In response to yesterday's post, I found this:
Call Me Cate said...
So what happens when he googles the right combination to find your blog?!?!?
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Sonuvabitch.
Great. Now I have to figure out how to preemptively block a site that is not specifically associated with pornography. Thanks for giving me more work, Cate.
'Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house, not a creature was stirring... oh, wait...
3:08am
*Knock Knock*
"Go back to bed," I say, groggily.
"But I threw up."
"Oh, no."
Poor Ethan. What a way to start Christmas. Poor me. Is there any possible way to get puke out of a mattress? Especially at three in the morning?
I set him up in a little nest right outside the bathroom door. He refuses the light being turned off, though. He's up again at 4:20. And by "again", I don't mean to imply that he sleeps in the intervening time...
5:10am
There is whispered conversation. Connor greets Ethan.
"I'm throwing up."
"On Christmas?!"
Because he has a choice in the matter? He didn't take into account the scheduling conflict?
Emily and Connor wait while Ethan throws up again at 5:20. There's nothing for it. We give up on the notion of sleep and go down to rip open some presents.
We've finally given in and given Connor his cell phone. I decided to put it in his stocking, since it's normally the last thing they tear into, yet it's the first thing he does. I hurriedly grab the video camera to catch his reaction. He's shocked into silence for a solid three seconds. A record. I look down. The friggin' camera is paused.
Moving on, I pull a large present out from under the tree to give to Ethan. Apparently this is the keystone gift. The tree decides it would prefer a horizontal life. It dumps water everywhere, breaks a tree-side's worth of ornaments, and irreparably damages the tree stand.
I think it's time to break out the espresso flavored vodka for my coffee.
I hope this morning is going better for everyone else.
A customer came in today wearing a surgical mask. I have to admit, my first reaction was, "Boy, she is one crazy bitch." So then I kinda beat myself up for being a judgmental asshole. "Let's give her the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she is sick and doesn't want to infect us." And that thought led to, "Fuck. What a selfish bitch! Why would she even come into public if beyotch is contagious?" (Yes, I swear this much, even in my own head.) And then I thought about my friend in high school whose father was battling cancer and could not go out in public without a mask for fear of the tiniest contamination from a simple cold, and people treated him like some sort of leper. And then I felt like shit again.
This is my constant internal monologue.
Emily had a Halloween party at school- at night, sans parents, a first. When I went in to pick her up, I walked in just ahead of a teen girl and her (I assume) boyfriend. Just as I was about to greet Emily, said teenage girl shouted, "Emily!" Instead of responding, Emily just glared at her. Obviously not giving a damn that Emily did not reply, she walked away, saying to her boyfriend, "That's the girl who always..." I didn't catch the rest. (Thank god?)
So I get Emily into the car and start quizzing her:
Me: Who was that teenager?
Emily: Brooke.
Me: And what did you always do?
Emily: Chased her.
Me: What? Why? And why didn't you say hello?
Emily: Because she's evil.
Yeah. So that ended that part of the conversation. I asked her what she did at the party. She ate and danced and did nothing. And then:
Emily: Oh, and limo.
Me, struggling to figure out what the hell that could possibly relate to- after all "Follow the Leader" is now called "Train". And no, I didn't yell at her to call it the right damn name or nothing at all. No, I didn't. You can't prove it: Limo? What is that?
Emily: Oh. Uhm, limBO.
And that ended the entire conversation because I couldn't take anymore.
This morning, Connor was putting his lunch... bits? containers? food stuffs?... into his lunchbox. "And to think," he said, "that I only have this *indicates lunchbox* because of cheating."
I gave him a glare. "At bible camp." Yes, bible camp. I know. Long, boring story, don't ask.
"Yeah," he said, then he smirked. "I'm going to hell." And off he flounced.
I? Stood there with my mouth hanging open. There's not much of a response for that- mostly because I'm sure he got the attitude (and, yes, okay, the phrase, too) from me.
I know that anyone who reads my blog is too smart for this information. Perhaps, though, you could just send a link to the people in your life to whom you know this advice pertains.
And, for those of you who arrived at this post through a link in a friendly email or perhaps after following a url from a crumbled piece of paper shoved hurriedly into your hand by a well intentioned if not all too subtle relative... they didn't mean you needed to read this... yeah. They meant they were sure you knew someone who knew someone who should read this for their own good... right. Uh huh... maybe you could just take a quick skim-zy over it anyway?
So, let's say your driving along a highway. For simplicity, there are, on this highway, two lanes of traffic headed in the same direction, this is the direction you're headed, too! There are many, many signs along the road. They say something along the lines of "55 (or 65/75/80) STATE SPEED LIMIT". For starters, let me interpret "STATE SPEED LIMIT" for you. This means "I will make that little arm on my speedometer hit said number". I know it seems like what that sign is saying is "limit means no more than, so just make sure you do 55 or less", but that's not what it means. The "or less" must go. Holy hell, just hit the speed limit. If you can do fifty, you can do fifty-five. Why? Because I goddamned said so.
(For those of you who are now yelling at the screen, "Fifty-five? What do you mean fifty-five?! They should be doing over that!", okay, I get what you're saying. Shut up now. You're scaring your family with your incoherent screaming. A? I'm not advising anything illegal (regardless of what I do in my own life) because the hell if I'm gonna get sued because some moron can't identify a state trooper when they see one. And B. Isn't it enough that I'm just getting these assholes up to the limit? Plus, I'm about to give the more important advice, so settle down.)
Okay, class. Eyes over here. Back to the highway. You are now traveling at the speed limit. Of the two lanes, which one are you traveling in? The left lane? Wrong, Johnny, sit the hell back down. The right lane is for normal driving. The left lane is for PASSING. What's passing? That's what the rest of us are currently doing to you. Or would be, if some other idiot- and I'm not naming names, *cough*JOHNNY*cough*- wasn't in the left lane keeping pace with the right lane. Let me explain further. Have you ever wondered why there are so many other assholes out on the road? Why they all seem to come flying up from behind you, ride your ass for a minute, then veer out from behind you, into the right lane, get ahead of you, only to veer back into the left lane? That's because they aren't the assholes in this scenario. They're hoping you will suddenly come to your senses, then, within a minute, they've learned their lesson, and have to get around you by passing on the right. Get the eff out of the left lane! Are you passing someone? No. This is a highway, not a free-for-all. Move. Over. Now. The interesting thing about this part is this is not just common sense. It is not just basic decency. It is not just a regular courtesy, some made-up rule that the rest of us abide by because some how we are in sync with each other. In a ton of states, it's an actual law. And it's not even one of those pesky ones they never tell you about. The have signs. They post those signs- at regular intervals, even. Sometimes that sign seems to be more apparent than the speed limit signs I kindly pointed out earlier.
So let's say, now, class, that you are driving the speed limit, you are in the right lane. You are approaching a car in the lane ahead of you. They have not listened thus far in the lecture, and are traveling at a less than reasonable speed. What to do? Change lanes? Okay, that's right- and you'll move back to the right lane after you've passed the other car? Good, good. Now how are you going to change lanes? (You know what, Johnny? Don't even bother giving me whatever stupid answer was going to come tumbling from your pie hole. Just go stand in the corner.) The correct answer is, "I will not only signal my lane change and check my blind spot, I will make sure I'm not about to cut off a car that is already passing in the left lane, especially if that person has chosen to do so at a higher rate of speed than I." You can signal using these lights on the outside of your car that are wired to that little stick thingy that sits behind the steering wheel. They let the other drivers around you have the slightest bit of warning before you pull some jack-assed maneuver. Your blind spot is this little space just back and to the side of your car that you cannot see using your rear view mirror- you do use your mirrors, right?- so you must actually turn your head in order to see this area. I know, I know, actually using muscles within your body to do anything besides flip someone off seems like a lot more effort than it's worth. Give it a shot, though. It might save you something in insurance premiums.
Okay, that's it for today. Next time, we will discuss how allowing someone to merge in ahead of you in traffic does not make you less of a man, why it's impolite to keep your brights on when you're behind someone, what to do on the highway when there are three lanes of traffic (god help us all), and why you do not always have to lead the pack. 'Til then, turn in your licenses and stay the hell off the road. Thanks in advance.
So, let me preface this by saying that I cannot sleep at night with my feet uncovered because gremlins will grab my ankles. That's right- gremlins. Not that I believe in them, but it's still true.
Last night: I am awoken by something slithering up my nightstand. Here, right at moment one, is where Sam's and my accounts differ. I say, upon seeing something move in the dark, I yell, "Oh, shit!" and launch myself over Sam to his side of the bed with him yelling and acting like somehow I'm overreacting. He's saying, "Just turn on my light, okay?" and I'm saying, "Are you kidding?! I'm not reaching over the side of the bed! Your side isn't any safer than my side! Do it your damn self!" Sam says I am fast asleep, sit bolt upright in bed, then proceed to crawl down to the end of the bed, around his feet, up his other side, then curl up in the fetal position, refusing to tell him what was wrong nor responding in any manner whatsoever.
Who are you going to believe?
I finally gather up my courage and take control of the situation and turn on his light because jeez, what a wuss, he couldn't even turn on his own light? There, blowing back and forth in the breeze from the ceiling fan, is one page from the magazine sitting on my nightstand. I plop a novel onto it to hold it still, triumphant.
"Ooh, honey. Your puzzle book is going to get you."
"Whatever. Something was gonna eat my face and you did nothing about it."
"Your... magazine? Was going to eat your face?"
"You didn't know."
*...an ancient cemetery or anything. It was farmland. So maybe it's cow-ghosts. Whatever. Is being trampled by ghost-bovine-hooves any better? No. Not that I believe in them, but it's still true.
It's a friggin' miracle- of Buddy Jesus proportions, anyway. I cut into a green pepper that I grew all by my onesies in my own backyard garden. Lo and behold:
It even has eyebrows!
Be happy.
And listen, no one come and tell me that this means the pepper was contaminated with typhoid or something. We already ate the pepper, so I'd rather just not know.
One evening of our trip, we go to a fantastic mexican restaurant. They make a margarita to end all margaritas. Normally I'm a frozen margarita girl because it needs to be frozen to cover up the nasty syrupy mess that most places serve. This one is excellent on the rocks, no salt necessary.
At one point, a woman comes over and says "Quieres mas? You have limonda o agua?" Now, as I have neither lemonade nor water, I pay no attention. (Or maybe it's because I'm nose-deep in my big-ass margarita glass.) Until I notice there's been no response.
"Uh, Alex," I say. "Do you want more lemonade?" "Oh. Sure." He passes his glass over, and I look curiously at Sam. "Why are we not responding to the waitress?" "Well I know I didn't get what she was asking." Huh. Over the years, I've tried to maintain some semblance of the remedial Spanish I took in high school. Paid off, I guess, as I barely notice the Spanish-English merging that she uses as she comes and goes from our table. I'm sure she's dumbing it down (Enlish-ing it up?) some, but I'm still understanding her perfectly. I'm proud of (read: full of) myself for my bad-ass bilingual-ness. Even from the bottom of my second delicious big-ass margarita.
And then we end up at Wendy's a few nights later. "Welcome-to-Wendy's-I'll-take-your-order-whenever-you're-ready-unless-of-course-you're-a-dumbass-gringo-in-which-case-you're-not-understanding-a-word-of-this-and-I-will-treat-you-like-crap," comes through the speaker. In Spanish. I assume. Because I? Don't speak a single word of Spanish. Apparently.
"Uhm... hi?... Can I... get two orders of nuggets?... And..." "Anything else?" she says. I'm sorry? Since when does "and" mean "I'm not in the middle of a sentence"? I know I'm slow here, but I'm thinking of how effed-up "nuggets de pollo" would sound. Eventually I finish and she gives us our total- I think?- and, we assume, asks us to pull up. Except I can't understand a word she says in English, either. I'm so flustered that I screw up the order and have to ask her to add on some junior bacon cheeseburgers at the window.
Now this is a personal insult. Right? It must be because the holy-bitch grows fangs. Sam hands over what I believe is way too much money, but it must not have been because we only get a dollar and change back. Huh. But then frostys come through the window (wee!), and then she yells at us. Something about nuggets de pollo? She shuts the window and Sam stares at me. "Pull up?" I say. It's really an odd sensation, the combination of fear, confusion, and growing pissed-off-ness. The woman is being heinous, but she's holding my nuggets de pollo hostage, y'all.
Eventually she comes out and- I am not kidding- throws the bags of food through the car window before dashing back into the restaurant. Thank god we got our frostys before we pulled up. And pissed-off wins the emotion battle that has been roiling within me. Heinous-holy-bitch is lucky because Sam is the one in the driver's seat and pulls away before I can go jump the woman.
It's not until we're almost back to the hotel eight miles on the other side of the crap-gangville-strip that we had to traverse (at ten-thirty at night) to get there (because of the lying-liar signs at the exit that said Wendy's was right here) that I found the receipt stapled to the bag. She had short-changed us by ten bucks. If I didn't live two thousand miles away? She and I would have words. Of course, we wouldn't be able to understand each other...
Emily was in desperate want of a CD player, and I promised that the next time we went somewhere that sold them, I'd get her one. Steel trap, her mind is when it comes to promises. She had one within two days.
Grasping it to her chest like gold, she and I caught up with the boys at a music/movie store.
Sam, looking suspiciously at the obvious money expenditure: What's that?
Emily: Mommy bought me a CD player!
Sarah: Traitor.
Sam: What for? Does she even have any CD's?
Sarah: She has some audio books.
Sam: Well get her some Simon and Garfunkel so I don't have to play it in the car for her anymore.
I found her a greatest hits set, used, for twenty bucks. She proceeded to learn every song.
Fast forward to a few days ago in the car. Emily is singing random non-word nonsense.
Sarah: If you're going to sing, make it something real.
Emily, singing: Cecelia! You're breaking my heart! / You're shaking my confidence daily! / Oh Cecelia! I'm down on my knees! / I'm begging you please, to come home!
As she continues singing, Sam suddenly grips my thigh. In my mind, I begin to fast-forward through the lyrics. Unfortunately, Emily beats me to the problematic bit.
Emily, singing: Making love in the afternoon with Cecelia / Up in my bedroom! Making love! / I got up to wash my face / When I come back to bed / Someone's taken my place!
Sarah, screeching: PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY, AND THYME!
Emily: That's not in this song!
Sarah: Well, sing this other one instead.
Yes, I am aware of how much trouble I'm in for in the future.
Sam whipping open the back door, mostly not clothed: Yeah! You better run you stupid squirrel!
Me: Get your boxer clad ass back in the house!
Sam: I have to give :insert neighbor lady's name here: something to drool over.
Ethan: Who's :insert neighbor lady's name here:?
Me: Nice. Idiot.
Sam: That's what I call the squirrel in our backyard.
Ethan: Oh.
For once, Connor forgot to throw away shared with me some of his work from school.
A 95 isn't a bad score, especially if you consider the gross negligence that is his handwriting and organization. I guess it's all correct since nothing is marked wrong.
Wait just one bloody minute.
The hell? I'm pretty sure, since this is not the Bible, that there is at least one wrong answer.
As we continue our landscape improving- we built our house a few years ago and therefore started with virgin land- the deer are being right bastards. Because I'm me, I took hours on my computer laying out the positioning for several evergreens (did someone says pine trees?) along one edge of our land. And the deer came along and chose four of the more delicate plants and ate them dead. This was after they stripped three brand new cherry trees to nothing. NOTHING. Now I've never been one for hunting- shut up, it's my blog, I don't care if you like hunting, take your whining elsewhere. That being said, I want these deer dead. Hang their corpses from the surrounding trees to warn the others! You eat what I have loved and cared for and spent money on, next time I poison it.
Ahem.
So anyway, four dead evergreens to be replaced. At the local nursery, we came across these gorgeous- and not so expensive considering they're over six feet tall- Irish Junipers (soft pine trees). Oh, damn, almost all of them were marked sold! Only three left! Quick, take the tags and get the dude to mark these two sold for us!
We scrambled and got the two we wanted. As it's against either of our natures to ask for help, we pulled the car around to load them ourselves. And discovered that our lovely soft Junipers... hurt like hell. Hurt. Bad. Ohmygodthepain. It was bad enough that they were super heavy and not in pots, instead wrapped in burlap and rope. But these oh-so-pretty top heavy plants were so stingy-scratchy that I was in pain on my forearms for hours. To add injury to injury, Sam and I both managed to smack each other in the face with these Satan-trees when we were planting them.
On the positive side- because I'm a silver-lining kinda girl- I dare those friggin' deer to try to eat these.
Hopefully this blog does not suddenly become popular in my hometown. I'm about to talk about someone else's kid. No names, but probably I'd still be pissed if someone did about mine. Screw it, though. This is blog-worthy.
I mentioned how Connor's team lost their first game. This kid on his team, let's call him Abe (because no one is named "Abe" anymore). So Abe, to show his chagrin whenever a goal was scored against his team, would kick the bench side of the boards with fervor (after all, what is the point in having an emotion if you're not going to get attention for it?). Now, I'm not sure at which goal his coach finally lost his patience. It would have been goal one if it were me. But from across the ice, I could hear him yell, "If you do that ONE MORE TIME-" at which point the crowd was noisy enough that I couldn't hear what the consequence would be.
Luckily, Connor was coming off the ice right at that exact moment, and had to wait while Abe responded to the coach. (I say luckily because Connor was well positioned to be my little gossip-fairy... er... gossip-ogre?... whatever, something masculine.) From my point of view, Abe tossed his arms up in the air in what looked like a shrug and tilted his head to one side. Apology accepted?
I stopped paying attention at that point until about five minutes later when Abe- during a pause in play, to his credit- skated across the ice into the opposite corner. What the crap? Six men on the ice? And then the door slammed... he had left the ice.
This DOES NOT HAPPEN. Even if you are thrown out of the game, you stay on the bench. Or, at the very least, the ref signals why you've been expelled.
So I accosted grilled questioned talked to Connor after the game. The bits I didn't hear from the bench:
Coach: If you do that ONE MORE TIME, you are sitting on the bench for the rest of the game!
Abe: Ha! I'm first line! SHUT UP!
Coach: I am your coach! You cannot talk to me like that! That's it! You're done!
At this point, Abe threw himself into the corner of the benches away from the coach and proceeded, according to Connor, to call his whole team a bunch of "effing a-holes", which, by the way, is Connor's censoring and not Abe's. He then expelled himself from the game. Like I said, emotion without getting attention is totally pointless.
I decided early on that this would not be the place I would come to complain about customers. Suffice it to say, however, I would like those-some-of-you to STOP BEING SUCH JERKS. For real, you are NOT going to get a NICER person than I waiting on you. I have infinite patience in my "professional" life- which is odd because everywhere else I have none. So, just a friendly reminder to everyone. The person on the other side of the counter, the odds are they don't own the store. The odds are they have dealt with a jerk or ten that day. The odds are they are not paid big bucks. So, while it's true that the odds are you won't ever see them again, and therefore don't have to face the consequences of your rudeness directly... consider that you may have, in your carelessness, made someone's mommy cry. And life will punish you.
And I make no promises for this one either.
We spent a lovely day at the zoo today... I'm sure something funny happened... Oh! Sam donated a portion of his buffalo chicken wrap to the bin, at which point a black squirrel (as the zoo has both grey and black (okay, really dark brown), I feel the need to specify) (and by "has", I mean the little bastards own all the eating areas) climbed into the garbage can and reemerged with- not the bread of the wrap, as one would expect a cute little tree rat to choose- but a chunk of buffalo-sauce-dipped chicken.
What the mother hell? When did squirrels start eating meat??? He was apparently not a fan of the sauce itself because he systematically tore off the exterior surface of said chicken chunk, the scraps of which he then carefully dropped on our heads. Because he was in a tree. Because he was a squirrel. Eating chicken.
Now the grey squirrels. They ate the saucy bits that the black squirrel discarded. I'm not sure who is tougher in this situation, the black squirrel with his mad "I takes what I wants and I drops these icky bits on your heads" skills, or the grey squirrels who would like a shot of jack to go with these chicken wings, please.
I don't know if it's the time of year or the sun was just right, but you could see right through the fur of the black squirrel's tail, right down to the nasty pink skin. It's a good thing they have that fur because their tails look JUST. Like. Rat Tails. JUSTLIKE.
As a bonus, I present a Sarah&Sam conversation, driving on the way to the zoo:
Sam: Whoa! We just played chicken with a whole flock of birds! We won, though.
Sarah: I'm pretty sure we didn't. I didn't hear any thump thumps.
UPDATE: I just looked the smarmy little rodents up on Wikipedia. "However some squirrels also consume meat, especially when faced with hunger. Squirrels have been known to eat insects, eggs, small birds, snakes and rodents." The day I see a squirrel eating a snake? I know it's the apocalypse.
So. The Wii Fit. The... video game. Yeah. Video games should not hand your ass to you, much less your sore ass. And thighs. And also, it's rude! The board- the board- made some jab about me tripping while just walking. This was after it gave me crap for my BMI- said it was fair and then trashed me anyway, frickin' thing. That was after it weighed me and blew up my mii, just expanded it on the screen- not a lot, grant you, but really, does any woman want to see a representation of her balloon even a little? Frankly, if it's going to be attacking me from the get-go... I just don't need that kind of pressure.
This thing has games. And by "games" I mean "one to two minute trials that make me feel fat, lazy, and somewhat whale-like". I admit, some of them are fun- right up until the end of the round where it actually says "uncoordinated" on the screen. The hell? Screw you, meanie bully video game.
And then there's also this whole test where you have to hit a soccer ball with your head, which supposedly has something to do with balance, but I don't know what getting hit in the head with cleats and panda heads (panda heads!) has to do with me showing that I have the ability to stand on my two feet.
There's also breathing. A section on breathing. There is a timed, scored section on breathing. Did you know it's okay to breathe out through your mouth but you really should breathe out through your nose? So they say, but you don't get a higher score for it, as they haven't made a controller small enough to fit up your nostril. Yet. So, really, if they're not going to give me more points, then I see no reason to do it their way.
But! It's not a waste! There are bonuses! (Other than the supposed health benefits and weight loss. We'll see, cruel exercise board.) There's a "bank". That bank keeps track of my minutes. And when I have collected enough minutes, I get a prize! (More workouts. For God's sake. Kill me.) No matter the prize suck-mastery, I'm still a winner!
