You see the strangest things in rural rest stations. Just passed a vending machine in North Carolina and we have:
-- Vienna sausages in a can topped with Starburst for dessert. Who put these things together? Is this a trendy culinary pairing I've somehow never heard about?
-- Giant iced honeybun which is larger than the circumference of my face and should not be attempted to eat after leaving a rest station, because the next rest station is 100 miles away and you'll need one 10 minutes after ingesting.
-- A dill pickle. I tried one in a theater once. It's a great way to make friends. It took 10 minutes just to extract it from the package (which cannot be done quietly) until it exploded like a vinegar bomb and sprayed sour pickle juice all over me and also within a 3-row radius and I still had 87 minutes of movie left. It doesn't seem like the soundest choice for a road trip, unless of course, you are alone.
-- Tuna sandwich. The only time I ever got food poisoning from a vending machine was during a terrible lapse of judgement when I was on a deadline and starving at 9pm and decided to trust a turkey snack pack. So that's never happening again.
-- Not pictured but you can eat your weight in fake Oreos for $1.25 if you so desired.
3. Run errands on way home, arrive home spent but everything is done!
4. Discover plumbing emergency.
5. Shut off water to the house.
6. Feel proud at mad homeowner skillz. I can turn a valve!
7. Feel relieved that the sound of rushing water in wall has dissipated.
8. Calmly call warranty company.
9. Calmly call plumber #1.
10. Slightly less calmly, call plumber #2.
11. Call plumber #3.
12. DOESN'T ANYONE WORK SATURDAY NIGHT
13. Oh, right... it's Saturday night...
14. Photograph water stains in downstairs neighbor's unit that are my fault.
15. Await confirmation from whichever plumber decides to show up.
16. Decide whether to spend the evening dirty and thirsty or go to a hotel.
17. Go to hotel. Put roommates up in separate room.
18. Fight with insurance company about paying for it.
Insurance company: "We only pay for the hotel if the house is uninhabitable, like it doesn't have running water or something like that."
Me: "It _doesn't_ have running water."
Insurance company: "Right, but that's because you voluntarily turned it off."
Me: "And the other option was what? Leave it on so it could pour into my downstairs neighbor's unit all night long??"
It was a fight but they finally did pay.
A tip: insurance companies always have a weird out. Like, it was the water line to the fridge that broke. They would have covered the ice line, but not the water line, but isn't I've water first? There is no such thing as an ice line. Fine print is so weird.
-- Hem the overly long curtains downstairs by ripping the shit out of them and then ironing on cheap ass hem iron-on hem tape because I am sure as fuck not taking them off the curtain rod now after all that work.
-- Hem the bedroom curtains BEFORE putting them up because, well, lessons.
-- Buy low VOC paint so no one dies of fumes when painting teen's room.
-- Sneak the final 8,000 cardboard moving boxes to recycling and hope the little old lady living next to it doesn't peak out like every other time and scold me for not getting the exact placement on the curb just right.
-- Accept that buying extra curtain clips for $2.99 from Ikea isn't worth the trouble returning them. (Heck, I would PAY someone that amount to just avoid setting foot in there.)
-- Assemble last piece of cheap and shitty furniture.
-- Spackle and sand the shit out of the drywall over the kitchen sink in last-ditch attempt to smooth out the botched plumbing disaster. If this fifth time doesn't work, then learn how to install a tile backsplash.
-- Buy a new blanket that is actually fucking wide enough for two fucking people.
Facebook likes to remind you when you've saved articles to read later. Note to self: don't glance at it when anyone might be looking over your shoulder....
1. Never try a new hairdo on your wedding day. It will suck and you will hate it and look ugly but not want to offend your BFF who painstakingly curled every strand. The photographic repercussions of your unwillingness to hurt feelings will last decades.
2. Learn which poses look good and which make you look like a walrus so you do not intermingle the two. (See #1 on photographic repercussions.)
3. It will be a huge blur and you won't talk to everyone nearly as much as you wish.
4. Check the hotel room's alarm clock to make sure it's not set for asscrack of dawn disrupting beauty sleep!!
5. Hold the handrails on the staircase and not JUST the dress.
6. People will congratulate you on life milestones and you will feel happy and overwhelmed and then sad that there won't be anymore societal milestones to check off because society doesn't care about old people and the nursing home is the next step.
7. You will order and pay for a plate of giant shrimp and then never touch them because no one eats on their wedding day.
8. All the planning will not help it be less abstract until the moment it is happening.
9. He won't even care that your hair is awful and he will tell you that you look beautiful, and you will ugly cry during the ceremony which will be
captured and uploaded to social media by countless others without having gone through your careful anti-hideous curation protocol.
10. You will have married the best person in the universe and feel like you (undeservingly, but still) won the jackpot. 💕
I've moved recently, kindof. Does hauling piles from one place to another for 14 hours count as a workout? Or is it basically just a hobby at this point because it's happened so often?
I share my Netflix account with my nephews and I can just picture the following conversation happening at my sister's house:
Nephews: "Mommy, what's 'scrotal' mean?"
My sis: "Um, where did you hear that word?"
Nephews: "Aunt Hannah saved 'Scrotal Recall' to her watchlist on Netflix."
My sis: "Um, I'll be right back, I have to call Aunt Hannah...."
The description is that a guy gets chlamydia and then calls every ex-girlfriend to notify them. I haven't seen it yet but I admit the title was... catching. I think it's not even possible for a dude to even know if he has chlamydia so I'm not quite sure what medical experts were on the show's advisory committee, but I'm sure I'll find out.
I tried to watch Girlfriend's Guide to Divorce and I got so disgusted I couldn't even finish the first episode. I can only hope that Scrotal Recall pulls through....
I don't know what's worse: almost walking into a dangling spider slowly lowering itself from the ceiling or losing sight of it after twisting into an involuntary backbend. But I think I just discovered a new workout better than P90x.
Last week I went on a cruise I planned over a year ago. I hated the one I was on as a teen but that was a million years ago and besides, I wasn't with my BFF then. This would be a whole different experience, I thought.
Oh, how I thought wrong.
Some mildly horrifying cruise ship facts:
It costs almost a billion dollars to build a modern cruise ship.
The ship uses about a gallon a second of fuel. (Their calculations, not mine.)
On board, there are (for a one-week journey): 1,500 gallons of ice
cream; 55,000 lbs of fresh fruit; 49,000 lbs veggies; 18,000 lbs
potatoes; and 70,000 bottles beer.
It is possible to read a 300-page novel in one day (if you do nothing but read and eat)
Enter my cheerful trip diary:
Day 1:
Any self-consciousness I had about my body is COMPLETELY gone. Everyone on this cruise is fat as fuck. And I will be too in 7 days, seeing the delicious, never-ending buffet.
Day 2:
I hate everything. How did I not realize that a cruise is like a giant obnoxious steel jellyfish with 4,000 human tentacles insufferably stinging their way through the ocean? I'm never doing this again.
Day 3:
I realize there are no noise ordinances in the middle of the sea, but MUST it be this loud? Seriously. Witness:
Obnoxious dance music is blaring from every deck. It is absolutely inescapable. Every hour, there's an announcement about bingo or the napkin-folding class. People do not know how to entertain themselves unless surrounded by a cacophony. Or fed bullshit manufactured recreation.
I read a 300 page novel in one day and it was the only reason I haven't jumped overboard yet.
I'm so fucking miserable.
Day 4:
Lady in hall was queasy, I have a headache that won't go away and the people next door have been flushing their toilet notstop for the last hour. Norovirus? I'm doomed.
Day 5:
Level
of loathing has reached a new high. I've decided my main goal for this
trip, in order to make the suffering worthwhile, is to save myself $7 on a bottle of self-tanning lotion so I won't have to wear pantyhose when I go back to work. So I have acquiesced to a deck chair.
However
there is no place on this stupid ship where I can be alone. Hateful dance music is blaring from every crevice, causing a line of numbed and sweaty folk to sway dully and sip margaritas across the entire length of this 1,000 foot vessel. I have lost faith in humanity.
Day 6:
I'm ready to jump. Where are we? I don't give a shit what port this is, I'm not leaving the cabin. It's the only quiet place on the ship. The
omniscient presence of people has reached absolutely unbearable levels.
I can't get a glass of
water in the stupid cafeteria without someone pushing into me from behind. I can't walk to the elevator without oblivious forms darting into my path. No one is paying
attention to anyone else because no one has had a deep
thought for more than six days. The entire ship is bursting with hedonism. No one gives a shit about anyone but themselves.
The
only people I want to be near (as long as I don't have to talk to them) are the recluses like me. At least the antisocial guy hulking over a book at the next table
has a philosophical teeshirt.
Day 7:
Land! Thank GOD the ordeal is over. I need to spend a month on top of a mountain away from
civilization. I hate everything and everybody. The only silver lining is that I can go back to work right away because I never got norovirus.
I can't sleep. And somehow mild browsing has led to an Internet wormhole which devolved into learning how to replace the cream inside truffles, despite hating truffles, cream, cream substitutes and the idea of cooking homemade chocolates.
Twenty years ago I would have had no idea how to make these wretched sweets. Today, thanks to modern technology, I can absorb hated enterprises never leaving my pillow! Ain't the Internet grand.
It wasn't the first time I had spoken to this ex in 13 months but it was the first time they mentioned having a 6 month old baby.
Of course I did the math right away. How long after we broke up did "it" happen?? Leave some leeway for not knowing right away but seriously, how could he have JUST mentioned it? I guess it's weird to email an ex and say, "hey, I'm a dad now, hope you're good!" but it just took me off guard.
Three exes have now had babies with the person immediately after me.
Breakups must exude fertility vibes. I dunno.
The baby is super cute though and the awkward moment has mostly passed. I came home to my sweet love who hugged me tight and everything else melted away.
Where did the month go? It was like 19 degrees out and I was in baggy sweater heaven (nothing is more comfortable) and now all of a sudden it's 80 degrees out. I want some winter back! Or at least a little spring.
I'm having a bit of an identity crisis. I'm not completely sure what to write about. Do I even bother writing? Or should I (continue) to pour my energy into the zillion other outlets? I started this new blog so I could leave behind a part of me I didn't really like, the transitory part that floundered after divorce. I'm not floundering anymore (at least not now) but I'm not unmarred enough to think this will always be the case. I think that's why old people are crotchety: the older you get, the more losses accumulate and maybe they make you weird and angry. I'm not weird or angry. At least not yet. But if I'm lucky enough to live another 50 years, I may have to move someplace that has a lawn so I can scream at people to get off it.
So, something exciting: I got engaged!!! I'm so crazy about this guy. That will have to be a whole other post.
I'm staying at my boyfriend's house this week, to compensate for not being able to see him last weekend or next weekend. We're doing the mid-week compromise.
Only my Mondays suck.
I want so badly to say they suck balls but that is profoundly unladylike, and even though the Jersey girl in me wants to not give a damn, even that connotes a visual a bit too strong for my comfort. Not only do I not want to make anyone picture me sucking balls, I don't even want to picture it. But I digress.
So it fucking sucked.
My day starts at 7am and ends around 9pm because I like to torture myself. I voluntarily participate in a 2-hour women's group after work which I love but the sessions are usually so intense I'll spend the rest of the commute home with my head wrapped around the night's discussion.
My boyfriend greeted me in the parking lot, sweet guy that he is. I had asked him to help me bring some things in when I arrived.
"Here, hold this please? Oh and by the way no sex tonight. I'm ragged." I breezed past him with a new throw pillow. "Thanks! Oh and I'm hungry!"
Just kidding, I didn't say it exactly like that. I'm not THAT much of a bitch. But I did actually need a way to convey my needs. Half of life is expectation management.
Because I was wound up, I needed to unwind. Normal people unwind by watching TV or meditating or maybe taking a hot shower. Not me. I have to clean. Like, overhaul. I can't just rinse a few dishes and lightly dust. I need to tuck in like I'm leaving town for a year.
Mission finally accomplished, I sidled sweetly up to my honey. Once calm, I can be good company. I just have to have a long and rigid set of needs met first. Jersey girls know how to charm!
