Oh, Christmas Tree . . .!

Despite what The Boy might say, we didn’t actually steal the Christmas tree.

Last weekend, Saturday December 15th to be exact, Jason and I went to two different Christmas tree lots in an ultimately failed attempt to obtain a Festive Holiday Tree. It’s not that they didn’t have trees I wanted, or that the trees were too pricey, it’s that there were no trees. None. Zero. Negatory on the trees.

At that point, I should have continued slaloming around the greater NoCo area and obtained a freaking tree. However, it was snowing and I wanted to get home and commence the Christmas Cookiepalooza I had planned.

This is me, though, and nothing can ever be simple. I didn’t go out on Sunday to get a tree. And Monday I had to work late, and The Boy was Christmas shopping and I wanted to go with him. Tuesday I didn’t feel good, and didn’t want to go out in the cold. This brings us to Wednesday, December 19th.

Now, I get that the 19th is, as The Liquor Fairy insists, a wee bit late in the season to go out shopping for Festive Holiday Trees. However, I assert that that’s just fucking stupid. People regularly used to put their trees up on Christmas Eve, and if capitalism was working as it should, there would be sufficient trees to meet the demand right up until Christmas. This is yet another failure I will lay at the feet of 7 years of a semi-literate Republican president and our ineffectual Congress, but I digress.

The first lot I went to did have trees, but they were a bit too mangy even for my taste. I understand that, when shopping less than a week before Christmas, some arboreal aesthetic compromises might have to be made. I do not hate on the little ugly trees, I just don’t care to put one up in my home. Plus, I don’t do long needles, which rules out at least half of the trees on any given lot from the word go.

We went then to the second lot, where in 2005 I got my tree like, three days before the damn holiday. Whatever. No trees. Not one.

By this point, I was threatening to start banging my upper body and head repeatedly back against my car seat like an emotionally disturbed child, a threat singularly terrifying to The Boy because he knows that I’m likely to actually do it. However, continuing up the road, we come to the Florissant Jaycee’s Tree Lot. As we get close I can see from the tree that they have veritable shit ton of trees, so I get to feeling pretty sassy.

Then we pull up and there is no one there. Empty trailer. Wet trees lit only by the sickly glow of the sign of the nearby Kmart. The hours on the trailer said that they should be open, but they weren’t.

I suggest we get out and look around. The Boy, anxious not to see his girlfriend have yet another meltdown, agrees, thinking that perhaps we can find a tree and return for it later.

“Fuck this,” I say. “If we find something, I’ll slide a check through the window.”

Nervous laughter.

“You think I’m kidding?”

“No. No, I really don’t.”

Which is why I love the man.

They did have a tree, full with short needles. It smelled of pine, and did not rain a shower of needles when shaken. It was, in short, good e-fucking-nough. “Let me get my checkbook,” I said, turning back to the car.

The Boy proceeds to follow with the tree. “No! We have to put it through the thingie!” I said, pointing the Tree Binding Plastic Netting.

The best part of this story, I think, is not the “buying” of a tree from an unattended dark tree lot, but the fact that we couldn’t get the tree through the damn tree netting thing.

First, he tries to shove it in wrong end first, which I think explains a lot about our sex life. Then, he refuses to apply sufficient force for the job at hand. Then we manage to stuff it through--directly through—leaving the tree unencumbered by netting, which is kind of the point.

I am almost no help because I am laughing hysterically the entire time. Finally, we get the tree bound up, and then we hacked through the plastic net with my keys since neither of us had anything better. Finally, I stuck the check through the mail slot, along with a note written on the tree’s tag telling what I had done and advising the Jaycees contact me at the number on the check in case there was some kind of issue.

I figure I won’t hear from them. They were probably at the bar.

Tuesday Redux

Tonight was a quiet evening. I got out of work in a pretty good mood, mostly because I'm off tomorrow and don't think there is much my co-workers can do to fuck up too badly while I'm gone. After admonishing them to try not to do anything irritating in my absence, I left for home.

In the car, I heard a Christmas song about a dude standing in line behind a kid buying shoes for his dying mother. The kid wanted his mother could look nice if she met Jesus on Christmas eve. A Christmas song about shoes, dead moms, and standing in line. Fun. Wish I wrote that.

I came home to meet The Boy. We were going to go get a Christmas tree, but it is rainy and crappy outside, so instead we went out to forage for food. I embraced the shame and we went for buffalo shrimp, which in the Lou is a fraught experience involving a trip to Hooters that I don't want to talk about but have to admit before The Boy snitches my ass out. There were buffalo shrimp, and the place was almost devoid of other customers, which was pretty much all I had hoped for.

On the way home, the car began making a new and distinct noise. My car health philosophy is exactly the same as my personal health philosophy--wait to see if it gets better. It didn't get better; it actually got worse. The Boy and I decided that it sounded like dragging. The good news is it's not a bum. The bad news is that it will require actual repair requiring something other than zip ties. I'm hoping a half-assed tack weld will do the trick. I'm willing to let the guy at Meineke look at my boobs or something if that will help. I'm not proud.

Speaking of not proud, after we retired to the house, we shared some valuable time vegging out in front of our laptops, where I found this, and had a big snotting, sobbing cry.

Yeah. D'you have a pet growing up? Yeah? Grab a tissue. Grab the BOX.

Merry Christmas

Well, my effort to be all cute and hostess-y was thwarted by the cocksmacks at eVite and their stupid limit to the size of photos that they will let you upload. The bastards. I'm sure that I could cut down the size of the photos I'd taken, but wrestling the beasties has left me exhausted and unwilling to fight with my computer.





I think Jack looks mighty damn cute, even if the look on his face suggests a gulag survivor.




Peanut butter. The ultimate dog training tool. If it will make The Beast hold still while wrapped in Christmas lights, I'm not sure what it can't do.





Bella looks so fucking cute in her Santa Suit that I wallowed on the floor after bursting a blood vessel in my brain.

Tonight, On PBS

So, tonight Le Boy and I were watched a documentary about a lunatic Frenchman exploring the most dangerous place on Earth. Oddly enough, it was not a visitor's guide to Detroit, but a film about a dude in a submarine exploring the bottom of the ocean.

One of the shots was of all these phosphorescent jellyfish, blooping and floating through the sea. Watching their aimless, mindless, actions all I could think of was my co-workers. And calamari.

Which leads, logically, to the next thing, I want to corner the market on the aquatic beasties that inhabit the darkest depths of the ocean--floating around in super-heated toxic water, blind and thoughtless. I want to gather them up, raise them out of the depths. The lack of pressure will cause them to swell to many times their normal size and I will SELL them to snooty gastronomes and the Japanese for thousands of dollars a pound, never mind the fact that their flesh stinks of sulfur and tastes of briny rotten eggs.

Think about it.

Space Staples

So. Today was a day so bogged down in stupidity that I fully expected someone to whom I was speaking to actually drop dead in the middle of our conversation because he had forgotten to breathe. Had you been a party to the idiocy that I was, you would feel the same.

At one point during the during the day, stymied by the silly workplace prohibition against calling business vendors "cocksuckers," I stated aloud that I hoped the bank with whom I was dealing was heavily invested in mortgage backed securities, and that as a consequence, the women (read: dumb fucking whores) with whom I was dealing would lose their jobs and become homeless. And be forced to reside under a pile of old cheese.

Upon reflection, though, I think the most incredibly stupid conversation of my day was regarding someone who had snail-mailed documents that were desperately needed as soon as possible. Didn't fax them. Didn't e-mail them. Didn't even copy them before consigning them to the dubious care of the USPS. Why, you ask?

Because they were stapled.

Space staples. Coming soon to an Office Max near you.

Pie, Bitches

I did it. Finally. I finally manned up and did it. I managed to put on my big girl panties and wash away the terrible stench of failure.

I made a pie. From scratch. Take that, bitches.

The last time I tried to make a pie, all hell broke loose. Flour was spilled; dough was thrown; I called apples motherfuckers. And when, finally, I dispatched my then husband to get frozen pie crust, the pie wasn't that good. It was runny and stupid and it pissed me off.

Today, though, the triumphant glow from my unclogged sink drain filled me with a strange sense of confidence. I wanted apple pie, and no pansy-assed frozen pie crust was going to do it for me.

And I did it.

Granted, my pie looked like a C effort in a Home Ec class for the emotionally disturbed, but it tasted pretty goddamn good. Further, I think I broke the code. I actually learned something this time, and I think I can do this again.

My god. The bitch can bake an apple pie. I'm officially perfect.

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Okay.

I'm not too familiar with the bible, or too down with religion generally, but I gotta wonder . . .

Do you really think it's . . . appropriate . . . to liken Jesus to a toilet lid?

It's amazing what's on tv at 2 a.m. when you don't have cable . . .

Halloween, A Requiem

Today my friend Russell died. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Unfairly.

I was at work; it was about 20 minutes before my shift was to end and I was going back and forth on whether or not I was going to stay late or go home. As usual when I’m at work, my cell phone was on vibrate. I paused when it started to go off There are only about five people who call my phone on a regular basis and of those, the only ones I wanted to talk to would know I was still at work and were unlikely to be calling.

I checked the Caller ID. “Russell.”

“Huh,” I thought. “Maybe he’s seeing what I’m up to tonight. Fuck, I don’t want to go out. I hope he’s cool when I just say I’m planning to go hang at Jason and Dave’s. Maybe I can ask if he wants to stop by for a drink and grab dinner next week.”

“Hello?” I answer.

Then things got all fucked up. It wasn’t Russell trying to convince me to get dressed up and go out and celebrate Halloween. It was Russell’s girlfriend, calling to tell me that he had had a heart attack and died.

I met Russell when I was about 21. I was in the middle of my GAF (Goth As Fuck) phase, passing Monday nights at the Galaxy and countless other nights at Haven, aka The Coffeehouse of the Damned. It’s odd, really, but I don’t know exactly how we met. Were we introduced? Did he introduce himself? It would be just like him, but I can’t recall.

It’s sad, you know, when you recognize a lapse of memory that is going to bring you pain in days and weeks and forevers to come.

Anyway, we met. We chatted. At some point he crossed the threshold where I trusted him not to get me cut into little pieces and, when he vouched for a photographer who wanted to shoot me in my corset and full regalia, I went for it. I took my girlfriend and we scoped the place out, but the fact that I was willing to take Russell’s word that this dude (his name was Robert) wasn’t going to try to keep me as a pet says quite a bit about Russell.

The fact is, I trusted Russell on very little evidence. I just did—some gut instinct told me it was okay, and I was right. And when at one he asked me to come up to Haven to visit him some afternoon while he was working, I promised I would come that week

I showed up that Friday, at about quarter ‘til five--typical of me, especially at 21. I half-assed my word, getting there just under the wire to keep my promise.

We hung out. We talked. We made dinner plans; I tried to cancel because I was trying to catch a cat that was hiding out in a construction site. He offered to help, and then he made me pasta out of a jar with artichoke hearts and red chile flakes. At some point that evening, I realized he was interested in me as more than just friends. Maybe he told me so, but I don’t remember.

Time passed, as time does. We became a couple, after a fashion. We were doomed to fail on so very many levels. I was 21 and hell-bent on breaking my heart on the sharp rocks of unwise choices. He thought more of me at the time than I deserved. Kate Chopin describes her short story character Athenaise as someone who did not want to be “loved against her will.” That . . . is pretty damned apt.

Apt? Yes. But ultimately neither here nor there. Even had I not been emotionally retarded we were completely incompatible as a couple. We were never going to wind up doing anything but driving one another batshit. The fact that we wound up friends is, frankly, a small miracle.

We never really broke up, exactly. More I weakly protested that things weren’t well going and he deserved better, and he blew me off and told me I was underestimating myself, and eventually we would reach an exhausted impasse and go to bed. All the while, mind you, while maintaining an “open relationship” that only I took advantage of but was STILL too weak to call “bullshit” on and put an end to.

Eventually, though, we reached the end. I met The Fuckwit, and my on-again-off-again-not-quite-relationship with Russell ended. It wasn’t always pretty. There were hurt feelings and we knew more than enough to take one another off at the knees. At one point I, with all sincerity, offered to brain Russell with an ice cream scoop.

Yeah, the ice cream scoop was probably a low point.

But we managed to come back from that. Eventually, we became friends. Really. Weird, isn’t it?

And now he’s fucking gone. The sonofabitch couldn’t have weighed 100 pounds if you dredged him in flour (he was 5’2”; it made sense), and he ran like he was being chased, and he had a motherfucking heart-attack and died.

So.

A Short and Non-Inclusive List of Things for Which I Wish To Thank Russell, In No Particular Order

Russell had a front-row seat for my nervous breakdown at 22. He saw come almost apart at the seams while I assiduously hid it from all those around me. He did what he could; one can only imagine that the carnage would have been greater had he not been around.

I have been to New Orleans three times; one of those trips was with him and about 8 other people. That one was the best. It was, frankly, a good time. I got on a plane, still drunk, after traipsing around the French Quarter in high heels until the wee hours. That’s how it is done.

Green Curry Tofu, hot. Ultimately, it was Russell that turned me onto one of my favorite foods ever. Thai food, generally, but especially Green Curry Tofu, is like manna from heaven. I can still hear him, “Green Curry Tofu, extra tofu, hot, with snow peas, oh yeah.”

Speaking of manna from heaven, it was Russell who taught me to drink coffee. The man literally put me through Coffee Training, by the end of which I had gone from milky, caffeinated hummingbird water to being able to drink drip coffee black.

Russell was the first person who ever seemed to be attracted to me for my brain. Mostly, Russell was a smart guy who expected the people around him to be smart. During our years of acquaintance, he saw me do a lot (A LOT) of really dumb shit. To his credit, he managed to remain my friend without, really, ever overlooking the dumb shit. Mad props for his ability to forgive.

The Cocteau Twins. ‘Nuff said.

The Sandman. One of the most brilliant, interesting, engaging works of modern fiction I’ve encountered. It just so happens to have pictures.

Russell was the first person who tried to teach me to raise the expectations I had of others regarding their treatment of me. I can’t say that it took at the time, but the sure the fuck worked to plant the seed. It’s not his fault that I was a slow learner.

And finally, Tanqueray. Without which, this blog and my particular flavor of mourning would not be brought to you this evening.

My god, there is so much.

I saw Russell on my birthday. He brought his girlfriend. We chatted. He said something about getting together for dinner that week, but I told him it was bad because I had so much shit going on and that I would call him when I got back into town and things calmed down. I was thinking about calling him and trying to get together next week. Fucking oops.

I guess, after all, we won’t. That’s just something else for which to be sorry.

So Many Shortcomings, So Little Time

So, The Liquor Fairy is off to trap bats. Sounds like a plan.

I have figured out why I’m not writing more, either here or in other areas of my life. It is, in fact, because the human psyche is built to tolerate so much fucking failure. When it all comes down to it, there is only so much failure that one human mind can endure before it crumbles under the weight of it.

And right now? A quick pit sniff tells me that I absolutely wreak of failure.

It’s not that I don’t already have more than a glancing familiarity with Mediocrity and its close cousin, Gross Incompetence. I have fallen out of more trees than most people are ever lucky enough to try to climb. Lately, though, I taste a new flavor of fucked—one that I must say I don’t much like. Suddenly, instead of the regular 32 Flavors and Then Some of screw-up to which I have historically subscribed, suddenly it’s like a Mochachino Chip Implosion of FuckedUppedNess. With sprinkles.

So, yeah. My job sucks. Sucks. SUuuuuuuuuucccccckkkks.

Everyone’s job sucks, you say? Well yes. Indeed. Indubitably.

Yesterday I spent 45 crying over approximately $12. Twelve. American. Dollars. Broken, crushed, snotting, tear-stained sobs over $12 that was the difference between the deal closing and getting off of my desk forever and . . . not.

The story is too long, not to mention too stupid, to relate. The short version—for real this time—is that I find myself in a situation where I have about three times the amount of work that can be handled by anyone in my position. Our software is the worst piece of shit I’ve ever had the misfortune of touching. I soothe myself by imagining tromping on the balls of the purchasing asshole who picked this thing. For variety I vary the shoes I’m wearing in the fantasy.

Were that not enough, I find myself in the fucking untenable position of explaining many of the finer points (and basics, frankly) of our industry to my co-workers so that they can continue to make more than $10,000 a year more than I do. Every time I help them to re-invent the wheel, I make more work for myself. I hate *everybody*.

I start dreading Monday after brunch on Sunday. I would be dreading tomorrow right now, but I’m a bit tipsy so I don’t actually care. Every day is much like shoving a little hedgehog backwards up my ass, and then poking it in the nose so it gets all spiny. Except hedgehogs are kind of cute, and there is nothing at all cute about my day and the douchebags I am forced to spend it with.

I pray for Death, but Death doesn’t listen.

No. Seriously. I had my wee mini breakdown, followed by pizza and wine and romantic comedy on DVD. I also locked myself out of my house and had to cut open the kitchen screen and crawl through. (Plus last night I fucking punched myself in the eye because my pets are ginormous fatasses who need to NOT sleep on their mommy’s covers.)

I got up today. I went to work. I have decided that for awhile most questions are going to have to be addressed to my PEZ dispenser (“Ask the PEZ head!”). Tomorrow will be the same thing. Things will either get better or will get replaced..

In the meantime, though, I have to scrape up energy. To exercise. To write. To clean my house. Because right now? At the end of each day? All I want is to sit, and stare, and hide my face against The Boy’s neck and get ready to force myself to do it again.

You know what really sucks for me, though? I think there was a chance that I might have been okay at this job if I had only been given some portion of the tools necessary to do it. That’s saying a lot for me. Mostly, jobs are just something I do while I try to find another job. This one? I could have been good at it.

September Sucked, Episode One

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Your Regularly Scheduled Ennui, Already In Progress

Kate's Plan For Career Advancement

1. Grab boss's penis

2. Place boss's penis in a standard table vice

3. Place hand on vice

4. Discuss rate of pay

Sounds like plan, non? I'll keep you posted.

On One Small Lesson Learned

Six years ago, I had a hangover.

I had been out to late with the then-husband and my best friend. We had enjoyed a wonderful dinner of olives and pasta and far, far too much wine. I woke up the next morning tired and dehydrated with a brain batted in cotton.

It was a glorious morning, the kind of early autumn day that seems as though it were colored out of a 64 Crayola box onto newsprint by an incredibly beautiful second-grade child. I unceremoniously deposited myself into my car to get to my dead-end job that I truly, deeply, disliked.

I don’t know at what point the news from NPR began to penetrate my post-drunk fog. Somewhere on the drive; at some point before I parked, I noticed that Bob Edwards (I think he was the Morning Edition host at the time) sounded completely, totally, confused. Lost. Bob Edwards was, in the coolest and most professional way possible, freaking out.

I walked into the ground floor of the building where I worked. There was a third-rate radio station there, one that got its news directly from some wire. The people in the booth looked gobsmacked; the woman had her hands over her face. The men gaped.

And that was when I realized we were fucked.

I am certain that everyone has a story that is, to a greater or lesser extent, similar. Where they were. What they were doing. What they thought. I remember being unmoored; like I didn’t know the world. Given my visceral, blood-thirsty reaction, I didn’t really feel like I knew myself. As I said at the time, it was like I couldn’t imagine a world without crying in it.

I don’t know that I’ve ever managed to make meaning out of September 11th, 2001. I don’t know if one really can. Maybe there is no meaning that can be made of 2974 dead. No meaning. Just a glass to be raised; a candle to be lit; a prayer to be said.

And, for me? A life to be lived.

Because after the shock of 9/11, I came to and realized that I was only going through the motions of my life, and that I was not doing a terribly good job of it. Once the shock of the attacks wore off it occurred to me that it was inexcusable for me piss away my life in the most mediocre way possible, when 2974 people had abruptly, suddenly lost their lives and couldn’t do anything at all with theirs.

Since then, I have struggled and won and lost and fallen out of trees and hit-every-damn-branch-on-the-way down and hit the ground and dragged myself back up. I haven’t written the great American novel. I haven’t created some great work of art. Hell, I haven’t even cut my grass in weeks. But I haven’t settled for miserable. I haven’t decided that just hanging on is enough.

I don’t think my small life is any, any kind of monument to their lives lost. I do think, though, that my small life would have been incredibly smaller without the remembrance of their unwitting, unwilling sacrifice.

2974 lives wasted is 2974 more than too many. It taught me not to waste one more.

More Excuses

I have been remiss about posting of late.

"No shit, woman," you say. "That is perfectly obvious from the utter lack of anything new on this crappy excuse for a blog for better'n two weeks."

Well. Yeah. Fine.

The funny thing about this blogging thing is that, when I go a bit without doing it, I feel vaguely guilty and unsatisfied. Because, right now, this is the only outlet I have that I share with other people. When I neglect it for any length of time, I feel uneasy. So, while I have been neglecting the blog, I've also been neglecting the attention whore, love-me-love-me, part of me.

The fact is this. I've had very little I've wanted to write about. I'm sick of blogging about job ennui. There is nothing remotely interesting the fact that I have been hating my job of late. Most people hate their jobs all the time, and it's not interesting. Politics remain screwed. My personal life is, blissfully, uneventful and boring in the best way.

That's all neither here nor there.

The fact is, there are a few reasons I haven't been blogging. One is that summer is ending; and the space between seasons, any seasons, makes me odd. The other is that I think I've been lying fallow, preparing to do other things.

Tonight, though, outside feels like the beginning of fall--it's glorious. So, while we'll have to wait and see, I think I'll be writing more.

Luscious

Oh. It is a perfectly luscious week in the news.

First, Gonzales quit. I was running late to work yesterday so I heard the first few minutes of The Diane Rehm show. When asked what had finally driven Gonzales to resign despite the continued support of President Halfwit, one of her panelists talked about how he would go to a U.S. Attorney’s office and the U.S. Attorney in question wouldn’t show up to meet him; about how when he would speak to a group, the group had to be scolded into standing up and applauding loudly.

Dance lawyer-monkeys, dance!

President Halfwit says that Gonzales’s “name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.” If by political reasons, George means that Congress felt compelled to curtail the Attorney General’s quest to gut the Constitution, violate the law, and install President Halfwit as Dictator for Life, then he has a point. Otherwise, who does he think he’s kidding?

Just because someone is your favorite whore, doesn’t mean he’s not a whore.

So, yeah. Goodbye Gonzales. Congratulations on “Living the American Dream” by destroying America. Hope you face perjury charges, you filthy cocksucking yes-man.

Gonzales quitting was a fine thing, yes, but I have to say that I’m even more excited about Idaho Republican Larry Craig getting busted for “lewd conduct” in an airport men’s room. Reading about this was like biting into a perfect, crisp apple fresh off the tree. Crunchy and sweet and juice-dripping-off-my-chin glorious.

Although perhaps less vitriolic in his hatred of gays and lesbians than his party cohorts, his votes against allowing gays to marry or offering them protections as victims of hate crime victims is enough to cause me to turn on him and call him out for being yet another hypocritical closet case.

Had he been content to be another pathetic bastard trying to subdue his self-loathing, I would feel sorry for him. However, since he felt compelled to ameliorate his personal sense of shame by attempting to inflict it on others, I feel justified in the following in laughing hysterically at his plight while relishing his public humiliation and, I hope, the impending premature failure of his political career.

I am especially pleased by the stupid desperation of trying to get his Senatorial Wee-wee played with in an airport bathroom. What? No time in the schedule to pay a visit to a truckstop?

Prisoner's Dilemma

The good news is, my co-workers have started making coffee. The bad news? Someone has introduced decaf into the building.

Our break room has three identical coffee pots. One of these things is not like the other. Some communist has put decaf in one of the coffee pots, and I have no way of knowing which one.

With good coffee, one can generally tell decaf by smell. One can certainly tell by taste. It’s like someone playing a chord incorrectly—something is just missing. There is a note that’s just missing from even the best decaf coffee.

Now, I have friends who for various reasons have given up caffeine. Sort of the way mother pandas sometimes forsake their young, or guppies eat their babies, but that’s their business. They’re good people and I don’t judge them. There are even occasions on which I have been known to order decaf, namely, after dinner on a school night with dessert. Tiramisu without coffee is crime against nature, and if I know I need to get sleep shortly after leaving a restaurant I will order decaf, as long as I know that it has been made from what were once decent beans.

With bad coffee, though, there is no point to decaf. Bad coffee already tastes out of tune. The one real perk is the jolt of wakefulness and the way it can sometimes evoke decent coffee. Bad decaf, though, is just . . . bad. When Jesus looks down from heaven and sees His children drinking decaf coffee, He cries. He did not die on the cross so that sinners could drink decaffeinated Folgers. He wanted us to enjoy his Father’s blessings. Do you know how hard it is to hold a tissue to dry your Holy Tears when you have big, gaping holes in your hands? DO YOU?

Whatever. I don’t care what other people choose to put into their bodies. Their diets of canned peas and stale Krispy Kremes are none of my affair. But the first time I figure out that the reason I’m falling asleep at my desk because I accidentally drank decaf I’m replacing it with Euro Roast cut with methamphetamine.

Lovin' the Late Shift

It is 7:30, and I am beginning to believe there is a very real possibility I might die at work.

"Why," you might think to yourself, "Katie must be so relieved! She's been so bored at work for months! Surely, she must at least feel relieved that she's needed; that she's accomplishing something!"

No. But thank you for playing.

I'm sitting at Corporate Happy Fun job with a headset perched on my ear in the extremely unlikely event that we're going to get a phone call between now and 8:15 CST. How unlikely, you ask? Well, about as likely as me one day explaining String Theory. To a chimpanzee. With a lobotomy.

Considering the monumental waste of time this is, I'm not that incredibly upset about it. At this point, my entire experience of Corporate Happy Fun America has been one of unmitigated human folly; I have ceased to expect anything better. I knew that the occasional late evening shift was part and parcel of this particular job, so I really shouldn't complain.

BUT . . .

My fellow late-shift suckers have, at least in theory, the possibility of being in some way useful. Plus, as an added bonus, they make a fuck of a lot more money than I do. Which means that they should have to sit here, and I should get to go home and take of this stupid bra. 7:40 is too late on a Monday to have to wear a bra, I think.

Instead, I'll just sit here for another 34 minutes and think about what I want for dinner. I think that cheese will figure prominently.

The Best Hangover Ever

I have the best boyfriend in the world, perhaps the best boyfriend in the long and storied history of boyfriends. If my boyfriend were a car, he would start reliably, get 300 miles to the gallon, and vacuum his own floor mats.

Why, you ask, am I waxing so fond of the boy?

Because he took me out and he got me really drunk.

After days of feeling ineffectual and useless at work and random other bummers that made me want nothing so much as to take to my bed, Jason decided that he was taking me out for drinks. Nothing fancy, just he and I and our friends in a bar.

It was glorious. Hours of gin and tonic and conversation about things that had nothing, NOTHING to do with Corporate Happy Fun Job: writing, art, the dispensing of romantic advice. For the first time in days I feel as though the wrinkles in my cortex are not filled with dryer lint. I enjoyed people! Wit! There was actual laughter, instead of wizened and bitter chuckles.

Plus, if last night’s company and cocktails wasn’t enough, as an added bonus today I just. Don’t. Care. I am exploring new and unplumbed depths of professional indifference. Right now, this instant, I truly believe that I’m earning every penny of my paltry fucking salary by holding my chair in place. My god. This is absolutely brilliant.

Not Cranky

Last night, through a liberal mix of alcohol and venting, I managed to work through my excess of vitriol and nastiness. After sleeping in a bit this morning, I woke to find my mood had lightened immeasurably and that I no longer derived a low-grade physical excitement from the mere thought of throwing canned goods at the heads of bosses, co-workers, and other drivers. Crisis averted. I don’t really know what all contributed to yesterday’s exceeding pissed-offedness, a combination of things, I suppose.

One factor, I’m sure, is that it has been unremittingly hot and miserable. It’s so unpleasant that going outside for anything but traversing the distance between one air-conditioned location and another is out of the question. Further exacerbating my sense of heat related isolation is the fact that I’ve been relatively broke. Normally when I’m poor I can walk the dog or something to get out of the house for an hour or so. Yeah. That’s so not happening. Right now the dogs are lucky I’m willing to open the door long enough to let them out; the thought of taking Bennet for walkies is patently absurd.

I know the hot weather will most likely come to an end sooner rather than later. August is the time of summer when it seems like the warm and green will stretch on forever, a never ending cycle of long, hot days and humid nights filled with the songs of crickets and cicadas and white noise of air-conditioners. The fact is, though, that summer will soon exhaust itself and give way to fall.

Indeed, most of the kids around here are already back in school. Somehow that just seems wrong to me, to have kids return so early and cut them off from the glories of going to the pool and sleeping in and staying up late. It seems strange to drag kids into the classroom before we’ve even had the whisper of a promise of the autumn. Even though I understand the reasoning behind it, the thought of being 16 and staring at homework instead of lying in my friend’s hammock and staring up at the sky kind of breaks my heart a little.

Cranky

Due to a lack of Tanqueray and a simultaneous lack of funds, I find myself at home pursing an affair with my first true love. Vodka.

I have had one of those days where I found myself unable to suppress or ignore the irritants endemic to being a pink collar wage slave. Instead, every typical and minor annoyance made me want to heave my coffee mug at the wall. To be graphic, today was like a yeast infection when you’re taking antibiotics. It was hugely unpleasant and annoying, and it was caused by the normal course of things being all fucked up.

Behold, a brief overview of the things that made me crankier than usual. I apologize for any misspellings or grammatical foibles; I’m busy trying to get a tad tipsy.

1. I would like someone to explain to me why it is that men in offices cannot make coffee. I mean, I know they’re busy making more money and exercising their throbbing male privilege, but give me a fucking break. If I come into work one more time to find a swallow of coffee cooking down into a post-industrial sludge in each of three damn-near empty coffee pots, I’m going to brew a pot using my own urine to serve the slugs in my office.

2. I’m tired of people acting cartarded. You know what I mean, any cocksmack who gets behind the wheel of a vehicle and immediately loses the ability to behave like anything but a fucking douche. You know, like the moron who couldn’t manage to get the ass end of his ginormous piece of dysfunctional Detroit shit out of my way so that I could merge. Fuck you. Fuck your little kid pissing on a Chevy symbol. Can you not see that I need to go home and get a drink? Can not the world see that?

3. Having read/seen a recent spate of stories regarding women who were sexually assaulted and subsequently screwed by the system, I’m left to the conclusion that the only logical course of action for someone who is raped is to kill her fucking attacker—that will at least be something like justice. Apparently, when being screwed against one’s own will, once just isn’t enough.

4. Fuck a bunch of St. Louis summer. 103? Can we just cry “uncle” and be done with it? Damn . . .

Post-Wedding Guest Wrapup

As expected, this past weekend’s wedding was quite nice. The bride and groom seemed appropriately smitten with one another. The groom’s mother, who has a bit of the control freak about her, managed not to stroke out. At no point did it look like the bride was about ready to kill herself or someone else, which at this jaded point in my life indicates to me that the wedding went off without any significant hitch. Either that or she had the forethought to partake of Lord Xanax, in which case she is a woman who is wise to the world and an excellent choice for a life’s companion.

The only exception I can take with the wedding was that there was a bit too much Jesus Cum-By-Yah shit for my liking. The minister/pastor/preacher/whatever was a brother-in-law to the bride. He seemed a nice enough fellow, if you ignore the excessive clean-cuttedness of his appearance, but for the love of a non-denominational god, I was left wondering if he had just learned the word “covenant” and felt compelled to use it in sentences so that he would not forget it. I’m not sure, but by the time all was said and done I think that all the guests might have been entered into a covenant with him, Cum-By-Yah Christ, the Holy Ghost, and perhaps the neighbors and the local mental health organization.

I for one have little tolerance for organized religion in general, and evangelical organized religion in particular. Although I am genetically Catholic (none of the faith, all of the guilt!), I refuse to partake in any religion that finds women to be unfit vessels for the word of god. If one accepts that Jesus was the son of god born to a virgin mother, then one accepts that a loving human mother allowed her son to suffer and die for the sins of all mankind. That counts as a pretty big sacrifice, methinks, and apparently indicates that god thought a woman was a fit enough vessel to bring his word to us. Otherwise, would god not have just sent Jesus, or built him out of sticks or something? And I’m having none of that original sin bullshit, either. I decline to believe that the stupid are god’s chosen.

Frankly, I don’t buy any of the major articles of Christian faith except that Jesus was a swell fellow with some pretty good ideas. I have been known to chat with Mary from time to time, but that has more with the limitations of my own ability to cope with reality than actual faith.

Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging, already in progress.

There were in attendance any number of people with whom I went to high school. All but one either ignored me or didn’t recognize me. I’m guessing the former because, well, I don’t really look that different. Frankly, I don’t care so very much because my butt was smaller than that of their wives. I try to pretty up that fact however I like, but I’m not one for lying. In the river of any life, are there not shallow patches? Yea, verily.

The romantic history of the bride and groom was sweet and poignant and all kind of Lifetime Movie Network. As I was departing, I had a chat with the groom’s mom, who summed it all up, “He’s loved her forever.”

Well, that’s something, isn’t it?

But not everything. In the end the test isn’t the love he’s had for in the past, it’s the love that he has for her tomorrow and 10 years from now and beyond. That’s what a marriage is, isn’t it? The decision to love someone today despite the occasional desire to strangle him or her?

Bleh. Enough with the mush. We will endeavor shortly to return to our regular schedule of complaints, rants, and wild speculations.

Saturday Plans

When I don’t have to go to pink collar wage slave job #2, my Saturdays generally consist of sleeping in, followed by perhaps brunch with the boy and some sort of effort to extricate my house from borderline chaos and filth with which I seem destined to surround myself. The evenings often involve friends and dinners or bars, again assuming that I am not working.

This Saturday, though, an old friend of the family is getting married. Our parents have been friends since they were in high school, and our mothers were pregnant with us at the same time. Our families have shared countless barbecues and midwinter parties, and some of my fondest memories of early childhood involve playing with Paul.

Perhaps, if she seems a laughing sort, I will tell his bride how Paulie and I used to play Star Wars in a blue plastic pool in his backyard, or how every summer he seemed to have a ready supply of box turtles. If I get really drunk, I might be prevailed upon to relate my earliest memory of the dashing groom, that is, him pitching a howling fit because the cold butter had torn a hole in his bread at the local pizza place. Although that last might be a story I just save for the other people who went to high school with us.

As Paul and I grew up, we found that we had fewer and fewer interests in common. When we went to high school together we were certainly friendly, but in the distant, nod to one another in the hallway kind of way. Now as adults, we see one another for major events but not much else. Still though, I am very happy for him and his family, and I’m looking forward to meeting his new wife and to hearing about their excitement about their new life.

I like weddings as a general rule, as long as the other guests don’t devote overmuch time to conversing with my cleavage. There is something life-affirming about the human willingness to fly in the face of evident futility and accumulated knowledge and promise lifelong devotion to another. It warms my chill little heart to see people behave with so much hope and so little reason.

That said, though, today a quick little wave of dread washed over me as it occurred to me that this wedding will be widely attended by people who attended my embarkation of my matrimonial Titanic’s maiden voyage just over six years ago. I have seen all these people since I’ve been divorced; it’s not like it will be news to anyone. Hell, most of these people have known me my whole life and probably weren’t surprised that another human being was unable to tolerate my constant companionship.

I feel kind of like a tart who spent a bunch of money to stand in front of a bunch of people with a fistful of flowers and a mouth full of lies. Even though I know that no one but me gives a fleeting fuck about any of this, the fact remains that I do. I sort of feel like I should wear an inappropriate evening gown and my whore-red lipstick to this shindig.

You know what though? I sort of think I should feel this way. Not in some sort of self-loathing-I-deserve-to-be-punished-and-suffer-way, but more that I think it’s important to have learned from that mistake. If it didn’t hurt a little, then wouldn’t that mean that I didn’t, at the very least, mean the words I said at the time that I said them? Even though that marriage was a mistake, and I suspected so at the time, I can at least say that I leaned into the traces and tried to haul that miserable fucker out of the sucking mud of failure.

It should hurt when you break promises, even if they were the wrong promises to make.

This little pang will pass. Tomorrow will be lovely, I’m certain. Perhaps if I’m lucky there will be good music and The Boy will honor me with a dance. That would be a good thing.

Extreme Elimination Challenge: Outdoor Edition

You know what this day needs? A beach. A cabaña boy. Piña coladas. A nice big umbrella so that The Boy can hang out with me and not be killed by the sun, as he comes from a long lineage of cloud-loving people.

Alas, no. There will be none of that. There will only be Monday and boredom, two great tastes that go great together.

I should not complain, I guess, as I had a lovely and relaxing weekend. Between pink-collar-wage-slave jobs one and two, it had been some weeks since I had had a day off. Considering I’m a generally unpleasant person at the best of times, this was doing nothing for my personality. This weekend, though, I took Saturday and Sunday off for a non-camping and float trip.

I’m not proud of it, but I don’t camp. I just don’t. If there is a hell and I wind up there, after a hard millennium of having my flesh flayed from my body by cruel demons, I expect the only vacation available to me will be camping. I like looking at stars and trees and various other representatives from this, our natural world, but I care little for being eaten alive by mosquitoes or peeing in the woods.

The whole not liking to pee in the woods thing totally horrifies my mother. She took my divorce like a champ. The fact that I remain childless doesn’t make her bat an eye. My economic insecurity is just par for the course. But my reluctance to pee while leaning precariously against what may or may not be a poisonous plant? That’s indicative of some sort of maternal failure on her part.

Further, I don’t cope especially well with the great outdoors. I love it in principle, not so much in practice. Any woman whose reaction to the unexpected out of doors is to yell “Nature! Nature! Nature!” while flailing is NOT someone who much needs to be out in the wild.

My other objection to camping is one that is endemic to being a St. Louisan, that is, most of our camping is done at one of several campsites within two hours of the Lou. These campsites are, often, absolutely infested with the trashiest of white trash one can imagine. Anyone who has ever had the misfortune of waking up at Bass River Resort can back me up on the following statement: long-term human inbreeding should be discouraged. While the occasional marriage between first cousins might not be the end of the world, over generations it should be discouraged.

My initial adult experience of camping took place under such unfavorable and frightening circumstances about 5 years ago. By the end of that weekend there was literally no one in a one mile radius of me that I would not have willingly killed with perfect glee. Although my hatred of the people who dragged me into that doomed and fetid pit eventually passed, my disdain for camping remains to this day.

This weekend, obviously, was very different. First of all, I have a much better class of friends at 30 than I did at 25. It’s been a busy five years, what can I say? Second of all, this trip did not involve any of the major commercial camping killing fields so popular among Those Whose Family Trees Have No Branches. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, my significant other on this trip is not a total fuckwit. There is nothing more exhausting than having to worry about the idiocy of someone with whom you are involved. Since The Boy is a pretty stellar traveling companion and all-around thoughtful guy, it took a lot of the dread out of the situation.

This weekend was a camping/float trip in belated celebration of The Roommate’s birthday. Because she is a thoughtful type, she ensured that I had a place to stay that involved window screens and, more importantly, indoor plumbing. Consequently, I got to enjoy much great company and a moderate amount of intoxication in a lovely natural setting with very little of the actual “nature” getting on me.

Overall, I would count the weekend a success. There was a wardrobe malfunction—the hook that holds the swimming suit top in place finally suffered a failure of structural integrity, snapping in two while paddling the canoe. Hysterics ensured, and fortunately my friend had a very brave little safety pin who managed to keep the girls in check for the remainder of the trip, surviving even the trip on the rope swing.

An Open Letter to Johnson and Johnson, et al

Dear Deodorant Manufacturers,

I know that in your quest to corner an ever-larger share of the antiperspirant market, you feel that you must always come out with a new and better product. As you pursue research and development in the service of this, our laissez-faire economic system, please bear in mind the following: as you attempt to impress me with ever-more interesting deodorant choices, my basic needs have not changed.

To wit, I need not to smell like an armpit.

Further, not only do I prefer not to “pit out” as they say, I prefer for my armpits to carry no noticeable fragrance of any kind. No lilies, no pears, no vanilla, no rain, ocean, jasmine, violet, ginger, spicy Italian sausage, or whatever other fragrance experiment might be floating around in a test-tube in your R&D lab.

When I shop for an antiperspirant, I am seeking the most easily ignorable product I can find. I want innocuous. I want unimposing. When my boyfriend asks about the unique and beguiling scent I am wearing, I want him to be referring to my perfume. Not the oily goo that I swipe across my stubbly armpit every morning.

In case your market research has failed in some gross way, allow me to elucidate something for you. The purchasers of women’s antiperspirants are, by and large, women. Most women are in possession of countless gels, lotions, creams, sprays, and powders that can and do assist us in smelling like anything hitherto encountered on this or any other planet. There is nothing that you can bring to this party that I want.

Now, I understand that there might be any number of women out there who enjoy the wide-variety of scents available on today’s antiperspirant market; far be it from me to stand between their armpits and life’s scent smorgasbord. All I ask is that when I stop into Target at lunch time to stock up, I can easily acquire a deodorant that neither possesses its own distinct aroma nor leaves giant, chalky marks on my clothes.

If it must smell like something, make it something subtle and forgettable. Powder scent will do in a pinch.

Yours sincerely,
Etc, etc, etc.

Feeding Frenzy

It is GO LIVE week at Corporate Happy Fun Job. GO LIVE is a very big deal, much fanfare and brouhaha surrounding our stage-one roll-out. Various systems people are wandering hither and yon discovering what we’ve known all along, that is, that this software is about as nice as an economy tub of lube mixed liberally with sand.

In an effort to simultaneously celebrate our GO LIVE and suborn the rebellion in the hearts of the employees, they have been feeding us with in an inch our lives. Today? Cheesecake contest. And cotton candy, sno-cones, and a popcorn machine. The sugar and fat is making us compliant.

I figure if we can’t make this Corporate Happy Fun project work, they are going to cut up the staff and market us as fois gras. Genius, really.

The upshot of this ongoing feeding frenzy is that I have spent the entire day covered in foodstuffs. Cotton candy leavings; coffee that managed to dribble onto my shirt beneath my boobs where I couldn’t see it until I went to the ladies. Fuckall knows what else. On top of last nights unfortunate yard tumble, I am forced to conclude that I am having one of those weeks.

Stoop 1, Kate 0

I just fell down on my own front stoop.

I wasn't drunk; hell, I wish I was drunk because that would be immeasurably less pathetic. No. Not drunk. Just me, though and through.

I took out the trash, and coming back in I put my foot on the stoop to step up; my foot slipped off; and I crashed to the ground. Thank god the neighbors didn't see me because between the state of my yard and my occasional fits thrown at the sight of Bennet's latest victim they undoubtedly already believe I'm a crank-addled lunatic. It's not even dark yet, I'm just a fucking klutz.

You know what? It hurts A LOT more to fall down at 30 then it did when I was a kid. I should know. I fell down a lot.

I still do.

Some days I'm really fucking tired of the whole me-ness of being me, you know?

On Anger

A few weeks ago, I was talking to a friend of mine at a party when he mentioned that he liked my blog. I was reasonably flattered, as I have assumed right along that in general the only people who would read it are those that have to, such as The Boy and The Liquor Fairy, and the occasional stalker who finds it by accident while trolling for victims. Also, I quite enjoy his meandering vitriol, which means that I count him in the .02% or so of the population whose opinions I don’t dismiss out of hand.

As we chatted, he mentioned that one of the things he liked about my blog is the fact that I’m so “angry.”

Hmm.

Even though I knew he meant it in a good way, my first response was to dispute that fact. “I’m not angry,” I protested, “I’m . . . not . . . I’m a pleasant person. I’m NICE.”

Who the fuck do I think I’m kidding? I’m not nice, I’m polite, and sometimes I can’t even manage that convincingly. Hell, I don’t even want to be nice. In fact, I am pretty angry. I’m not joyless or bitter about it, but I spend a decent amount of time in a state of low-grade rage.

Why? Well, god. There are just so many reasons.

I have been pissed about President Halfwit since the word go. I am pissed that he was elected the first time, and I’m REALLY pissed that he was elected again. He’s a fucking idiot of the first order, and I’m beginning to suspect he might be batshit crazy to boot. Do not even get me started on the rest of monsters in his administration.

I am tired of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights being read like lists of suggestions.

Speaking of the Bush administration, I remain pissed off at Ralph Nader. I will always be pissed off at Nader. If Nader’s teeth were on fire, I would not piss in his mouth. I will always, ALWAYS blame Nader for Bush. Every dead soldier in Iraq? Nader’s fault. As soon as the first woman dies after Roe v. Wade is completely gutted by those bastards on the Supreme Court, I’m sending him the picture of her bloodied corpse (which I feel certain will appear in the local paper or online). If he’s dead by then I’m taking it to his grave. I love a futile gesture as much as the next girl, truly I do. There is, however, a line between making a noble but futile gesture and being a megalomaniacal asshole.

While we’re on the subject of dead women, I’m sick of being a second class citizen. I am angry that we cannot manage to treat the decision to have a child as though it were anything but a flippant decision on par with picking a fucking handbag; one that is the exclusive province and problem of women. I’m angry that after all this time, people still talk to my boobs. I’m tired of a lot of things having to do with being a chick. I am sick of “women’s issues” being somehow different and inferior from regular “issues.” Hell, I’m mad that my first reaction upon being told that I’m angry was to insist that I’m not. I should be angry—I’m not stupid. My first reaction should not be to feel bad about that.

BUT, I have it lucky. No burqa. No child marriage. No dowry. I can leave my house. See a doctor. Go to school. I might be cranked about some of the bullshit that goes on in this country attendant on my having a uterus that goes on in this country, but at least I’m here. At least I don’t have a target on me, or a very low price on my head. At least I usually don’t feel expendable.

I am angry about reality television.

I am angry people who don’t have enough sense not to, at the very least, vote against their own best interest. Do you come from a LOT of money, preferably OLD money? No? Then why. The Fuck. Would you ever. EVER. Vote Republican? You stupid ‘git.

I am angry about those stupid health care personal savings accounts folks keep bandying on about it. The whole proposition of “People will choose more wisely if they are spending their own money,” is asinine. Yeah. I just randomly SPEND healthcare dollars. I go to the doctor because I love waiting and old magazines. I take birth control for shits and giggles, not because I don’t want to have a kid I can’t afford to feed. And when the time comes I need a mammogram? It will just be because I want to have my boobs mashed. Are there people who over-utilize healthcare resources? Sure, but most don’t. Most avoid the doctor unless they need to go, either for illness or for a checkup to prevent illness. Since most people don’t like waiting, co-pays, or needles, most people partake as little as possible in the healthcare system.

You know what will happen when people are forced to pay cash for their own healthcare, without assistance from insurance? Lots and lots of dying, punctuated with gangrene and tumors the size of grapefruits.

And finally (for now), I am angry that so many people don’t recognize the difference between “everyday” and “every day.”

Good Morning, Marmot

On my way to work in the mornings I pass by what I think must truly be one of the ugliest corners in North St. Louis County. A swath of brown, weedy grass to the right of the highway exit runs up to a rusted chain link fence. Beyond that is a patchy parking lot in front of a singularly unattractive building supply warehouse. Beyond that? A Waffle House, a Super 8 Motel, and some other unfortunate NoTell Motel.

The fact is, though, this particular ugly is more than the sum of its parts. Ever been to a crummy dive saloon and see some drunk dude down at the end of the bar with a bad case of summer teeth and B.O. who insists on telling unsuspecting neighbors his sad fucking life story; a story made all the more sad by the fact that all of his problems were largely of his own making? This street corner is that guy.

Or, it was. A few weeks ago I noticed some creature standing in the patch of grass. At first I thought perhaps I was seeing things and that it was time to stop drinking cheap gin, but no. My mom takes that same exit to get to work, and she had seen it, too. We even saw it together when we carpooled for a week.

I have seen him several times. Generally, the wee brown beastie stands majestically, if squatly, with his back turned dismissively on traffic. Instead, he surveys his vast domain—the weedy patch of grass—with a proprietary air. He is, it seems, busy. He cannot be bothered with us stupid humans and our stupid cars. He has all this ground that needs looking after.

After several days of wild and fruitless speculation as to the nature of the beastie (“Is it a beaver?” “It can’t be a beaver, can it?” “What do I know from beavers?”), it was finally determined that this particular critter is a groundhog. We think.

You know what, though? I don’t even care. On the mornings when I exit the highway and I see the fat little thing hanging out in the weed patch, it completely makes my morning. More even then coffee. Today was exceptional, as there was not one but TWO groundhogs doing that which groundhogs do. One was ignoring traffic, while its little friend waddled about in the background hunting for food or breaking in new shoes or whatever it is groundhogs do in the morning.

Good morning, marmot. It’s going to be a good day.

Kate Does Nothing Day

Last night, the woman at the grocery store didn’t recognize my eggplant. In a world of foodstuffs, I would have thought that the distinctly purple eggplant would have stood out. I was, it seems, wrong. She also mistook my cilantro for spinach, en error that I can’t even follow because one, the only thing they have in common is being green and two, the checker had just rung up the spinach that I did in fact buy. The spinach was easily distinguished by the large, white lettering that read “Spinach” across the front.

I then went home to make a meal for The Boy and me. Black bean burritos with fresh pico de gallo. This was meal was followed by a carbohydrate coma so profound that I wound up having to hide the pillow on which I dozed off because it was so sodden with my own drool. That’s the last time I add rohypnol to my black beans.

After our nap, we took Bennet for a walk. Bennet spent most of her time trying to trip and/or drag me while The Boy and I spent most of the stroll discussing the possibility for a series of children’s books featuring Bennet and my other beasties. Some titles:

Bennet and the Short Bus to Obedience School
Bennet and the Rolled-Up Newspaper
Bennet and the Remote-Control Shock Collar
Jack Does Nothing Day
Bella Destroys the World

and my personal favorite

Bennet Goes to the Korean Deli

Yes. I fully expect to go to hell. That’s okay, though, because my work life of late has done a fine job of preparing me for an eternity of suffering.

The details of the disaster are irrelevant, but I will paint a quick picture in broad strokes. I took a promotion for the opportunity to start up a new corporate department in a brand new facility. Our computer system is notable not only for the things it does not do well, but also for the things it does not do at all. I have spent the past seven weeks either doing nothing, doing nothing and pretending to do something, or testing the worthless software.

I finally realized yesterday that it will require a miracle, a-hand-to-god-Gabriel-on-a-shaft-of-golden-fucking-light-comes-down-from-heaven-and-saves-our-asses-miracle, for this project to do anything but disappoint and frustrate for the first year or so. After that, ho knows? It might just be too late. I am at peace with it, though. I keep up my corporate charade, then I go home and complain to my wonderful boyfriend and drink myself into a stupor. Thus does time pass.

Adding insult to injury, though, today we have corporate muckety mucks come in. I suppose that this is to re-emphasize to us, the peons, the importance of lying to people outside the building. Fine. Something different at least.

Through it all, though, I’m going to keep a smile on my face by imagining the following exchange:

Muckety Muck: “So, how do you feel about being here at Exciting Corporate Startup?”
Me: “I wish my mother had aborted me.”

They Don't Like You, Either

So Friday night, I went with The Boy to his younger brother’s wedding reception. The wedding proper had taken place 10 days earlier in Jamaica. The reception was a reception. The bride and groom were good enough to trot out their wedding finery for us—they looked lovely. There was food and dancing and, best of all, little girls in fluffy dresses who were all twirly-whirly as little girls at weddings ought to be.

And, like any wedding, there were representatives from the contingent of People Who Were Raised by Coyotes.

I am constantly amazed at people’s inability to comport themselves appropriately. It’s not about knowing which fork to use, it’s about knowing that one ought to make sure that one’s thong isn’t showing before one leaves to go to a wedding. And men? You haven’t been forgotten, this one’s for you. It also means that one ought not to converse with a woman’s chest.

Not one, but two men preferred to carry on their conversations with my tits than with me. They were not subtle, quite the opposite, in fact. Indeed, they drew attention to their admiration of my breasts through their conversation. Not that I could follow what they were saying, forced as I was to watch the top of their heads as they gazed longingly into my cleavage.

What planet are these men from, where apparently there are no breasts? They reacted as though they had never seen anything like it.

I, literally, could not think to do. On one hand, I wanted to embarrass and shame these men. Why would they so obviously impose themselves and their sticky, yellowed eyeballs on me? Whatever would make them think that would be okay. On the other hand, though, I was not raised by lichen. I could not bring myself to risk a scene at another woman’s long-awaited wedding reception.

Besides which, what can you really do to affect someone who would act that way? Mace his ass? I’m at a loss.

On Daughters

So, a few weeks ago, one of the men I work with took the morning off to go with his pregnant wife to her ultrasound appointment. It was the big one—the one that let them know what flavor of baby they were expecting. When he came it, he was all atwitter with having seen his gilled little offspring swishing around in his watery, temporary home.

No, I’m not using the universal masculine here. The happy couple will be welcoming a bouncing baby boy in some few months, he will be their second. My co-worker was surprised, as he and his wife were both convinced that this baby was a girl. That doesn’t surprise me. I suppose when a woman finds herself playing host to the most perfect of strangers, an unknown so complete that the first indication of its presence is a pee-soaked stick, there is a certain desire to ascribe some sort of trait to it; to give the growing bump some sort of identifiable characteristics.

As Co-worker was discussing this unanticipated penis-enhanced state of affairs, he mentioned that he wasn’t disappointed. He was, in fact, relieved. Relieved that he would not have to worry about fathering a girl; relieved that he would endure fewer sleepless nights and headaches. Relieved because boys are easier.

*sigh*

Now, I feel confident that if Co-worker were in fact expecting a girl, he would still eagerly anticipate the arrival of the little hitchhiker and then devote his life to doing everything he could to make sure she turned out happy and healthy and whatever else it is that parents want for their offspring.

I also feel confident that Co-worker gave little if any thought to what he was saying. Hell, the vast majority of people never give thought one to the trite drivel that spills from their mouths. In his mind, I’m sure that he thinks it’s an accepted truth—girls require more work and worry.

I was vaguely insulted.

No. Not drag someone down to HR insulted. I wasn’t even sufficiently annoyed to point out to him the stupidity I perceived in his statement. Instead, I just thought to myself, “Damn. Do men think we’re made of spun glass or something? What could possibly be so much more difficult about helping one’s daughter become a functioning adult?” I also wondered if he realized he’d discussed the difficulty of girls in front of several women. Women who, by definition, used to be girls.

Like so many things, though, the whole thing became crystal fucking clear once I spent some time really paying attention.

Later that same week, many of us went to a Happy Hour to celebrate the monumental career mistake we all made by entering this particular job. Okay, that was the reason I was there and I won’t speak for anyone else. Whatever, doesn’t matter.

So anyway, there is a group of us sitting around the table. A woman with whom I work brought her husband along, and he was discussing his 17-year-old from a prior relationship. A different male co-worker (CW2) mentioned his own teenager.

As a matter of getting a acquainted, the Husband and CW2 sorted out the genders of their respective high-schoolers. Husband has a daughter, CW2 has a son. CW2 sort of laughed at the plight of Husband, pointing at him and saying “I don’t have to worry about mine. You do.” Husband communicated his agreement with the statement through his chagrined chuckling.

Schmuck.

So. This is all more of the “I am a guy/I used to be a teenaged boy, so I know how they think.” Apparently, because boys and men are lust-filled nincompoops, girls are harder to raise.

What. The fuck. Ever.

I will give CW2 the benefit of the doubt and assume that he has done what he can to teach his sons to treat girls and women with respect; that he has not in fact raised some little monster who after a few keg-stands will require a knee to the groin to take no for an answer. Rather, I assume that he just assume that it is the natural order of things that men are the hunters and women are the hunted.

Clearly, this dude has never seen me on my game.

Once I began spending time with men who could reliably identify and locate the clitoris, I was every bit as sexual as any man my age. While I will not argue that I always made the wisest decisions where men were concerned, I did always *decide*. No one ever “talked me into” sex. Frankly, I’ve yet to meet anyone that clever. Have men lied to me to get me into bed? I suppose so, once or twice I maybe even allowed myself to fall for it. Women do the same dishonorable shit, though, so this whole predator/prey mindset rings hollow.

I don’t want to hear about the catty nastiness of teenaged girls, either. Yes. Many, if not most, teenaged girls have a terrible streak of interpersonal nastiness. However, as I recall, the teenaged boys weren’t measurably better. They’re cruelty just took on a different form. Believe me, as someone who was homely and bookish in my early teens I got an up close and personal experience with the myriad varieties of teen cruelty.

The one thing I will give fathers (and mothers) is that their daughters are at much greater risk of being the victims of violence. Domestic violence; rape; murder, the trifecta of parental horrors and sleepless nights. All of these are much more likely to happen to daughters than to sons.

The solution to this problem, though, is not to welcome daughters with apprehension. Indeed, treating your little girl as though she’s made of fluff pretty much guarantees she’s going to be. If you treat them as reasonable and intelligent creatures, they’re likely to behave as such.

The other solution, obviously, is that parents to need to wake up and smell the 21st fucking century and stop this whole “boys will be boys and I don’t have to worry about my son” attitude. Maybe if parents of boys devoted a modicum of fucking effort to raising civilized human beings, the parents of girls could unload part of the burden of guaranteeing the next generation was not made up of uncivilized knuckle-draggers.

Extreme Elimination Challenge: Michael Vick Edition

I am not a sports fan. This won’t come as a shock to anyone who has ever talked to me for more than 15 minutes. I like to go to Busch Stadium once a summer or so to watch the Cards play, but that is mostly an excuse to drink beer and eat nachos. Hockey games are fun, but not worth the effort to actually procure my own tickets. Football bores me witless, although now that I’ve been divorced for a couple of years I no longer have an active antipathy to the game. On a boredom scale from 1 to 10, with a 10 being a 15 minute orgasm and 1 being a typical workday here lately, a conversation about sports rates about a 2 or a 2 ½. If I’m lucky.

So, the fact that I’m also going to wade into this whole Michael Vick thing really says something. It says, “I am sick of sports assholes.”

Having read the indictment, I would very much like for some enterprising reporter to figure out where the man was at the times alleged; I wouldn’t mind giving Vick the benefit of the doubt, assuming of course there is any doubt from which to benefit. I would hate to overstate myself or oversimplify the situation.

The fact is, though, I don’t much give a rat’s ass if he was actively involved in dog fighting or not, although the evidence in the indictment seems to point to the fact that he was far more than a passive dipshit who let his cousin freeload on his property. Best case scenario? Michael Vick is negligently stupid, buying property for a shitbum cousin and then failing to do anything to make sure said shitbum didn’t commit any felonies while crashing there. You know what? As a landlord, I feel that one does have some responsibility to make sure that one’s tenants don’t turn one’s property into a meth lab or a whorehouse or a dog fighting kennel.

I don’t know if Vick was legally responsible to make sure that the bruised fruit from his family tree wasn’t engaged in various and sundry illegal activities on his compound in the sticks, but he was morally obligated to do so. It’s not like the cousin was found with a bong full of weed in the kitchen, or even a patch of weed out in the woods (neither of which would even make me bat an eye). Nope. He was found with a farm full of fighting dogs. Unlike, say, a patch of weed out in the woods, dogs make noise. They smell. They do dog things. If anyone ever visited the property, he or she would have to know there were many, many dogs there. The rest would not require Mensa level reasoning to figure out.

I assume Michael Vick isn’t retarded. I assume he’s just a bastard.

I would like nothing more than to see him kicked off the Falcons and bounced out of pro-football. He doesn’t deserve it. I don’t look at it as holding him to a higher standard because if one my Corporate Comrades was similarly worthless, I wouldn’t want to work with him, either. Of course, should my Corporate Comrades do something stupid, I feel certain the powers that be would be unable to suspend or fire him unless he was convicted of an actual crime. Just being a careless, callous cocksmack does not bar one from employment in corporate America.

The National Football League has different rules, though. They can suspend and dismiss their players for their behavior. Even if Vick were not ACTIVELY engaged in dog fighting (a claim which I don’t buy because my brain has not been replaced with paper bags and hairballs), his behavior was so outrageously negligent that it hardly bears thinking about.

Why doesn’t the NFL and their pro-league brethren, I dunno, make it a policy that players facing felony indictments are suspended pending trial? If they are exonerated, let them come back. Convicted? Pack up your cleats, son. Enjoy your life. For the bajillion dollars these dudes get paid to run, sweat, lift, and engage their god-given talents to chase balls around, it’s not to much to ask that they keep their questionably criminal behavior under control for the decade or so they get to play.

Sounds like a fucking plan to me. It's just another form of asshole tax.

A Whole New Lease On Life

I have had a stupid day.

I sat at work, all day, while two 12-year-olds from the central office attempted to assist us with our supremely worthless computer system. Although it is now clear to me that this toad was foisted on them in much the same manner it has been on us, the unsuspecting end users, five hours talking about all this shit these cheerleaders don't know made me want to chew glass.

World news is unremittingly bad. Iraq is becoming an inescapable monster to which we feed American soldiers and Iraqis alike. Our fearless leader continues to be a halfwit. On the way home from work today I heard that Alberto Gonzales began his illustrious career misleading Senators all the way back in April of 2005 when he told them that, "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse," despite the fact that he was in receipt of reports of at least six.

Maybe he wasn't lying. Maybe he's just illiterate. Hey, it happens. Just look at President Retread.

It's hot. It's humid. I am fucking sick nigh unto weeping of home improvement projects. I'm tired. I'm crabby. I don't think my meds are working.

Just when I was about ready to say fuck it all, I visited The Liquor Fairy's site, which led me here, which lead me to this absolute gem of a message board post:

I am really excited to have this product over the counter. I was in the clinical trials years ago and lost 40 lbs in 2 months. I kept it off for years until I got off my food plan and quit walking.

I can tell you that my first experience in trying to cheat on this pill was very embarrassing! I went out to eat Japanese stir fry and had my first "accident" - (shall we call it "Alli-opps" now?) before I could get home. I had uncontrollable oily seepage...It looks just like spagetti grease for those of you who are curious.

You cannot get it out of your clothes so I would encourge you to use a panty liner until you find out how you react to the medication. If you are sitting down, whatever you are sitting on will be stained. . so be careful.

On the other hand, if you stay on tract w/ your food plan (low fat) you will not have any problems...or at least I didn't. Occassional gas but I learned when I could pass it (on the toilet)!

Another tip - get a bottle of Grease Release and keep it next to the toilet so that you can spray the bowl after each bowel movement... gets rid of the grease line.

Bottom line. it is kind of like Antibuse for the alcoholic... if you don't eat too much fat you will be ok but if you do, you will pay w/ unpleasant side effects.

I LOVE IT!

I have a new fucking lease on life, hand to god. At the very least, I can have chips and dip for dinner and not have to worry about shoving a tampon up my ass and having to clean my toilet with degreaser. Things aren't so bad, after all.

We Can't Even Have Words

*sigh*

It’s official. I’ve reached the unfortunate conclusion that it is not a particularly good time to be a woman in America. I’m not sure if there has EVER been a good time to be a woman in America, frankly, but things seem to be taking rather a turn for the worst.

I no longer know why any of this surprises me. I suppose it is because I have made such a concerted effort not to surround myself with typical meatheads, nor do I spend time with misogynists (who can and do hail from both sexes). The downside of that, though, is that I tend to forget my vagina means that I will forever be a second class citizen.

In a fresh and interesting approach to insulting women everywhere, a judge in a Nebraska rape trial declared that no one in the courtroom could use any of the following words or phrases during the trial: rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, or sexual assault kit. This gag order not only applied to the lawyers, police, or experts in the case, but it also included the woman who states she was raped.

The defense, who asked for this linguistic somersaulting, feels that using words like “rape” implies guilt. They argue that allowing the woman to say “That man raped me,” will make the jury will be unable to rationally look at the evidence and decide if, in fact, that man did rape her.

So the logical conclusion is to require the woman to use the exact same words to describe non-consensual sex as one would describe consensual sex. Of course. That makes perfect sense.

I’ve had a decent amount of sex. Good, bad, and indifferent. I am fortunate in that I have not ever been raped. There but for the Grace of God go I. That said, I cannot imagine being required to describe a sex act in which I was unwilling participant in the same words I would describe sex that I wanted.

Words have meaning. Sex and rape are not the same things. Period. Never. Never. It is an insult to everyone everywhere to even suggest anything different. And that is what this judge’s ruling does. By insisting that this woman describe what she perceives as a physical assault in the same words she would use to describe a consensual act, the judge takes away her ability to accurately talk about the truth as she knows it. Suddenly, the words to describe what really happened to her just aren’t there.

And that, my friends, is seriously fucked up.

Of course, the judge should admonish the jury that what a witness says or how she says it does not constitute a legal conclusion. After all, you might have a random complete idiot sucking air in the jury box who doesn’t realize that a trial is meant to ferret out what really happened. To say that the lawyers and other professionals mustn’t actually use the word “rape” might not be horrifying. “Rape” is a word that carries an immense emotional charge—as it should—and what the cops and the doctors and fuckall knows who else in this situation need to convey can probably be communicated through more exact and less charged terms.

But to say that they can’t use the phrase “sexual assault” is absurd, and to say that the woman can’t describe what happened to her as she perceives it is preposterous and a continuation of a terrible and terrifying victimization. Further, the jury was not even told that the forbidden words were, in fact, forbidden. What must those people have thought as everyone including the complainant tap danced around every term that would reasonably be used to describe the incident they were all supposed to try? A normal person might guess that the woman was, alas, batshit crazy.

I do find myself asking if Judge Cocksmack would have reached this same legal conclusion had this not been a date rape. If this woman were, say, out jogging or selling fucking bible subscriptions, would he have taken her words right out of her mouth? Methinks not. What the fuck do I know, though? Maybe my
uterus is wandering.

Of course, this would never happen in a robbery or a homicide. Rape, though, happens primarily to women. So, what does it fucking matter anyway? I should just be grateful to be out of the kitchen.

Pedicure-a-palooza

I have, on more than one occasion, built an entire outfit around a pair of shoes. Today though, for perhaps the first time ever, I built an outfit around my toenails.

For some kind reason, my stepmom decided to she wanted to treat me to a pedicure. I don’t know from whence this impulse sprang. Not that she isn’t generally friendly and generous, but she never before expressed any interest in the state of my beauty regimen. Whatever. It was certainly nice of her, and for god’s sake, my feet were devolving into something most un-cute.

So the nice people a the local strip-mall-nail-hut deposited me into their whirly, bubbly, Sharper Image-esque chair and proceeded to bring my feet back from the brink. As and added treat, I got a bling-blingy flower on each of my big toes. Very tropical and fun and girly.

All this means that today I had to pick a pair of shoes that would allow me to show off my pretty pink piggies to their best advantage. Then, obviously, I had to choose an outfit that matches the shoes. The upshot of all this ridiculousness is that I’m having a cute outfit day.

The other perk is that the first time I ever saw the tropical big toe flower was at The Liquor Fairy’s bachelorette party when I met Anna the Squirrel Savior. As a result, toe flowers remind me of a hysterical drunken weekend in Vegas in the company of crazy, fantastic women. Who would have thought that toenails could bring such joy?

Plus, as an added bonus, the magic fingers chair has done marvelous things for my back.

***
I wrote the above draft longhand first, as I sat in a corporate training hell listening to someone describe, in excruciating detail, how to use the software for the phone. For over an hour. This after we had an hour-and-a-half worth of training two weeks ago about how the actual, physical phone worked. Could you ever have imagined such a thing was possible? Me neither. I can now, though. Learning it made me wish I had died in infancy.

You know you’re in corporate training hell when a blog entry about your fucking toenails seems like a reasonable alternative to actually paying attention.

Two Weeks, An Abbreviated History

While I suppose that interesting and/or good things have been happening in and around my world I have not, of late, been inclined to talk much about them.

So here, a condensed update and informative primer in this, my life.

Yardageddon was a tremendous success. My mother and I spent four hours trimming, cutting, shearing, lopping, salting, and spraying various plants into submission or death. I am impressed at the destruction we wrought in such a short time. Although the ivy lives still, it is much less enthusiastic than it has been and therefore a less favorable environment for mosquitoes and other things that want to bite me. Cheers!

Speaking of my mom, she and I managed to complete some pretty impressive work on her screened-in porch—especially when you factor in that we were more or less making it up as we went along. Although anyone who pauses to even consider me working with power tools would undoubtedly scurry away to hunt up appropriate items for first aid, I am pleased to say that no one was hurt. Who woulda thunk it?

In young puppy Bennet’s quest to drive me batshit crazy, there was a tragic incident involving a baby bird in the yard last week. I wonder, whatever do the neighbors think as I run around waving my arms and yelling? My pets and I, doing our part for natural selection.

I am still looking forward to the upcoming arrival of my roommate. Last night I completed my $20 closet project, again with the help of my incomparable mom. Yes. $20. Here’s what I came to realize. A closet rod is little more than a slightly fancy and shiny stick. I love fancy and shiny as much or more than the next girl, but come on. $15 for a stick that is going to be behind a door that I keep closed? Not if I can help it.

Since this “closet” is actually the tiny room in my basement where the monsters used to hide, I realized there had to be a cheaper yet equally effective way to handle this. The answer came to me in the form of some PVC pipe, some plastic pipe strap, a thing of carpet cleaner, an air freshener, and some $3 wallpaper from big lots. Three hours later, and I am the proud owner of a huge walk-in closet complete with lined shoe rack. A thing of beauty? Perhaps not. A thing of tremendous thrift and effectiveness? Indeed. I got your Design on a Dime, right fuckin’ here.

Last week we attended the 88 MM Productions’ screening of their incomplete 48 Hour Film Festival movie. They were, sadly, unable to finish because some miserable bottom-feeders held up the sound guy. Luckily, no one was hurt. From the bit I saw, the looked quite good. It truly sucks that they were not able to finish, although I am given to understand that the fragment was selected for the “Best of . . .” showing this Thursday. Hooray! And besides, next year they can come back and continue their cinematic misadventures—although in future we hope that the only criminals are those that are actively involved in the filming.

Also last week The Boy and I went to see Much Ado About Nothing in Forest Park. Set in the old West, I think this production did a better job than most communicating the play to those who might not be totally up on their Shakespeare, as well as doing a pretty good job of editing to a manageable running time. For the first time ever, the characterr of Ursula was something other than completely forgettable--that was kind of a cool. The Boy is an excellent picnic companion, and a grand time was had by all.

Finally, I recently had to put into practice the wise advice of The Liquor Fairy. No, not “People who are still puking are not in imminent danger of alcohol poisoning,” although that is good to know. Nope. The bit about “You shouldn’t break bread with people you don’t like.” This weekend I had to choose between eating with a number of my friends and one distinctly non-friend, or spending a quiet evening at home with The Boy. Although a quiet evening at home with The Boy is always lovely and never unwelcome, it was rather a suck choice to have to make—to leave or not to leave. Really though, I find myself asking if it was really a choice at all?

Yeah, no. I don’t think that it was.

Whee!

The fact that Paris Hilton is going back to jail makes my heart sing.

It's not that I'm a hater. I'm just glad to know that "dumb whore" has not been declared an actual medical condition.

Yardageddon

Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!

This weekend is going to be Yardageddon 2007. It’s been a long time coming. From a tolerable distance, my backyard doesn’t look too bad. It’s shady and mostly green. A bit overgrown, sure, but I’m into that English Woodland Garden look.

Up close and personal though, it’s rather a clusterfuck. I have a superabundance of ivy, which looks fine, but allows for all manner of little fly-y bite-y creatures to breed without restraint and fuck with me mercilessly. There is tree life that knocks on my side door and invites itself in for cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. I think a vine just tried to eat Bennet.

It’s time to get all NoCo on this shit.

I have a weed whacker, and I hope that I have better luck with it than I have with my nemesis the lawnmower. I also have some trimmer thing, I don’t know what it’s called. I don’t need to know what it’s called because I don't care; it will chop plants into smaller bits and that is a good thing. I am going to borrow some lop shears.

Here’s the thing, though, does anyone have any suggestions for how to kill plants at the root? I looked at Roundup, but Roundup costs A Lot of Money, and I am poor. Roundup is out. Off brand weed killer has proven no match for the plant life around here.

Here are the things I’ve been told:

I’ve been told that drilling several holes into the trunk of a tree and pouring salt in will kill it. Done. The house next door has some piece of shit weedy tree just at the fence line that is trying to move into my house. I could cut it back, but why? They have all but abandoned that house, making no moves to sell it or rent it or reattach that siding that blew off last July. Fuck it. I’m sending the tree to see Jesus.

I’ve been told that plain white vinegar will kill plants reliably. Is this true? While not entirely thrilled about the possibility of my yard smelling like a cheap douche, I’ll give it a shot.

Any other ideas? At this point, I would probably put down some fucking Agent Orange if I knew where to find it.