My Resolution: To Muster Up a Regular Update

Ohhhh it's such a funny resolution. We all know I'm incapable of sticking to it. But it was an adorable glimmer of hope, wasn't it?

Well, the first semester is finally over, and I'm enjoying the end of my winter break. Christmas has come and gone, and overall it was a very nice one. My parents bought us a Wii, which is delightful in every conceivable way to me. I got to see some family I've not seen in a while, and I got to spend some time with my new brothers to get to know them better. (Yes, let's all acknowledge that it's a little weird, but I suppose there are stranger scenarios in the world.)

While visiting family, my cousins Jadrid and Brennie gave me two pricess quotes of the day, so eat them up while you've got this rare appearance from me!

1. Jadrid, who is 8, was telling us about having seen the movie Step Brothers (his parents had rented it without first screening it for the kiddies....ohhhh, unwise). Apparently, there is a part of the movie where one character accuses the other of putting his man bits on his drum. Jadrid, recounting the line from the movie, said, "I know it was you! You put your pesticles on my drum!" I want to hug him and squeeze him so he never grows up. Pesticles. Heh.

2. Brennie is now 4, and his dad wants people to start calling him by his given name, Brendan, so he'll seem more grown-up or something like that. I don't know. I get it, but at the same time it's like, "Dude, he's 4. If were' still calling him Brennie when he's 14, then that's a problem...but right now I think we've got a free pass until he's 5 or 6." Anyway, so my mom asked Brennie what he thought of the name situation. "Do you want me to call you Brennie or Brendan?" she asked. His reponse, without hesitation: "You can call me Flower if you want to." agh, it makes my uterus hurt.

We returned home to discover that the strange sounds we had been hearing (and trying to ignore) for weeks are, in fact, feral cats living in the crawl space under our house. "Oh, Cor! Just your luck!" you exclaim. To that I respond with a hearty laugh and "I know, right? Allllll in a day's work for the Master Jukemeister." How could such a thing happen, you wonder! How could the cats have access to the crawl space? I'll tell you how.

You see, before we agreed to buy this house, we had the owners fix some ducting in the crawl space. Apparently, their contractor couldn't be bothered putting the access door back on the crawl space entrance, because, you know, mustering up those 5 seconds of effort is exhausting. So since the crawl space door is under the deck, and since we had no reason to go under the deck to check the door (until, of course, we heard cats fighting under our living room floor), we had no reason assume anything was askew down there for the two months it was wide open. Silly, stupid Cor. I sometimes get complacent and forget my mantra: never underestimate the destructive power of one incompetent boob.

So anyway, we've now hired this guy who specializes in humane trap and release methods to catch these cats and get rid of them for us, and so far we've caught two of God knows how many cats. Total cost so far--$200. All because of an asshole who couldn't bother closing a simple crawl space door. *sigh* More on that continuing saga later.

The Beast Stirs

Yes, I'm an ass. It's been ages. Beyond ages. It's been an utterly reprehensible amount of time since I last posted something. In truth, I've been quite busy, but also you should know just for honesty's sake that I've been spending a lot of time tooling around and procrastinating. I'd apologize, but I think we all know by now that this pattern of timewasting is just a part of my nature. (There was also lots of real work and a move to a new house in all of that time away, but I don't feel like recounting any of that, as the 5 people who actually read this blog and care already know about all of that.)

While I have nothing of substance to note tonight, I do just want to illustrate that I am, in fact, still alive. Also, I'm hoping to come back soon with some good funnies from my students' journals.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I must go shuffle some papers around for an hour before bed and delude myself into believing that was productive work.

Tids and Bits

I have no story for a formal post right now, but I thought I'd pass on some things I found funny recently. First, a sign we passed on the way to a baseball game several weeks ago:


Second, we went out to eat last weekend and ordered an appetizer dish called the "assorted platter." Imagine my glee at getting the check and seeing the "ass plater" on it:


Finally, some notes on funny things my students have said. I make them keep a writing journal in my class. Every day, they have to respond to a prompt I write on the board. These are some of my favorites from the last three weeks:

Question--If you woke up tomorrow with one new quality or ability, what would it be?

Answer: When I wake up tomorrow, I wish to be ridiculously good looking. I chose this for several reasons. A few of my reasons include girls, charisma, and stellar poses. Any female would drool at the sight of my eyes, which would be similar to a waterfall shimmering in a blazing sun. Charisma would allow me to easily raise any grade from a D to an A. Being charismatic is a trait that simply hovers over any man with extremely good looks. Last, stellar poses would give me a chance to further show off my ridiculously-good-lookingness

Question--If you could give one piece of advice to any person in history, what would it be?

Answer 1: I would tell Einstein to fix his hair. It's hard for people to take him seriously when he doesn't look professional.

Answer 2: I would tell the guy who invented cake that he should never mix vegetables with cake. Carrot cake? I honestly want to hit that guy.

Answer 3: I would tell a pirate, "Eat oranges, and tell your friends." (I think this is a reference to preventing scurvy, but the wording made me laugh so hard.)

Answer 4: I would tell the Beatles to donate 85% of their sales to me so I could increase their popularity among mothers and nuns.

Consider them your quotes of the day.

Sometimes I Have No Title

Am I the only person who thinks Tom Brokaw's voice has become a caricature of itself? It's gotten so weird! Throatier than it has ever been. It's like he's doing an impression of himself. You must listen to it sometime. I'd find a clip of him speaking to illustrate my point, but you know the routine; I can't be bothered.

We're up to the third week of school, and so far things are going ok. The kids are still pretty good, and they're starting to assert their unique personalities. Funny stories (a select few to be chronicled here) will appear soon.

Quote of the day:

I have a student who is an incredible "helper." He always has resources at the ready to help people, whether it be handouts (odd) or computer guides. (Today he offered another student--whose zipper on his shorts broke--a spare pair of PANTS. I couldn't help myself; I had to stop class to inquire about the circumstances that led to him always keeping an extra change of clothes with him, just in case someone needed to borrow them.) Anyway, he was in the computer lab, and another student raised his hand asking for help with a printing problem. As I began to scoot off my seat to go over to to help, "Helper Kid" (this will not be his official nickname) commenced an enthusiastic skip-run across the entire length of the computer lab. "Sit down, I've got it!" he said to me mid-jaunt. "I'm a NERRRRRRDDDD!"

I've Been Doing This Like Three Days Now and I'm Pretty Good at It

Well, kids. I've successfully finished my first week of teaching and I still have my sanity. All in all, it's been a good week. The kids are great for the most part, and the staff has been really helpful. I am a pretty happy camper right now in regards to the job. Exhausted, of course, and still nervous about doing a good job, but so far so good.

In other news, my birthday was Tuesday, and imagine my joy today to have received my annual $5 birthday check from my grandparents. Now, it's not that I'm ungrateful about the money; it's just that my grandparents have money and they're just cheap. Frankly, it's more of a nuisance to take the check to the bank than anything else. Additionally, ever since I got married they have spelled my new last name wrong on every single birthday check. You'd think they'd get it by now. So anyway, I think I'll be saving this year's $5 birthday check as a souvenir to screw up their checkbook balancing....muhahaha.

Karma Karma Karma Karma Karma Chameleon

Have you ever had a painful haircut? Not emotionally painful, like the time when a "stylist" left me with a rat tail as a child because she thought it was cute. Not emotionally painful like the time I agreed to let my husband cut my hair and he proceeded to grab my low ponytail and cut the whole thing off, proclaiming "Done!" when he finished. No, I mean physically painful.

I didn't think it was possible to experience a physically agonizing haircut...until today. The haircut I received today is proof beyond a reasonable doubt that karma is real and it's a bitch. Every bad thing I've ever done in my life came back to me today. For starters, I should've realized something was askew when I walked into this national chain salon and immediately noticed that the median age of all of the customers was somewhere in the neighborhood of 60. When I finally settled into the chair to have my hair cut, the stylist's eyes lit up with glee at the thought of being able to cut my hair with a razor instead of scissors. (The old people, she said, are wary of the razor.)

She wet down my hair and started hacking away with the razor. About a minute in, she informed me (I swear) that the woman who had her hair cut before me had been exposed to lice over the weekend and had been complaining about her head itching. Oh, lovely. Thanks, master jukemeister!

She pressed on. My hair began to dry, but she did not re-wet it. No, no. She just went on with her razor, systematically pulling every hair in my scalp one-by-one as we lost lubrication and buffering from the water. For minutes I winced and groaned with each pass she made, and she, of course, was oblivious to my agony. Why didn't I speak up? She was in the zone with her razor, overzealously lopping off more and more hair, and I stupidly thought each pass had--just HAD--to be the last one. Why didn't she react to my groans and facial expressions? Because she's obviously a dolt. Regardless, my scalp still feels like someone lit my head on fire.

When she finished, I paid and left hurriedly, lest she find a way to torture me more. I came home and straightened my hair, only to discover she gave me the exact haircut my mom had for two years, which I made fun of ceaselessly for its general poofiness and helmet nature. Think "classic mom hair." Ugh. I should've known better! Median age of 60 up in that place, after all! If that's not bad enough, she didn't even leave it long enough for me to put it into a ponytail for it to grow out for a while. Curses!

On a final, unrelated note, our local meteorologist just referred to the weather as "sultry" six times during the forecast. I don't know about you, but that's both an excessive number of references and a totally inappropriate word choice...unless of course the weather plans to be making bedroom eyes at us in the next few days.

Freak-a-leek

We went to Walmart tonight. Don't ask why. You know I'm anti-Walmart, but sometimes there's just no other place open to buy tires and wine at the same time. Our local Walmart is especially vile because 1. it's always disgustingly busy regardless of the time of day or day of the week, and 2. it seems to draw the most interesting specimens out of the woodwork.

Tonight we saw a middle-aged man with an impressive ponytail that would've made Walker, Texas Ranger weep with joy. He also wore camouflage pants and a sizeable pocket knife. He smiled at me as he browsed through $5 DVDs.

The best one today, though, was a drunk with (I swear) a tattoo of a smiley face on the end of his nose. Ok, I can't prove it was a tattoo. God almighty, I hope it was only pen or something, but this little part of me just knows it was a tattoo...the kind of thing done hastily on a dare for $10 and a case of Busch Light.

It's people like that that make me feel obligated to have children of my own one day. Someone has to step up to help keep the delicate balance in the epic humanitarian battle against stupidity.

Freaks and Fireworks

I know, I know. I'm an ass. I've been horrible about updating, despite promising to update more often. We all know by now that I can't be trusted on such matters.

Things that have occurred in the last couple of weeks:

I went to a teaching conference. It was, well, as I expected it to be, only it was actually slightly more useful than I expected. I got a lot of good materials to use in my classroom and a ton of free books, so I'm happy about that. On the downside, I did have to spend four solid days in the exclusive company of other teachers, which, for me, is like Hell on earth. You see, teachers have a tendency to be egregious storytellers, manipulating any situation to get in a story about 1. how great of a teacher they are, 2. the worst/best/most horrifying/etc. of any given situation they've ever experienced (all in an effort to trump someone else's rant), or 3. how dumb their students are. It's not my game, you see, and so my tolerance for such events is limited. One teacher told a very strange story completely out of nowhere about how her school was "famous, but not in a good way" because one of their students murdered his entire family on his graduation day. First off, what the f? Secondly, it's called INFAMOUS, ass. "Famous, but not in a good way." God. This is me rolling my eyes.

Additionally, teachers tend to have really strange quirks. For example, one woman said "right, right, right, riiiiight, oh yeah, riiiiiight" to everything (EVERYTHING) the teacher said, almost as if it was "amen" time in church. To keep myself from going insane, I rooted her on with a tally. On her worst day, she said "riiiight, yeahhh, uh huh, riiiiight" 533 times. 533 times in six hours of tallying. You'd want to kill yourself too. Serenity now, God. If that wasn't bad enough, on the other side of me sat "The Repeater," a woman so enthusiastic about the topic that she attempted to finish everyone's sentences or repeat words or whole phrases to show they were on the same page. I made it my mission to throw her off, peppering in comments like, "I wouldn't be more surprised if I woke up with my head sewn to the carpet."

So anyway, you can see that I'm pretty well set for a year in the company of people like this after ohhhh, three hours. But no...this was thirty hours. One teacher even had the nerve to show up hocking a book she had just written, forcing everyone to pass the book around and accept promotional postcards directing us to go to amazon.com to buy the book. Quiz time: Guess whose postcard went straight into the trash! That's right, mine. Someone asked her how long it took her to write the book, a biography of an Indianapolis Colts player. "Ten years" was her response. TEN YEARS! The book, friends, was 156 pages. You could write a single page a DAY and be done in less than 6 months. Hell, throw in research and I'll maaaaaybe give it a year, but come ONNNNNN. Ten years?! Sometimes I have no words.

Following the teaching conference I went to visit my parents and some friends. It was nice. Got to see my parents and my quasi-brother Michael (don't ask...let the mystery propel your insanity), as well as Julie, Michelle, Laney, and Drew (whose wee daughter I met for the first time too). All around, a productive adventure. Salute to me!

Upon returning home, I resumed my marathon reading and course-planning schedule. (In case you're wondering, it does, in fact, include two hours of The People's Court every day. That Judge Marilyn Milian is one sassy lady, and I like her!)

On Friday we resolved to go see our city's fireworks display. We went out to eat and then hit up our lovely neighborhood casino boat, where we played the slot machines for 5 minutes and managed to win $10.50 between us. You ask, "Did you put that money right back into the machines because you're an idiot?" To that I say, haHA! Yes, yes we did. You know me so well. Although by the end we were still $3 on top. Could be worse. Don't judge me!

So afterward, we moseyed on over to the river and laid down our personal territory. From our spot, we had a perfect view of this guy:

Interesting things about this specimen:
1. He almost exclusively entered the car through the driver's side window, despite the fact that the doors clearly worked (as he did actually open them once or twice)
2. He spent the bulk of his time before the show cleaning his windows and rooting around in the hatchback. I can only imagine he was trying to get his homemade subwoofer workin, or something else those cool Camaro kids do with their Subway salaries.
3. When not performing car maintenance in front of thousands of people, he was sitting on the roof of his vehicle....just like this photo illustrates...looking around (sometimes forlornly), waiting for the ladies to flock to him and his cherry red love machine. (Psssst...it did not end well for him.)

Final verdict: delightful.

Then the fireworks came, which, well, were quite nice. We had prime real estate. Here are some photos (taken from my cell phone, because I am an ass and couldn't be bothered with my real camera) to prove we actually stayed amid the crowd for the big show:
So, that's about it for now.

Right now Y and I are planning a road trip for a week or so from now. More on all of that later, as well as musings on my parents' recent proclivities for collecting vagrant children.

Royal Crotch

Updates are coming soon (the goal is by tomorrow), I swear. In the meantime, I present today's quote of the day. It's from my husband. I was telling him about the recent pictures that have come out of Prince Harry going commando in some low-slung combat pants in Afghanistan. His response:

"I bet he did it on purpose so people would see it, that hunky bastard."

Go Kateo, It's Your Burfday

Today is my friend Kate's 26th birthday. I've known Kate for eight years now; we first met in our freshman year of college. She was the maid of honor at my wedding, and we know each other better than pretty much anyone else. This is why this morning, discussing her plans for her big day, she earned herself a quote-of-the-day honor with a one-liner dripping with uncharacteristic sarcasm.

Cor: Are you gonna do anything special this year for your birthday?

Kate: I don't know. Usually my family just takes me out to dinner, but no one has really said anything about it this year, so I don't know if we're really doing anything.

Cor: Ooooh, maybe they're planning a surprise party or something and just have to keep mum about it!

Kate: Oh yeah, Cor. SO OFTEN people plan elaborate surprise parties for landmark birthday years like TWENTY-SIX.

Awww Kateo, I love you. (And I hope it was your best birthday yet, special dinner or otherwise.)

Go Figure

I live in a tri-state area. Living here, I get to see TV commercials not only from my own state, but also from the two nearby states. Imagine my immense glee over this new public service announcement aired by our good friends in neighboring Kentucky.

The scene: images of flowers and complacent, smiling women come across the screen accompanied by sweet, lullaby-ish music. For about ten seconds you watch and wonder, "Hmm...what's this going to be a commercial for?" Then, a young woman begins talking. She has a soft but noticeable Kentucky accent, almost as if she was hand-picked to represent an ideal mainstream dialect for her people--not too twangy and backwoods but not too...northern. "If you're pregnant," she says, "don't drink or smoke. Take your vitamins and see a doctor." We then find out it's a message from the Kentucky Department of Education.

Oyyyy. What year is it?! Is the situation so bad in Kentucky that they've had to issue a statewide PSA campaign reminding women that it is, in fact, NOT okay to chain smoke between keg stands whilst incubating a human being? What is going on across the river?! How is this not common sense, and why does it take a multi-million dollar ad campaign to teach common sense to our neighbors? And finally, what the hell does health class look like in those schools? I must know.

I'm the slightest bit tempted to send a letter to the Kentucky Department of Education that says, "Hey, thanks for doing your part to virtually LEAP into the 1960s on publicizing your public health policies. You take a break now. You've worked hard. Just put your head down and rest. You'll need your energy for that big AIDS crisis PSA you'll be putting out in 15 years."

Three New Nuggets

You: Cor, do you not love me anymore? Why haven't you updated in so many moons?

Me: Dry your eyes, friend. It's not you; it's me. I will be back with renewed devotion soooon.

You: But, my sweet, won't you at least give me a Cliff's Notes version of what's been going on?

Me: *sigh* You've twisted my arm.

1. I got a job for the fall. It's an amazing opportunity that I will not write about much on account of my refusal to invite being fired should someone stumble across this blog and put two and two together. The secondary effect of landing this new job is that I get to quit my job at the tutoring center, and I think we all know after the events of Teacher Appreciation Week that it's time.

2. I bought a new car. This is especially exciting for me because for the first time in my life I own a vehicle that doesn't shudder like a dying old man when it idles. I also don't have to worry about assorted chunks of it flying off on the highway, nor do I have to commence holding together critical parts with duct tape. All in all, I am a very happy camper about this situation, although in all honesty, I do miss Pepe II. Yes, I get attachments to inanimate objects. (When I was a kid I cried when my parents purchased a new dishwasher, because I felt bad for the old one. My justification was that it still worked and they just threw it to the curb like it hadn't served our family faithfully for all those years. Yes, I know I might be mentally ill. I blame it all on seeing The Brave Little Toaster when I was very young.) The good news, though, is that I found a good new home for Pepe II. Woo.

3. Yesterday I fished a dead mouse out of our pool. It happens on occasion that a wee critter will drown in the pool after trying to get a drink for itself, but this was the first time I've been the one to find it and dispose of the body. Later, I went to swim a few laps and was suddenly overcome with psychological sickness as I imagined ingesting tainted, fetid dead mouse water little-by-little as I made my laps. It got to the point that whenever I returned to the shallow end (where I found the mouse), I would gag and have to spit the metallic taste out of my mouth to keep from vomiting. (You all know I have an impressive 8-year vomit streak that I cannot afford to break because of a completely unjustified paranoia.) I will keep you updated on future swim endeavors, but here's to hoping that was a one-time-only psychological breakdown, and that I never happen across anything bigger than a mouse floating dead in the pool. (Wear your water wings, Mom.)

So, I think that's about it for now. More later...I promise.

*Sigh*

I miss my friends. Stop scattering to the winds and come live in redneck bliss with me!

Journalistic Excellence at Its Finest

This is a photo my husband took of the TV today as we shrieked in joy over the midday news.

Yes, apparently our mayor has seceded from our city and started his own town, which he is also the mayor of.

Dearest Channel 14 WFIE, for the love of all that is holy, fire your editor.

Me Can Count!

I just need to make a quick observation. I have a pet peeve to address. I cannot stand when people say they are some age "going on" some age. I was just talking to a woman who told me she was "27 going on 28," and, truly, I need you to know that it makes me cringe. I just wanted to stop her and say, "Hold on just a second, now! I am going to count this up on my fat little fingies to make sure 28 does in fact come after 27. Can't have you pulling one over on me! Onnnnneeeee....twwwooooo...threeeeeee...."

I understand that people say this to allude to an upcoming birthday, but for the love of god. If I ask, "How old are you?" I want to know how old you are...NOT when the next big milestone is coming. I'll be honest. If I want to know what month you're born in, I will ask you. I do not need a continual reminder of numerical sequencing now that I'm a full-grown adult.

It's really right up there with the rage it gave me when my teachers would insist on taking 30-40 minutes to read their syllabi out loud in class. After 20+ years of experience and practice, I like to think I've mastered both counting AND reading.

Controlling my rage over things that should be insignificant? Not so much.

Drumroll, Please

A bookmark! Teacher Appreciation Week ended with a bookmark! More on a very interesting day at work AND a picture of this bookmark (which I will cherish forever, no doubt) coming soon...

UPDATE: I've decided I can't be bothered photographing the bookmark right now. Dry your eyes, and just take my word for it that it's a winner.

Oh the Anticipation!

Oh kids, we're mere hours away from finding out today's Teacher Appreciation treat. I've been doing some brainstorming, and here are some viable options:

-a phone book (preferably from last year, according to Y. "Most of the numbers are still the same anyway," he adds.)

-a half-used roll of toilet paper stolen from the nearby grocery store

-circus peanuts *shudder* WHO EATS THOSE? I swear the original batch from 1950 is still in rotation on store shelves (so, of course, leave it to my boss to buy them b/c they're a steal!).

-leftover Halloween candy found in the deep recesses of someone's cabinets. ("The chocolate has turned white but don't worry, it's still edible.")

-a desk calendar with the dates up to today marked out

Any other ideas? Let's hear em! Make them good, kids.

Serenity Now, God

*siiigh*

It appears Teacher Appreciation Week continues at my work. Do allow me to give you the updates so you know just how well things have blossomed since Monday's quarter-sized cupcake.

Yesterday my boss called me and told me not to come in because several of my students had canceled. So today I arrived to find my Teacher Appreciation Week gifts from yesterday AND today at my desk.

Tuesday's treat was a single serving box of chocolate chip cookies. I know you're wondering what kind, and the answer is they went really fancy and got Keebler. I learned later, though, that it actually wasn't from my boss; it was from a man named George whom, I swear, I've never heard of in my life. My boss added that "technically, Teacher Appreciation Day was only supposed to be Monday," but she decided to wave her beneficent hand through the end of the week on account of George's generosity yesterday. (For the record, I have no ill will against this George character. Thanks for the cookies, George. I'm glad you were able to convince my boss to spend five whole dollars on her staff over the course of this entire week.)

I digress.

Today's treat was eeeeven better: two "fun-sized" 100 Grand candy bars and a coupon book that is distributed for free with the newspaper every week. This (again, I swear), is what my boss had to say about it:

"I was going to just give one candy bar, but then I decided what the heck! You're not worth 100 grand, you're worth 200 grand! And someone was coming around to the office complex giving out these coupon books, so I grabbed a bunch and decide to give one to each of you. There are more in the front if you want more of them."

Again, I make $9 an hour and I am a licensed teacher. At this point it would be wise for me to say pray for me as I forge ahead with another interview tomorrow morning. Mama needs a light at the end of what is quickly becoming a godforsaken tunnel.

Teacher Appreciation Week

I've decided I dislike my job at the tutoring center. It's not the kids. No. I like the kids. It's...my boss. And frankly, I really need to secure a full-time job for the fall before I shrivel up and die inside.

The center I work in is severely lacking in new, clean materials. We routinely use books with pages falling out of them and books that have been written in, making them look not only unprofessional but ALSO a cheating student's dream. We're expected to use dry erase boards and markers for a significant part of our lessons, but the dry erase boards are warped, bubbled up, peeling, and dirty, and the dry erase markers barely write anymore. Despite this, my boss will not shell out for new materials. Why? Because her bonus check at the end of each year is dependent on the center's profit, and if she can avoid buying new teaching materials it means more money in her pocket at the end of the fiscal year. Lovely.

My main problem with this boss is that she's extremely passive aggressive, and I don't handle that well, especially when it's sooooo obvious and pathetic...not the careful manipulation someone like me could orchestrate. For example, our time cards are processed on Thursdays, so in order for our Thursday hours to count, we have to fill out our time worked on Thursday on Wednesday evening before we actually work the Thursday hours. Typically, I will get done with work at 6:45 on Thursdays. However, twice now she has stood over me and forced me to write 6:30 as my clock-out time for Thursday so she can avoid paying me an extra 15 minutes. I want to stab her for this, and the second time it happened I made my body language very clear that I would destroy her if she ever stood over my shoulder again and tried to cheat me out of paid work time.

A couple of weeks ago we had a small run-in about my work attire. I went to work wearing black pinstripe crop pants and a black shirt. The crop pants fall about 3 inches above my ankle. When I said hello, I immediately noticed she was giving me the up and down. "Oh God, WHAT?" I thought to myself. But I said nothing because she said nothing. So I went and worked my shift. At the end of the evening when everyone was packing up to leave, I was cornered on my own when she came up to me. "I just wanted to let you know so you know for the future," she said as I sat at my desk and she stood over me, "that shorts aren't allowed." What I wanted to say: "Are you freaking NUTS, lady? These are not shorts and you f-ing KNOW IT." What I DID say: "Well yeah, of course. That would be unprofessional, and I don't ever wear shorts anyway. I haven't since I was in middle school." Her response? "Well, just so long as you know." Um yeah psycho, whatever.

Fast forward to yesterday. Apparently it is Teacher Appreciation Week. Nothing...and I do mean nothing...makes me feel more appreciated for my $9/hr than what I found waiting for me at my table. I rounded the corner to discover a single napkin on my chair. Atop that napkin was a single cupcake that (I swear) was literally the size of a quarter. My boss rounded the corner right behind me and proclaimed, "That's just a little something from me for Teacher Appreciation Week." I tell you, friend, there are times when I can literally feel a part of my soul dying. I felt that sensation loud and clear when I had to suppress everything inside myself and feign the kind of extreme enthusiasm I knew she expected for her "generosity." I felt the bile rise in my throat as I exclaimed, "Thank you so much! That's so nice of you!" If that wasn't f-ing bad enough, she stood there and waited, nonverbally insisting that I eat the tiny, pathetic, quarter-sized cupcake in front of her and further express my gratitude.

God. It's times like this I hate my life.

Seven Deadly Idiosyncrasies--Part Deux (That's Two, to the Layperson)

You ask, "Cor, why in God's name have you opted to do another installment of this this thing and expose your mental illness to the world?" The answer, friend, is that I'm bored, and it's either this or I tell you horrifying stories related to my overactive imagination. So, without further delay, let's begin.

1. I have a longstanding phobia of the human pulse. I don't like putting my head against my husband's chest and hearing it, I don't like seeing it pulse in someone's neck or feet, and I don't like feeling it in my own body when I'm trying to drift off to dreamland. It also makes getting my blood pressure taken an interesting adventure. I know it makes no sense...the pulse should be reassuring. It should say, "Hey look! You're still alive." But for me it's disgusting, and it's like a counter ticking down the seconds I have left in my life. Blargh. I hate it. I discovered a while back that my brother, curiously, has a similar problem with the human pulse. It's weird, but I'm grateful I'm not the only one.

2. I secretly judge people on the basis of their spelling and grammar. I don't really need to say much about this since it's kind of self-explanatory. The worst for me is probably subject-verb agreement. Like, if someone says, "Is there any cookies?" I want to punch them in the neck while I scream, "ARE! ARE there any cookies?! I hate you!"

3. I get so angry sometimes when the contestants on The Price is Right consult the audience for help figuring out the prices of things. It's like, "Come on. Do you REALLY think the audience knows the last 3 digits in the price of that car any better than you do? Stop wasting time!" So annoying. Make a decision!

4. I am far too anal about time, resulting in a crippling desire for me to do everything on a multiple of five on the clock. For example I can't just roll out of the house at 3:03. It needs to be 3:05, and if I miss that window, by god I'll wait until 3:10. It's a sickness. It's getting better, though, don't worry. It's been nearly a year since I've worn a watch, and my husband and I fight far less over this unsavory anal quirk of mine. (That last sentence sounds all sorts of wrong, but you know what I mean. God, at least I hope you know what I mean.)

5. I can't stand hearing women with "crisp" S's. It's like they're hissing when they speak. I want them to say, "SSSSooo, I am SSSSecretly a SSSerpent." *shudder*

6. I love eyebrows. They're one of the first things I notice about a person's face. People with good eyebrows delight me, and I have no shame in telling them how much I appreciate them.

7. I make up nicknames for just about everyone I know, particularly those I'm just acquaintances with and especially those I'm not a huge fan of. In fact, I often find myself drawing a blank when I see these people as my mind desperately grasps at straws to remember their real name. Some notable nicknames over the years (many you may remember from the old blog) include but are not limited to: Crab Boy, Kermit, Chewbacca/The Jackhammer, Eyeballz, Figaro, Fitsy, The Text Messenger, Marla Hooch, Kappa Kappa Suck Me, Grimace, Coin Slot, Sir Spanx-a-Lot, Skidmark, SparkNotes, Rasputin/Jesus With Glasses, Chinless Joe Jackson, Pete Schweaty, The Hobbit, Dildohead, Senor Stache, Collette Reardon, etc. etc. etc. You get the idea. Am I going to hell for it? Probably. Will I give this up? Never!

In other news, you may remember that some time ago I decided to try to perfect a Rosie Perez accent. I abandoned it for a long time because it turned out I sucked at it, despite the incredible glee it brought me. Well kids, I'm back to working on it? Why? Because of the Band Aid commercial with the two little kids singing the jingle. The little girl sounds just like wee Rosie Perez and I can't get enough of it. So I will continue to work on the Rosie Perez voice when I'm alone. Aside from Kathy, it's likely that none of you will ever hear this, but do take comfort in the fact that I get such joy from it.

Kids Say the Darndest Things

On Saturday Y and I went to Target in the afternoon. It was there that I heard the best accidental public outing of a family member by a child...ever.

A woman was walking down a main aisle with a little girl about 8-years-old. This is what I overheard:

Girl: "It's fun to come here and look at toys with your kids, isn't it?"

Woman: "I don't have any kids of my own, though."

Girl: "NA UH! You will!"

Woman: "When do you think I'll have kids of my own?"

Girl: "WHEN YOU AND AUNT KELLY GET MARRIED!"

Ahhhhh perrrrfect. Well done, little one. The case against spawning strengthens.

The Wedding: Part II--Thank GoDDDD for Pastor Chet

So the wedding took place in Cumming (I swear), Iowa, a town famous for a website called (again, I swear) ilovecumming.com and "I Love Cumming" t-shirts. Don't worry, the t-shirt as a tiny little "IA" (for Iowa, of course) in a little green shamrock at the edge of the wording so the wearer can say "you PERVERT!" to anyone who makes the gross miscalculation in assuming the t-shirt is an invitation for anything sordid. I'd be a liar if I said we didn't go to the Cumming Tap and buy one for each of us, but don't worry. They're "in the house" shirts only.

Y and I made our way to the ceremony site for the rehearsal dinner on Friday, and it was here that we get to meet Pastor Chet for the first time. Let me say before I get started here that Pastor Chet is delightfully insane and I have no idea where Kathy and Eric found him, but I am so glad they did. Pastor Chet was a small, middle-aged Indian man who informed us all that he had been a preacher for twenty years and that in the past week he had performed a wedding and two funerals in a single day. "Oh, so you're clearly qualified," I thought to myself. (He later mentioned this same exact fun fact about himself in front of the packed chapel at the actual wedding.) By a comfortable mile, though, what was most interesting about Pastor Chet was his voice. It was a bizarre amalgamation of three distinct accents and voices: midwestern man who secretly wishes he is British so he rolls his r's whenever possible to appear more genteel, booming Lutheran minister, and humble Indian man longing for the motherland. In particular, Pastor Chet had a very distinct way of saying words that ended with "d," most notably, "God." (Being as how it was a wedding and all, God made several appearances in the ceremony.) Pastor Chet said God with a long "o" like in "go" and overemphasized the d at the end to the point of lunacy. Oh, how I had to clench every muscle in my body to keep from giggling as he said "GoDDDD" repeatedly.

At the end of the rehearsal dinner, Pastor Chet offered a prayer that began (I swear I'm not making this up...it's impossible), "Thank GoDDDD for man and woman. Thank GoDDDD for sexUALity..." I would tell you the rest of it but I can't remember it, as I spent the next few minutes of the prayer trying to keep control of myself because the urge to giggle and risk getting the evil eye from Pastor Chet was so overwhelming. I caught sight of a groomsman in my peripheral vision having a breakdown as the laughter began to erupt from deep inside him, but I'm happy to report I held it together until we got to the car and made our way to the rehearsal dinner. (Pastor Chet later also repeated this exact prayer at the wedding, but I was more prepared that time and found my happy place before I could let the giggles take over.)

At the rehearsal dinner, we ate well thanks to Eric's dad and his rockin' drink tickets. We discovered a drink on the menu called the "Kathie B's Hot Sex," which was especially perfect since our Kathy's last name starts (started, I guess, now) with B. Kathy's response to her newfound fame was to give me this pose:

(Kathy, if you want me to take this picture down, just let me know.)

In case you're wondering, I DID drink the Kathie B's Hot Sex and it was everything I thought it would be. Giggity giggity goooooo.

The next morning we did all of those standard pre-wedding activities that were mostly uneventful. During the pre-ceremony pictures, though, I did get to meet an interesting specimen from Eric's family, Uncle Tom. Uncle Tom strolled into the back to the chapel as we were taking pictures, and I could not help but notice his choice of formalwear: a black tuxedo t-shirt tucked into jeans with the biggest belt buckle a human being should be allowed to own legally. He also wore glasses, which he kept firmly affixed to his head with a braided red leather band. Don't worry, though. While the band was flashy, it did not distract from the ponytail he had created with the lower part of his mullet and tied off again in the middle with another rubber band (presumably, just for good measure). Just to complete the mental picture for you, let me just say that dental work was obviously a foreign term to this man. After the wedding Eric informed me that this particular uncle also has a strange proclivity for keeping scissors with him at all times...so much, in fact, that he keeps his scissors in a custom-made scissor holster that stays firmly attached to his pants with a chain at all times. He even, according to Eric, refuses to take off the scissor holster for special occasions like family photos. I'm sorry to report, though, that I did not catch a glimpse of the scissors at the wedding, although I DID get to see Uncle Tom root through the flower arrangements and pick roses for a woman who I presume was his wife. (I know, sometimes there is no explanation other than I guess there really must be someone for everyone.)

Before the wedding, though, everything else was pretty standard.

In fact, everything was pretty standard up through the end of the wedding ceremony. Pastor Chet thanked GoDDD a lot, the kids said their vows. It was all well and good. Then, however, something curious happened. Pastor Chet informed Kathy and Eric that it was their time to kiss and seal their union. They gave each other a short, sweet peck on the lips....because, you know, neither of them is especially big on the public makeout, especially in front of a hundred of their closest family and friends. Pastor Chet, though, was apparently perturbed by the brevity of their kiss, because he proceeded to do the single most ludicrous and hilarious things I've ever seen at a wedding. He physically grabbed their heads and clunked them together like coconuts. Now, granted, he was attempting to get them to kiss again for everyone, but, well...I don't know about you, but when someone grabs my head like they're palming a basketball my natural inclination is to resist. Kathy and Eric both did the same (momentarily) and so the force Pastor Chet exerted to attempt to unify them again was excessive. I swear if it were more silent we would've been able to hear a hollow thud as their skulls collided. Even as I type this, I am nearly weeping from the sheer joy of the mental picture replaying in my mind.

After the wedding, Kathy and Eric went on a carriage ride through Cumming helmed by two burly men decked out in what I can only assume was their best camouflage hunting gear. We later learned that one of the men was, in fact, a woman with some unfortunate facial hair, but I swear she was all man from where I was standing.

The reception was lots of fun. I got to talk to JoAnna and Mike, who had come in from Omaha for the wedding. My toast ended up going ok, although I got really nervous right before I had to give it and kind of screwed part of it up. Some people seemed to really appreciate my particular brand of humor, while others, well....not so much. A few people came up to me afterwards and told me they thought it was funny, although one woman did approach me and say sarcastically, "You think you're some kind of comedian, don't you?" Oh well, can't win em all! At least Kathy seemed to like it.

The rest of the reception was spent dancing, drinking, and laughing it up with friends. Pretty standard. I got to manage the bride's side of the dollar dance festivities. (If you're not familiar, this is a custom to raise money for the couple. People pay $1 minimum--although they are cheap bastards if they go in for anything less than $10--to dance with either the bride or the groom.) At one point my retinas almost nearly burned out of my eyes when I looked over to see one of Kathy's male cousins dancing with Eric with his hands so firmly on Eric's butt (and partially into his crack) it was like his life depended on that dollar dance. The next morning Kathy and Eric met us for breakfast at Perkins, and Eric informed me that after that dance the cousin asked Eric, "You want a 24-point inspection to go with that lube job I just gave ya?" That, friends, is your quote of the day.

So, you know, all in all a wonderful wedding weekend.

The Wedding: Part I--The "Hotel"

So the big wedding was last weekend. I'd apologize for not updating about it sooner, but I couldn't be bothered. All in all, it was an outstanding weekend. I had a great time getting to see Kathy and JoAnna again, and I loooooved getting to see Carissa and meet new baby Marin.

Y and I left on Thursday evening to begin the 10 hour drive. We originally planned to stay overnight on the way and finish the drive the next day, but we decided about 3 hours in that we were still young and vibrant and could make the whole drive at once and arrive in Des Moines after 3 a.m. Idiots. I called the "hotel" (you'll understand why the quotes are necessary soon enough) and asked if we could check in a night early (we had already prepaid two nights) and they said yes.

At 3:30 a.m. we rolled up to the Ramada Inn in Clive and checked in. Not so much to our surprise (as the room was only $70/night), it was clear the furnishings had not been updated since the Carter administration. We did not care, though. We were dying from lack of sleep. As my husband lay his head upon his pillow to begin his blissful rest, we discovered it was going to be an interesting stay at this place. His pillow felt, quite literally, like a sack of rags. Upon inserting his hand into the pillowcase and braving the yellow, stained pillow, he discovered it was actually one very thin, lumpy pillow the hotel staff had creatively folded in half and put back in the pillowcase to avoid having to buy a new one. Classy.

We went to sleep, and later in the morning we arose to meet Carissa for lunch. As we were getting ready at around 10:30, we heard someone put a key card into the door and then attempt to burst right in. The only thing keeping him out was the deadbolt I had locked the night before. I gave my husband a "What the F?!" and then followed the man down the corridor. He wasn't wearing any uniform, nametag, or other identification, but he told me he worked for the hotel and that we were supposed to be out of the room. I told him we were paid up until Sunday, actually, and that checkout wasn't until noon anyway, thus meaning he had zero reason to attempt to barge into our room without knocking first at 10:30 in the morning regardless of the circumstances. His response? He walked away. Again, classy.

A couple of minutes later the phone rang. It was the girl at the front desk asking if we were going to check out or if she should charge us for another night. Godddddd. We decided to go down to the front desk and straighten everything out in person, as the girl on the phone seemed to be clueless when I told her we had prepaid through Sunday. My husband grabbed his creepy pillow to exchange it and we left the room. I realized that I had forgotten something I needed, though, and pushed down on the door handle (forgetting momentarily to put the key in the door first). Much to my shock and horror, the door opened right up without the key. After fiddling with it for a minute to confirm that the door did, in fact, NOT lock at all and that the key cards were useless for the door, I decided it was time to put on my business voice.

I made Y stay in the room to guard everything we owned as I went to the front desk to straighted out the bill situation and bust some ass about our busted-ass door lock. I first dealt with the issue of the bill. I'll spare you the details of that one, but do trust me when I say it was a delightful adventure in what I can only imagine was an adventure in illiteracy. Next I turned to the room situation.

Me: "I am HORRIFIED that you guys put us in a room that doesn't lock, and that we slept there last night with literally ANYONE being able to walk in willy nilly. So you're going to put us into a new room now."

Her: "Oh, ok. Are you ok with moving up to the 3rd floor?"

Wow, seriously? Am I the only one who believes she was far too cavalier about this situation, as if, perhaps, this is a rather common complaint at the Ramada Inn of Clive? And how much should we bet they didn't fix it and there is some sucker sleeping in that death trap room right now?

So we moved rooms, but before we left our first room we did notice that our Ramada Inn mattress said Fairfield Inn. My husband and I are still debating whether they bought the Fairfield Inn's old mattresses (charming) OR straight-up stole them from them. Either option is viable, but I lean toward the latter.

So we moved to our new room, which was a palace by comparison. In this room our door actually locked (gasp!) and we didn't have to access it from the outside (yay, interior hallways!), but we did get to have an Easter egg hunt for carpet staples (total tally- 7) and had a precarious toilet whose seat was bolted down on only one side, so imagine the fun and games of that one!

When we were leaving we also delighted in their oh-so-sophisticated "excuse our mess" signs as they "renovated" the hovel...er....excuse me, hotel. I bet they really did regret the "inconvienence" and appreciated our kind "coopertion." Perrrrfect. Just so you know, that hotel has been "under construction" for over a year, so those signs have been up for as long. Let it bloom, friends. Let it bloom.

Coming up next: Part II--Adventures with Pastor Chet

Quote of the day: My husband, as we were driving to Iowa and becoming delirious, began entertaining me with poop jokes. "I dropped so many kids off at the pool it felt like an orphanage!"

A Frigging Miracle

You'll never believe it. David has escaped certain death just in the nick of time. Yes. He finally sent the deposit check. And it only took him four months and several carefully planned terrible lies!

The Cadbury egg....still there. I will be away from it for several days as we're leaving tomorrow for Kathy's wedding, but I will cross my fingers that it will still be there when I return to work on Monday.

So yes, the big wedding is this weekend, and I am thrilled to see my friends. Kathy, JoAnna, Carissa, and even The Jer. *siiigh* It'll be nice. Expect a full report on the wedding events and the horrors of our road trip sometime next week. And cross your fingers that our rental car doesn't end up being another craptastic Kia Spectra with busted speakers and no cruise control. Also, cross your fingers that I can muster up finishing writing this toast speech. Under normal circumstances I would just wing it, but my friendship and comfort level with Kathy is very unique, and I fear if I wing it I will end up making revolting diarrhea references or other assorted offensive comments that only Kathy would find amusing. While it's unlikely that I'd ever see many of these people again and thus shouldn't care too much about offending them, I still don't want to go down in history as the ogre who ruined the wedding reception by sparking a chain of projectile vomiting among the guests.

Ok, no quote of the day today, but dry your eyes. I will make it up to you another time. I'm off to go pack.

Oh, and keep those personal quirks comin! (see previous post if you're confused!) They DELIGHT me.

Seven Deadly Idiosyncrasies

Still no deposit check back from David. You're shocked, I can tell. (Pssst...I am not.) How sorry he should be that he promised to get me the deposit money he owes us by today. Unfortunately for him, my next angry phone call comes tomorrow evening. I think it's time to remind him that I dislike liars, so he should really make sure he gets his suit dry cleaned to meet my smiling face in court....for the full amount of the deposit and then some. Awww shucks.

Anyway, on to my main reason for today's entry...

A while back, an acquaintance challenged me to go public with no less than seven personal quirks. At the time I thought, "Ha! Amateur! I could tell seven quirks about food preparation alone." But then I decided to think about it and really inspect myself for noteworthy ones. What follows is what I felt like writing down. So without further ado, I present you with my seven quirks that made the cut.

1. I love (LOVE) lists. Making them. Reading other people's lists. Assigning categories to things. There is an order and structure to them that delights me to the core. As you might imagine, this very list is satisfying a deep desire inside myself to line everything in my house up at right angles. All the reward with only a fraction of the work!

2. I am very particular about my socks. If they don't fit perfectly, if they're slightly askew, if they have a tiny little stray thread swimming around in them, I feel it and it makes me insane. I can't just let it go or adjust to it. It will torment me until I have to take off my shoe and readjust everything.

3. I like to eat some foods in exact proportion. Specifically, M&Ms. Say, for example, I purchase one of those little bags of M&Ms during a weak moment in the checkout lane at the grocery store. Let's say I open the bag and there are 5 browns, 6 reds, 3 greens, 4 yellows, and 3 blues. After I curse the company for screwing me with an underfilled bag, I arrange all of the candies by color, then begin eating them down so the overall proportion never gets out of whack. So first I eat a red by itself, then a red and brown together, etc. until I have the same amount of each color all the way to the end. This is a relatively new phenomenon for me, but I see now how mentally ill it looks, so perhaps I should work on that.

4. I have deep and unjustified loathing for commercials that employ computer-animated/cartoon animals to really sell it to us. Case in point- the Airwick commercials with the elephant mom speaking in a tidy English accent about how her Airwick eliminates the odor of her disgusting family. Another case in point- the Nasonex bee. God. Get a life, losers. It makes no sense, and I don't think I can roll my eyes far enough into my head to express my disdain for these advertisements. Additionally, I hate commercials that employ computer-animated people. Suck it up! Get real people! Shell out the fifty bucks and go for it. Hell, call me! I'll do it for twenty. Beggars can't be choosers.

5. Sometimes I fixate on things that shouldn't even concern me a little bit. For example, there has been a Cadbury egg in the parking lot of my work since Easter. I know this because the Monday after Easter I parked my car and saw the Cadbury egg and thought to myself, "Those were gold when I was a kid. I should take it. Noooo, that is disgusting. But it IS all wrapped up still. But I don't even like them. But maybe I could give it to someone else, since it's obviously still good and all. But then, in good conscience I would probably have to tell them I found it in the parking lot....etc." You get the idea. So since then I've made it a point to specifically look for the Cadbury egg and see if it's still there. Nearly a month later, it doesn't let me down! Part of me thinks I may be a little sad when it finally disappears. And even then there will be lingering questions. Did someone else take it? If so, did they know it had been sitting there for a month? Or did it blow away? And if so, where to? Will an animal choke to death on its shiny foil wrapper? *sigh*

6. I appreciate few things more than a perfectly worded sentence. There are times (like now) when I spend over an hour working on this steaming turd of a blog to retool sentences and paragraphs until they click in my head juuuuust right. It's a sickness. It's also the reason why I don't update as often as I probably should. Often, even if I feel like I have a story to tell you, I just don't want to deal with my own neurotic editing process.

7. (FINALLY!) Sometimes I think I must be a little bit autistic. I do weird things like count the number of times a person says "ha" when they laugh. Or the number of times a particular person in a crowd claps. And when people speak, I sometimes imagine a scrolling marquee above their head with the text of what they're saying to me passing by. It's like I'm my own closed captioning! So if someone says something mundane to me like, "I went to the store," I will envision it in my head as if I'm typing it and spelling out each word. "I space w-e-n-t space t-o space t-h-e space s-t-o-r-e period." I remember first doing this in high school to alleviate boredom, but now it's part of me.

So there ya go, kids. Seven more pieces of evidence that remind you you should probably have nothing to do with me. Care to accept the challenge and reveal your own?

Phishing for Answers

Yesterday evening, I had to give a little girl the nonsense words test that I wrote about a few posts ago. Guess what word came up, friends? Oh, you guessed it. P-H-I-S-H.

How did the little girl pronounce it?

FISH.

I am vindicated. She missed every other word, but for the love of God, at least she got that one without hesitation.

In other news, many of you know about my ongoing one-sided death match with my former landlord. For the sake of this blog we'll call him David (because that is his name). If you remember the old Windows Live Spaces blog, I'm sure you'll recall a number of problems I had with David. They included (but are not limited to):

1. He attempted to cut down a 30-foot-long span of 8-foot-tall bushes with a pair of hedge trimmers and then, because he was too cheap to haul the yard waste away, he systematically attempted to BURN the bushes IN A PAINT CAN (I swear) over the course of several weeks, violating numerous city codes related to fire, smoke, being an idiot, etc. This brought Kathy and me ENDLESS delight as we would observe this burning ritual day after day until finally some neighbor called the fire department and they came and made him put it out. (I have pictures. Thanks again, Kathy, for having the presence of mind to document the occasion.) In case you're wondering, he made about eight feet of progress and then left the wilted shrubs out to rot. They're still there along with the now-rusted paint can.

2. He had a "girlfriend" (this is in quotes because it seemed that she was more of an indentured servant than a girlfriend) who was very nice but was, for lack of a better word, his bitch. There was NO END to the things he would ask her to do for him, and much to our amazement she did them all! Goodbyeeeee, self esteem, is all I can say about that. These chores included her manning the burning paint can for hours on end while he left or played chess and drank with his roommate; taking his laundry away, doing it for him, and then returning it FOLDED for him; cooking for him AND his roommate; and (this is my favorite) mowing the lawn at ten o'clock at night in the PITCH DARK for him. After ALL of this that she did for him, David admitted to Kathy that the girlfriend was nice but that he wished he would've found someone hotter. Just...just read it all again and then let it stew. Yeah....now you've come along on that journey.

3. He refused to do anything like help with snow removal, despite the fact that he lived there too, so by the time we moved out it was a death trap of glacially compacted ice. My husband and I had to go buy 120 pounds of sand to put on the driveway just to keep ourselves from dying as we moved all the heavy stuff.

4. He forced me to play chess with him once and then bragged about his liquor stock, which, when I added it up in my head, was worth more than my CAR.

5. Sunday night Martini Nights. I swear. Is it sinking in what a douchebag this guy is?

6. To top it all of, he had (has) a myspace page, and the background of the page is tiled pictures of Michaelangelo's statue of David. Our David, dipshit, douchebag landlord David, has written on his profile, "By the way, that picture is the statue of David." It just...makes me cringe.

Anyway, before we moved out I left David a note telling him my new address and how to get ahold of me and all of that crap so he could send my deposit to me. Weeks passed and in the middle of February I called him (having found his phone number on the infamous myspace page because he never would actually give it to me in person). I left a voicemail reminding him to send it. He did nothing.

So a couple of weeks later I called and left another voicemail that was a little firmer. Again, nothing.

Finally I got pissed and put on my business voice and drafted a letter in March that said, essentially, "I will have you by the balls in court if you don't send my deposit back by (insert date here)." STILL nothing, as my "I'd better have that check in hand by April 11th" ultimatum neared.

Well, kids. Imagine my surprise when he called the other night. Incredible. "Whaaaaa?" he asked like the true wank he is. "I totally sent you your deposit back and an explanation of charges way back in January!"

Me: "Noooo ya didn't. And didn't you notice that that much money never left your bank account?"

Him: "I'll be honest, I don't really check my bank account ever." UH HUH.

Me: "Well I never got the money that you claim you sent. I don't want to have to sue you because it is going to be an enormous pain in my ass, but I will do it. I'll be there next week for a wedding and I'll file papers while I'm there if I have to."

Him: "No no! Oh this is just a miscommunication! I'll FedEx a new check on Friday! Saturday at the latest."

Me: "Uh huh."

Etc. Etc. Blah blah it was insufferable.

It went on like this for a few minutes, but I can't be bothered typing it all. The point is he's keeping $140 of the deposit because he claims he needed to replace the drip pans on the stove (that's fair) and change some lightbulbs (interesting, since apparently in his world lightbulbs go for something like $10 a pop, and there were only three fixed ceiling bulbs in the entire apartment anyway, all of which worked just fine when we left). He also claimed my roommate stacked up "18 bags of trash" that he had to pay extra to remove, which is hilarious because 1. all the trash that was there was there before I left, and Kathy specifically talked to David about it being a lot of trash and he said no problem....she added nothing to it and MOST of that trash was stuff that had been accumulating from both apartments for a month because it was icy and David wouldn't help us take the trash down (he made his girlfriend do it), and frankly we were sick of it; and 2. according to an acquaintance who drove by the place at the end of March, all (ALL) of that trash was STILL THERE, thus showing he hasn't paid extra to get rid of it.

Blah, whatever. So the point is I'm supposed to be FINALLY getting this deposit back (or most of it, since I don't feel like fighting him tooth-and-nail about the rest of it, even though I should just to make his life a living hell) soon. I don't know about you, but I'll believe it when I see it.

The Classhole's Honor Society--A Resolution

Go back quickly and refresh your memory about my honor society debacle. Do it. It's ok, I'll wait. Ok, so I finally received all of the crap I told you I had been waiting for for nearly a year. This, kids, is where things get delightful. I retrieved the mail thinking, "Oooh, yay!"

Upon opening the envelope with my materials in it, I realized it was silly of me to have any expectations of these people. For starters, the certificate came folded in quarters and it looks beaten up, like someone carried around in their backpack for weeks and finally mailed it as an afterthought. Niiiiiiice. The best part, though, is that....well, ya know how certificates generally have little sections on them for people to sign and authenticate them so they're legit? Yeahhh, apparently no one could be bothered to sign mine because it's completely blank like I stole it or made my own on the computer. No signatures of chapter president or faculty sponsor. Just a sad, empty, beat-up certificate. It'll be just lovely if I apply for jobs and someone asks for proof that I'm a part of this group! I can happily take them my piece of crap certificate and say, "Well, there ya go! Oh, yeah I know it looks like a 5-year-old mailed it to me, but mentally it's close enough." Perhaps I'll forge some signatures to go in the blanks. I think Charlize Theron will be the chapter president and George Clooney will be the faculty sponsor! Why not?! Let's see who notices. Feel free to offer suggestions for names for this section of the certificate.

Today's quote of the day comes from another wee lad at the tutoring center. He is six and crazy and he's also good at reminding me of how much I'm getting older. Today he astounded me with his incredible long-term memory: "I remember lotsa stuff! I can remember things all the way back to 2007!" Me too, tiny tot...just barely.

I Suppose It's All a Matter of Perspective

I don't feel like writing a lot tonight, but I really must pass on what may be the best quote of the day of all time. It comes from a seven-year-old second-grade boy at the tutoring company I work for.

(For the record, he didn't say it to me; he said it to the 60-year-old woman who teaches at the table across from me, and I just happened to hear and and write it down as I suppressed tears of hysterical laughter. In retrospect, perhaps I shouldn't have laughed so hard, because I'm sure as far as that boy is concerned I'd be standing with one foot in the grave too.)

The quote, spoken with the level of astonishment one might expect upon discovering their dog is capable of speaking English:

"You were alive when the first Harry Potter book came out?! You are OLD!"

Sigma Tau Dipshits

Nearly a full year ago I joined an English honor society at my university. "What the hey," I thought. "I don't really like other English people because they're usually pretentious and annoying, but this will be good on my resume." So, along with a few of my friends who were invited, I joined. We should have all been tipped off that things were awry when only half of the new members showed up to the induction ceremony, and one of the sponsors didn't even show up. At that induction ceremony last April we received nothing and they said, "Ahhh, don't worry about it! We're going to mail your membership certificates and pins!" No big deal, right? I didn't particularly care.

So the induction passed and I went to the meetings (averaging five whole members each week, which, in case you're wondering, is awkward, especially when your new president tells you her favorite book of all time is Harry Potter and you have to suppress your bile without drawing too much attention to yourself).

Fast forward to the end of last semster, early December, as many of us are preparing to graduate. We all receive e-mails from one of the new sponsors informing us that, golly-gee-whiz, a "miscommunication" must've occurred in the spring because no one ever sent off our dues or information to the national home office of the honor society! And no one ever thought to double-check it when they curiously heard nothing back from the home office. Oh by the way, she adds, would you like to still be a member since, technically speaking, you never were one?

Ha, perrrrfect. I wrote her back telling her that, oh boy, they should be embarrassed by this. I also asked her how I'm supposed to explain their screwup to people who've received my resume in the meantime and would check my affiliations, awards, and honors only to discover it looked like I completely made this one up out of thin air. Not cool, I told her. Regardless, though, I told her I still wanted to stay in the national organization, and to go ahead and send my dues money in and keep me in as long as the membership would backdate to the time we all originally thought we were being inducted. She wrote back and apologized for everything and then said she'd send do that and then forward all of my memberhip materials to me.

Another month and a half passes. By now it is the end of January. I've still not received anything from her, so I e-mail the sponsor back. She tells me the new group secretary (someone who was literally coerced into taking the position so the group wouldn't lose its certification with Campus Student Organizations) is in charge of that now. Ohhhh great, way to follow through. So I e-mail that girl, and she tells me my materials are on the way! Yay!

Nooooooo.

Which brings us to this week. I write the secretary again. I've still received nothing, and frankly, it's been almost A YEAR since we were supposed to be inducted into this piece of crap organization. Where is my stuff? She writes back. "I still haven't sent them yet for a couple of reasons. Sorry!" What the hell reasons can there be, man? Her thumbs fell off? Her cat mauled her in the middle of the night, grossly disfiguring her face and leaving her emotionally scarred and unable to forward a fricking envelope? It's so beyond me!

So, it's been almost a year now, and of course I probaby owe renewal dues now, but how the hell would I know? I don't even have my original materials! Which means I can't access the national website, I can't pay my updated dues, and you guessed it, I'm soon going to be out of the national organization AGAIN because of these bumbling idiots at my school's chapter. So much for trying to utilize one's opportunities to make one's resume look better.

On a final, totally unrelated note, I was just watching The Price is Right. Drew Carey lets contestants give "shout-outs" while they spin the big wheel. This guy just used his "shout-out" moment to say, "Yeah, I wanna say hello to my lord and savior, Jesus Christ." Yeah, dude, don't suck up to Jesus. I guarantee you he is not watching The Price is Right, and he is not going to help you win the Showcase Showdown. He has other things to do.

UPDATE: Hell if that guy didn't totally win the Showcase Showdown.

Go Fosh Yourself

Everyone I work with has at least one glaring speech impediment. This is ok...I don't really care. But I could've come to blows with one woman after an exchange we had over one particular word this week.

You see, she sat down with me and told me she wanted me to take the oral phonics tests we give the students so I would be completely familiar with everything. No problem. That's fair. These tests involve sitting down and reading a lot of nonsense words. They're designed so students have to utilize their phonics knowledge to blend letters and recognize certain vowel sounds. We sat down and I started reading the words, and all was well until we got to "phish." How would you pronounce that word? "Fish," right? LIKE THE BAND. Phish.

"No," my coworker says. "Read it again."

Me: "Ummm...it's pronounced like 'fish.'"

Her: "No. It's 'fosh.'"

Me: "Uh, are we looking at the same word? P-h-i-s-h would totally be pronounced 'fish.'"

Her: "No, sweetie. Look at it. It's 'ph' like in 'phone' and 'ish' like in 'wish.'"

Me: "Yeah exactly. So 'fish.'"

Her: "NO. Look at it. 'FOSH.'"

Me: "I swear to you I read it and I see it! But it's just like the band, Phish. FISH. I don't see 'fosh' at ALLLLLL."

Her: "How can you not see that it's 'fosh?'"

Me: "How can YOU not see that it's obviously 'fish'? I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this one."

Her: "Fine, just as long as you see it's 'fosh' when you grade the kids."

What the hell man? On what planet would you read that word as 'fosh'?" No planet, that's which planet. These people make me nuts with their weird word quirks. My dad put it all into perspective for me, though. "If all else fails and you can't keep working there because the people are nuts," he said, "you can always just relax and go foshing." Heh. Well played, Dad. You've just earned yourself the quote of the day.

I'd write more right now but my computer is starting to act like a crankypants, so I'm not going to push it.

I'm Learnding!

The good news I've been waiting for since January has finally arrived. That, my friends, is that my teaching license finally came, so I can now legally destroy the minds of middle and high school children in my state in both English AND Journalism. Ooooooh. Double your pleasure, double your fun!

I've also gotten one full week at the tutoring company under my belt, and well, there are things that need to be said about it. Monday began and I gave my new boss my documents attesting to the fact that I am a US citizen and thus legally allowed to work in this country. I was slightly perturbed to discover the I-9 form I had to fill out was a copy of a handwritten original, but let's just hope that's because they've only recently made the leap toward having modern conveniences like computers and electricity here. I then immediately discovered that no one where I work can make "oll" sounds. No one. They all say it "ow." I know this because I had to talk to several people for some reason about "payroll" and was delighted when they each referred to it as "payrow." (There is also clear that there is an epidemic of the Indiana "extra r" complex here, which rears its ugly head in words like "wash," which these people say as "warsh." It makes my skin crawl.) Why do I find this so funny, you ask? Because we teach small children how to read, and how funny is it that these people are setting them up for lifelong speech impediments?

Anyway, after filling out my paperwork, my boss instructed another employee to give me "the tour." At this point it it probably important for you to know that this entire facility is maybe a thousand square feet in total. You can stand at one end of the teaching floor and look to the other end, and that's the entire teaching area. Then, if you turn around, you look through a door to a small room that constitutes the office/break room. That's it. That's the whole facility. I didn't really see why a "tour" was in order, but let me just say it was spectacular. This, I swear, is the Cliff's Notes version of the tour I got from the other worker:

Her: "So, here are the tables. We teach at them. You'll sit in the middle and the students will sit around you."

We move 5 steps toward two bathrooms, one regular and one handicap-accessible. Between the bathrooms is a water cooler.

Her: "Here's bathrooms. There are two. You can use either of them, cause we don't got no handicapped people. If you want more room that is. Here's the water cooler. You can use it if you're thirsty. Blue means cold, white is room temperature, and red is hot water. In case you want to make something hot. Like tea. Or hot chocolate."

(This is the part where the full-body clenching starts because I just couldn't bring myself to show them my true colors on my first day. So I held on with all my might and avoided doing something ridiculous like telling her I was confused and asking her to show me how one fills a cup at that ever-so-complicated water cooler.)

She then began walking me around, pointing to things and identifying them as if English were my second language and we were on the "identifying nouns" stage of my language aquisition.

Her: "There's books we use. Ummm....manipulatives. For math. Toys. Extra paper. Pencils. More tables."

Me: "Ok! Think I'm solid. Thanks so much!"

Then my boss returned and got me started reading the company propaganda....errrr...mission and program materials. First I had to read up on the history of the company and take a short test on it, including an essay over what steps I would take to help the company's success. (In case you're wondering, I spent exactly 30 seconds on this part and was told I passed the written portion with flying colors.) Then I began instruction on the first program I was to learn to teach the kiddies. I'm sure the manual that went along with an instruction manual would've been a gripping read if it weren't riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes, including but not limited to:

-"awaremenss" (Yeahhhh, they were going for "awareness," but as you can see that didn't really work out as planned.)
-"...before its released..." (because who needs those pesky apostophes anyway?)
-..."The learning process begins for a readers when..." (arg.)

So that was....revealing.

On the positive side, though, the people I'm working with have been really nice and helpful, and the kids I've been working with (mostly K-2nd graders) have been super adorable to the point that it almost makes my uterus hurt. Almost, Dad. Don't get your hopes up for grandspawn just yet.

Anyway, so that's life at the private tutoring company. It's going ok, I suppose. I feel like things are a little bit unnecessarily complicated there on just about every level, but perhaps the reasons for the madness will reveal themselves soon. I'll keep you updated.

In other news, I am getting mighty excited to get to see Kathy in a month. I'm not looking forward to ruining her wedding pictures in my generally unflattering bridesmaid's dress, but that's a small price to pay for finally getting to see my hetero life partner and other friends like JoAnna and Carissa. I suppose I should also start composing this maid (matron, I guess, since I'm married, but that sounds so dowdy) of honor speech too, eh? Feel free to give me ideas for something that will deftly walk that fine line between funny and heartfelt without slipping into the abyss of "I will never speak to you again for ruining my wedding" inappropriate (which would be hard to do with Kathy, but still).

On a final note, I'm going to a new doctor tomorrow to have a physical and get established so I'll have access to sweet glorious drugs should I ever need them. So, you know, that's bound to be a great experience that will in no way violate the remaining shreds of my dignity. Worry you not, though. I'll let you know.

As I sign off, today's quote of the day once again comes from my husband. (We've already established that I don't have contact with a lot of people, and most of the ones I do have contact with aren't that funny, so he wins quote of the day by default most of the time.) It's turning out that RC Cola is becoming a running joke in our house ever since his previous quote of the day about it being undrinkable (which is true). Well, on the news yesterday there was a story about a man who was caught diddling himself in front of a woman and her child (which, for the record, is just super classy and he should tell everyone he knows about how he became a local celebrity). The story continued that the man had been seen in the area previously at a vending machince (flash to the shot of the RC machine). "Man, I'm REALLY glad I don't drink RC now," my husband said. "There's no telling what it could make me do!"

Blah

I know I normally update every few days or so, but I'm just not feeling it right now. I'll make a list and try to squeeze out a nice, comprehensive entry sometime this weekend. Dry your eyes.

Serenity Now, God

Trying to talk to those imbeciles at AT&T Wireless is like talking to a retarded monkey about Shakespeare. (Actually, making that analogy probably does a disservice to retarded monkeys everywhere, who are clearly more qualified to run a business than AT&T Wireless.)

You'll remember that last Friday my husband and I ordered new phones. To ease confusion, we both ordered Blackberry Pearls, his is black and mine in red. The timing was good because my cell phone had just died, leaving me impotent in communications. We were super excited yesterday when UPS showed up to deliver these new phones, but my joy quickly turned to anger when I saw that they only delivered my husband's phone. I hopped online and discovered my phone is now on backorder--something the woman on the phone didn't tell me when we ordered and I never received an e-mail about or anything like that. Being as how I'm the one with the dead phone, this pissed me off. But we worked out a way to keep my phone on life support so I can keep in contact with people until my new one comes.

*sigh*

Fast forward to today. Unable to find how long the phone would be backordered online, I called customer service to ask the most basic question I could possibly ask about this problem: "How long is this phone going to be on backorder?"

I had first logged on to online customer service "live chat" and was immediately told that they don't have access to that information (of COURSE not!), and would have to call a phone number the rep provided me. Allow me, then, to explain to you how the next FORTY MINUTES of my life progressed trying to get this question answered.

I called that number and explained my problem to the rep. "My husband and I are on a family plan together. We both ordered new phones on Friday. He got his yesterday but I didn't get mine, and I just want to know how long mine will be backordered since it doesn't say online."

The rep put me on hold and came back a couple of minutes later. "Yes ma'am. My records show the order was shipped and you received it yesterday." Arg...it begins.

Me: "Yes, my HUSBAND got his. I did not get mine. I'm asking about mine....how long it will be on backorder."

Numnuts: "Yes, one moment. Let me check on that." (goes away for another 2 minutes) "Yes ma'am, ok. I am showing that your phone is on backorder. You will receive it when we get it."

Me: *breathe...breeeeeathe* "I know it's on backorder. We've established that. I want to know HOW LONG it will be on backorder. One week? A month?"

Numnuts: "Yes, one moment. Let me check on that." (goes away for another 2 minutes) "Yes ma'am, ok. You have a discounted account, according to my screen."

Me: "Yes, we have an education discount through my husband's work. Just now saw that, eh?"

Numnuts: "Yes, then I can't help you with that. You'll need to speak to Business Services. I'll transfer you."

Breathe...count to ten. No one is going to die today.

I wait on hold with Business Services for ohhh...5 minutes, then speak to a woman who seems more promising at first than Numnuts.

Me: "OK. Let's make this easier than it was for the last person I talked to. I ordered two phones. One came, one shows online as being backordered. For the love of God, can you tell me how long that other phone will be backordered? That's all I want."

Her: "Ok, no problem. It's showing here that that phone is backordered. We'll ship it out to you as soon as we get it back in stock."

MOTHER F!

Me: "I know this! I would sincerely hope you wouldn't just hold on to your new shipments of phones and hoard them for sadistic pleasure. Can you find out how long this phone will be backordered? Will it be days? Weeks? I'd like to know because my current phone is dead and that's not good for me."

(at this point we'll commence calling her ohhhh...how bout Asshat...yeah that works)

Asshat: "I'm gonna need to put you on hold for a few minutes to figure that out."

Me: "Sure why not? I don't have anything better to do with my time. Bring it on!"

She's gone for several minutes, then returns and tells me the phone will be backordered for three weeks. Of course it will! Why not? It's not like I didn't already pay for it or anything.

Me: "Ok, that's kind of a long time for me since my phone is dead and I was never told this was backordered from the beginning. I wouldn't have ordered it if I'd have known that. Since you haven't processed the order yet with the phone being on backorder, can I just cancel that order and pick a different phone that I can get sooner?"

Asshat: "I've never had to cancel an order before. Let me put you on hold for a few minutes to figure that out."

Me: "Ok."

Asshat comes back a few minutes later. "Ok, I won't be able to do that. You've already placed your order and committed to this phone."

Me: "Uhhh, but you guys also committed to send it to me in 3 to 5 business days, and that part's not happening either, is it? It's not like it's sitting there waiting to be shipped. You don't even HAVE this phone to send to me. How hard can it be to just pick a different one of the same price?"

Asshat: "I'm sorry, but unfortunately you already committed to this phone. If you'd like to pick a new phone, I'll have to charge you the full, undiscounted retail price for it. Then, if you don't still want the other phone that's currently on backorder, you'll have to refuse delivery from UPS when it shows up in a few weeks."

Me: "I'm sorry, but I don't see how it could possibly be this hard to make a simple switcheroo at this point in the game."

Asshat: "Unfortunately, ma'am, that's how it works."

At this point I ended the call because, well, I could feel my head beginning to explode. Hopefully yours is too, because I can't possible be alone in this, can I? I mean, seriously. Idiots! It's easier to get out of a goddamn marriage than it is to change an order with these people!

The good news I have to report, though, is that I got a call yesterday evening from the woman at the private tutoring place, and she offered me the job. I'll be starting there on Monday. Yay to finally being a little less of a pile of crap. Updates on that later.

Ahhh, Another Day...

...another lesson from a grocery store bagger about his bagging technique. (In case you're curious, this one's was more of a "crush everything indiscriminately" tactic, although he'd have you believe it was the "conservation of resources" approach).

Before going to get groceries, I first went to the office (and by office I mean home, and by home I mean hoarder's delight bordering on bona fide hovel) of the woman I picked randomly from the alterations listings in the phone book to alter my bridesmaid's dress for Kathy's wedding. When I first entered I immediately noticed an errant child asleep on the living room couch, followed by two empty baby carriers (car seats? whatever they're called when they're not strapped into the car) with no sign of actual infants in sight. It's possible she's running a baby mill in addition to her prolific alteration business, but I'll have to do more research and get back to you.

I followed her through her living room into her "kitchen," which is in quotes because I swear to you all that could be seen in the entire room to identify it as a kitchen was the faucet peeking out from a stack of odds and ends, catalogs, and god knows what other crap. "Oh this is promising," I thought to myself as I rounded the corner into the main part of the room and walked into a man with a full-fledged, four-alarm mullet dressed head to toe in NASCAR merchandise. (In case you're wondering, he's a big fan of whoever drives the Home Depot car. I'd look it up, but I'm trying to protect what's left of my precariously dangling IQ until I can secure a full-time teaching job.) "Hellooooo to you," I said to him. "How's it goin?" he grunted in reply. Never been better. Never been better, indeeeeeeed.

She led me into a room that appeared to be the center of operations for her alterations business. She left me there to change into my dress, and while she was gone I couldn't help but notice her personal library in the room, which consisted largely of books espousing the indisputable fact of Creationism and of the best ways to evangelize to nonbelievers. (Interjection: I'm glad I at least have found the target market for Fun Bible Sudoku. Now I can go on living.) There was also a book titled FOOD right in the middle of all of her religious zealotry paraphernalia, which seemed strange, but it was clear that I was half naked in a stranger's house at this point and not in a position to ask questions.

The fitting itself went ok, and she's only charging me $30 to alter it (although she claims she's never worked with this kind of material before, so that could make things interesting), so that's probably a fair exchange for her bizarre library, creepy mulleted husband, and baby mill. Cross your fingers.

As of right now, I've not heard back yet from the tutoring company about whether or not they want me. The interview on Monday was promising (that is, I made less of an ass out of myself than one would expect) and the owner told me she really liked me but wanted to think it over for a day or two to make sure it was right. So today is the second day, and so far I've not heard anything from her but I'm trying not to let my pessimism take over. (Okay, that's a lie. My pessimism is totally starting to take over, but fear not....I will update with my good news or shame--probably my shame--either way.)

Looks like that's about it for now. Today's quote of the day comes from our mailman, who clearly has an anger management problem. (To help you visualize, he looks like Kenny Rogers before his bad plastic surgery.) One day last summer when we first moved my husband into this house, I was sitting in the living room when the mailman came, and at that moment someone honked their car horn repeatedly. The mailman, overcome with a flash of anger, started yelling, "WHAT IS WITH THE HONKING?! JESUS CHRIST!!!!" My eyes widened in delight at knowing this man was going to be my source of rage-filled joy for as long as we live here. Anyway, fast forward to this morning. Our mailbox is what you might call "broken." The little plastic bar doodads that hold the opening flap onto the main box fell off right about the time we moved in, so my husband fixed it the best way he could--with tightly knotted strings through the holes. (Hey, we don't own this house so we're not putting the money into actually fixing things.) Now, when you close the mailbox, you have to line it up right so it stays closed. It's not really that big of a deal....takes maybe an extra one or two seconds to close it. Well, apparently the mailman wasn't having it this morning. Once again, I was sitting in the living room when he arrived, and this is what I heard:

(rough banging of plastic)
"LOCK, DAMMIT! WHY WON'T YOU LOCK?! SON OF A BITCH, LOCK!!!!!"

Yeah! You tell that mailbox who's boss!

Stating the Obvious

Last night we went to dinner at an Amish buffet restaurant we've been to once before (because nothing, and I do mean nothing, says "romantic Friday night date" like a trip to the Amish buffet). Just as the last time were were there, they served waaaay too much unidentified fried stuff for my taste. You know it's bad when my husband (who will eat just about anything) inspects the texture of some bizarre glob of miscellaneous deep-fried animal organ and decides to pass on the grounds that it's a bit too suspicious.

Anyway, as we were leaving he noted what might be the best stupid thing I've seen in a while. The restaurant has an attached gift shop much like you'd see in a Cracker Barrel or other assorted redneck dining establishment. Prominently displayed on one of the shelves was a $10 game book called Fun Bible Sudoku. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but sudoku is a numbers game involving putting numbers in the correct order so they add up a certain way. What the hell kind of sudoku is Bible sudoku supposed to be? It's so stupid! Talk about taking people for a ride. Idiots. I'm going to invent Bible Rubick's Cube, charge twenty bucks for it, and see what kind of morons will buy it.

Finally, today's quote of the day comes from a bona fide asshole who yelled this from a passing car to my husband (but clearly directed it toward me) as we were on a walk together this afternoon: "Hey, she's fat! Get away from her!" To that person I say 1. how you've not won a Pulitzer Prize yet for your eloquence is beyond me, and 2. thank you for reminding me of alllll the reasons I'm glad I never have to be a middle-schooler again.