Only Nola

Okay, NOW I Need That Drink

It's been one nightmare of a week.  I might post all the details later, but right now it's all libel this, gag order that, attorney the other... blah blah blah.  Suffice it to say that I have officially been crowned the Queen of Hell.  I have a penthouse office and a reserved parking space.  And do you know how I managed to keep my tiara and bright, shiny scepter?

I get to go house hunting again.

(...)

Yes, you heard me right.  House hunting.  Again.  Because my life just isn't complete without a healthy dose of emotional trauma with a migraine chaser.

The new house we were having built?  Someone else will be living in it.  And paying for it, needless to say.  Not like we're buying it and just opting to let some squatter come along and park in the house while we live in a cozy ditch down the road.  Things happened... and happened... and kept happening... and finally, one day, it just got to a point that it couldn't go on.  I hate it.  Words cannot express how much I hate it.  The situation, not the house.  I loved the idea of that house.  Structurally.  I designed the fuck out of that place.  All these little touches and design alterations that make it what it is.  Unfortunately, structure is one thing, downgrades on essentials are another.  That's something I don't want to get into too much right now, mostly because I can't safely take more migraine medication for another 6 hours and I'm barely recovered from being cross-eyed with pain as it stands right now, so why push my luck?  I will say that the things that the house was originally supposed to have are not the things that it ended up having.  Lots of changes, and not in a good way.  And as a reward for shaving off the quality of the materials installed?  The price shot through the roof.  Don't ask me how that works, because I can't wrap my mind around it.  Must be that new math.

So, being an American in the 21st century, I did what anyone else would do in this situation...

Retained counsel.

Don't misunderstand.  I didn't want to retain counsel.  Far from it.  But it wasn't a question of want, it was a question of need.  We were about to be forced into an untenable financial position due to the escalating costs of this house, while sacrificing quality and amenities, and it just couldn't continue.  I was going to be back in the job market, whether I liked it or not, just to cover our asses.  This was not something we envisioned when this started.  I'm a stay at home mom, and if I ever choose to go back to work, it should be out of my own desire to be employed, not out of fear of bankruptcy due to a home that has a gargantuan payment AND doesn't even have grass... or a storm door... or garage walls not left in a primered state... or a deck... or hardwood floors... or all the appliances listed in the appliance package... or... or...

*head implodes*

Sorry about that.  Anywaaaaaaaaaaaaay.  It just got out of control.  Now, on a perfectly rational level?  I know and accept that getting out of this contract is what needed to happen.  I do.  Really.  I swear.  But emotionally?  On a strictly 'oh-my-little-thumpin'-heart' kind of level?  This is fucking KILLING me.  I hate it.  That's MY house.  MINE.  I sweated and pored and fretted over that goddamned thing for the last FOUR MONTHS.  I've plotted and planned and done research and made HOMEMADE COOKIES FOR THE SUBCONTRACTORS, for the LOVE of GOD!  I have a huge emotional investment.  Like NASDAQ huge.

I know none of this is very funny and very out of character for my blog (for the most part), but it's hard to access the funny when dealing with a situation like this.  It's all heartbreaking.  Not only have I lost the home that I was dreaming of, I've also had to learn a valuable (and infinitely painful) lesson in the process.  One I should have learned sometime in the past, oh... THIRTY SIX FUCKING YEARS.  Something about mistaking acquaintanceship for friendship, mixed with a whopping cup of 'friendly business is an oxymoron' on the side.  I think the whole thing has been made more raw and hard to handle by the fact that I considered my builders friends.  Sure, I hadn't known them long, but since when has THAT stopped me?  We bonded.  We joked and chatted and blah blah blah.  They'd ask about the kids and play with my son when he was around.  But none of that changed the facts of the building situation or the financial aspect or the list of things that were supposed to be part of the contract that were just. not. THERE.  And that's when you start to realize that friendship?  Was not part of the equation.

I not only don't have the house I had my heart set on, I also had the ugly realization that the friends I thought I had were never mine.  They were friends of circumstance.  That's a Nola nugget of wisdom there, by the way.  Friends of circumstance.  That's a good term for people who are thrown into a situation with you that promotes friend-like behavior and feelings, but it is, at least on ONE side, merely attached to the situation and purely transient, carrying no more weight nor permanence than the winter's first snow on the still warm earth.  Someone always gets a little bit shattered around the edges in these relationships.

*sighs*

God, I'd better be a WHOLE lot less maudlin come tomorrow.   Maybe I'll have to go to the mall and get a Cinnabon after lunch.  There's not much that a five pound cinnamon roll slathered in butter and cream cheese icing can't fix. 

Other than diabetes.  It's HELL on diabetes.

Hey, You

Dear Mrs. Dipshit (your real name is unimportant... you know who you are),

On behalf of all the people who bake under the noonday sun in their quest for a little family entertainment (and sunburn... and $4 cokes... and migraines... lots and lots of migraines...) and relief from the daily tedium that engulfs us all, I want to say thank you.  We paid half an arm and, in some cases, the occasional testicle in order to get into that damned theme park.  We knew you'd be there.  Oh, yes. we. did.  But, in our blind hope that it would be the other poor bastards in the park that actually had to encounter you, we came anyway.

And there you were...

It was you who showed us all that teaching your child manners is an option, not a duty.  Waiting one's turn in line is for the faint of heart, the weak, the appallingly polite.  Not the bold, the daring, the... uninhibitedly selfish and unrepentant.  Like you.  I watched in awe as you coached your children in the fine art of getting off The Lost River ride and then hopping the handrail to butt in front of the hundred or so people on their way up the ramp.  You know... the fools who thought that doing silly things like getting in line would ensure them their turn on the ride that promises wet underwear and running mascara.  Suckers!  I heard you and your children howl with laughter at your own brilliance and, YES!, derring do!  If you hadn't outweighed me by a good 300 pounds, I might have found the nerve to commend you on your unparalleled foresight in helping to raise the next generation of little inconsiderate bastards.  But there's that whole instinct of self-preservation that kicks in at the damnedest times.  I decided to just let it go.  And shoot you little eyeball darts of hate when you weren't looking. 

It was you who found the one functioning water fountain in a five mile radius and proceeded to park your children on it, in rotation, for an indeterminate period of time, guaranteeing that the rest of the population finally gave up and wandered off to suck rocks.  (And not in a good way.  Perverts.)   While one child after the other (in cycles... REPEATING cycles) stood and sucked the entire contents of the local water tank down to a shell of its former self, you stood there and glared at anyone with the gall to glance your way with either the expectation of a drink for themselves (the NERVE of some people!) or the mistaken idea that a little disapproval might move your ass along before they dropped dead of dehydration.  HA!  You showed them!  You  were there first, and if they can't accept that, well then... they're welcome to try and move you!  (...)  I'd almost pay money to see that.  Okay, I'd totally pay money to see that.  From a nice, safe distance.

It was you who showed us all the power of a well placed elbow when applied to an 85 year old woman with a limp and what looked to be a glass eye.  Sure, she was at the trolley station first, and she was old and a bit handicapped around the edges, but what does that have to do with you?  NOTHING!  By god, to the victor go the spoils, and if you hadn't taken granny out (I'm sure the paramedics were able to revive her) you and your brood of Future Inmates of America might have had to wait an interminable six minutes for the next trolley.  INCONCEIVABLE!  You weighed your options (although apparently not the caloric content of those nine funnel cakes you inhaled) and made a split second decision.  You stood firm.  Resolute.  Congestive heart failure and karmic retribution looming over you like the wrath. of. GOD.

If there's any justice, you'll choke on your next twinkie.  And your kids will get shipped off to be raised by a group of nuns with no cable, no Pop Tarts, and no sense of humor. 

Counting the hours,
Nola

Open Letter To An Employer

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing in regard to your job opening in the ____ department.  While I'm not sure exactly what the ____ department does, I'm sure I'd make a valuable addition to your team.  Okay, maybe sure is the wrong word, since I don't really play well with others, but honestly?  Considering the way my hormones are raging right now I'm just be grateful (and shocked... absolutely shocked) that I'm not writing this letter with the blood of my slaughtered cats and/or husband, so I'm feeling pretty optimistic.

I'm sure you want a list of my qualifications, so in the interest of fairness I'm going to try to be as forthcoming as possible:

• I type fast.  Not sure exactly how fast, but I know I annoy the hell out of people I'm chatting with in Yahoo, so it's pretty damned fast.  As long as there aren't many numbers or strange symbols (like that accent mark thing the French love so much... what's up with THAT?   Guess no one ever taught them that less is more.) thrown in.  The numbers thing, well, I have these really long fingers and... there's a second guessing issue, compounded by a trust issue... blah blah blah.  Just ask yourself if me slowing down a hair when numbers are involved is really that important.  Think of your shiny new car out there in the parking lot.  And your pets.  See, that whole typing proficiency thing just took on a whole new perspective, didn't it?


• I'm able to multi-task.  A lot.  Okay, maybe there are some questions regarding the actual completion of the aforementioned tasks (multi!  multi-tasks!), but really, why be rigid and uncompromising?  That's just so bad on the digestion.  People who complete everything they start are merely stating to the world 'Hey!  I like ulcers!  I'll take TWO!'  And doesn't that just mean they'll be missing more work down the road and costing the company money in health benefits and such?  Surgery shmurgery.  Whiners!  Plus there are the isolation issues.  No one likes a coworker who finishes everything they start promptly and efficiently, so having an employee like that is just sowing the seeds of future eye gouging and ball kicking.  Possibly throttling.  If they'd just go about it the right way, like I do, they'd live much longer and continue to contribute to the success of the company for years and years to come.   That's me... always thinking ahead.


• I'm always willing to help my coworkers.  Now, as we all know, the real help that is needed isn't often the help someone asks for.  Take a drunk.  The help he really needs is to dry out, right?  But what he asks for is five bucks to load up on Coors and pass out in a shrub.  Same with coworkers.  My skill is in knowing the help they really need as opposed to what they think they need.  Sure, the chick coming up the stairs carrying 4 boxes of printer paper that are slightly blocking her line of sight might think she needs someone to help shoulder the burden.  What she really needs is someone to hold open the door for her and shout out directions to guide her to her destination.  Assessing and problem solving are lost arts.  Be very glad you found me.


• I'm friendly. (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!)


• I'm loyal.  Now, loyal is a funny word.  To some, loyal is a dedication and devotion to one's employer in the face of adversity and financial hardship.  That actually describes abject stupidity, FYI.  I like to phrase loyalty something like this... I'll come to work five days a week, generally within 30 minutes of the time you actually preferred (preferred, demanded... potato, potahto) me to be there, do some kind of work-like tasks in between cigarette breaks and phone calls, and for this you'll pay me a decent wage and promise to send me home with a sympathy card and flowers if/when I break a nail, for either the length of time that it takes me to reach retirement or until someone else offers me a better job.  That's capitalism, by the way.  Just so you know.

I look forward to hearing from you to work out the details of my starting date/time/pay/sexual harassment lawsuit.

Counting the hours,
Nola

 

To Hat or Not to Hat

It's 9:19 a.m. and there's a decision to be made.  Errands to run, people, errands to run... this, of course, means actually getting OUT OF THE HOUSE.  This, in turn, means facing the fact that I will be seen by breathing entities other than my cats and my children (both of whom have accepted the fact that my bathrobe is a staple and have come to terms with the knowledge they will only get rid of it over my cold, dead body), whether I like it or not.  Not wanting to terrify the general population, I have two options: shower and get dressed like a normal person (HA!) or stuff my hair up under one of my two hats (can't do both at once, although I'd be willing to try I could still see to drive while hiding my face altogether) and pray I don't encounter any stiff winds.

Normal people don't face these kinds of dilemmas...

Sure, the shower thing sounds, at first thought, like the obvious answer.  That's where it grabs the unsuspecting victim, in its very simplicity.  But showering?  Other than being full of hidden dangers (glass doors!  drain monsters!  psychotic shower heads!  water temperature surges!  It's a DEATHTRAP, for the love of god!), there's also the obvious ones... if one showers, at least if one has MY hair, one is then forced to blow dry one's hair.  Yeah, that's right, BLOW DRY!  I'm sure I don't have to point out to you the dangers of electrocution that riddle a situation where you have a an object plugged into the wall in one hand and a mop of wet hair in the other.  Impending DEATH, people!  I've seen the movies... these things never end well.  And how about the looming menace of the RAZOR!?!  Sure, it lulls you into a sense of complacency and peace with it's bright pink color and harmless name (Daisy, for fuck's sake... think babies and puppies!  Nothing sharp here!  Toooooooooootally peril-free!), but it's really just waiting to sever a vein.  I KNOW!  Sneaky fucker.

Okay, sure, there is an argument to be made for the possibility that I'm just extremely lazy.  I'm sure it could look like that to the unenlightened.  But danger, people!  Mayhem!  Disaster!  The fact that I have the energy lately of a turnip (after heavy sedation and electroshock therapy, no less) has NOTHING to do with it.  Really.  REALLY.

I'm voting for the hat at this point.

A Day of Bad Ideas

Where should I start?  First off, we decided to go to Exotic Animal Paradise again, since Nathan hadn't been in awhile and we do have those season passes to put to use.  Life lesson #1 (which, apparently, I forgot in a blinding moment of temporary insanity): don't tempt fate by taking an already irritated male to a place with innumerable annoying variables. 

It was a hell of a way to start the day.

Considering that the drive to EAP (woohoo for acronyms!) was, in and of itself, nothing short of an early warning device, I can't blame anyone but myself for ignoring the indicators and forging ahead. 

We ended up behind this train of assbags for almost the entire drive through the park.  These are the inconsiderate dipshits that ignore the signs (posted along the road regularly... REGULARLY, people!  What, are they fucking BLIND?) that tell people to pull over to the right when stopping to feed a group of animals, thus allowing those BEHIND you to get the fuck AROUND you.  This, of course, hit the nerves of my husband (who was already suffering from residual road rage from the drive to the park) like fingernails on chalkboard.  Times ten.  MILLION.  These are also the people who, due to some kind of blunt force trauma (I'm assuming), choose to drive through a park with LARGE and UNPREDICTABLE wildlife with their minivan doors open...

(...)

OPEN!  'Cause nothing spices up a dull Saturday like a water buffalo rampaging through your back seat and picking your three children out from between his teeth.  There were some alternate idiots about three cars behind us that had, in a stroke of genius, decided to drive through the park with their hatchback sticking up... which, judging by the earsplitting screams we heard (sustained screams, no less... not just an 'oh shit, that horn is HUGE but totally non-threatening!' brief yell of distress, but its cousin, the 'fuckmewe'reallgoingtodieandidon'twanttoBEwildlifekibblefortheloveofGOOOOOOOOOOD' variety'), was not the wisest decision they could have made.

Anyway.  After we all eventually made it home, more or less in a state of one piece-ness, I had yet another stunning idea.

Yeah, I should have been stopped.

Roller skating!  I'd take the boys roller skating!  EUREKA!  I can so do this!  I can skate!  Nathan can skate!  Connor can...

(...)

Okay, maybe I should mention here that Connor?  Has never been on skates in his life.  Ever.  While I'm sure this is not a punishable parenting offense, I'm now realizing that he's a bit behind the curve on the whole general athletics thing. 

I am not the most ideal person to teach a child to skate.  FYI.  My patience is not what most people would call optimum.  Go figure.  *coughs* About the nine billionth time I pried Connor's fingers off the half-wall around the rink, just to watch him fall down after he refused to use his toe stop thing to help keep his skates from zipping off in opposite directions (with his feet still inside them, let me stress...), I felt the vein in my forehead bulging to the point of potential explosion and caught faint undertones of the banshee from HELL in my voice while I screeched 'USE YOUR TOES!'  I decided that that was probably a good time to throw the rental skates (which, by the way?  universally suck.  There is an unwritten law somewhere that forbids any and all skating rinks the use of comfortable and functional skates.  Look it up.) at the guy behind the counter and get the fuck out of Dodge.  Which reminds me... the roller-skating rink?  Totally has Dodgeball.  I don't know if it's an intramural league thing, like bowling or some shit, or if it's open Dodgeball, where any nutbag off the street with a hunger for painful contact with flying objects can join in the fun, but either way?  Dodgeball... totally on the menu at the skating rink.  How fucking twisted is THAT?  I'm going to PAY someone to let me participate in a sport that I tried to AVOID in gym class?  The same sport that still comes up, from time to time, in THERAPY?

Some people are, truly, too stupid to live.

And finally?  To top it all off?  Don't ask me what happened to dessert I was making tonight, which was the straw on the camel's back.  Not that dessert was actually straw, and definitely not fresh off a camel's back, but...

You knew what I meant.

Hire ME!

Well, yours truly is looking for a job.  My days as a stay at home Mom are coming to an end.  In theory.  First we have to find someone to actually hire me, but assuming I can get a job... Hi Ho, Hi Ho... blah blah blah.

Why can't someone just pay me to sit around and be snarky?

I could get a job tomorrow if I was willing to go back to doing hair for a living.  Sadly, I'm completely and desperately opposed to the idea.  This does complicate a job search, since my work history for the last ten years is pretty narrowly defined.  On paper, anyway.  For a prospective employer to look at my resume and see salon work as the one constant in my life, they're going to make some hasty assumptions.  You know what assumptions do, right?

A-S-S... yeah, you know.

The thing is, my work in salons has been anything BUT simply doing hair.  I've got experience out the proverbial wazoo in customer service (helloooooooooooooooo!... you haven't lived till you've had to deal, day in and day out, with people going through a totally subjective process like getting a hair cut.  One person's 'cut it ALL off' is, apparently, a normal person's 'trim off anything more than an eighth of an inch and I'm going to have a hemorrhage right HERE!'), retail sales, inventory (both the monitoring and maintaining thereof), appointment setting (god, the headaches involved when you've got 12 different stylists who all want booked on separate increments and regularly forget their own scheduling parameters.  Self IMPOSED parameters, at that.  Freaks.), cash handling, tax preparation and/or record keeping, multi-line phone management, blah blah blah.  I could go on for DAYS.  Not to mention what I do at home.  Strangely enough, most people ignore the fact that there are a plethora of job skills that many stay at home Moms have been forced to develop.  (Not to mention stay at home Moms like yours truly that spend most of their waking hours in front of a computer... if they need someone who can follow a chat conversation, email, balance online banking statements and comment on blogs regarding the nightmare that is Paris Hilton... simultaneously and without breaking a sweat?  *jumps up and down frantically* THAT'S MEEEEEEEEE!)  Multi-tasking, budgeting, time management, referee and riot control, among others.  Nothing like having to knock some heads together on a daily basis to give you a strong base to take with you to an office.  Can't find a file you gave someone the day before?  Totally prepared for that scenario.  There's no law against spanking an adult, right? 

(...)

Where was I?

Oh, the work thing.  With the house payment now substantially higher than expected, and also the fact that there are a lot of things that were supposed to be part of the finished product that we've just found out will NOT be part of the finished (and I use the term loosely) product, thereby forcing us to shell out money after the house closes to bring the house to a level that doesn't offend my aesthetic sensibilities (we're not getting any landscaping... that's NO landscaping.  None.  And I use landscaping in the vaguest sense of the word, which includes grass, people.  Grass.), we're going to need a second income for peace of mind.

I'm torn between being excited about the prospect of re-entering the work force and outright terror that no one will hire me and/or put up with me for 8 hours a day without sneaking up behind me and whacking me with a fax machine. 

Why can't I just win the lottery?  Or stumble upon the opportunity to join a nice class action lawsuit?

*sighs*

Things Fall Apart

The house we've been building for the last few months?  Well, not personally building, since the last thing you want is me turned loose with power tools, but you know what I meant.  The house.  Things have gotten a big messy with that, and damned if I know what's going to happen.  We're having a meeting with our builders tomorrow night, and at said meeting we'll either come to a peaceful resolution which will leave all parties suture free, or there'll be an eyeball or two poked out, followed immediately by ambulance sirens and the ominous sound of impending litigation.

I am just so looking forward to this...

The cost of the house has skyrocketed from the initial estimate of $89,000 (that's build cost only... the builders' percentage goes on top of that.  15%)  to the latest quote (from last week) of $103,000.  Tack 15% on to that.  Go ahead.  The number gets ugly.  Now, my builders have said that they'll eat part of that figure, since we're not pre-approved for the $118,500 that that all works out to, and sell it to us for just the amount we're approved for.  This creates two problems.  1)I don't want them losing money.  If they can sell it to someone else and get their full 15%, more power to them.  Otherwise, even though the cost escalations are not OUR fault (I'm not even sure at this point what HAS caused the price hikes.  I haven't seen the paperwork on the expenditures yet.  Meh.), they, being men, will harbor that in the backs of their minds for years, how they didn't get what they should have out of the house sale.  I'm not looking to add one more person to the list of people who are cursing me into an early grave.  2)I clearly stated at the beginning of all this that even though we were approved for a certain amount, it was NOT what we wanted to spend.  The bank typically approves you for more than you can really afford.  Well, unless you want to go without little things like cable, phone service, and possibly dinner three nights a week.  So our goal was to stay comfortably under that amount.  And initially we were told that that would be easy.  No problem.  Apparently?  NOT easy.  BIG problem.  If someone makes enough money that they can buy a $300,000 house, well, an $11,000 difference in price isn't shit.  But for us?  Buying a home at significantly less than that?  It's shit and then some.  We're talking, with insurance, taxes and loan amount, about a difference somewhere between $100 and $125 a month.  That's on top of the fact that the max we were approved for is just that... the MAX.  That's the 'pushing your luck, you ignorant FUCK!' number that the bank gives you in the hopes that you'll ignore your need for food and clothing and opt instead for the bigger house so that they can make more on interest payments. 

*sighs*

I'm really not sure what to do.  My builders are sweet as can be, but this thing has just spun out of control in a matter of weeks.  Two weeks, to be precise.  Two weeks ago I was still being told it would only be about $107,000, MAYBE $108,000.  Then a week and a half ago, it jumped to $110,000.  Okayyyyyyyyyy.  This is AFTER I've gotten rid of almost all my upgrades, dumping my hardwood floors in the dining/kitchen, my deck, my double vanities... how is the price so high when I've made so many concessions?  Trying to swallow that down.  Then a week ago?  $115,000.  Whatever is behind it, whether it's increased building material costs or The Riddler sneaking in and stealing my construction loan funds while fucking Batman's on vacation... whatever it is, I don't know how we can manage it. 

I love my little house.  I do.  I helped design the goddamned thing, so I must.  I've added so much to that house, it'll be kind of hard to let it go.  But it will be harder on my family to afford it, so that's what I've got to worry about.  Right now I'm a stay at home Mom, and we like it that way.  Jonathan's job hasn't come through with the pay and overtime that he'd been promised, so that's another worry in the 'will the house payment cause us to open a vein?' category.  I figure that we'll ask our builders to release us from the building contract (NOT a real estate sale contract... we STILL don't have one of those, for whatever reason, and that's also a concern), which will both a)allow them to sell it to someone else, someone who WON'T be requiring them to take a financial hit in the process, and b)allow us to get out from under the financial burden that this house has turned into.  I don't know if they're going to go for it, but I guess we'll find out.  It makes sense for them to do it, but since when do men do the thing that makes sense?

I love that little house, but sometimes you have to worry about doing the smart thing instead of the heart-led thing.  If they won't budge, I'm not sure what we'll do.  I guess they could sue us, but...

Blood... turnip... see the connection?

Another Day, Another Amusement Park

Yesterday I took Connor, Nathan (my 12 year old), my sister and her son, Matthew (he's 13) to Celebration City.  That's the bastard stepchild to Silver Dollar City.  Where Silver Dollar City is based on the frontier, with plenty of rides and all but lots of arts and crafts and country music shows, etc., Celebration City is purely rides and concessions (the price of which will give you a coronary... $3.50 for a COKE?  Bloodsuckers). 

Oh, what a day...

First off, there was the ticket line.  I have season passes for Connor and I, but I had to stand in line to get a ticket for Matthew (I had guest passes for Shauna and Nathan already).  You'd think this would be a pretty straightforward concept.  Get in line, move forward, hand over insane amount of money, move on. 

You'd think.

Apparently whomever that was behind the ticket window hadn't been given the memo on how these things are supposed to work.  We stood there for five or ten minutes, behind only ONE person.  ONE person.  That should take no time at all.  I have no idea what was holding up the process, but I can only assume one or both of the people involved in the transaction was both deaf and BLIND.  Nothing else makes sense.  It's really not that complicated.  Hand over money... hand over ticket... repeat.  I was ready to kick someone by the time dude got out of my way.  It was freakin' HOT in line, and there was no shade, and no matter what the commercials say?  Secret is NOT strong enough for a man.

So we get inside.  Finally.  Matthew, who apparently hates a large number of rides, wants to go get in line for the go-karts.  I didn't have much interest, since one can ride go-karts damned near anywhere (whereas you don't find roller coasters parked on the corner between Kum & Go and Taste of China), so I took Connor to this roller coaster called the Jackrabbit while Nathan, Matthew and Shauna went to the go-karts.  More power to 'em.  The irony here is that the go-kart line?  Longest one in the park.  Apparently there are a LOT of people who don't get the concept of paying to get into an amusement park.  Whatever.  So Connor and I went and rode the Jackrabbit, which wasn't bad except for the high whiplash factor.  It was one of the roller coasters you see more and more now, where they've crammed all they could into the smallest space imaginable.  Land being at a premium, I guess, the coaster twists and turns on top of itself, with corners sharp enough to cut cheese on.  That's fine except for the fact that when you take a hairpin turn on a coaster that was previously doing warp nine?  It tends to slow and turn simultaneously, resembling nothing so much as shaken baby syndrome.  For grown ups.

Much rattled but happy enough, Connor and I go over to the go-kart line.  The gruesome threesome?  Haven't moved since we left them.  We stand in line with them for fifteen or twenty minutes before throwing in the towel.  They elect to stay, so Connor and I go down to ride the Scrambler and then the Tilt-a-Whirl.  I love those things.  We make our way BACK to the go-karts.  Progress in the ranks?  Not so much.  Nathan asks how many rides Connor and I have ridden in our absence.  When I tell him, he begins to get a wee bit annoyed.  He opts to get out of the line and come with Connor and I.  Smart move.  No go-kart is worth over an hour's wait when the other rides can get you on in under five minutes.  Not unless it guarantees actual orgasms and will respect you in the morning.

Eventually we're all together and on our way through the park.  We stop at the bumper cars and I get a quick lesson in the effects of a litigious society on recreational activities.  A quick, painful lesson.

Do we all remember bumper cars?  Not overly complex in the goal.  Your aim is to knock the living shit out of as many other cars as possible.  Extra points for knocking someone's fillings loose.  That was back in the good ol' days, though.  Now?  We have replaced that with the Sunnyvale Retirement Community Bumper Cars for Dummies and Geriatrics.  The bumper cars are now placed on, instead of a large open area with lots of potential for speed build up before impact, a large space with a divider in the middle, forming a track of sorts.  There are now rules forbidding head-on bumping.  FORBIDDING HEAD-ON BUMPING!  What the FUCK?  What's the POINT of bumper cars without a good face first collision?  The people go around in circles like so many sheep, occasionally nudging the person on their left or right, oh-so-gently, and praying for death as a rescue from the goddamned monotony.  I almost shot myself and I was just watching.  What dipshit from the outer limits came up with this crap?  See what happens when amusement parks live in fear of someone taking them to court?  Over a bumper car injury?  Pussies.

They had this Barney Fife impersonator hanging out by this antique cop car (just like the ones they drove on the Andy Griffith show... duh) and he'd pretend to hassle the occasional pedestrian.  You know, in that very Barney Fife way.  I can't explain it if you've never seen the show.  It has to be experienced to be understood.  Don't you have TV Land?  Anyway.  We were standing there after opening a vein in exchange for a frozen lemonade when the Fife guy zeroed in on this black family.  Three thousand white people (why is it you mostly only see white people at amusement parks?  Or is it just that way on the days I go?  I'm biting my tongue here on about 612 totally politically incorrect remarks (which is horribly painful to both my tongue and my fertile mind) so I'll just say... it makes me wonder) and he walks up to the one black family I saw the entire time I was there.  I leaned over to my sister and said...

"I'm waiting for the piercing scream of 'Profiling' to fill the air."

Okay, maybe I'm the only one who thinks that was funny. 

I was going to recount the horror that was my broken hearted 7 year old's face when this supercilious, overly-conscientious cunt decided to measure him for the height requirement on this roller coaster... after he'd already RIDDEN it, and one BIGGER than it, four times in the past two hours.  God, that sweet little face!  And he'd even been measured before, earlier in the day, with no problems.  Well, NOW all of a sudden, he's suddenly not big enough?  Made him get OFF the ride?  Totally left him distraught and woebegone because she claimed he was HALF A FUCKIN' INCH too short?

Okay, maybe 'I was going to' ended up being 'here it is'... I can't help it.  I wanted to stick that extended yardstick right up her... um... nose.  Yeah, that's it.  Nose.  Oh, well.  At least he got to ride Wildcat (the bigger roller coaster) four times, in addition to his trips on the aforementioned coaster with the staff change from hell.  I wish the people who'd been working it when we first got there had still been there.  Then?  No problem.  I know they have safety issues, blah blah blah, but HALF a fuckin' INCH?  And after he's RIDDEN IT ALREADY?  Phhhtttt.

On a closing note, let me just say two things.  1) Going to an amusement park is not a free pass on personal hygiene.  Just because you can expect to sweat doesn't mean you should come prepared by already being sweaty and overbearingly ripe.  Clothing doesn't have to look like it was last seen doing oil-rag duty in the local Conoco and there's absolutely NO reason to sit in the parking lot before you enter the park and torture that giant zit on your face until everyone who sees you remarks that you have, apparently, a bullet hole in your forehead.  And 2) Parenting interference from cocky and intellectually suspect 19 year old males?  Not the best of ideas.  When I want some post pubescent dipstick encouraging my 12 year old to 'stand his ground' against me and 'be a man', I'll make sure to make an announcement.  No announcement?  Totally means keep your goddamned mouth shut before I have to rip off your tart's faux ponytail and choke you with it.  Apparently the fact that you've convinced yourself that you da man has interfered with your ability to spot incoming danger.  A hot, sweaty, tired mother of two trying to have a discussion of whether or not it's appropriate for him and his 5'9 cousin to board the kiddie plane ride?  Not the best time to insert your intellectually deficient two cents. 

God, that almost got ugly.

 

Oh, How I Hate the Bugs

So, as we all know, I'm a smoker.  Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's bad for me, I should quit, I'm going to burn in hell, blah blah blah.  I'll work on it later.  Anyway... I smoke.  There it is.  Sue me.  Now, the thing is, I don't smoke in the house.  Don't I get points for that?  Well, that's not entirely accurate... I rarely smoke in the house.  Really rarely.  Blue moon rarely.  And when I do?  I sit on the hearth and hold my arm up the chimney in between puffs, encouraging smoke to waft upwards as opposed to out in my damned living room.  I also blow out my smoke, yes, you guessed it, up the damned chimney.  This surely counts as effort in the 'I don't want my house all fucked up stinky with smoke AND I'm trying to keep my son's lungs relatively smoke free' category.  Right?  Well, obviously, if I'm not smoking inside, I am forced to smoke outside.  Since I'm not overly fond of sharing my space with the ants and things one tends to find outside, and I also don't want the neighbors to see me in all my bathrobe, hair-from-hell glory at odd hours, I smoke in the garage with the door open about a foot at the bottom for circulation.  Sounds safe enough, doesn't it?

You've forgotten who you're dealing with, haven't you?

Apparently there is a sign, visible only to the largest bugs known to man, that hovers over my half of the duplex.  It says 'Welcome'.  I'm pretty sure it also plays music and promises naked bug women or something, since the response is overwhelming and immediate.  Now, I'm not sure what these bugs are.  Other than big, that is.  To me, they look like some kind of cockroach.  But bigger.  I can't stress the 'bigger' thing enough, people.  BIGGER.  Jonathan says he's not sure what they are, but that they're not roaches.  He's a MAN.  What does he know?  Sure, they can squash a bug, but identify it correctly for the hysterical female now standing on TOP of the car?  Phhhttt.

Cockroach or some kind of mutant beetle from HELL, I neither know nor care.  They come in through this little crack by the seam in the concrete at the opening to the garage.  Regularly.  They're big enough (BIGGER, people, BIGGER!) that they make very noticeable scritchy (god, I'm shuddering here just thinking about it) noises as they zoom in on me, sitting innocently on my perch on the steps from the garage into the house.  What the fuck did I ever do to THEM?  Sure, there's the little matter of the other giant bugs I've killed on previous nights (I've dropped everything on them from Jonathan's work boots to terra cotta planters... WHAT?!?  I'm all about whatever the fuck WORKS!), but how do they know that?  Is there like a little bug reporter hiding somewhere in the rafters, relaying information on my activities to some bug central?  I'm not ruling anything out at this point.  Maybe these are vengeful little buggies from hell and they're now all on a mission to get me, the Giant Homicidal Bathrobe Bitch.  Ever see that Patrick Swayze movie 'Next of Kin'?

Not ruling ANYTHING out.  I'm not kidding.

Jonathan bought this spray crap that's supposed to be like death in a bottle for all bugs.  Spray, watch bug gasp out 'Priest... PRIEST!'.  Easy, right? 

I saw the first bug of the late shift come in last night and couldn't wait to try the new anti-bug juice.  Walked over, fighting down the immediate and TERRIBLY STRONG urge to be, once again, on TOP of the car, and hosed down the little fucker.  Sprayspraysprayspraysprayspraysprayspray... pretty sure that it's not supposed to take half a bottle per bug, but I'm taking no chances.  Any woman here disagree with that logic?  I thought not.

Bug?  Couldn't have given LESS of a shit.  It kept on motoring around, ignoring my high pitched screech of frustration.  It even felt good enough, drenched and shiny in its coat of alleged POISON, to crawl up the goddamned garage WALL.  I know I'm not hallucinating when I say it was crawling smugly.  Smugly, I tell you.  You know what fixes smug?

A size 11 1/2 work boot, meeting the wall with the force of the wrath of GOD.  Wielded by yours truly, the chenille-wrapped bugaphobe.  Little fucker isn't looking so frisky NOW.

God, I hate bugs.

My Head Hurts

Okay, first off, since I obviously haven't abandoned the site yet, let me just say that there isn't much that I hate more than a hacker.  I was up till after 3 last night, dealing with the aftermath of an attack on a small site of mine.  It's a tiny little community (it was about, oh, 15 or 20 members) forum that I built about a year ago, I think (that sounds right... ), and it doesn't see a lot of action.  The people who are/were members are old chat friends, mostly, and I created the forum after closing another site of mine, which was a much larger forum that I had for two years.  The closeknit core group needed somewhere to still go and keep in touch, so I made a private forum, non-publicized and restricted entry.  It was just a wee little thing, never hurt a fly.

Fucking hackers took it down.

I won't even go into what I found on my site when I went to check on it at the behest of a member.  It's almost irrelevant WHAT the hackers did to my site, visually.  What matters is that some walking assbag out there decided that in order to make his penis feel larger than it actually is, he needed to fuck up something that someone else had worked hard on and had an emotional attachment to.  'Cause, you know, I'm just sure that he now qualifies as much MORE of a man and all.  Fucker.  Why do I assume it's a man?  Well, I've known some hackers, in passing, and by and large?  Penis afflicted.  I'm well aware that there must be some women out there who indulge in this juvenile activity, but they're not the majority and would most likely spend their time hacking into Neiman's to slash the price of shoes, not pissing all over someone else's little friendship circle.  We women know where to draw the goddamned line.

Hacking has always baffled me.  Maybe I could understand it, if still disagree with it, if they were doing something for a cause, like a Peta group going in and zeroing out all the beef orders at Wal-Mart for the week.  But just the random acts of destruction?  Who the fuck are they impressing with that shit?  Their two pimple-faced friends who ALSO can't get laid?  People with actual lives and any kind of self esteem whatsoever would find no enjoyment in costing people a)time, b)money, and c)ulcer-free living.  People with the ability to find their ass with both hands don't generally spend their spare time fucking with people they don't even KNOW.  Save that shit for someone who's actually done something to you.  Family is a good place to start.   Save your titty tantrums for someone who actually GIVES  a FUCK.

I'm blaming all this on Barney.  See what that purple dinosaur has done to the newest generation?  SEE?!?

So, anyway.  The site?  It died.  It was so deeply fucked up that I had to just dump it.  *hums Taps*  Database and all.  Good-bye, Hideaway... *sniffles*

Hellooooooooooo, Splat!  Yeah, that's right, people, I named my replacement forum Splat.  As in 'fall down go boom'.  I think it's totally appropriate.  For more reasons than I care to list at this point.  In my ever present sense of daring (HA!), I have decided not to make this one private.  At least not yet.  I get too much shit from incoming strangers, I may change that later, but for now?

Everyone's welcome.  God help us all...

*pops some Advil*