done nothing but shower me with affection and praise, and I've been neglecting you like a wicked stepmother who forces you to live in the windowless basement and have only mice for friends... I could've made a "People Under the Stairs" reference there, but that would make me that creepy lady who gets all freaky with her brother, and despite living in the South, I don't get down like that.

Anyway, I promise that I have a good reason for neglecting you. And it all has to do with the fact that I'm kind of a big deal. You all know about my new job, and while having a respectable job in this economy is news enough, I have already made a name for myself, because I learned in one WEEK what it took my predecessor nearly a MONTH to learn. That makes me awesome. It also makes me very tired, because not only have I had to learn it, I've had to explain it to pretty much everybody down here who knows me, one at a time. They run into me at church, or at the grocery, or I get invited to their house or whatever, and then, one at a time, people will congratulate me on getting a good job so fast, and then ask what it is that I do. I take the time to explain to them the basics, and then they get all confused, so I have to give them more detail. Usually around the time I finish telling someone the gist of my job, someone else shows up and the whole cycle starts over. It is flat out exhausting. Add to that the fact that my weekends are spent at the kids' sporting events, babysitting the kids, trying to find the parts to fix my car, and looking for a good deal on an apartment in a reasonably safe area of town, and well, that really rounds things out. Are you tired of hearing me whine about how busy and awesome I am now? Because I'm fucking BEAT!

My cousin Frank has repeatedly suggested that I take up adult rec sports or other means of meeting people because he basically wants me to find a dude and get married already. I don't know about you kids, but if I could find the time to breathe I'd be happy, let alone trying to breathe while making out with someone... I mean that'd be nice and all, but I've been here less than a month, and already landed the job and have narrowed down the apartment search significantly... I figure the boy will come around given time.

So if you've been wondering why the hell you can't get your regular dose of the poop house chronicles, calm down. The remaining posts are in the pipeline. It might take a little time to get to them, but this has been a pretty significant shake-up for me, and I'm trying to get the dust to settle a little bit. If you're that antsy, go back to the beginning and refresh yourself... Gorging yourself on poop house posts ought to be enough imaginary-sensory overload to slake your thirst for a little while... In fact, if you go back and read them all at once, I'll commend you for keeping your lunch down.

That's where we stand.

Get it?

Got it?

GOOD!

In case you were wondering,

2009-03-22T16:51:00.002-05:00

I nailed it.

This is yet another reason that I am so much happier below the Mason-Dixon.

2.5 weeks of job searching landing a REAL job that does not involve poop houses or cashiering, versus three months of job searching and getting stuck behind a cash register and doing hourly restroom checks and having to clean up other people's vomit and explosive diarrhea messes. Salary versus hourly. Benefits and 401k versus no benefits and wanting to chop my legs off at the knee because my feet hurt so badly from standing for 9 hours at a stretch.

Things are WAY better here.

Could it be the best day ever?

2009-03-19T09:51:00.002-05:00

We know that I'm a junkie when it comes to the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. That has clearly been established in years past. And in more recent posts, we've established that I'm a fan of my new home in the South.

So I'm really hoping that the stars are aligned to make this the best day ever, because not only is it the first day of game play in the tournament, but I have an interview that I totally think I'll nail! Couple that with the fact that the weather is spectacular, and after my interview is over I'm headed to the family lake house for a long weekend of tournament viewing, boozing, hooting and hollering, game playing, basketball watching, jet-skiing, bracket busting amusement. Basically, if I get this job on top of everything else, this weekend is going to rock the house. I'm trying not to get my hopes up so high that I totally choke, but I'm pretty damn excited.

After consulting with the Admiral in our annual tournament selection series, and discussing the job interview, (because she does pretty much the exact job I'm interviewing for,) I'm feeling pretty confident about this nonsense, and all I have to do is make that easy layup... Though if I don't get the job, I will totally revise that figurative language to reflect something on the order of a Hail-Mary- buzzer-beater- half-court shot, as opposed to the bunny shot of an unguarded layup... Or for the few tournament nerds out there, I will equate it to the year that Kenyon Martin went up for an easy layup and came down only to snap his leg like a twig, and crush the hopes and dreams of 90% of the tournament enthusiasts, all of whom had Cincy winning it all that year because he made them unstoppable. I'm really hoping that this doesn't go down like that.

So keep those fingers crossed for me sports fans, (and all non-sports fans who love me enough to want me to get a damn job). If you enjoy reading anything here, you really need to keep those fingers crossed, because getting a good job means that I can finally afford to get my computer fixed and post more frequently because I won't be spending my down time looking for a damn job.

It's going to be awesome, I just know it!

Before I forget...

2009-03-12T22:47:00.002-05:00

I know that I haven't posted in over a week and then I followed it with two posts in under an hour, but I do want to make a couple of quick points.

First, I apologize for not checking in on many of your blogs recently. And I certainly haven't been much for commenting since a few months ago when my computer went bonkers... I've lost most of my bookmarks as I use my cousin's computer here, and seldom have time to go through the whole sidebar to catch up with everyone.

Secondly, (albeit much more importantly,) I know that many of you couldn't give a rat's pink ass about this, but I want to point out that BRACKET DAY IS RAPIDLY DESCENDING UPON US, AND I FOR ONE COULDN'T BE MORE EXCITED! You all forget from year to year that this is better than Christmas for me, because it gives me a totally fail safe excuse to drink beer and consume buffalo wings while gorging my auditory and visual senses with NCAA Men's Basketball nonstop for days on end. (It stretches over a couple of weeks by the finals, but in the later rounds there are days with no games in there and clearly those days totally don't count!)

Thirdly, I still get regular updates from people who continue to work for my old employer, (The poop house job, not the retail job,) and from what I gather, the shit is REALLY hitting the fan over there, and believe it or not, they are actually FIRING some of the more dedicated people who are not only WILLING to do the worst job on earth, they are, or rather, WERE totally COMMITTED to the job... This all sounds crazy to rational people and continues to make me happy that I told those bitches to suck it when I did.

Thank you, that is all... If you haven't already read it, there is a new post below, but these surreptitious thoughts and addenda came after the fact and therefore stole the heading thunder.

There's a place where people are actually HELPFUL?

2009-03-12T22:05:00.002-05:00

So, I've been here for almost two weeks. Most of my time has been spent settling in, getting to know the lay of the land, and looking for a job. It was the latter of which that had me so perplexed, and I'm still a little surprised by what I've found.

I know that in past posts, and in my general conversation, I've mentioned to anyone who will listen that the news has regularly reported that Ohio was the state hit hardest by the recent economic recession. And while I've only relocated to one state since the market upheaval, I must say that the bleak picture in Ohio is an accurate one when compared to my new homeland. Around here, while people talk about the recession, and jobs aren't exactly overabundant, the fact is that there is work out there, and much to my shock and dismay, people are actually willing to do what they can to help a sister out!

Imagine my utter awe at making one phone call and being instantly given three outlets to search for jobs by someone who doesn't even know me. Imagine my jaw hitting the floor as the woman later emails me with two more possible contacts for me to pursue without a moment's hesitation. Imagine my complete astonishment when my cousin gave me another person to call who may or may not know of anything I can do, and upon talking to her for a mere five minutes she's asking me whether or not paid benefits would be a deal breaker. Am I really that good? Or is it just freakin' AWESOME down here? Now, yes, I've had a fair amount of people giving me the cold-shouldered brush off, (FUCK YOU AIG, I DIDN'T WANT TO WORK FOR YOU ANYWAY, YOU BAILOUT-NEEDING, COMMON-MAN-ROBBING ASSHOLES!!! I just didn't have the bad manners or the heart to walk away after the poor sweet little underling grabbed me out of the crowd and tried to get me to talk to her snake oil salesman of a manager.) And I've gotten plenty of the "Well, you need an appointment to meet with anyone in HR, and to do that you have to apply on our website and wait for them to call you," But the fact is that I really do love it down here, and I love that people are friendly and helpful, and that I've got people to talk to at the end of the day, and it's not Ohio... All of which is AWESOME!

Who am I now? I'm all happy and shit... If I don't start busting out Debbie Downer news, you all are going to start wondering what the hell happened to the old Lizzle and leave me! (Well, you wouldn't leave right away, you're still waiting on the conclusion of the Poop House Chronicles!)

I'm telling you, if it weren't for all of the McCain/Palin stickers all over the place, I'd think I'd died and gone to heaven!

HEY Y'ALL!

2009-03-04T10:37:00.002-06:00

Hey everybody! I made it safely to my new home in the South, though I must say, the trip was an interesting one! One involving cars spinning out into the median despite near perfect road conditions, and several inches of snow causing traffic snags, and sleeping in the cab of the u-haul when the roads got a little too ridiculous... It was a harrowing journey, and making it through Tennessee was a white-knuckled ride to say the least! But I'm here, and settling in.

Since I'm no longer an Ohio resident, I apologize to all the people who do live there, but I just gotta say, OHIO SUCKS ASS! I mean REALLY REALLY SUCKS ASS! For those of you who don't live there, don't go! And for those of you who do live there, I'm sorry but you need to think about moving... Soon.

And I will say that even though I've only been here for a couple of days, and those days have been spent primarily with my family, everyone I've talked to seems really optimistic about the economy and my quickly finding a new job that doesn't involve cashiering, or doing restroom checks, or fetching carts from a sub-zero parking lot, or cleaning up someone else's explosive diarrhea, or going into poop houses, etc.

I have a good feeling about all of this!

I'll check back soon, until then, stay out of trouble, and make good choices!

...And then I shit my pants...

2009-02-19T12:38:00.002-06:00

So I, literally only moments ago, just got a phone call from The Admiral. The landlord apparently contacted her because she found a new tenant... And the new tenant wants to move in March 1.

Today is February 19.

I have no job nor place to stay in my new city yet. But I have to be out of here by March 1... So that was roughly the point when I shit myself.

I am continuing to shit myself on a fairly constant basis since that phone call.

Anyone got any helpful suggestions?

The Poop House Chronicles (Part Eleven): You don't even have to go in for it to ruin your day...

2009-02-09T23:49:00.000-06:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been remiss with regard to a few things entailed in my position as a social worker. It should come as no surprise to you that these things escaped my attention when we had more pressing matters to address, such as the deplorable living conditions of these people in modern day USA... Conditions which one state in particular seemed to be entirely too eager to approve of and allow. The propagation of the animals and bugs seemed pretty important to mention too... But you need to learn a little more about the background of the employer in order to really get a complete picture of the appalling bullshit that I had to put up with during my time shoveling shit in hell.

First off, I need to address the wage I earned for all this torment. I've told you that it was a paltry pittance... I wasn't lying. I've talked to friends about my income and they have always been beyond shocked at the measly sum which qualified as my paycheck. Since my company was sub-contracted by the state to do all THEIR leg work, the most reasonable thing to do would be to compare my wage to theirs. Since state case workers have government jobs, they get all the state benefits. They still get what we would call the lowly social worker wage, but they get health insurance and 3 weeks paid vacation from day one. They also get all kinds of state holidays off. Meanwhile, my company elected to keep us on the poverty line by paying us roughly $10,000 less annually than the state workers, (YES, you read that right, we're the ones doing all the hard work, and the get $10,000 LESS...) and they gave us NO paid holidays, unless of course you really WANT to work on Christmas day, (without receiving any bonus compensation,) 1 week of vacation earned only AFTER you've been there a year, and to be used over the course of your SECOND year on the job, (and if you bail out before the end of your second year, don't count on getting those unused vacation days in your final check, because that won't happen.) Let's also keep in mind that the state case workers only have to see their clients once a month. Meanwhile I'm fully expected to go into the poop house EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. $10,000 LESS for seeing the clients 25 times MORE... Figure that one out.

If you're not appalled by the wage described for the job you already know about, you should be.

Let's now address the working environment. This is a company which SPECIALIZES in providing therapeutic mental health services. And they constantly lecture to the workers that they should find outlets to deal with the job. (Of course, when they randomly drug test, and keep us on call 24-7, the most obvious outlets are out.) They then get upset when the workers hang around the office talking to each other, and they get REALLY upset when the workers are at the office talking to each other about anything work related, ("Because you never know who is walking around the office. And we don't want to offend any clients." ...More on that in a moment.) The logical solution to the problem would be for the company to provide an outlet for the workers, right? I mean it isn't like they don't have therapists available. But no, if we wanted to talk to anyone on a professional level about how to cope with the mental toll of the job, we were expected to PAY FULL PRICE to meet with anyone... And the mental health services are not covered in the crappy insurance plan that you have paid for out of your aforementioned tiny paycheck. (Unlike the state, who provides therapeutic services for their social workers free of charge.) *It should also be noted that the crappy insurance plan also doesn't cover birth control, despite the fact that if there was ever a job that would drive a person to want birth control in any and all forms, this is it!

That covers the compensation and benefits portion of our program, but there was an important point buried in there somewhere.

Oh, yes... "We don't want to offend any clients." That's a REALLY important point.

To normal people, like us, we find it pretty easy to stay on the right side of the law. We have stayed out of jail for the most part, (aside from perhaps a paddy wagon ride for some drunken/ disorderly conduct, or other misdemeanor shenanigans.) Those of you in my readership who are parents, have managed to maintain parental control and guardianship of your kiddos as far as I know. Congrats! To my knowledge you do not beat them, molest them, neglect them, or use drugs around them, (or while pregnant, ladies). At the office we were constantly told that the clients that we deal with are generally the bottom 1% of the barrel. So we're not offending 99% of the population by default, simply because they don't walk in the door, largely because, much like you, the upper 99% don't abuse their children. (I would include myself in that statement too, but I have no children.) But despite the fact that we are dealing with a tiny fraction of the population, and that this tiny fraction of the population is only in contact with us because the state has AT LEAST somewhat substantiated allegations, though in most cases SIGNIFICANT PROOF of abuse and/or neglect, we are expected to go out of our way to NOT OFFEND them.

Absorb that for a moment before we move on.

I mean I understand that it is important to establish a rapport with people that you have to have a working relationship. I understand that it's important to go through life doing your best not to offend people in general, (though sometimes it is an incredibly good time to be offensive). But we were fully expected to go above and beyond, often to the tune of defying natural biological responses our bodies volunteered. This means that if you are forced to sit in a room with a known child molester while he visits with his kids, despite the rage you can feel building within you, you are not allowed to beat him into unconsciousness and then kick him in tender places so that he won't be able to molest anymore. It also means that if you walk into a house so foul that your body spasms and you feel that there is no doubt that you will wretch and vomit, that you have to control that involuntary response, and you have to choke back anything that might come up... Because if they are willing to live there, you being so repulsed that you have to vomit would likely offend.

We were constantly told that we had to do any and everything possible to avoid offending this tiny insular group, even though the behavior that landed them on our roll call is highly offensive to anyone with even the most remote sense of decency. And as a bluntly honest person who is rather used to just telling it like it is, this is the task with which I struggled the most... Well, that and not blowing chunks every time I had to set foot on the premises at the poop house.

So when payday rolled around every two weeks, and I looked at that measly little figure that had been added to my checking account, my day was ruined without ever setting foot in poop house territory.

But when we left off, I was confronted with a clog in the poop house kitchen sink consisting solely of dead roaches. And although it's been more than a month since that last poop house post, let's really contemplate how bad a roach problem has to be that you have SO MANY roaches running around that your sink is SOLIDLY, INEXORABLY, and UNFATHOMABLY HOPELESSLY clogged with NOTHING BUT DEAD ROACHES. That's a little bit beyond a significant roach problem.

So when I contacted state case worker "Dave" he basically had the same reaction as you fine folks... But then brushed it off in a way that I was beginning to find all too familiar when it came to the state's manner of handling this case.

"...So he plunged the sink and nothing came up but dead roaches... and he said they've been working on plunging it for something like three days, and it's still totally clogged. They can't do dishes. It's revolting."

"Sick."

"Yes, that's one way of putting it."

"So other than that, how's the house looking?"

"Are you kidding me? Their sink is clogged with dead roaches, they can't do dishes because their sink is clogged with dead roaches, and you think there's going to be improvement elsewhere in the house? Have you gone mental?"

"Well, I thought I'd take a shot."

"Poor choice of timing on that shot."

"So, how does her room look?"

"It's every bit as sad and repulsively-smelling as the rest of the house... My concern is that since they are having plumbing issues that they will collectively bathe less than usual, and that's a rare enough occurrence as it is."

"Hmm... Yeah."

"Well, as helpful as this conversation is, that's really the most up to date information I've got for you... Oh and she doesn't have cancer, so they dodged that bullet."

"Oh, good."

"Have a nice day, Dave."

"You too!"

As I hung up, I marveled that this was his response, and that this lack of response and lack of action made considerably more than I did, and he only had to spend about a half an hour with them once a month versus my daily trek into hell for hours on end at times.

Clearly there is a gross inequity in there somewhere.

Without ever stepping foot on the grounds, my day was once again ruined.

But then again, it was a working day... I would still have to go there. I would still have to figure out how to fix this plumbing issue... Man, I must've missed this in the brochure.

Don't you dare...

2009-02-03T22:33:00.002-06:00

I know that many of you have probably lost all hope that I will ever post something interesting ever again... Don't lose hope.

And don't for one second think that I've forgotten that we're still in the middle of the poop house saga.

I still have a poop house post that I've been working on. It gets a new paragraph every now and then and then I have to put it down for a little while. I find that the more time I have between me and the actual events the better, and I am less willing to really delve into the worst parts. Unfortunately, there are no "good" parts, and we are really getting into the meat and potatoes of the beating heart in the epic tale.

I did recently find myself thinking about another of my clients today, one of my juvenile mentoring kids... A tragic story too, but even though my service time with her and with the poop house family overlapped, I'm going to limit this to one horrific story at a time, because I no longer have the personal desire or wherewithal to rehash things all at once. And I don't want anyone confusing the details of one case with another.

Basically, even though I had to deal with it all at once, you're not being paid to deal with it, so I won't put that burden on you.

(It's also much easier to drag my tales out and wait for someone to offer me a lucrative book deal if I'm telling things one case at a time.)

So what I'm really saying here is for you not to lose hope. Don't think that I've forgotten about you. I haven't. You'll get the whole story in due time. (In truth, I spend much of the time when my computer is cooperative doing research and planning for my upcoming relocation.)

Can I just have a nap?

2009-01-26T18:32:00.002-06:00

The weekend was not as relaxing as I'd have liked.

I knew that doing the ghetto-fix using tape or plastic sheeting of any kind simply wasn't going to cut it when it came to closing my car window. And I knew this because I work in an area that's kind of run down, and well, ghetto, so bitches would think nothing of just busting through that shit.

So I got up on Saturday and decided that I was going to try my hand at a real solution. So I did a little googling, and I searched for a screwdriver, and out I went. And then I turned into a total bull-dyke for a couple of hours and I fixed that shit myself.

Yes, that's right, I took the door panel off and fixed that window and put the door panel back on all by my lonesome.

I then decided that all I wanted to do was go in and watch some reruns of "House" and call it a night... but Ollie had other plans. He called me up and requested that I accompany him to the gay bar. And by "requested" I mean demanded, and by "gay bar" I mean tragic leather daddy dive bar.

"Ollie! I can't go to the gay bar! I've been WAAAAY too dykey today!"

"You're going."

"No, I need to save the money! I fixed my car myself. I fixed it myself instead of taking it to a mechanic because I need to save the money!"

"Well, see you need to celebrate that you fixed it yourself... BY GOING TO THE BAR!"

"I CAN'T! I can't spend the money!"

"You're going. I don't care if I have to drag your dykey ass out of the house in sweats, you're going to the bar."

"NOOOO! I have to go try on bridesmaid dresses in the morning... That will most likely be plenty painful without the added pains of a hangover!"

"Oh that's funny, I still don't care. You have one hour. Get dressed."

"NO I CAN'T GO!"

"You're going. We're done talking."

"OLLLLLIIIIIEEEEE!!! NOOOOO!"

"See you in an hour."

"I hate you."

So I went. And I laughed. And I drank. And I danced. And I laughed and drank on the dance floor. I admit that I had fun... But there was a price to pay, and it was exacted on me the folowing morning.

I woke up with a wretched hangover!

And while all the other bridesmaids were all giggly and chipper over lunch, I was sullen and salty as I clutched a large glass of water while praying that I could keep some of it down.

We went. We tried on dresses. We ended up with an interesting green number, and I nearly beat some bridal shop girls down with mannequin arms, because it is ridiculous to ask 6 bridesmaids to use ONE fitting room when they have an appointment, and you knew they were coming.

I then went with The Admiral for a little "hair of the dog."

In retrospect, I should've gone home for a nap.

I didn't get home until 11, I didn't get to bed until 1. Which is a problem when you've gotta be up at 6.

I just need a nap.

If it's broken, and it's going to be expensive to fix, it's probably mine...

2009-01-23T23:36:00.003-06:00

Today is one of those days... Work was shitty. (Work being shitty is nothing new, but it was shittier than usual because half of my staff decided not to show up, and one of my supervisors decided to get pissed off because the other person who gets paid to do my job decided not to accomplish a damn thing for yet another shift... And then she decided not to show up for her shift to relieve me at the end of mine.) So there I was, getting berated for things that weren't my doing, and trying to do five people's work all by myself. When it came time for me to take my lunch, I tried my hand at improving my day. I went and found myself a pretty rad new shirt, and a Burt's Bees pomegranate infused lip balm... And in a handy twist of fate, and the one thing that went right for me today, I managed to get them both for a grand total of sixty-two cents. And with that one little thing going right, I threw off the balance of nature, and FAR more expensive things started going wrong.

As I left work, I noted that it was actually a few degrees above freezing today. So I rolled down a window not so much for the balmy temperature, as for a little fresh air. I noticed that the window I wanted to roll down wouldn't work... So I rolled down a different window. Upon getting home and giving it a little further inspection, I found that it would roll down when using a different switch, but then no matter which switch I used, it wouldn't roll up. Marvelous. So now one of my windows is down just enough to tempt someone into trying to reach in and steal what little I have if I should decide to go anywhere... And certainly it's down far enough to let in enough moisture from rain, sleet, and snow which will surely settle in and mold the back seat.

In an attempt to do a little homework online to see if there was any way that I could fix it myself, I got on my trusty computer, which seems to normally function on some level of busted-ness, but which had decided to actually work properly for the last couple of days. As I was searching for answers, I found nothing... Nothing but frustration as the computer too decided to stop properly functioning as well.

All for a lip balm and a rad shirt for 62 cents... If I'd known that's how it was all going to go down, and that the measly 16 dollars worth of positivity would throw things the natural balance so far off kilter, I'd have paid regular price for them, and keep my window and computer working.

But at least I didn't get arrested.

Happy Inauguration Day!

2009-01-20T01:52:00.003-06:00

It's a big day for America!

It's Inauguration day! We've finally replaced that nincompoop (who I believe is actually quite shrewd and works hard at making us believe that he was an even bigger nincompoop, while slipping stuff under the radar of most folks who merely heard his terrible public speeches and wouldn't believe that he was intelligent enough to get one over on any of us)!

It's a big deal, no matter who you are, or who you voted for. I don't care if you're black, white, blue, red, green, pink, or every shade of the rainbow. I don't care if you voted for Ralph Nader, John McCain and his insipid running mate who will not be named, or any other pairing on the ticket in your state. No matter who you are, where you live, or what your political affiliations are, you have to admit that there is an electricity and an excitement in the air that hasn't been present in American politics for far too long.

People are finally getting interested in the people that are running the show. I am so glad to see that people are waking up and giving a damn about the things that will not only impact their lives, but the lives of their children... It's kind of an important thing to care about, don't you think?

An Officer, and The Admiral:

2009-01-20T00:53:00.003-06:00

Just before I was scheduled to go in to work, I got a text message from my best friend, "The Admiral." Before I tell you what it said, I should note that we tend to call or message each other when we have bad days and compare notes. I have pretty crappy luck in life, so I usually win this contest, where it is usually better to be the loser... Today I got trumped.

The message, verbatim, read: "Today I got arrested. I've finally beat you."

Knowing that it was only early afternoon on a Monday, and that The Admiral is generally a law-abiding citizen, I knew that this was a big deal, and that there must be a story to go with it.

I called her, hoping that if she was able to access her phone to text me, that she still had access to it to talk to me and give me the full scoop on how the hell she managed to get arrested. I also wanted to know if I needed to figure out some means of bailing her out.

She answered, which reassured me that she was ok.

"What the hell! ARRESTED? HOW? WHY? And might I add, WOW!"

"Well, I went to get my taxes done. That was shitty because I found out I owe the government a few hundred dollars that I don't have. So I was upset. I was crying while driving back to the office and trying to figure out how I was going to pay it."

"Ok, that's shitty in and of itself. But that doesn't explain getting arrested... Did you black out and go on a kill-crazy shooting spree?"

"Well, remember that car accident I got into a few months ago?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I got a citation for following too closely, and for not having proof of insurance with me. They told me to submit proof of insurance when I paid the fine, or they would suspend my license... I paid the fine, but totally forgot about the insurance card."

"OH, shit!"

"Yeah, so while I was crying over my taxes and driving today, I apparently missed a sign that said no turn on red, and a cop was there to see it."

"DAMN."

"So of course I'm in hysterics over the tax thing and then getting pulled over on top of it... So when he got to the window, I was a mess."

"Jesus."

"So he runs my license and unbeknownst to me, it comes up as suspended. Since I was hysterical already, he probably thought I already knew about it and was upset because I knew I was in trouble for it, but I really didn't know! That was probably why he was such a dick!"

"OH MY GOD!"

"Yeah, so I was cuffed and put in the back of the car for driving on a suspended license. They printed me and everything... Though now if I'm ever murdered and something happens where I end up beheaded they can still identify me, because now they have my prints in the system!"

"Well, clearly that's the bright side in all of this!"

"Yeah, so they took away my license and impounded my car, and gave me a court date... It took him a while, but once the arresting officer figured out that my story was true, and that I really wasn't lying and trying to put anything past him, he stopped being such a dick, even saying that he wasn't going to require a bond on me because this was my first arrest, and that he could tell from my hysterics that this wasn't something I had done regularly... I think I even went so far as to reassure him 'NO, this isn't like me! I'm a good girl! REALLY! I'm a good girl!'"

"So they didn't put you in a cell or anything, right?"

"No... They booked me, but didn't put me in the slammer. I think they could tell that I was not the type to do well in jail."

"Wow... I just don't know what else to say. WOW!"

"Yeah, I finally scored one on you."

"Congratulations... You trumped me. Well done!"

"Oh, it was really just a matter of time... I mean I got engaged, got into law school, and got a huge scholarship all in one month's time... Things were just going far too well, OF COURSE it all had to go awry."

"WOW... I just don't know what else to say. That is an impressively bad day."

As much as I don't look at this as a win for me, because it is unfortunate and it happened to someone I care about, it is nice to know that it DIDN'T happen to me. I am by no means gloating over this, because I wholeheartedly sympathize when the shit hits the fan and just keeps heaping up, and it happened to my best friend, so that sucks. Can't we all just collectively catch a huge break?

Crazy Magnet...

2009-01-18T22:29:00.001-06:00

As a person with my life experiences, and job history, I've come to the realization that I'm some kind of magnet for all kinds of crazy. And as a crazy magnet who is working in retail, I've also come to grips with the fact that it was almost inevitable that the crazy would come and find me at the store.

Today it happened.

I was in the last hour of my scheduled shift, fantasizing about going home and forgetting the crap I'd put up with all day. One of the people I regularly converse with, Patty, was headed to take a break and smoke a cigarette. Since things had warmed up to a balmy 10 degrees ABOVE zero, I decided I would accompany her outside so that I had someone to talk to while she got her nicotine fix.

No sooner than we got out there, the crazy found me.

A customer came out of the store, having freshly purchased a can of pringles potato chips. She popped the top, and ate a chip or two. She then said that she thought they tasted bad. Having the particular job I have at the store, I told her that if she wanted to return them, we'd help her out with that. Almost instantly, she said that she felt like she was going to sue because she felt like she was going to get food poisoning. Then she decided she was going to act like she was feeling ill. Instantly she was talking of calling her lawyer... And the crazy magnet now pulled me in and got me involved.

This crazy lady decided she wanted to make a real production of it... Simply returning the can of chips wasn't an option! Not when there was money to be made with frivolous litigation! So she demanded that we fil out an incident report. All over one measly bad pringle.

While we were filling out the paperwork, she called 911. Yes, you read that right, she had one stale potato chip and called an ambulance! AN AMBULANCE!!! I don't think it's necessary to inform you that the EMTs were PISSED when they found out why they'd been called. They told her to go home, drink some water, get some rest, and that they weren't going to treat her. Then they got back in their rig, slammed the doors, and peeled out of the parking lot to go to REAL emergencies.

I then spent an additional 40 minutes beyond the scheduled end of my shift filling out an incident witness statement instead of going home and forgetting about my shitty work day.

All for one bad pringle.

I tell you, the crazy just finds me like a heat seeking missile.

How about a knuckle sandwich?

2009-01-17T00:44:00.002-06:00

Let's talk about some cold ass weather.

For those of you not currently residing in Canada, or the midwestern U.S, I feel the need to inform you that it has been cold here... But cold isn't the word for it. A more appropriate way to put it would be A TRAUMATIC AND BRUTAL ASSAULT ON THE SENSES.

When talking to my mother, I mentioned that despite living in Chicago for more than six years, (a place widely reputed for brutal winters,) I noted that I believed that despite all my memories of all the winters I spent there, I have absolutely no recollection of the existence of such cold, and that I must've mentally blocked it out like an abuse victim mentally blocks out traumatic memories.

Knowing that it was as cold as it was, (seriously, NOT counting wind chill, we're talking -18,) I was not thrilled about the prospect of getting out of bed to go to work my crappy retail job. But as I mentioned in my last post, I need the money so that I can get the hell out of Ohio as soon as possible, so I was thinking in more long-term parameters. So I got up, shivered, and said to myself that if the car didn't start on the first try that I would not feel guilty about calling off. And given the temperature, and the fact that my car is 10 years old, there was a distinct possibility that is was going to sputter for a second and tell me to bugger off. But in the interest of putting forth an honest effort, I went out, put the key in, and tried it. And wouldn't you know it, that thing turned over like nothing. So as it ran for a few minutes and warmed up a little, I ran back into the house, tried to shake off the cold, and went to layer up appropriately for work. And after bundling up, I went to work. My coworkers were not quite so diligent.

Three of the five people who were supposed to work under my watch called off, and the other two were late. The one person who my supervisors were supposed to send to help me out, was taken back to answer phones or something. Basically, I was doing it all myself as usual. I wasn't too upset though, because the extreme cold seemed to keep most rational people away, so things were relatively calm. I noted to a few of the people that I worked with that I genuinely questioned the intelligence and judgment of anyone coming to the store to get anything other than prescription medication, diapers, or a space heater.

Once things picked up and my late comers arrived, I was managing to juggle three or four things at one time, when a customer decided to get her nose all out of joint. She threw a fit when she had to stand behind one other person in line, and essentially demanded that I stop what I was doing to wait on her. I went ahead and opened up a register so that we could take her money and get her the hell out of there. As I bagged up her items and informed her of her total, one of the items in the bag shifted and was sticking partially out of the bag... At which point the bitch clearly lost her mind. She pitched a royal fit, calling my rush and my bagging skills "disgusting" and stating that she couldn't believe any of it! Seriously... Things shift once bagged. And if that makes me "disgusting" then I'm fine with it, as everyone who ever placed items in a bag only to have them shift is "disgusting" right there along with me. I, of course, wanted to punch her in the face, and as she sat bleeding on the floor, I'd have shouted at her, "What is disgusting is your attitude. Now get the hell out and don't come back until you've learned how to treat people." But seeing as I need my paycheck at the moment, I didn't.

I'm in hell.

Talking about the weather and my desire to assault people is really the best I can manage at the moment.

Going nowhere fast...

2009-01-13T23:03:00.002-06:00

When I first came up with the idea to relocate to the South, the original concept resonated with me so much that when I talked to my cousin, it was "THE SOONER THE BETTER! GET ME OUTTA HERE!" But things have changed somewhat. After some money was spent on car repairs, and other unforeseen expenses, it has become pretty clear that I've got to get some finances in order before picking up the stakes and rollin' to the other side of the Mason-Dixon... Which is really tough to do on a crappy retail pay scale. So I'm still working on planning the logistics of the move, because it's really tough to find an apartment in a city 9 hours from where you currently live. Sure you can look at online listings, but the pictures that people post on the apartment search websites can deceive you into thinking a roach motel is a palatial estate. "We have in unit washer dryer hookups, hardwood floors throughout, OH, and you're conveniently next door to a very lovely crack house!" None of that shows up in the pictures that they put up. It's an interesting endeavor to be sure.

And when you're saving all that you can to afford the move, planning a trip to another time zone and another region of the country is an expensive notion that seems a little out of the question for the time being. So I'm cooling my heels and waiting for my bank balance to tell me it's ok to start thinking about this in concrete terms.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still eager to get this thing nailed down and over with, but without the help of some ridiculously wealthy benefactor, I'm going to be spending my days biting my tongue and busting my ass in the retail world... Unless any of you want to contribute to my cause! (In which case I will totally sing your praises as I hightail it outta here, and you know me, I'm not one to mooch off you guys, which should tell you how big this is to me!)

In other news, despite my better judgement, I went to a job interview here in Ohio the other day, thinking that if things worked out, I could at least spend a few weeks earning a check while not being ridiculed behind a cash register, or maybe put in for a transfer if I learned that was a possibility... Turns out it was another one of those bullshit "group interview" gigs where some dude yammers on for an hour while never actually saying anything, and then hooking a few of the dumber sons of bitches with talk of an unreasonably large paycheck, but not once ever mentioning what you needed to do to get it... My momma didn't raise a fool. My ass walked out while others remained seated around the table, and I again had the notion that some of them were folks planted to talk the idiots into sticking around and wasting their time and energy on some pyramid scheme or craptastic sales job where you spend all day pounding the pavement for someone else's benefit, or cold calling people for ten bucks an hour. Either way, not for me! I just thought you should know.

The poop house post has been delayed, but it is about half-way completed... I don't know when it'll actually be up, and I could give you a date, but I don't want to lie to you.

Much love, bitches!

When in doubt...

2009-01-09T22:54:00.003-06:00

If ever you were wondering how best to spend your day when you are in Hell, Ohio, let me tell you!

Let me be your guide through this fantastic voyage!

Get up early. Curse your very existence. Curse harder at the state of your life. Curse harder still at George W. Bush. Then get yourself all dolled up and go to work. Do your job, even though it's crappy retail work that any trained monkey could do. And when your boss calls you in for a chat, (the same boss that you wanted to punch in the face the night before,) go ahead and chat with her. Listen to her bullshit "feedback" about your performance. Smile and nod, and hold your tongue, knowing that you're not going to be there very much longer, and that soon you'll be able to tell her to "shove it where the sun don't shine" and not worry about where your next meal is coming from because you don't need that bullshit paycheck from that bullshit job. Keep that smile going because you know that not only are you about 30 IQ points smarter than her, and much better able to work with people without offending them, you're awesome, and people love reading your blog... In fact, anyone with any real sense seems to love you, so just keep that in mind when listening to the nitwit who makes bank by talking down to you.

When you're done nodding at your boss while ignoring everything she says because you don't really give a rat's pink ass, go home. Hook up your analog-to-digital converter box, because we all know that your poor ass can't be wasting money on extravagant things like cable! And then marvel at the fact that you get more channels and that none of them are all fuzzy, snowy, and wobbly like the ones you've gotten used to!

When the novelty has worn off, take a little something to make your back feel better, because only a week ago you were having back spasms, and you've already been back at work for a 5 days, and have a short little nap. When you get up, cook yourself a lovely dinner of pasta and marinara sauce, and crack open a bottle of wine... Keep it open. You're going to be done with it by the time the night is through.

Go ahead and put some laundry in the washing machine so that the night isn't a total loss.

As the mellow buzz of the wine mixes with what little amount of the mild pain killer that's still in your system, laugh your ass off when you realize that one of your new channels is airing the 80's B-movie horror classic, "Killer Clowns From Outer Space." Watch in amazement.

Move the laundry from the washer to the dryer.

When the Killer Clowns have been defeated, channel surf for a little while, and marvel that Carson Daly still has a television show, and someone finds him relevant enough to keep paying him. That revelation should really keep you busy for a good long while.

Fold your laundry, match your socks, and put fresh sheets on the bed.

When you've thoroughly exhausted yourself trying to figure out that Carson Daly dilemma, have yourself a shower making sure to wash in your belly button and behind your ears (among other important places to wash!) Make sure you've washed your face, then brush your teeth, (don't forget to floss!) and head for bed.

That really is the long and short of it.

Congratulations, you've just survived a day in Hell, Ohio.

Is this as good as it gets, or what?

More poop house to come, but not today...

2009-01-08T23:47:00.002-06:00

Today I thought I'd opt for a feces-free post.

Your basic lizzle update as it were.

I continue to speculate and plan for a move down south, but have nothing set just yet. In the meantime, my current crappy retail job continues to suck the life out of me. (And it endangers the life of one particular supervisor, as she tends to make demands of me which are ridiculously beyond the scope of my job description. She seems to think that I can get my normal full 8 hours worth of work done, and done well mind you, and that she can also heap on another 3-5 hours worth of OTHER PEOPLE'S work for me to do, all while expecting me to supervise my underlings effectively, and making sure that they are doing what they are supposed to do, despite the fact that they seem pretty friggin helpless when I'm busy busting my hump... It's a crappy retail job, and they don't pay me nearly enough to get all that other crapola done, so they can just kiss my fat ass! But back to that supervisor, when she makes her unreasonable demands, she acts like I'm just manicuring my nails on the job, instead of running my ass off, and then she makes smug remarks when I finish crap that she should be doing to "lead by example." That frosts my pumpkin! In point of fact, she's lucky that I was able to restrain myself from giving her a fat lip for her little remark tonight!)

I'm just venting because I'm in a salty mood, and I'm ready for my life to finally feel like it's getting somewhat on track...

Anyway, I just thought you might like a non-poop related update, and for those of you anxiously awaiting the next installment of the poop house variety, I have the weekend off, so I should be able to get something done up by Monday... So there.

Words of encouragement are appreciated, as I feel like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel for morale these days.

An open letter to 2008...

2009-01-01T16:04:00.004-06:00

Dear 2008,

First off, let's not beat around the bush, because 2008, you sucked. I'm glad that we're done forever, because you used me and abused me, and now as far as I'm concerned you can suck a big fat, scabies-ridden cock! Yeah, that's right! I said it!

The start of 2008 still had me doing that social work bullshit. That is bad enough. Early in 2008 I took a mini vacay to use up a few of my remaining paid vacation days to go and visit my family down south. The vacation was nice enough, and I bought new sheets while I was there. But part of my time down there was spent belly-aching to my aunt about my crappy job. Her take on things was that I'd pretty well already made up my mind to leave that crap, but that if I wasn't already thinking that, then it sure sounded like I was ready to bounce. I got home and went back to drinking, working, and plotting my escape.

In an effort to genuinely forget the hell of my life for a few days, I went to vegas. That trip didn't go off as planned, but it was still a spectacular time. That was really the highlight of 2008. Which isn't saying much because it was little more than an abberant long weekend where I was allowed to live on someone else's dime.

In late spring/early summer, Kirsten came to town to take her LSAT, and I really made the final decision to leave social work for whatever Ohio had to offer. In the meantime, the job continued to suck the life out of me though. I quit that shit for good in mid July, and had moved before the month was out. I then went to the family reunion which wasn't bad, but certainly lacked it's usual luster.

Shortly after my arrival in Ohio, the economy collapsed. And I shat myself metahporically. And of course my car decided to stop working and require $800 worth of work... $800 I REALLY didn't have.

Awesome.

In discussions regarding the economy all over the U.S. it was widely stated that Ohio was economically the worst state in the union. The job market was total bullshit, and despite sending out something like 700 resumes, I got a ridiculously low number of interviews, and got pissed off.

Then Hurricane Ike blew through. That bitch knocked out the power at my house for a week. During that week, Kirsten essentially took to living at Mike's house, so I spent a great deal of time alone with the cat.

When the power came back, the refrigerator did not. It took another 6 weeks before the landlord decided to fix that shit. (In case you were wondering, 7 weeks without the use of a refrigerator for ANY purpose SUCKS DONKEY BALLS.) And somewhere in there I had a shitty birthday, improved only slightly by the fact that I actually got to see Kirsten for the first time in weeks.

And after having only the cat for company for roughly 2 months, Kirsten came and got him and took him with her to Mike's house... My only friends in Ohio were now living elsewhere, and seldom heard from thereafter.

Right around the time that my bank balance hit absolute zero, and the refrigerator got fixed, my computer stopped working correctly, and I got a call telling me that I'd gotten a crappy retail job. GREAT!

So I spent most of the fall and early winter months cursing under my breath while fetching carts, change, and plastic bags for people, and wondering why I bothered getting a college degree, let alone a degree from a respectable university... I still do the cursing during my retail shifts, in case you were wondering. (And then I remind myself that it's not the poop house... but it still sucks.)

Then Kirsten got engaged, which didn't suck for me, but didn't really do much to improve things for me either. It did, however, solidify the fact that I have no reason to stay in Ohio, because the one reason I came to Ohio decided to fall in love and get married, and sledom be heard from ever again.

To round out my shitty 2008, I spent Christmas alone because I had to work on Christmas eve and the day after Christmas, effectively isolating me for the holiday season. I worked some of that shit, and then started having intensely painful back spasms. I then spent a few days on pain killers, and to really round out a shitty year properly, I had to have more work done on my car to the tune of $300. (I know, AWESOME, right?)

(Oh, and I got sued.)

So 2008 can suck it... In fact, 2008 DID suck it.

2008 sucked a golf ball through a garden hose.

Thank god we're done with that piece of shit year!

Happy New Year

2008-12-31T22:49:00.002-06:00

Happy new year you crazy bitches!

May 2009 treat us all a little better than that piece of shit 2008.

I hope you all wake up hangover free and may all your resolutions be easy to keep!

I rounded out 2008 with a nasty round of back spasms, so I'll be taking pain killers and going to bed early.

Cheers!

Deep thoughts, not by Jack Handy...

2008-12-22T22:52:00.003-06:00

I've been doing some thinking. Serious thinking. The kind of thinking that has gotten me into trouble in the past.

In case you care, I will be spending the holiday alone. Tragically, my crappy job (which at least provides a paycheck, and that alone is reason to be grateful,) requires me to work on Christmas eve, and the day after Christmas, so I will be unable to even go so far as to drive to my dad's house which is a mere 3 and a half hour drive away if there are no weather problems, but that is also not the case at present. But since we're talking about family and the holidays, I should mention that my mom is down south visiting her side of my family. Since she was there, one of my cousins called me up and very sweetly offered to fly me down for the holiday, but I sadly had to decline due to the aforementioned crappy job and crappy schedule.

While I was on the phone with the cousin, I couldn't help feeling the genuine love and sadness at the fact that I would miss the holiday with everyone. It might seem strange of me to say this, but the truth is that I've missed feeling so loved.

Don't get me wrong, I know that I am loved, and I know that I am missed, but the fact is that since my move to Ohio, I haven't seen my family, and aside from daily phone conversations with my mom, I haven't had any connection to my loved ones.

After the conversation with my cousin, I really got to thinking. Basically, I've been thinking that Ohio hasn't turned out as planned, that it shows little sign of turning around, (because economically it is still currently the worst state in the union,) and that for all intents and purposes, despite the fact that my best friend lives here, and that I've been living in her house on her good graces, I very seldom see her since she decided to go fall in love and get engaged, so although it was unforeseeable at the time, I've discovered that it was a mistake for me to move here.

As such, I've considered resuming my nomadic lifestyle, and picking up the stakes and hitting the road once more. Moving to the south was something I had originally considered when I decided to leave the social work gig. I decided to venture east to Ohio instead. Since things didn't pan out, I am looking at this as a move based on the premise of casting a legal Obama vote in a swing state before settling in a red state. Now that that's done, it's time to move on. Hopefully once I land in the south, I will acquire some gentility, and southern charm... And then use that charm to spread my liberal notions to the masses...

Seriously, I've got to stop moving, or start buying stock in the u-haul company!

An update not of the poop house variety...

2008-12-17T00:14:00.002-06:00

Dear friends,

We're all friends here, right? Some of you know that I'm working. A few of you know that it's a crappy job that I have no intention of keeping in the long term, but hey, a girl's gotta eat in the meantime, and we all know that right about now the job market is about as pretty as what washed up in the poop house sink basin. So I have this crappy job, and in talking to some of the people who work with me, more than one has mentioned that they are interested in going into the field of social work. I laugh my usual bawdy laugh, and then try and talk them out of their possible job prospect using a few of the mildest bits of my job history. I think they think I'm just making all of this stuff up.

Trust me, I'm not.

I haven't even gotten into the real guts of the matter with any of them, and they seem horrified. They continually say things that imply that it couldn't really be that bad... IT IS THAT BAD!

The world does need social workers, don't get me wrong, but it won't be me, and it won't be anyone I have any influence over! You bitches need to believe that we're about to delve into the real belly of the beast here...

There is more to come.

It does get worse.

I am not making this up.

Don't be a social worker.

Don't encourage anyone you care about to be a social worker.

I'll work on the next poop house post over the weekend when I've got a couple of days off.

The Poop House Chronicles (Part Ten): Better or Worse?

2008-12-11T11:59:00.001-06:00

The last time I'd seen the poop house family, (including all nineteen animals, and all of their piles of feces,) it had been a Saturday, I'd gone out and purchased toilet paper, bread and bug spray for them because they lacked the money and the wherewithal to go out and do it themselves, I noticed the most horrendously awful "heat rash" I'd ever seen, and I'd been informed that Millie might have lymphatic cancer. I didn't have a great weekend when all that went down.

I typed up my weekly paperwork, and turned it in. I turned it in because I didn't want to be tortured by thoughts of the poop house all weekend long while dreading doing my paperwork, so I just got it over with... I still had no such luck. All weekend long, I was tortured by the idea of this kid living in the conditions I'd seen. I was baffled at the state allowing it. I was troubled at the idea that the family had squandered their state check and Martha's paycheck on SOMETHING, and yet had no toilet paper or bread. Needless to say, I was bothered by the cancer issue. I was really having a rough time trying to put all of this on a back burner so that I could have an actual weekend and a bona fide personal life, (which was to become a running theme of my time as a social worker). Many of you might not get that last statement, but the thing is, when you're working for the people I was working for, you were constantly told that you needed to do everything in your power to not take your work home with you, and to leave all your work cares at the door of the last client's house... Of course, then they made us carry work cell phones so that we were on-call 24-7 for those clients, even on those weekends when we should've been more worried about what movie to go see, instead of, "How the hell am I going to find an open food bank to get these people through the rest of the weekend on a Saturday at 4:30 PM?" To boot, they made us turn in paperwork on the weekends in such a way that required everyone to make a special trip to the office at some point during their weekend to do work-related paper work which had to be done AFTER all of your client meetings for the week, and BEFORE the office officially opened on Monday.

Those things made it a little tougher not to think of clients on your own time.

Those things also made having a personal life a lot tougher.

So after my weekend was spent thinking about things I had no interest in thinking of, (namely poop, bugs, cancer, clients, and the like,) the weekend came to a close, and it was back to the daily grind of going to see the poop house family along with all of my other clients.

In the meantime, my weekend was sufficiently ruined by thoughts of the tediously disgusting work with the poop house family which persisted, even through the otherwise pleasant haze that a couple bottles of wine afforded me.

On the first day of my work week, I did all of my other work and saw all of my other clients... (because apparently the poop house wasn't amply sufficient in ruining my life). After I finished my typical daily run through other people's misery, I drove to the poop house. I continued my normal pattern of cursing and snarling involuntarily with my increasingly worsening facial tic. I changed into the poop shoes, and braced myself for the smell before opening the car door... The day was about to go down the drain... But as I was about to learn, that was all that was going down the drain.

I walked up to the disgusting door. I knocked and surveyed the ever-growing pile of garbage on the front porch as I waited. Mitch answered the door. He said that he was going to put the dogs in the bathroom before letting me in. He closed the door. As I waited, I continued to look at the huge pile of festering garbage on the front porch of this "home." I continued to wait... and wait.

Five minutes later, I figured that I'd caught busy Mitch by surprise, and that he was attempting to do a minimal amount of cleaning before letting me in. It was a safe assumption.

When the door finally opened, and Mitch let me in, I reeled and gagged at the odor, which seemed worse than usual. There was a new dimension to it. Usually it was merely the unbearable odor of cat urine, all kinds of animal poop, and hot garbage... There was definitely something new this day. There now seemed to be the added foulness of rotting food of some kind and swampy mildewy water.

"Mitch, I'm not going to beat around the bush, and I don't mean this to hurt your feelings, but I just have to tell you, it STINKS in here!"

"Oh... That's the sink."

"The sink? What's wrong with the sink?"

"It's clogged. That's why we haven't done the dishes."

"Ok, so that's the reason for the mountain of dirty dishes I'm seeing behind you there."

"Yeah, we haven't been able to do dishes since Friday."

"Why didn't you say something when I was here on Friday or Saturday?"

"Well, we thought we'd get a plunger and that everything would be fine."

"And did you get a plunger?"

"Yeah. but it didn't really help."

At this point Mitch led me around the landmines of dung that the animals had left behind, and toward the kitchen sink. As I looked at the mountain of dirty dishes precariously heaped on the counter, and I worked hard not to gag or vomit at the intensifying odor of rot and filth. I was also very VERY careful not to accidentally bump into anything, including the counter, which was crawling with a thick brownish coating of roaches. I couldn't control the internal desire to be out of this house as soon as possible. And I was about to get the jolt that would push me over the edge and make me want to run away screaming.

"Mitch, before we get to this, how is Millie? Any news on the possible cancer?"

"Oh, yeah, she's fine. The antibiotics are working to reduce the swelling, and the doctor called and said she's going to be fine in a few days."

"Oh, good! You all scared me with that cancer thing!"

"Yeah."

"So, what's going on with the sink that the plunger can't knock out?"

"Well... uhh... you see... "

Mitch then picked up the plunger. I was close enough to the sink to see that there was about a centimeter of standing water in the bottom of the sink which was semi-translucent.

"Mitch, have you guys tried something like liquid plumber?"

"Well, I don't know that that would do any good."

"Why not?"

Mitch nervously thumbed at the handle of the plunger. His downcast eyes let me know that there was more to this story that he wasn't telling me.

"Well, I don't think liquid plumber is designed to do anything for this particular kind of clog."

"What? WHY? What the heck kind of clog do you have that something like that won't do any good?"

Mitch then issued his reply, but instead of saying it with words, he SHOWED me.

Mitch stuck the plunger over the drain and pumped it a few times. He then pulled it away from the drain.

I was utterly HORRIFIED at what I saw.

(Keep in mind that this is a whole other dimension of HORRIFIED in what was already a horrific situation... And my additional horror might be an indication that you need to go and get a receptacle in which to contain your own violent reactions at what's ahead... I recommend something rather large and preferably concave.)

As the plunger cleared out of my view of the drain, I saw what had come up in the plunging process.

Considering that this sink was primarily used to wash the household dishes, I was expecting nothing more than chunks of soggy food because these people didn't strike me as the type to do a thorough job of scraping the plates before rinsing and washing dishes. But chunks of soggy, semi-disintegrated food was not what washed up in the plunging.

No.

In fact, I don't think there was a single particle of food in all of the drain back-wash... But then again I might have been distracted by everything else that did wash up.

As the drain back-wash settled enough for me to realize what had come up, and I visually processed the items in view, and mentally come up with a way to comprehend what exactly I was looking at, the reality of it took several seconds to sink into my psyche.

I, for one of the VERY FEW times in my grossly over-articulated life, was rendered totally and utterly SPEECHLESS.

If I hadn't been afraid of what might enter my mouth, I'd have stood there agape and agog with the horror of what I saw.

NOTHING ELSE had washed up, and by nothing else, I mean NOTHING else, other than about a thousand dead roach carcasses.

Yep.

[I will pause momentarily here so that you might vomit and afford yourself the natural reaction to such an image, and an appropriate amount of time to recover from this revelation... Keep in mind, that since I was standing there, in front of my "client" I was afforded no such opportunity to genuinely react, and no time to recover... I think that you'll find that with this pause I'm being quite generous. --All better? Me neither. But we must press on, because there are many more horrors ahead. Though I think now that you know this, you better understand why I took longer than previously forecast to get through creating this post for your reading pleasure, because understandably, I didn't want to revisit it... And I don't want to revisit anything else that is yet to come, but I will. For you. But please remain patient with me. I'm fragile.]

Oh, so now that you've had time to comprehend what I just told you, don't just cast it aside. REALLY LET IT SINK IT. PROCESS IT!

As I stood still horrified and unable to think or speak, my mind raced, but I was unable to grasp a hand-hold on any of them as they sped by.

I mean, picture yourself for a moment in this situation. You're already horrified at the state of the "home." You already struggle to breathe because the air is stifling, stagnant, acrid, and foul. Generally, the only thought that runs through your head in this situation is how to breathe as shallowly as possible, or how to get out of there as quickly as possible, or maybe even how to best ensure that you don't carry any contaminants from any of the critters out with you. If you have the mental capacity to get past all of this, all you can do is mentally detach and fantasize about an industrial sized bottle of hand sanitizer, a super-heated steam shower, and a job which doesn't require you to venture into the earthly portal to hell on a daily basis... Perhaps something as spectacular as a job with the fine folks at the Clorox companies... Somewhere where germs are endangered, and kids are clean, happy, and healthy. Your brain is already doing all it possibly can to prevent you from having a mental break which might cause you to either find give up on reality and figure that this lifestyle is acceptable, or go on a murderous rampage... Either way, the circuits are overloaded as it is. But to round out the picture, you have to think enough to talk to your clients about the unacceptability of this lifestyle. You have to think about ways to improve things. You have to formulate manageable tasks for these imbeciles. You have to supervise them as they work on these tasks so that you can ensure that they get done. All at the same time. All while trying to breathe and to keep from fainting or vomiting. It's a lot to process all at once.

And now you have to engage your clients. And you have to engage them about the thousand dead roaches which just washed up out of the kitchen sink drain. And you have to formulate a way that they can work around this problem until you can come up with a way for them to genuinely solve it... Which is also something you will have to do when considering that they are impoverished and can't afford toilet paper and bread, let alone a plumber for a proper fix... Not that any self respecting workman would ever cross the front lawn, let alone the threshold, or the poop minefield... Nope this is all on your shoulders. Congrats! And for all of this you get a pitiful paycheck, no retirement plan, no paid holidays, no health benefits unless you want those taken out of your measly paycheck, and no appreciation. Man, how did you luck into a job this awesome?

Can it possibly get any better than this?

If by better, you really mean A LOT WORSE, then yes.

Yes, it can... And it will.

I lied.

2008-12-09T00:52:00.002-06:00

I planned to have the next edition of the PHC up over a week ago... It's no secret that I continue to suck.

I've had even less desire than usual to think about the poop house, and thus less desire than usual to compose the posts.

When you combine that with a best friend getting engaged, a celebratory hangover/ day spent assisting with wedding planning nonsense, and work nonsense, well, the last thing I want to do on my day off is to think about that hell hole.

I'll get to it as soon as I can.

I'm not going to apologize, because I'm entitled to take my sweet ass time here, because IT IS MY BLOG, DAMMIT! So just get over it, and go read dlisted or something. I mean really, you've got your nerve coming around here and thinking that you can place demands on me... Selfish assholes! It's not like you're paying my bills or anything! You really need to think about other people's needs for a change, especially when you're coming to their playground for a visit!

(As far as the italics go, I kid... but you knew that already!)

Back soon.

2008-12-02T00:18:00.001-06:00

I'm going to be working on your latest poop house post tomorrow, and it will be up at some point in the day.

I'm a bad blogger. I know.

I could make excuses, but it's not worth it to anyone.

Sorry.

The Poop House Chronicles (Part Nine): A Thin Line Between Pity and Disgust

2008-11-23T11:13:00.004-06:00

I'd been going about my business with the poop house family for a couple of weeks at this point. I know that it's difficult to comprehend that all of this disgusting, revolting information can occupy such a small amount of time, but I assure you that's the case.

I mentioned in the last post that during this time I suffered from nightmares about the poop house, and in general didn't sleep very well. I was about to see things which would add to those troubles.

Seasonally, at this point in the story, we're in roughly early- to mid-autumn. In the Midwest, that generally means that it can still get up in the upper 90's during the day, sudden showers can crop up out of nowhere, the humidity makes life unbearably sticky and gross, and it's possible to have frost on your car when you wake up in the morning. All of these factors combine with other things which in all are supposed to comprise the appeal of life in the Midwest. Personally, despite spending the overwhelming portion of my life here in the North American Midwest, I still don't see the appeal, and if it weren't for the ties of friends and family, I don't think I'd have anything to do with the place. I mean I like seasons and everything, but the Midwest finds new and interesting ways to make the best parts of the best seasons totally suck.

So one sweltering day, I had a mid afternoon cancellation. This meant that if I went to the poop house a little earlier than normal, I could be done for the day. Normally people would look at finishing a work day early as a good thing... Since the poop house stood in my way, I was not one of the normal people. I knew that in order to finish early I would have to ruin my day early by going to the poop house, and that by going to the poop house earlier than they typically expected me, I would be surprising them. (And not in a good way.) In all likelihood, they would not have lifted a finger to work on anything because they weren't expecting me until later.

I went to my office. I chatted up one of my friends who knew my caseload while I was there.

"So the 'Waltons' [name changed] canceled on me."

"Oh! That's great! There's no coverage today. You want to go get a drink? I finish at 6:30... We can go then."

"No can do."

"Why not? You just said that you had a cancellation. Last time I checked, that means that you finish early since there's no coverage on the board."

"Well, you see, I always go to see the poop house family last."

"Oh."

"And since they're not expecting me until after that appointment is supposed to be over, if I show up now, that place is going to be extra gross."

"Yeah, extra gross poop house means you'll probably have to stay there longer than usual. And that equals extra-strength heebie jeebies, and an extra long shower, it's almost more trouble than it's worth."

"If you ask me, that whole case is more trouble than it's worth. They should just put the kid into a permanent placement and be done with it. The parents are NEVER going to change."

"Well, if you're out of the shower by 8 give me a call and we'll go get that drink."

"Will do."

I chatted up a few other people around the office, putting off the inevitable, giving them time to get something done, even though I knew it wouldn't happen.

Sometime between 5:30 and 6, I ran out of people to talk to, and procrastinate with, and so I went begrudgingly on my way to the poop house. And on the ten minute drive from my office to that festering sore of a residence, I shuddered at what I was likely to encounter, and I cursed to myself, and my upper lip curled in an unpleasant snarl that was becoming a victim in the form of an entirely involuntary facial tic.

I pulled up to the curb. I tried to control the snarl, and the cursing. I sat in my driver's seat, gripped the steering wheel in my fists and violently shook back and forth. I then reached back into the bag in the back seat and changed into the poop shoes while muttering incoherently something to the tune of, "...Can't believe this... fucking disgusting... nobody is paid enough for this... fuck... if one of those fucking little dogs touches me... son of a bitch... living in poop... this is hell... I'm in hell... need to advocate human sterilization... Fuck."

I walked up to the front porch and noticed that some of Mitch's alley-way finds hadn't made it to the trash, but to the top of the porch heap of garbage. Not quite the same thing. I knocked and the dogs began to shrilly bark. Mitch opened the door a crack, looked surprised, and told me that he was going to put the dogs away in the bathroom before I came in.

"Fine. Do it."

A few minutes later Mitch emerged, coming out onto the porch rather than letting me into the house.

"You're early."

"Yeah, I am. But your goals were the same no matter what time I was going to come and check on the progress."

"Well, we're not exactly done yet."

"Would you be done by the time I normally show up? Think carefully about how you answer."

"Probably."

"Probably? When did you get started working on the stuff we talked about?"

"Well... uhh... you see..."

"Let me guess, you haven't even started."

"Well, uhh, kinda."

"Kinda? You 'kinda' started to clean up the mess? You 'kinda' picked up poop? You 'kinda' did the dishes? You 'kinda' did laundry? You 'kinda' got rid of all the stuff you picked up in the alley? You 'kinda' gave Millie a bath? Stop me when I hit something that you 'kinda' did."

"Well, we didn't do any of that."

"None of it?"

"Well, we were going to do it before you got here, but you're early."

"That wasn't a wise answer Mitch. You just told me that at the very most the goals I've set for you would take up less than two hours of your day, because you haven't started, and I'm roughly two hours early. That's not good for two reasons. One, you're not working at a full time job, so you have AT LEAST EIGHT workable hours per day, and yet you're not managing to work here for even two. And I'm betting it's not the commute that's stopping you. And two, if you're not working to accomplish the goals I set until you know I'm coming over soon, that means that you're not spending the right amount of time on them, which means that you're not cleaning appropriately, and that means I'm going to have to look harder at what is getting done, and how it's getting done... There are more things wrong, but those are the biggies!"

"Well, uhh..."

"Mitch, why haven't you started? Why is there poop on the floor? Why are there dishes in the sink?"

"Well, that's the thing. We're out of toilet paper. I don't have any way to pick up the poop."

"Well, usually when I run out of something necessary like that, the solution is to go and get some."

"Well, Martha has the money, and she's at work... And we don't even have bus fare to get out to see her."

"You have no money and no toilet paper in the house?"

"Nope."

"Ok, that's something that you need to take up with your wife. It's absolutely unacceptable that if you have money between the two of you that at least some of it should be left here, because taking care of kids costs money, and you're going to run into expenses."

"Yeah... I guess you're right."

"I know I'm right. So what I'm going to suggest is that for right now, you pick up some of those old newspaper ads and use that to pick up the poop, because it can't stay here on the floor."

"Oh, I hadn't thought of that."

"Ok, so let's get going on that."

As Mitch went through the house using newspapers which should have been thrown out months or years ago to pick up poop deposited days or hours ago, little Millie came bounding out of her room to see what was going on. She was filthy, but that took a backseat to the first thing that I noticed, which was the angry red rash which covered the vast majority of her exposed arms and legs. I then noticed the swelling in her face. I'd like to say that the facial swelling was noticed first, but due to her normal level of pudginess, it took me a moment to realize that this was well above and beyond her normal look.

"Mitch! What's going on here?"

"What?"

"Mitch, Millie is covered in a rash, and her face is REALLY swollen. Don't tell me that you didn't notice!"

"Oh, that. Well, Martha took her to the doctor, and he said that it's a heat rash and swollen tonsils. She's got medicine in the fridge."

At this point Millie began screaming that she wanted more of the medicine. Mitch responded by screaming back that she couldn't have any more until later.

Millie became enraged at being told no once again. She ran over to the disgusting rusty box that they called a fridge, and tried to pull it open. Mitch blocked her and prevented her from opening the fridge. This only pushed her further over the edge. At which point she turned suddenly and felt that her best course of action was to sucker-punch me in the stomach.

The wind knocked out of me, and aghast at that response, I could not speak. I inhaled sharply trying to recover my breath... My body's natural response to a need for air was met with a considerable problem when the only air to inhale was so foul and nauseating as that which I was being forced to inhale. My eyes began to water, and the chunks rose in my throat. Meanwhile Mitch grabbed Millie by the upper arm and pulled her into her bedroom. He closed the door behind her after casting her solidly into the room in a forceful but not abusive way. Millie audibly screamed and cried in her room for the next several minutes but did not reappear.

Once I was able to regain my breath, choke back the vomit, and blink away the natural eye-watering response to the foulness, I said something briefly to Mitch about his response to the outburst. The exact words escape me.

As Millie continued her temper tantrum in her bedroom, I looked around and noticed that the roach problem was significantly worse than it had been lately.

"Mitch, I noticed that your roach problem seems to be getting worse, what's going on there?"

"Well, they usually get worse this time of year, but they are pretty bad right now."

"And did you guys go out and get any spray like I suggested?"

"No. We couldn't afford it."

"Ok. When does Martha get paid again?"

"Not until next Friday."

"Ok... Well, I really think we need to get something going before then... Hmmm."

"Well we don't have the money for toilet paper right now, so we REALLY don't have the money for bug spray."

At roughly this point in the conversation little Millie came out of her bedroom calm as ever, as if the previous incident involving her fists and my stomach had never happened. I admit that part of me was pissed off at getting physically assaulted by a five year old, but pity took over when I looked at her swollen face and the horrid rash covering the vast majority of her body. Kids lash out when they don't feel good in any way... It happens.

Little Millie then asked Mitch for a sandwich.

"I can't make you a sandwich."

"Why not?"

"We don't have any bread, and I don't have any money to go get some."

My heart broke.

"Mitch, you don't have any toilet paper, bug spray, or bread, and you don't have any money whatsoever?"

"Nope. Martha might have a few bucks, but we've got to make that last until her next check."

I thought for a moment. I knew very well the idea of not having the money to go and get necessities. I knew what it meant to have to make it work with what you've got, but as someone who typically planned for things like toilet paper, I knew that hunger often took a back seat to being able to wipe your ass. But in the time I'd known that feeling, I never had a child I had to support. It wasn't fair that she couldn't have a sandwich and had no toilet paper. It wasn't fair that she had to live in this roach motel because her parents were spending their money on god only knows what instead of getting bug spray.

"I tell you what, Mitch, get started on your chore list. I will be back in a little bit and I want to see some progress."

I let myself out as Millie pleaded with Mitch for a sandwich and he repeatedly told her that he couldn't make it happen.

I went to a local market and picked up toilet paper, bread, and bug spray. I paid for it out of my own pocket, and never submitted the receipt to the office for reimbursement, because it was within my power to do $7.64 worth of charity that day. I then drove back to the poop house and walked up to the door. I knocked and Mitch and Millie came out to the porch.

"Mitch, I went and I got you enough bread and toilet paper to get you through, and a can of bug spray because you need it."

Millie looked at me as though I were the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy all rolled into one.

"You bought us bread?"

"Yeah, I did... You said you wanted a sandwich, didn't you?"

"I DID!"

"Well, now you can have one."

"But you got us toilet paper, too?"

"Yes."

"WOW!"

Mitch thanked me, and I told him that he could thank me more effectively by going back into that house and actually spending some time on the chores he knew he needed to do.

I turned and left, driving to see Martha at work.

I walked into the pizza shop, and shook my head in disbelief at the fact that they let her work there. I then addressed her as she stood at the front register.

"Hey, Martha."

"Hey."

"I was just over at your house. I saw Millie and talked to Mitch. He said that you took her to the doctor for that rash and the swelling in her face."

"Yeah, it's a bad heat rash, and the doctor had to run some tests to figure out what is going on with her face."

"What do you mean?"

"He thinks she might have lymphatic cancer or something... Said he'd know more in a couple of days."

"Oh my god!"

"Yeah, my aunt died of lymphatic cancer... so there's a chance."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"It could be nothing, that's why he gave us the antibiotics."

"Ok, well, be sure to keep me updated about that! But the other thing I wanted to discuss with you is the fact that you're the one working and you're leaving Millie with Mitch, and he's got no money to buy anything as needs arise."

"I don't have any money either. All I've got are the bus tokens I got from Dave."

"And you don't get paid until Friday?"

"Nope... We're due to go to the food bank though, so we should be fine."

"Ok, well, if that doesn't go as planned, let me know, or have Mitch let me know... We'll figure something out."

"Ok."

I couldn't believe it. We had enough horrible shit to deal with... Adding cancer to the mix was not anticipated.

I left Martha's pizza shop, and called Dave to let him know what was going on medically. He showed a marginal amount of concern, but didn't seem to get too worked up. I, on the other hand, was plenty worked up for the both of us. I just had to wait to see how it all played out.

In case you care:

2008-11-18T22:59:00.002-06:00

I know a lot of you are just coming around for poop house posts, but in the interest of keeping you informed, I will let you know a couple of things:

First off, my computer is still being a huge bitch. This usually means that I am relegated to typing up the poop house posts on the meager time that it allots to me before randomly deciding that it needs a rest and spontaneously shuts down... It makes things difficult.
Secondly, my time is now occupied by a crappy retail job that I took in the interest of paying bills until I can find real work... Who knows how long that will be. This means that I'm spending a minimum of 30-40 hours a week doing swing shifts, and not sitting on my computer being awesome/unemployed. This also adds to the delay.
And finally, in a move totally out of character for me, I have gotten sick. I currently have a really nasty cold, and in addition to not being able to breathe out of my nose, all I want to do is sleep. I might have to take the Admiral's cure, (known as "whiskey-ing it out of the system,") which is to drink enough alcohol to kill any and all germies coursing through my bloodstream. I have a feeling I might be able to use this method effectively.

Furthermore, I have this weekend off, but I hope to be spending it tailgating at the Ohio State- Michigan game... This will be a prime opportunity to continue the whiskey-it-out method if I haven't already recovered somewhat.

That's all for now. More poop house to come, and trust me when I tell you that things will get REALLY REALLY NASTY within the next few posts.

The Poop House Chronicles (Part Eight): Let's get ready to RRRRRRUUUUUUMMMMMBBBBLLLLLLLLLE!!!!

2008-11-10T00:43:00.001-06:00

(My computer is still acting up, so I apologize for the delay on this and some future posts.)

The poop house haunted me, both when I was awake, and in my nightmares.

When awake, I fitfully itched and scratched, compulsively cleaned things I already knew to be clean, compulsively showered multiple times per day, did laundry to a point which would be considered highly wasteful by energy and water conservation standards, and generally dreaded my next foray into hell.

When asleep, I was tormented by the nightmarish number of cats, dogs, and cockroaches. Sleeping sucked because it was seldom restful sleep, and usually I was at the mercy of all the living creatures in the poop house, which generally meant that I dreamed of having dogs biting at my ankles, cats hissing at me from shelves, and cockroaches surrounding me no matter where I turned... And of course the smell. Yes, even in my nightmares the smell was thick and utterly rank.

Normally, Lizzle is pretty affable most of the time. Hell 95% of the time Lizzle is downright likable to most people with any intelligence. (Admittedly Lizzle is less likable to those who posess IQ scores on the lower end of the spectrum, because she derives intense pleasure from mocking many of them with words that are too big for them to comprehend... And despite the lack of intelligence and vocabulary, they somehow manage to pick up on tones of derision, ridicule and mockery.) Lizzle really tries not to make fun of the dummies, but so many of them just beg for it! And like any good realist, Lizzle admits that there are always bad days here and there for anyone, and she's not going to pretend that she's the least bit likable when things are bad, or when she has cramps. But once the poop house came along, Lizzle started losing sleep. Sleep-deprived Lizzle is a different beast altogether. Sleep-deprived Lizzle tries to be nice, but generally operates on a really short fuse, and once that fuse is lit, it's spent for the day, until a little bit of fitful sleep essentially hits the reset button. Lizzle knows that parenthood robs a person of countless hours of sleep, but those hours are balanced out by the mellowing effects of affection for the offspring, rendering most parents pretty tolerable, if not likable. But the sleep-deprived Lizzle has no children. No pets. No nothing. Instead sleep-deprived Lizzle had the poop house, and needless to say, there was NO affection WHATSOEVER for the poop house. In point of fact, Lizzle had nothing but contempt, loathing, and hate for the poop house... And all involved with putting her there and keeping her there.

Lizzle is tired of referring to herself in the third person.

I admit that I was a little coarse and probably difficult to be around at this point in time. Things were not looking as though they were going to improve any time soon though, so my real friends tried to offset my general aire of unpleasantness by asking me to recount my daily interaction with the poop house family. I don't know if they thought it would be cathartic for me to just vent and that I would be more pleasant once it was out, or if they just had a really morbid curiosity about everything, or if they figured that since they had to suffer my presence, they might as well get the latest chapter of the horror story, but whatever the hypothesis, whatever the reasoning, no matter how many people I told, I didn't feel any better about it. Never. I did get to a point where I was able to laugh about the sheer foulness and and misery of my daily visits to the poop house, but only as a means of mental self preservation... I never genuinely felt any better about it, and to this day it still intensely bothers me. The laughter and joking merely made others more comfortable around me.

So I went back the next day.

Again as I sat at the curb, changing into poop shoes, I cursed under my breath. I then cursed at normal volume because the subtle cursing didn't make me feel any better. I turned my gaze to the poop house, noticing a grocery cart in the front yard that hadn't been there before. Knowing that there wasn't anything more than a run-down bodega, much less a full-on grocery store, within a mile of this shit hole, I had the distinct feeling that the cart had not been idly dumped by someone traveling to their own home, but rather that it had some significance to play in this visit. As it turned out, I was right.

As I choked on the foul air standing and knocking on the front door, I listened to the dogs barking. Mitch took his sweet time doing whatever he was doing inside, I assume he was getting up from his late afternoon nap in front of the television... Because he certainly wasn't cleaning. He opened the inside door, and as he reached to open the screen door, the five small dogs barked and rampaged down at his feet, and spilled out onto the porch the instant the door was open. Contrary to the instincts that you and I have, they were not out to make a grand escape. Rather, they snarled at my feet and one of them chomped at my pant leg. While I'm not one to advocate violence against animals, I am also not one to tolerate being bitten, especially when the offending animal has been living in filth and has god only knows what growing in and on it. I fought the urge to kick the little bastard off my ankle and merely shook him off, and suggested that Mitch store the animals somewhere other than little Millie's room for the duration of my visit. This would become a part of our daily routine.

As he collected the little beasts one by one and shoved them back in the bathroom, I pulled up my pant leg to make sure that my skin was still 100% intact. Once the process of containing the dogs was complete, he opened the screen door and let me in. Instantly I knew two things: 1) Mitch had DEFINITELY not been cleaning prior to my arrival, and 2) I knew I was right about that shopping cart. As I looked around, I saw enough dung on the floor that if I hadn't known better would have made me think that I hadn't been there just one day earlier. I looked around without moving more than three steps beyond the front door and could count more than a dozen piles of crap.

"Mitch! WHAT ON EARTH HAVE YOU BEEN DOING?"

"What?"

"Mitch, I'm still within spitting distance of your front door and I can see at least a dozen piles of poop on the floor... That's your number one job on the chore list, so what on earth have you been doing? Because picking up poop ain't it."

"Well, uh, you see..."

That aforementioned short fuse had been lit. I was now a ticking time bomb.

"And now that I'm looking around to see more than just poop... What is all this stuff?"

"Well, uh, you see, that's what I was doing."

"I don't follow."

"Well, I was out earlier walking down the alley, and I saw this computer, and then I saw this box of stuff, and then I saw this..."

He carried on, indicating all of the treasures he'd found on his trek down the alley. My inner rage was about to boil over, and so I focused my efforts on controlling that, rather than listening to the whole list.

"MITCH. STOP. You're telling me that despite the fact that you have a total of nineteen animals to clean up after, and a house that the state has told you is too cluttered and filthy, that you went down the alley and picked up OTHER PEOPLE'S GARBAGE and brought it into your house?"

"Well, yeah," he said in a manner so frank and simply that it astonished me.

"Mitch, if I've been coming every day and telling you things that you need to throw out or clean up, what part of picking up other people's trash and putting it in your house did you think I'd be ok with?"

"Well, it's not trash, you see..."

"Mitch, I'm going to cut you off, because here's the deal, if your house is already too full of stuff you can't manage to keep clean and organized, and the state has to call to make sure that someone like me is coming by every day to make sure that things aren't getting any worse, and in fact, work with you on making it BETTER, what made you think that taking things that other people had THROWN AWAY would make this better?"

"Well, this isn't trash... It's a computer."

"Mitch, I'm not trying to insult you, but you don't live in the ritziest neighborhood in town... When someone around here throws something away, there's usually something pretty significant wrong with it that they can't fix. Nobody is going to leave a WORKING computer out in the alley."

"But I can fix it."

"Really? Do you have the expertise to know exactly what is wrong with it, or the parts to repair it?"

"Well, no. But I've got these other ones over here too... and I'll fix them and sell them."

"You see, this is why I have a problem with this... You're currently pointing at five other computers which you've amassed by some means or another, and I am assuming that none of them work either. If they did, you'd either be using them, or you'd have sold them as functional. You've told me that you don't have the expertise or the parts to fix them, and since I know you guys are going to food banks to get food, I think it's a safe bet that you're not in a position to go out buying computer parts, diagnostic equipment, or even pay for a class to learn how to figure out what's wrong with them. Stop me if I'm wrong, at any point, but if the state is telling you to clean up your house and get rid of all the clutter, which by the way would include broken computers that you don't know how to fix, doesn't adding a grocery cart load of other people's trash seem a little counter productive?"

"Well..."

"You don't have to say it... We both know the right answer to that one. And I tell you what, I'll even tell you that you can hang on to that broken computer, but in trade, you've got to take TWO grocery cart loads of other stuff that is broken, or trash, out to the alley. You can't keep adding other people's trash, when you've got too much of your own."

Mitch looked at me utterly crestfallen. I was making him choose. And for him, choosing certain things among his house full of garbage was like Sophie's choice.

"Mitch, I'm not trying to be mean here, but if that's what it takes to show you I'm serious, I'll be meaner than a rattlesnake. I want you guys to get this house cleaned up. I want to be able to tell your case worker that you're making progress. I want to be out of here just as badly as you want me to be out of here. And I know that you don't want me in here every day, telling you your business, and if you get this place cleaned up I don't have to be, but that's the problem; that's why you can't keep heaping new stuff onto the pile here."

"Oh."

"That's also why you can't be going out to look for stuff when you've got a house full of animals to clean up after. Because it's pretty obvious that while you were out and about, the animals have gone to town, and it shows that cleaning up after them wasn't your first priority."

"Well, I was going to, but then I sat down to take a break and then you showed up."

"Mitch, if I haven't even made it this far into the house and I can count twelve piles of poop without even looking around for the ones which might be a little bit hidden, or around a corner, I'm betting that you didn't just sit down and 'poof' I was here to catch you taking a break. I am in full support of taking breaks, but that means you've got to be doing something productive in order to take that break... And I've already told you I wasn't born yesterday, so I'm betting that you guys haven't cleaned a thing since I left yesterday, have you?"

"Well, we did some laundry."

"You started that while I was here... So that doesn't count."

"Umm..."

"Come on... I'll give you the points for honesty."

"You're right."

"I figured. The question is, what are YOU going to do about it? I've already told you that I am not going to do it for you. I will tell you what you need to do, and I'll supervise, and I'll help you with resources, but my job it to make sure that Millie is safe, and that Dave knows she's safe... And I can't say that I'm able to give Dave a very good report today."

"I'll clean up the poop."

"And?"

"I'll go through the pile of stuff."

"And?"

"And I'll take some of it out back to the alley."

"And?"

"And I'll do the dishes and the other stuff on the chore list."

"AND?"

"And what? What else is there?"

"Mitch, there's a whole lot that isn't on that daily chore list that could be done... But in the interest of setting goals I think you can achieve, I will settle for what you've already promised me you'll do, AND NOT going out and adding to your problems with other people's trash."

"Oh. Ok."

I did a pretty standard look around the house, made sure that the poop got picked up, (in the end there were more than two dozen piles of poop found and cleaned up,) made sure that he knew what he had to get done by my next visit, and left.

As I changed out of the poop shoes, soaked my hands in sanitizer, and raced home, I called case worker Dave to make sure that he knew about the massive amounts of poop, and the additional garbage in the house... There was NO WAY IN HELL that this was going to come back on me. I passed the responsibility to him by making sure he was aware of what he had Millie living in.

NO. WAY. IN. HELL.

Time to separate the wheat from the chaff!

2008-11-05T23:57:00.002-06:00

If you can make it through watching this video without audibly giggling at least once, then you have no business here... If you cackled like a freak, then you're right where you belong! (Possibly not safe for conservative work environments.)

Thanks for coming out!

2008-11-05T02:12:00.002-06:00

Dear Readers,

I know for a fact that you are an intelligent group. As intelligent people, I'm sure that you all voted yesterday. No matter the candidate you selected on your personal ballot, nor the candidate selected by any of your given states, I want to thank you for going out and participating in what was a long, arduous, historic, (no matter who won the presidency, it was going to be pretty historic,) and intensely electrifying election. Participation in the democratic election process is just one of the many things that makes this country so great! And whether you supported him or not, it's now time to unify behind President Elect Obama and get to work on turning around this runaway train.

Whether you hail from a red state, or a blue state, or a county which went the opposite color of your state as a whole, know that your vote mattered, and be proud to live in a nation where you were allowed the opportunity to be a part of the process.

I am going to show my political bias by stating that I am proud that all three of the states I've called home since coming of legal voting age all went blue, and it makes me intensely happy. It also makes me happy that we have a President Elect who is eloquent, calm under pressure, and knows how to pronounce the word "nuclear." I am also happy that Sarah Palin is headed back to the snowier regions of the non-contiguous USA, and return home to her pregnant teenage daughter, and her moose hunting. Thanks, Alaska, but you can keep her!

With all of this said, I thank everyone for their civic duty, and hope that the next four years bring peace, prosperity, and a renewed sense of pride to you all.

Way to be awesome, America!!

Faith, Hope, Peace, and Love,

Lizzle