Adventures in Suit Shopping

I tell you, I am batting a thousand today.

Let's begin with the good news, eh? The good news is that I've FINALLY been called for an interview with a private tutoring company a few minutes from my house, which is good for a host of reasons that should be obvious after I've been pathetically unemployed for two months and couldn't even get a call back for a $6/hr. job at the library. I now have a reason to live for a few more days.

So, knowing my one professional "business-y" outfit is ill-fitting and atrocious for a multitude of reasons (and knowing I'll need to look presentable for interviews for real teaching jobs), I went out today to invest a new one. Now, I'm well aware of the fact that my body is horribly disproportionate, so I was prepared for this to be a frustrating venture. In the end, though, I only had to visit four stores before I found a winner. However, anyone who knows me knows that's four stores for me to make a spectacular ass out of myself or attract some kind of weirdo.

Store #1: The sales lady wouldn't leave me alone. And she was very keen on trying to get into the dressing room with me, which I don't get and I've always hated. All of this unnecessary "checking in." Ugh. Finally, I was like, "I swear to you, I will come to you if I need your assistance, but at this particular juncture I can put my own pants on." Later, as I was checking out (I bought a single shirt), she invited me for a bra fitting (all on the up-and-up, of course), and my response, though I don't remember the exact wording, was something to the effect of, "Well, you know I would, but my husband prefers to watch and as you can see he's not here now." In case you're wondering, she WAS horrified! I probably can't go back there for a while.

Store #2: Why do people bring their frigging kids to stores? This little 5-year-old boy with a plastic Slinky was running around and no one was controlling him, and he was just screaming and being a little shit. You probably can guess how I feel about that. Anyway the sales lady was talking to me, and I was becoming visibly irritated with the little shit as he ran up to her and started talking to her. I must've rolled my eyes, because she asked me what was wrong. "I dislike little children," I replied. Her brow furrowed. Oh god, what now? "That's my nephew. He's my little buddy." PERFECT! My response: "Of COURSE he is. Why not."

Store #3: Nothing of note, as I only spent about 3 minutes in there before leaving.

Store #4: The woman in the dressing room next to mine was talking very loudly and in far too much detail about how she had some sort of oral surgery two days ago that involved a cadaver donation. I'm still kicking myself for tuning it out up to that point, because it got sooooo good when she started telling the sales ladies that she bit into this cadaver tissue, causing it to dislodge from her mouth. Long story short, she claims she SWALLOWED IT (blargh blargh blargh blargh blargh) and that (this is a direct quote I swear I'm not making up) "it really had a very distinct taste" which she claimed was still in her mouth. I tell you, if you asked me to grip a pen at that moment I would've been unable to. Sickening! So I spent the majority of the rest of my time there studying the woman and unsuccessfully trying to figure out the first part of the story. What kind of oral surgery was it? Why was her mouth not swollen? Why was she not speaking like a marble mouth? What kind of oral surgery requires a cadaver donation? Why was she not behaving as horrified as I felt she should be in a situation like that? And what kind of oral surgeon uses a cadaver donation that so easily detaches and is swallowed?! And does this constitute cannibalism if you accidentally eat a part of someone else's body? Ohhhh if it weren't for my horse...

On a final note before I proceed with today's quote of the day, if you are a friend of family member of mine reading this and you're mad at me for not returning your calls within the last couple of days, please forgive me. My cell phone has decided that it can't be bothered doing its damn job anymore. Yesterday it started turning itself off randomly, and after I convinced myself it was not, in fact, a poltergeist, I discovered the battery was going to crap. Then things went downhill quickly like an episode of According to Jim (what a horrible, horrible show) and my phone began telling me it was 1999 (ohhh to be young again!) as I kept it on life support plugged into the wall at all times. Finally, the death bells came and it won't do anything, so yeah....bear with me as I attempt to replace it sometime soon.

Ok, finally...the quote of the day. I was talking to my friend Steve online yesterday, and we were comparing notes about a particular professor at our old school whom I despise and whom Steve is getting his first experience with. This particular professor pissed me off because he was always unprepared for class and would stall for time. He was also really disheveled and had that curious problem of collecting white dobbins of spit at the corners of his mouth, which made me gag. My main problem with him, though, was that it was clear his four-pack-a-day smoking habit had taken over his life, as he would routinely leave in the middle of our 75-minute class to go outside and smoke. Come on dude, get the fricking patch or something. Ridiculous! Anyway, Steve has the great pleasure of having this professor as an internship supervisor, requiring him to meet with him one-on-one weekly...an unparalleled adventure in awkwardness, for sure. So we were commiserating about this teacher's quirks, and I asked Steve if he still has his nicotine-withdrawal bumbling stutter. Steve's response: "Yes...and breathes heavily, kinda like he's making a pervy phone call."

Picture it...piiiicture it. Now you've come along for the journey. That is funny.

UPDATE: We ordered new cell phones today (fear not, we were already planning on doing this; it wasn't merely an overreaction to my battery dying), and it's looking like my new one will come around Tuesday or Wednesday of next week. Til then, call the home phone, my husband's phone, or just e-mail to reach me. All two of you.

Free to Good Home: Cat

12 years old, spayed, front declawed, answers to the name "Peanut, NO!"

You ask, "But Cor, why would you want to get rid of Peanut? You love her!"

You're right, I do love her. But I just might kill her if I don't vent my temporary hatred for her.

You see, for the past five nights she has been waging a campaign of sleep deprivation against me. The moment I begin to nod off to sleep, I hear it--the sound of her 12-pound body thumping up onto the bed. She has arrived for her nightly regimen of tapping me in the head with her paw until I turn myself into a position that satisfies her insatiable need to sleep in my armpit with her face burrowed in my hair and neck.

"Just ignore her and she'll go away," you say. Silly, ignorant reader. You are wrong. It doesn't stop. It never stops. If I ignore her, she will leave once, returning within ten minutes just as I am again on the verge of sleep. She taps me on the head again. Again. Again. Again. I continue to play dead. Then the crying starts. "Meowwwww." If I don't respond to the crying, she will take to biting me until she gets her way. Biting me! What kind of savage have I raised? If I swat her away for biting, she leaves. But you know the routine. She's back 10 more minutes later, and by then I'm wide awake and have lost half an hour of sleep time. So it's best to just accommodate her.

But then there she is blissfully resting in my armpit with her face in my neck, and I can't move. I can't move from that position or I will destroy her nook and open a floodgate of her trying to reposition herself within my next sleeping position. The worst is when I'm sleeping on my back and she must...must burrow between my legs like they're her own personal warmers. My lower back where I hurt it over a year ago always kills the next morning when she pins me down like this.

And this, my friends, was the position I found myself in at four o'clock this morning when I decided I loved her but that she was going to have to die. We had already had our little hour of fun with her walking all over my body trying to find the most opportune position for herself. (In case you're wondering, it was in my armpit with her head burrowed in my neck--the usual--with the added twist of her pushing off of me slightly so that her back claws dug into my stomach.) At some point I had managed to get to sleep, and she left me to get herself a snack.

I don't know what it was, exactly, that made me realize what was happening at four in the morning. I was sleeping soundly. I had my earplugs in, which I wear often now because of my husband's pesky little snoring problem. Perhaps it was the dull, repetitive shaking I felt toward the end of the bed, definitely occurring between my lower legs and not coming from me. Perhaps it was the faintest hint of an audible gurgling sound I perceived just barely through my earplugs.

Then it hit me. Peanut was lying on top of me...retching. Heaving.

I jolted up and kicked her off the end of the bed as I yelled, "Peanut, NO!"

It was too late. She barfed a full, steaming loaf of undigested cat food on me at four o'clock in the morning.

Actually, let me clarify. It wasn't on me directly. Rather, it was on the 40-year-old patchwork family heirloom quilt my great-grandmother made and passed on through the generations, which, incidentally, had been my main covering. Gee, thanks Peanut! You're the best!

If the fact that she vomited on me in the middle of the night isn't bad enough, she has spent almost the entire day attempting to jump on tables she knows she's not allowed on, and then went and dropped a load in her litter box literally ten seconds after I finished cleaning it, tying up the bag, and throwing everything away.

So, as you can see from the evidence I've presented today, she and I are going to rumble. And I am going to win.