How Do They Do It?

Working in a grocery store is a prime people-watching opportunity.  One of the most fascinating subjects has to be the mother of small children.  There's so much variety there, and so many delicious ways for me to judge them, usually. 

There's the mom who ignores her kids as they run all over the store touching things and climbing on my counter while I'm trying to bag.  There's the mom who thinks her kid can do no wrong and completely ignores me so she can fuss over her little angel as I try to ask questions necessary to complete her grocery transaction.  There's the mom who comes in with three dirty, maniac little kids and another on the way and pays for her organic junk food with food stamps.  I want to punch that mom in the stomach and ask the government to give me a little of the money I just saved them.  Seriously, I totally get falling on hard times, but that is when it's time to stop reproducing, Fertile Myrtle.

Then there are the moms who put all the other moms to shame.  They have a couple kids in tow, but the kids are well-behaved, helpful, and quiet.  On top of that, the kids are clean and dressed neatly AND the mom looks hot.  How does that even happen?  Every time I see a woman like this, I want to reach across the counter and heartily shake her hand.  How does one manage to raise decent kids, clean them, dress them, and then make herself look not just presentable but enviably good-looking?  I can barely even manage to get my eyeliner on straight before I leave the house, and all I have is an Andy to take care of (and he is actually completely self-sufficient - he only pretends to need me so I can have some self-esteem, because he's good like that).

On the subject of women with babies, I would really appreciate not having any more dreams about being pregnant.  They are scary and unpleasant.  Last night I had a very long, hilariously horrific dream about being pregnant.  In the beginning, I had just realized I was pregnant and was apparently toying with the idea of getting the ol' coat hanger special so I didn't tell anyone about it.  Then, all of a sudden, my belly just exploded in size and I became quite obviously pregnant but I kept going around in giant sweatshirts trying to hide it because I still wasn't sure if I was going to keep it.  Then my alarm went off and I woke up with the WORST gas.

Congratulations, it's a fart.

That old shower injury flaring up again...

I wasn't allowed to shower for the longest time.  Unitl I was six or seven, I was made to take baths, which I detested.  The bath water was never hot enough or deep enough.  I believe this shower taboo stemmed from my mother's fear that I would fall in the shower.

I always found this to be completely ridiculous and unfounded.  What kind of able-bodied person just falls in the shower for no reason?  I'm not in there doing jumping jacks or practicing the alley cat.  Why worry?

I'll tell you why you should worry.  If you shave the way I do, please, learn from me.

Tuesday morning, I awoke to my unwelcome alarm clock at 5:50 am.  I had been up past 11 the previous night baking bread, because I'm a marvelous wife [yes, I got off my 8 hour shift at 7:30 and came home to make bread.  I'm probably better than you, but only at being a martyr/homemaker].  Thus, I was groggy and not fully awake when I stepped into the shower.

I proceeded to plod robotically through my shower routine.  Shampoo.  Face.  Rinse.  Condition.  Wash.  Shave.  Everything was fine, albeit slow and foggy, until I got to 'shave'.  Here is how I shave:

I do this for a few reasons.  One - because I can.  I'm freakishly flexible.  Two - It's nice to get a good stretch in under that hot water.  Loosens you up for the day.  Three - If I don't have my contacts in yet, I can't even be sure it's my leg that I'm trying to shave.  It might be just some flesh colored tube I found in the shower.  In order to see what I'm doing so as to not lacerate myself or miss large swaths of stubble, I gotta bring the leg to my face.  It usually works pretty well, but on this fateful day, my strategy failed me.

I guess I was stretching a little too hard, putting too much pressure on my back foot.  All I know is that one moment, I was standing up, happily shaving my right shin.  The next, I was in the most awkward, scary position I have experienced in a bathroom (except maybe the position where your face is on the toilet seat because if you lift your head you will vomit some more, but not lifting your face away from the toilet makes you want to vomit and it's just an awful, awful catch-22 that ultimately ends in more vomit no matter what course of action you choose).  It looked something like this:

Oh GOD, you're probably thinking.  Were you injured?  Did you cut yourself?  Bruised?  Pull something?  Maimed?

No.  In fact, I just remembered today that it even happened.  I guess I was so deliriously tired that I just dropped and stood back up before I even realized what I had done.  I stood there for a second, utterly stunned, but once I established that I wasn't broken or bleeding, I carried on with my shower and completely forgot about it for two whole days.

Moral of the story:  If you worry about something long enough, it will eventually happen. 

Don't Get Too Excited

This is hardly a real post.  But, if you like to live vicariously, you can get really excited with me.  One week from today, we will step off the an airplane into a dingy, foul-smelling terminal at Philadelphia International Airport.  We will be surrounded by people as apathetic and undesirous of small talk as I, people who might be asking their travel companions something like, "Jeet yet?"  "Nah, 'jew?"  "Nah, let's get hoagies."  And it will be a thing of beauty.  And then we will get in my mom's car, and she will drive us over the bridge, over the filthy Delaware River (a river that isn't dammed to hell and back for the sake of federally subsidized hydroelectric power, and that isn't teeming with any sort of life except the DNA traces on the dirty syringes) and I will roll down the window no matter the temperature so I can fill my lungs with that dank, polluted, sweet New Jersey air. 

I cannot wait.  So excited.  My suitcase is already 80% packed, which is a strong indicator of how excited I am about a trip.  If I'm totally stoked, I make my list of outfits weeks in advance.  If I'm only moderately excited, I give myself 3-4 days, and pack a night or two ahead.  But this time, I'm taking no chances.  Also, I did a monster pile of laundry yesterday and don't want to do more before we leave, so I'm taking precautions against accidentally wearing anything I plan to take with me.

Leave the window unlocked for me, New Jersey, 'cause I'm sneaking back in.

Sh*t My Customers Say

Wearing a name tag at work creates a gross imbalance of power that is certainly not in my favor.  People who I have never seen in my life refer to me by name as if they know me.  They get a little too familiar, and I don't like it.  I would prefer to be largely anonymous in my subservience to others.

When a well-meaning older gentleman who happens to be a complete stranger says to me, "Hi Katie, how are you?" it feels more like he is saying, "Hi Katie, what size bra do you wear?"  That might be an overreaction, but it feels like a violation in some way.  I may be wearing a name tag, but the use of my name in the customer/employee context should be reserved for complaining about my service if I have failed in some way.  I don't want to make pleasant small talk with you so that you feel good about being nice to "the help."  I'm here to scan and bag your purchases and collect your payment, not to bolster your feelings of self-righteousness. 

Some of these people might even be genuinely friendly and enjoy conversing with everyone they meet.  That's great for them, but imagine how it makes me feel.  Do I really need to discuss the weather with scores of people over the course of an eight hour shift?  I suppose I should be grateful that the customers who want to chat far outweigh the scary malcontents who refuse to communicate beyond grunting one word answers to questions such as "paper or plastic," "debit or credit."  However, I would take that over people who seem endlessly fascinated by the fact that it's cold, or that it's snowing, or that it's sunny.  Or the people who want to know my life story, or who want to tell me that their sister's best friend's daughter's name is Katie. 

Really, I just don't care.  All I need or want is an opening hello and a closing thank you.  Just basic politeness.  I'm spending three minutes in your presence, performing a service for you for an hourly pittance.  We don't have to be best friends for those three minutes, just stand there and be quiet so I don't accidentally charge you three times for the same item.  But if I do, then you can feel free to use my name when you complain to the management. 

Sometimes, people just go beyond anything annoying and enter the realm of WTF.  The other day, something must have been tainting the water supply because people were acting all kinds of weird.  First, a middle-aged man came through my line and asked me if I ever watch this British television show called Doc Martin.  I told him that I couldn't afford TV, so no, I hadn't seen it.  He proceeded to tell me how I look EXACTLY like the character named Louisa.  EXACTLY.  He was adamant.  I'm surprised he didn't ask for my autograph, because he seemed to be a huge fan.

Naturally, I googled this Louisa when I got home.  Life fail.  This chick is played by a 40 year old actress, and she's kinda busted looking.

Louisa, played by actress Caroline Catz.  Source:  Wikipedia

I mean, she's not ugly, but really?  Not much of a compliment.  At least he didn't say I looked like Steve Buscemi with boobs or something.

A short while later, a woman approached my counter and leaned forward with an ominous look on her face.  "You have a cat, don't you?"

"Pardon me?  Uh, yea, I do.  I'm sorry, are you having an allergic reaction or something?"

"No, you have a cloak of invisibility.  All cat owners have it."

"Huh?"

"I walked right past you a minute ago and didn't even see you.  Then I saw you, and I knew you must have a cat because you were invisible."

So I guess Timothy Leary must be working for the water company these days because honestly, these people were tripping on some serious Kool-Aid.  I didn't even know what to say to that, because I had become so accustomed to discussing exclusively weather-related topics that I forgot how to talk about deeper, metaphysical issues like invisibility vis a vis cat ownership.

Begin rant.  Food stamps.  Okay, I get falling on hard times and the cycle of poverty, but why are you buying gourmet imported cheese and artisan bread and effing YAK MEAT when you are so poor that the government has to buy it for you?  I work for my damn money and I'm not running around like a gourmand or a Rockefeller.  I'm also not pumping out children like my ovaries are a pre-recession assembly line.  End rant.

I'm glad I'm getting all this off my chest now, because I am at that critical point where I get to stop caring entirely.  Yesterday I put in my two weeks notice!  I'm still not ready to reveal the details of my grand scheme but I am 97.5% certain that my master plan of making a triumphant return to New Jersey is going to succeed, and soon.  I just have a few formalities with which to dispense in a couple weeks, and then I can hopefully reveal a glorious truth.  Yay!

Shalom?

Hanukkah
Hannukah
Hanukah
Channukah
Hanakah
Chanuka
Hanuka
Chanukah

I give up.  A holiday so difficult to spell, it took eight nights of celebrating to get it right.

I'd like to wish a happiest of Chanukahs to my Jewish brothers and sisters.  Spin a dreidel, eat some matzo, and light a candle on your menorah for this reluctant Gentile. 

The warm, celebratory atmosphere that envelopes this season reminds me of a game my friends and I used to play during lunch (and after school, and in class, and whenever our attention wasn't being properly channeled into a more productive vein).  We called it ghetto dreidel.  If I recall, it was really just a version of bloody knuckles in which we were too weak or scared to actually make each other bleed very often.  Someone would set a quarter spinning on a flat surface, and if it came near you you had to flick it to keep it spinning.  If you failed, the spinner had the high privilege of slamming the edge of the quarter into your exposed knuckles.  But we've all been in prison so I'm sure I did't really need to explain that part.

I don't know why we called it ghetto dreidel, as if implying that we were too poor for a dreidel (unless the point was that it was violent), because, seriously, we were substituting the real toy with money.  Surely there must have been a cheaper and thus more ghetto alternative.  Maybe a wayward button? A nickel?  A rusty hubcap from the gutter?  Jew fail. 

Down to the last remaining cranberry

I polished off the last of the Thanksgiving leftovers today.  Homemade cranberry sauce with plain yogurt and granola = mouth heaven.  It was like licking a unicorn dipped in a rainbow.  So delicious.

Then I threw myself headlong into the next holiday season and finished my Christmas shopping!  I really wanted to avoid participating in Cyber Monday, because I just think the name sounds dirty.  Actually, that should make me want to be a part of it, but my desire to reject huge consumer trends and mass acquisitiveness usually outweigh my (powerful) desire to be raunchy.  My internet purchases were just a matter of convenience and coincidence today, though.  I swear.  I had the day off, and realized that the holiday is fast approaching and, as I currently have no means of getting to a decent store, Cyber Monday came to the rescue.

Now I can just relax, bake cookies, and work on my annual round of semi-inappropriate handmade Christmas cards.  Oh, and continue to work six days a week.  So that part isn't relaxing at all, but the cookies and card making - let's just focus on that part.  I'm trying to think positive thoughts, which will hopefully permeate my writing as well.  I realize that somewhere along the line, this blog became less humorous and more bitch-fest/pity-party and it's high time that is rectified.  As in righted.  Not made into an anus.  Because I always picture a cat's pooper when I hear the word 'rectified' even though a more appropriate mental association would be say, the scales of justice. 

Seriously, though, does bathroom humor ever get old?  I'm pretty sure farts will still be hilarious even when my body is so old and floppity that farts sound like wind rustling between two pieces of tissue paper. 

But I digress.  I started this post with the intention of sharing some Thanksgiving photos.  Unfortunately, some jerk (me?) forgot to turn on the flash and these pictures look like Helen Keller built a time machine and traveled to the present to punch Zombie Ray Charles as he was taking the photos. 

 If you squint, you can almost pretend that the pictures are in focus and you are the one with the problem.  Try that.

Andy's little tiny baby bird.  It's probably a baby eagle stolen directly from the nest, plucked, and smothered in bacon.  So tender and unethical.

Right where I belong - standing in front of the stove (possibly barefoot but certainly not pregnant).  Yes, I need a haircut, desperately.  Also, my awesome grandmom made me that apron for my birthday!

Modest fare.  Sandwich plate was the perfect serving platter for the eaglet.

End scene.

And then it stopped snowing

It was like the Great Flood up in here.  Only instead of Noah, it was me, and it was more like 6 days instead of 40, and I really needed a sled with some huskies or a monster truck with studded tires instead of an ark.  I really thought it would never stop snowing.  But sometime in the middle of the night, it stopped.

The past few days have been some serious Little House on the Prairie kind of business.  On Tuesday, I literally walked uphill in the snow 3/4 of a mile to work.  Wednesday we had some subzero temperatures, and Thursday I didn't leave my house once.  Just cooked and baked my little heart out and then ate until I could eat no more.  But then Friday, it was back to the grind, except I really thought I would need to tie one end of a rope to my front door and the other around my waist in case I lost my way or was blown into a snow drift. 

The streets are only nominally plowed, and some sidewalks have not been shoveled at all.  This makes driving a car with regular tires impossible, and causes short walks to become long, arduous slogs through snow of consistencies varying between wet cement and dry sand.  Seriously, what is this?  In the rest of the civilized world, plowing means scraping all the snow off the street and then liberally salting the roads so every incapable idiot can get where they need to go.

What is this incapable idiot to do when she needs groceries??  You may say, oh honey, you are dumb, you work in a grocery store.  To that I say, touche.  But I prefer to do my weekly marketing in one fell swoop.  It is frustrating to have to limit my purchases to what I can comfortably carry (in bags) in two hands and possibly on my back.

I've toyed with the idea of harnessing our cat to a little sled and training him to haul the groceries.  My husband thinks this is impractical, and he may be right.  I mean, strength issues aside, this cat can't understand the simplest of commands.  I've been trying for about 5 months to teach him that he isn't supposed to eat my spider plants, and he still hasn't mastered "no."  "Mush" is probably beyond his grasp.  Actually, anything beyond eating, finding the litter box, cuddling, and purring at everything are beyond his grasp, but this fat little toadstool needs to earn his keep somehow, so it might be worth a try.

At any rate, it's starting to feel like The Shining.  If I see any little boys on tricycles in my upstairs hallway, I may cut off an arm just so I can be MedEvac'ed out of here.

Thanks(for)giving (us smallpox!)

By Katie, age (2)5

Yay, food!

I'm thankful for having two days off in a row for the first time in over a month.  I'm also thankful for experiencing my first white Thanksgiving.  Not that kind.  Not in a racist way.  I mean snow.  And I'm also being completely sarcastic.  I'm actually a little concerned about my ability to ever leave town until June if it doesn't stop snowing ever single day.  Ugh.

But I digress.  This is a day for feasting and joy!  And watching A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving!  It's just Andy and me for Thanksgiving this year, so I'm making a little mini-feast.

Here's a preview of what's going to be gracing my table this evening:

I butchered and bled the turkey myself?  Or, a bowl of homemade cranberry sauce. 

White Thanksgiving, or, The Shining:  Holiday Edition.  The dagger-like icicles hanging from the roof across the street (yes there is a street between the camera and the row of houses) are probably going to murder someone.

A pie only Helen Keller could love!  I promise the crust was really pretty before I put it in the oven, but it kind of got droopy and deformed for some reason.

Classy:  a bed sheet for a table cloth and a pumpkin leftover from Halloween as a centerpiece.

Also on the menu:

Spinach salad with mushrooms and mandarin oranges, with homemade dressing
Mashed sweet potatoes
Steamed green beans with almonds
Stuffing with apples, onions, celery, raisins, and mushrooms
Roasted Cornish game hen with apples, celery, onions, and bacon for Andy

I think my favorite part about Thanksgiving is the leftovers the next day.  All of the deliciousness and none of the effort!  I am seriously sad that I'm not at home to eat my grandmom's awesome food this year, though.  Best cook ever.  Hopefully the years of helping her in the kitchen (or trying, at least) will pay off for this little solo attempt.  And maybe this year my pants will still fit during the first week of December.  My sole consolation.

Happy eating, guys!

Understatement

I think weather.com needs to adjust the vocabulary and expand the scale on it's comfort index.  Yes, 23 degrees sounds uncomfortable.  NEGATIVE 1 degree sounds unbearably, unspeakably painful.  My appendages might fall off.

I've been a little MIA lately because I'm kind of freaking out about some things I need to do.  Normally I would just do these things and not freak out.  However, working 6 days a week makes it sort of impossible to get certain things done.  For example, my car battery is shot.  We can jump my car but it won't hold a charge, so I need to take it somewhere and get that fixed, but my schedule and Andy's schedule don't really align during business hours.  We were going to take care of it this morning, but now there's snow everywhere and I'm a big wuss and I'd rather just wait on this battery than risk wrecking my whole car. 

And then there's Thanksgiving and all of America has to shut down and pig out just because 400 years ago, some red people helped some white people not die, and the white people expressed their gratitude by taking all the red people's land and giving them some smallpox and casinos as a consolation.  So I guess I have to pretty much give up hope that anything meaningful will get accomplished this week.

Also, I have some other stuff that I'm working on.  Stuff that requires phone calls and emails and possibly being physically in New Jersey to sign forms and get things notarized and oh my god I am going to give myself an ulcer.  I don't mean to sound mysterious, but I don't want to jinx (or embarrass) myself by revealing my plans and my fervent hopes only to have them dashed against the incredibly sharp, pointy rocks of failure if things don't work out in my favor. 

That's all.

Reason #4,987

that I'm a horrible person.  Or just really committed to earning my honorary Jewdom:

I got a pamphlet in the mail today with all this propaganda about Gerber baby food and infant formula, accompanied by a $15 coupon for formula.  FIFTEEN DOLLARS!  That's so much money.  The first thing I said to Andy about it? 

"I wish we had a baby so I could use this coupon."

Jewiest thing I have ever said.  Leave the menorah burning for me, people of Abraham.  I'm coming home.

Well That Was Cute

Apparently power outages are a common occurrence around here.  What is this, Cuba?  According to my source, the freaky weather that plows through this prairie will down wires on the regular, and some of the sub stations that serve the town are set out in remote areas, thus impeding quick repairs.  But the subtext is that taxes are almost nonexistent here, so the infrastructure is just all-around abysmal.  Um, that's nice, but I pay for my electricity, and I would gladly pay some more taxes if it meant having paved roads and consistent power (and maybe a real job, and health insurance...need I go on?).

This windstorm started to pick up last evening.  By the time I left work at 7:30, it was roaring pretty good.  I labored to stagger home directly into the wind, and probably burned a ton of extra calories in the process.  All in all, not a bad deal.  By 10 or so, things were getting crazy.  All through the night, high winds between 45-85 mph, hail, thunder, and lightning assaulted the area.  I slept through most of it, go figure.

Fast forward to 5:50 am.  My cell phone alarm went off, so I jumped out of bed and scurried to the bathroom before the shock of cold air had time to dampen my resolve to stay out of bed.  There was a problem, however, as the bathroom light wouldn't come on.  The power was out.  Fantastic.

The last time the power went out, our light switches didn't work even after the power came back on, because a breaker was tripped.  So Andy grabbed his dorky useful headlamp and checked out the situation.  There was nothing we could do, as our entire neighborhood was blanketed in darkness save for the distant glow of a few street lamps shining down on us from the campus proper.  Incidentally, the last time the power went out for an hour or so, it was a completely clear day.  We later learned that a moldy utility pole had fallen over and taken the wires with it.  I repeat:  taxes are not always a bad thing.

Since the campus seemed to have power, and that's where I was working today, I realized I was going to have to pull up my big girl panties (if I could find them in the dark) and make myself presentable.  I found two candles to take in the bathroom with me, and set about investigating the water situation.  The toilet flushed.  So far so good.  Water in the sink was running...and....we had hot water!  There was no telling how long the hot water was going to last, as I can't imagine that the hot water heater doesn't run on electricity.  A potentially ice cold shower by candlelight just wasn't an option, so I settled for washing my face. 

I was not happy about this at ALL.  I am sort of OCD about personal hygiene, and I also don't feel fully awake until I shower.  Something about being pelted in the face with a forceful stream of water that you just can't replicate by bending over the sink.

Washing my face and then getting dressed by the light of two small candles was fine.  Luckily I had picked out my outfit the night before with the aid of electric light, so I was A-OK in the fashion department.  Putting on makeup promised to be the biggest hurdle, I thought.  I decided a light touch was key.  I was afraid if I tried to replicate my usual routine I might come out looking like a clown.  A glance in the mirror once I got to work confirmed my theory.  There was just enough makeup to set me in that delicate equilibrium between zombie and clown, and I appeared well-rested enough that I wasn't in that Bermuda Face Triangle where there IS no equilibrium and I either look like a Zombie or a Zombie Clown. 

That little blessing was nothing short of a miracle, because, despite sleeping like a baby through the night's violent, apocalyptic vortex of horror, I had to go to work without coffee.  I need sufficient rest, a shower, AND coffee to look and feel normal.  Usually, an extra cup of coffee can compensate for the alertness a shower provides (though nothing suppresses the feeling of dirty).  But no shower AND no coffee?  You may as well cancel Christmas, because you've just ruined my day so hard.

So I powered through the work day, and went to the gym where I tried not to sweat too much since I probably already smelled like hot garbage.  Came home, took an EXTRA long shower because now I have to live with the fear of not knowing when my next shower is going to come.  Power outages are traumatizing, guys.  But then I made tofu fajitas and all is right with the world once again.  It's 7:21 and I'm probably going to fall asleep in about 4 minutes due to caffeine withdrawal.

Oh god. Is this the apocalypse? No power. No heat. Car won't start. 40 mph sustained winds. Are we dead? Is this Hell? No, it's just Idaho.

Sent from my iPhone.

Sick-bed Blogging

I'm writing to you all from my sick-bed.  It's really just my regular bed, but I'm way sick.  Convalescing all over the place.  Or all around the house, and the grocery store, and the recycling center.  Because when you have only one day off each week, you have to get shit done, even when you feel like someone smacked you in the face with a 2x4 and pumped a bunch of glue into your nasal passages.

The good news is, I found some decently priced flights for the holidays!  We'll be flying home to New Jersey on the 20th and we won't be returning to the geopolitical abomination that is Idaho until January 4th!  Hooray and huzzah.

The other good news is that I think I should be done with bad things happening to me for a while.  They come in threes, right?  So I figure I have to be storing up some karma points for the (totally awkward) job rejection, getting sick, and discovering this afternoon that my car won't start because of either a weird electrical problem or a bad battery.  How convenient that this should happen mere months after the warranty expired.  Come on, universe, throw me a bone.

Although I may have just squandered all my karma points later this afternoon.  I was on the phone with my mom, dressed in several layers and huddled under a blanket, alternating phone-holding hands so neither hand would get frostbite, when there came a knock at the door.  I had just begun to generate some warmth by shivering in the fetal position and seriously had no interest in getting up to answer the door.  I heard two unfamiliar female voices outside, so I decided to ignore them in the hope they would go away. 

Alas, the hags were persistent.  They knocked again, harder.  And hags they certainly were.  I glanced out the peephole to make sure they were unarmed (you never know around here, people are to guns as 1990's tourists are to fanny packs, they just strap 'em on like it's no big deal).  They looked harmless, so I cracked open the door to find two very frumpy, soggy-looking women huddled on my porch.  "Your keys are in the door," one of them said to me.

"Oh, uh, thanks."  Andy had apparently left his keys in the door when we returned from the store.  I moved to shut the door and the first woman spoke up again.  "I see you're on the phone."  Uh, YEAH.  What do you want, ladies?  "Perhaps I'll just leave you with an encouraging verse..."  That's when I noticed her clutching a dog-eared bible, so I went into stealth mode and blurted out, "No thanks, we're Jewish!" and quickly shut the door.  Mean?  Yes.  Necessary?  Hell yes. 

I want no part of any religious group that tries to rudely intrude on my private life in that way.  You can have whatever beliefs you want, but keep them to yourself.  Seriously.  Who comes to someone's house, uninvited like that, and knocks TWICE?  If you want to come up to me on the street and proselytize, fine.  I'm still going to shoo you away, but you have every right to approach me in public.  But when I'm in my house, leave me ALONE.  Save your black Nikes and your Kool-Aid for someone else.

TGIF

It's Friday and I don't give a damn! 

For those of you with humane work schedules that recognize a two-day weekend, happy Friday.  For the rest of us schmucks, I'm sorry and I feel your pain.

Remember TGIF shows on ABC?  How effing awesome were they!?  Life was so much simpler when a Friday night consisted of getting your shower before 8:00 so you could spend the next couple hours sprawled out eating ice cream on your mom's bed with the Tanners, the Winslows, and whatever the hell hyphenated abomination the family on Step By Step was named.  That show kind of sucked anyway.  Suzanne Somers really went downhill after Three's Company, and Patrick Duffy looks like a Muppet.  Plus the dude that played Cody beat his girlfriend in real life, but he was probably just pissed that his parents gave him a girl's name.  Who names their son Sasha?  Seriously, DYFS should have stepped in on that one. 

Since ABC totally dropped the ball on wholesome Friday night programming and I don't have TV anyway, I'm just gonna hang out, drink a beer or two, and read some more of The Executioner's Song.  I was all set to watch Reality Bites on Netflix (see the comments from the previous post), because I figured, hey, it's an older movie, of course you can probably stream it.  Then I discovered it's not available for streaming, so there it sits, at the bottom of my queue, below a bunch of shitty mountain climbing documentaries my husband threw on there. 

Speaking of mountain climbing, I hate it so much.  Or rather, I hate the equipment required for the activity.  My current pet peeve is just hearing Andy say the word "crampons."  It's such a disgusting word.  I'm insane, so I've been making him call them "foot spikes," because he insists on constantly reminding me of how badly he wants a pair (they are very expensive).  "Crampons" (I shudder to even type the word) sounds too much like a portmanteau of cramps and tampons.  I hate the sound of the word almost as much as I hate the word "moist."  That's really saying something.

While The Cat's Away

The mice will play.  Strip poker.  Or Russian Roulette.

Andy's over on Mt. St. Helen's until tomorrow night.  So while my husband chills out on a volcano and does Man Things (honestly, I would have gone, too, if I didn't have to work and if temperatures below 65 degrees didn't kill my soul and parts of my flesh), I'm going buck wild up in here. 

And by buck wild, I mean that I didn't get around to doing the dishes until two hours after I ate dinner.  In all fairness, there was a huge amount of dishes and the counter was covered in coffee grounds and spilled coffee, and there were two half-empty cups of black coffee just hanging out and going to waste.  I was at work all day.  This was not my mess.  Do I sound bitter?  Sorry.  I just feel like, you know, somebody should be tipping the maid.  That's all.

As if doing the dishes SLIGHTLY LATER THAN USUAL wasn't rebellious enough, I worked on what I hope will be the last cover letter I have to write for at least a year.  But I didn't finish it.  I just didn't have the mental energy to come up with a snappy closing paragraph.  So it waits until tomorrow.

Now, to continue with my streak of reckless abandon, I'm going to sip on some serious sizzurp.  (Right after I punch myself in the face for trying to use the word 'sizzurp'.)  And by that, I mean I'm going to microwave a cup of piping hot ginger tea and watch Cougar Town on Hulu.  After which I will get in bed and read more of Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song, because I'm weirdly fascinated with Gary Gilmore, the second to last criminal executed by firing squad in Utah. 

Oh my god.  I'm so boring and responsible.  I'm the worst.  I guess maybe I am a Real Adult, even if I don't have the level of employment I feel should accompany that status.  Maybe all it takes to be a Real Adult is to take your vitamins, (try to) keep your house clean, budget your money responsibly, eat vegetables, and actually desire to sit in your house and do quiet things.  Unless that's the definition of a Real Boring Adult Who Is Poor and Has Low Self-Esteem and Anti-Social Tendencies.  Part of me thinks I am a huge loser for not going up the street to the gas station for a Four Loko so I can get tore up and take ironic mirror shots to post on my tumblr.  Then the sane part of me thinks that I'm a loser for thinking I'm a loser for not wanting to do that.  Where does this cycle end?  It ends when I have a day off and can sleep in, regroup, exercise, eat at normal times, and regain just a touch of sanity to see me through the following six days of work.

Hump Day

 

I feel like the one on the bottom.  I'm always getting the shaft.

Earlier today, I was thinking about how Wednesday is my second-favorite day (next to Sunday, my only day off).  I get to sleep in and go to the gym in the morning, but I still earn some bucks during a nice little four-hour shift at the library.  This is the day I file looseleaf updates of legal resources, and it's wonderful.  I just listen to music and perform this methodical, solitary task.  At least I tell myself that it's wonderful.  It's actually kind of insultingly easy and repetitive, and the tissue-papery pages I'm handling really suck all the moisture out of my hands, but shit, it's better than working at McDonalds.  A real job offering a living wage and health insurance would be legitimately wonderful, but you have to find the silver lining.

I had one last hope for living like a real adult in this godforsaken backwater hellhole.  I applied for a job (for the third and final time, I can take a hint) at the university's library.  A job that doesn't even require an MLIS, but a full-time, benefits-included job nonetheless.  I interviewed for the job two weeks ago, and received the world's most awkward phone call today, informing me that I wasn't selected for the job.  I'm not sure if I was more angry about the rejection or the awkwardness of the phone call.  I don't even know if it's possible to accurately convey the awkwardness with text - it wasn't the fact of being rejected via phone, it was the quality of this particular phone call.  But I was (and am) mighty pissed about the whole thing.

So I am working on an escape plan.  Or a retreat plan.  Whatever you want to call it, but it definitely involves going back to New Jersey.  Idaho, it's not me, it's you.  You just suck, and I hate you.

Confessions

But not the sin kind.  I'm just going to tell you stuff that is kind of embarrassing but afterward you're just going to shrug it off or maybe judge me a little.  You aren't going to absolve me of anything, or molest me.  Because this is the internet, and you can't touch me.

Christmas is fast approaching, and I'm already about a third of the way through my shopping.  I like to start thinking about gifts early so I have time to select meaningful, quality things for people.  Then there's time to just hang out and eat my way through the rest of the season without getting stuck in a mob of procrastinators fighting over the last pair of dress socks at the mall.

My mom is totally awesome and still asks me for a Christmas list.  It's possible that she still feels a lingering need to compensate for the year my dad destroyed the mythology of Santa Claus and ruined Christmas forever.  But I'm going to go with "awesome" because my dad ruined a lot of things and I don't want to think that my mother's love for me is one vicious cycle of making up for his failures.  And also, my mom is actually awesome so there's really no flaw in my logic.

But anyway, I sat down to create this year's list and I just couldn't think of anything.  I resorted to my usual practice of making a booklist.  Thank god David Sedaris put out a new book this year.  What would a Christmas booklist be without him?  So I assembled a respectable selection of Chelsea Handler, David Sedaris, Sarah Silverman, Samantha Bee, and then I gave up.  What do I want?  Do I even want anything?

Yes.  Yes, I want things.  Here are the things I really want, but cannot seem to obtain:

• New clothes
• New underwear
• New bras
• A real job
• Health insurance
• A dentist appointment
• New glasses OR Lasik
• A bed frame
• Washer
• Dryer
• Dishwasher
• House with more than one toilet 
• House with a place to put the litter box that isn't the kitchen closet so I don't have to hear a cat peeing while I'm eating
• House with a yard so I can have a garden and some dairy goats
• Cable 
• A non-CRT television
• A DVD-playing device that isn't a secondhand PS2
• Internet that works at least most of the time
• To live somewhere that isn't Idaho
• A haircut
• Permission to paint my walls and hang nice curtains and install nice carpet that isn't smelly and from the 80s
• A digital SLR camera
• A refrigerator with a vegetable drawer that doesn't stick and jam every time you pull it out
• An oven with a window in the door so I can check on my food without heat escaping
• To live near my family and friends
• To be warm

So that's just the short list.  I'm not listing all this to suggest that my life sucks.  It's pretty decent.  But there's a lot to work for, and many things I would like to change.  Maybe someday.  Just gotta work on winning the lottery or starting an internet meme that I can milk for millions of dollars.  Or you know, find a real job.  Which is high on my list of desires, and would also facilitate many of the other desires.  At this rate, though, the meme seems about as achievable as a job.

I just want a job with regular, normal hours that doesn't require me to stand in one spot for eight hours at a stretch.  And one that doesn't give total strangers the opportunity to say bizarre things to me without repercussions.

Yesterday, a well-dressed, respectable-looking woman came through my line.  She quickly proved that appearances are deceiving, because she may have looked normal but she was weird as hell.  She kept staring at me like I had two heads, and every question I asked her was met with a delayed, slow, and distracted-sounding response.  Finally, she asked me, "Where are you from originally?"

Dammit.  My big hair, Ed Hardy, and orange skin must be giving me away.  I need to tone it down a little.  Maybe choose one of the three?  Nobody ever accuses John Boehner of being from New Jersey...do they?

I immediately figured she was trying to place my accent, and couldn't decide if I was from somewhere else or "special."  I had encountered that assumption many times as a bus girl in restaurant at the shore.  So I quickly explained, "I'm from New Jersey.  Why do you ask, do I have an accent?"  I was about to learn, once and for all, why people always seem to think I'm foreign or retarded.

She responded, still speaking in her slow, dreamy, drinking-the-Kool-Aid voice, "No, you don't have an accent...you're...you're very pretty, but not like you're from the Northwest."

Well shit, lady.  That doesn't settle anything for me.  "Pretty" for this area could mean as little as having all your teeth.  It could mean not having a mullet.  Not having a lap that grazes your kneecaps when you're standing upright.  The standards are abysmally low.  In fact, not five minutes before this exchange, I rang up a man who had six yellow teeth and about ten tiny brown nubs in his mouth.  And he was wearing a wedding ring, so somebody evidently thought he was a real catch.  She may as well have said, "I'm staring at you because you have mastered the art of basic hygiene."

What Idaho lacks in infrastructure and amenities, it more than makes up for with its low cost of living and even lower standards of fashion, hygiene, and aesthetics.

Friday, or, Thursday part 2

Working six days a week is lame.  My jobs are not mentally taxing or anything, but still.  I require a significant amount of cooking/cleaning/bread-baking/reading/crossword-puzzling/internet-surfing/gym-going time, and all this working is really cramping my style.  Which is illuminating.  I wasn't previously aware that my style was "lazy homebody."  Maybe I was aware but not ready to admit it, so here I am, telling the world.  Or like five people, but whatever.

So it's Friday night but it doesn't feel like it at all, because I still have to get up early and work another 8 hours tomorrow.  Whine whine whine oh my life is so hard.  Nobody wants to hear it.  At least I'm working.  Buuut health insurance would be nice...and a regular schedule...but a girl can dream.

Speaking of dreaming, I thought I was having an opium nightmare this morning at work.  (I don't know if opium gives you nightmares, but the phrase sounded hardcore and we've been watching Deadwood and those Wild West whores are ALL ABOUT laudanum and opium.  ALL about it.)  This man came through my line who I would swear was a cartoon character.  He was short and stocky, but he was...so much more than that.  He was extremely muscular, yet so short and so broad.  He looked like a chiseled little vienna sausage with arms and legs.  The best part had to be his outfit, which only accentuated his comical physique.  Fire-engine red baseball cap, same color sweatpants, and a pale pink, skin-tight, threadbare Mighty Mouse t-shirt.  So skin tight I could have counted his chest hairs.  If it had been any colder, his nips would have pierced right through the cotton. 

Humping Day

But not like that.  More like this:

This post was intended for yesterday, but, conveniently, my internet crapped out after I typed the first sentence of this post and never returned before I went to bed.  I should mention that we're on the university's network, which moves about as slowly and dies about as frequently as the woman in the above illustration.  What the hell kind of backwater, third-world, piss-poor infrastructure is this?  But anyway, this post sort of still applies today since I have a six-day workweek now (I whined and got out of a six hour shift on Sunday so as not to work 14 days in a row).

Speaking of backwater - guns.  I am constantly hearing noises that I am positive are gunshots and not backfiring trucks, even though we live in town.  The other day I may have discovered the source.  I was walking home from work and saw a frat guy leaning out his window firing what I suspect was just some kind of air gun (it was orange) into the air.  Then he saw two of his brothers approaching the house so he pointed the gun at them and fired.  Because that's ever a safe way to joke around even if your gun doesn't actually use bullets.

It seems I can't quite get away from commutes where I'm exposed to people carrying guns.  I would bring up riding the Riverline between Camden and Trenton, but that really deserves an entire post to fully explain its horrors.

Things I Need to Get Off My Chest

Aside from your hands or your creepy wayward glances.  They can stay.

I worked 11 hours today.  I realize this is a regular occurrence for many people, and that some people work much more than that, even.  I'm a wimp, though, so I'm totally wiped out right now.  It didn't help that I started the work day at 7:30 in the morning and ended it at 9:30 at night.  Oh and I walk about 3/4 of a mile each way to both my jobs.  And one job involves constant standing.  And I forgot to wear socks because it was warm this morning, so the walk home was very cold.  Until it was just numb and kind of like walking with miniature ice floes attached to your ankles where your feet should be.

On the way home, I tripped over a crooked piece of sidewalk that was lurking under a pile of leaves.  I came so close to eating it, and I'm pretty sure people on the other side of the street saw it.  It was pretty graceful and cool looking.

What was even cooler, though, was the very subtle act of public urination I witnessed shortly prior to almost eating it.  This car was stopped at a red light and just before the light changed, the passenger door opened ever so slightly.  Then the car sped away.  It was then that I noticed the passenger had placed a clear plastic soda cup, complete with lid and straw, on the ground.  It was 3/4 full of yellow liquid.  How meticulous of them to replace the lid so their pee didn't spill.

And now I will rant.  My coworkers all seem like super nice, chill people, but I have a gripe.  I hope that none of them by chance read this, but if anyone does, it's not personal, I like you, but I just need to bitch.  When I'm not at work, I'm NOT AT WORK.  I need a liberal dose of Me Time, and I'm barely eking out enough as it is.  I don't want to get a phone call from you, asking me to come and cover your shift in two hours, because I have probably already OCD orchestrated the remainder of my day and can't mentally accommodate your request.  Sorry, I'm insane, but that's who I am.

I'm going to make a concerted effort to write more (quality) posts this month (except for this one, this is just me spewing garbage), since November seems to be all about writing.  NaBloWriMo?  Sounds like a sex act, so clearly I'll participate.  NaNoWriMo just doesn't have the same verbal appeal, and I don't fancy myself very skilled at the art of fiction, so NaBloWriMo it is.  Expect a post a day, unless I'm dead.  But for now, you'll have to excuse me, because there's a glass of wine and some dried apple rings with my name on them, and I am in the middle of Chelsea Handler's My Horizontal Life.  Goodnight, everybody.

It must be some sort of hot tub time machine...

And a new month is upon us.

We did not have one single trick-or-treater last night.  I didn't put on any makeup yesterday, so I was just going to tell anyone who asked that I was a zombie.  Alas, the opportunity for self-deprecation never arose.

Lately I've started thinking that moving to Idaho from the east coast is the equivalent of stepping into a time machine.  Either that or people here are just really vocal about compliments.  I'm leaning towards the former, though.  I get an insane number of compliments on my clothing, even though I'm wearing mostly things that are between 2 and 5 years old.  It's weird, because I am by no means a fashion plate.  Since it's apparently still 2007 or 2008 here, most of my clothes must seem new or futuristic by comparison.  I'm okay with that, except now I'm worried about how outdated I'm going to look when I go home. 

In other news, Tote Bag Lady carries a Jagermeister lanyard.  She's steadily proving herself to be the coolest person in town.

Happy Halloween!

Ohhh yeaaa.  Happy Halloween to me!  This was the real day off I've had in about a week, and the last one I will have for the next fourteen days.  Needless to say, I was determined to enjoy it, and I think I am doing a fine job.  I slept in, pet the cat, enjoyed not one but two morning constitutionals (TMI, perhaps, but I'm just keeping it real and you all know that's the kind of thing that makes you feel accomplished even when you're having a lazy day), enjoyed a great workout, called my grandmom and my mom, cleaned the bathroom, and made my first-ever quiche. 

Right now, I'm sipping a hot cup of ginger tea and watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown on DVD.  Because I own probably every good Peanuts special on DVD.  Some might find that hopelessly lame, but I'm alright with that.  Peanuts, especially the older strips and animated specials, is just as entertaining, if not more so, as an adult.  Sure, there is an undeniable nostalgia factor, but Charles Schulz had some pretty heavy hangups and a lot of unintentional existentialism comes across in his work.  It's also very witty and the humor is innocent yet sophisticated enough that there's still something there for adults.

So far, we have had zero trick-or-treaters.  I heard some kids rampaging past our windows a little while ago, but they didn't approach our door.  The porch light is off, so it's entirely possible, yet hard to believe, that kids in this town actually respect this signal.  I feel a little guilty, but I'm too lazy to get up and turn the light on.  If they don't want the store-brand bulk-bin peppermint patties I'm prepared to hand out, then it's their loss (and my gain, in probably more ways than one unless I forget about them and Andy eats them all, which is likely).

I've been cooking and baking and cleaning a lot lately (or at least thinking about wanting to do those things).  This falls at odds with both my work schedule and my desire to sleep all day.  My work schedule also interrupts my ability to be cranky and irritable.  This seems to happen every fall.  The weather turns cold and gray, and all I want to do is bitch and nest.  I'm beginning to wonder whether I have Seasonal Affective Disorder or if my mom neglected to tell me that I'm part bear.

Since I love food right now, let's talk about this quiche.  Not to toot my own horn, but SO GOOD.  I've been wanting to make quiche for a while, and I received the final push I needed when a blogger I recently started following shared her recipe.  I made the crust from scratch with the pate brisee recipe that I wrote about in August.  Then I perused some quiche recipes on allrecipes.com for temperature guidelines and how many eggs to use.  And then I made up the rest, because I'm defiant and don't like to follow directions. 

Quiche is great, because it's so simple and there's so much room to play around.  Eggs and whatever other crap I want to throw in?  I can handle that.  It's like my omelets, which Andy calls "scrambled eggs with shit in them" because they are hideous and sloppy.  So quiche is like scrambled eggs with shit in them, but baked in the oven with a pie crust.  It only sounds pretentious.  Here's the rundown:

Preheat your oven to 450 and begin sauteing the following: two small zucchini, thinly sliced; about half a red pepper and a green pepper, diced; one small onion, diced; and three generous handfuls of spinach.

Arrange your pie crust in your pie plate, line it with foil, and bake at 450 for five minutes.  Remove the foil and bake for five more minutes, then remove your pre-baked crust from the oven and reduce heat to 350.

Mix 5 beaten eggs, 1/4 cup milk and 1/4 to 1/2 cup grated cheese.  I used some cheddar and some mozzarella because that's what we had on hand, but you can get fancy if you like.

Transfer your sauteed vegetables to the pie crust, and add a handful of sun-dried tomatoes.  Pour the egg mixture over your veggies, sprinkle on a liberal dose of garlic, and throw that bad boy in the oven.  Bake it for 40-45 minutes, let it sit for at least 5, and then prepare to have a oralgasm.

The two of us devoured half of it, and now I have lunch tomorrow and dinner on Tuesday to complement my inhuman work schedule that prevents me from cooking or eating at normal times.

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

I have been a negligent blogger.  I am sorry, but I've been working a lot lately.  It's been a rather abrupt transition to go from an utterly unfettered state of unemployment to working lots of hours at random times doing three different jobs.  Still no health insurance, but a girl can dream. 

In job related news, I was not selected for the job entailing boar semen.  Some of you may be dying to know what boar semen had to do with the job, and now I can tell you without fear of impunity.  It's not as glamorous as it sounds.  I wasn't interviewing to be a nipple tweaker in the animal porn industry (or would it be a teat tweaker?).  I wasn't interviewing to be the person who gathers the semen for artificial insemination, or the person who does the inseminating.  I wasn't volunteering for a medical study in which I would be inseminated with boar batter to study the gestation of a pig-human hybrid.  I was just interviewing to be an administrative assistant in a university's Animal Science department.  Pretty boaring stuff.  Boring.  Sorry.  I like puns, and you don't.

I'm still not entirely sure why boar semen was brought up twice by two different groups of people during separate segments of my interview.  The women who brought it up both intended to warn me that I may have eventually received phone calls about farmers wanting to order a particular type of boar semen.  I don't know if that was a test, but I laughed, so maybe I failed.  Oh well.  If you can't laugh about a catalog of swine semen, what good is your life?

I see strange enough things at my current jobs without throwing animal 'nads into the mix.  Case in point:  veiled racism?

As many of you might assume about Idaho, it is a very white place.  As in, a whole lot of whiteys and not much diversity at all.  At least, not to any extent that I'm used to.  It's weird.  But, being the case, I guess it's easy to understand why a person would be overly conscious of not being racist, to the point of creating unnecessarily awkward situations, because she has no real experience interacting with anyone even remotely different from herself.

This evening, I'm checking out an African woman when a white woman gets in line behind her.  The first woman, let's call her Jane, turns around and warmly greets the second woman by name.  We'll call her Betty.  Betty smiles an exaggerated smile and loudly and slowly tells Jane that she doesn't remember her name.  In perfect English with a noticeable but completely understandable accent, Jane (whose real name is quite common and not at all exotic or challenging) reintroduces herself even though it's obvious from her initial greeting and their later conversation that the women are part of some club together and have totally interacted several times before. 

Betty, still speaking at an awkwardly loud volume and slow pace, says to Jane, "I forget everyone's name.  I am so horrible with names.  I am not treating you any differently than I would treat anyone else."  I swear on a stack of David Sedaris books that I transcribed at least that last sentence verbatim.  She seriously said that.

So let's recap.  In an effort to not be (or at least not outwardly appear) insensitive or not-PC, this woman spoke to an intelligent adult the way one would speak to a two year old, presumably just because she had an accent.  And then she assured her that she was treating her like she would treat anyone else. 

And I watched all this in mute horror.  It was so very Seinfeld.  It took a great deal of willpower not to ask Betty if she was serious.  In a loud, slow voice. 

But I just stared at her, judged her, and made a mental note to blog about it later.  I treated her just like I would treat anyone else.

Fecal Trail of Tears - Part 3

This last segment has been a long time coming.  I have been debating whether it's a tale worth telling, because it involves developmentally delayed children.  So I just want to make it clear right now that the events in this story are true, and that my reactions of disgust are related solely to the presence of fecal matter and do not reflect my feelings towards the children in question.  I'm not making fun of the kids here, okay, people?  The mockery lies in my seeming inability to avoid other people's poop in my various jobs.  So don't get all up on my case that I'm making fun of anyone's disability, because I'm not. 

If you haven't read Parts 1 and 2, or you just need a refresher, go here and here.

As you will recall, my first job was just all-around awful.  The sloppy chocolate icing on the shame cake was cleaning a mess of feces off the wall and floor using plastic grocery bags for hand protection.  A couple jobs and three summers later, I found myself working at an overpriced Jersey Shore restaurant where I had a very close encounter with misplaced bowel movements.  By then, I had grown a proverbial pair and weaseled out of the cleanup.

Fast forward another couple years and I had graduated from college with an utterly useless English degree.  I got a job in a high school library, which was good in a lot of ways and terrible in almost as many.  I liked my job-related tasks.  I did not like having students call me a bitch or sexually harass me.  I especially didn't like when the kid who spent a year in juvie for beating the crap out of his mother used to say my name the way a child molester would say "Hey little girl, wanna come in my van for some candy".  If it was any other kid, I would have verbally shamed him and sent him on his way, but this kid was terrifying. 

But I digress.  The wonderful thing about this job was that I was finally confident that I would not ever have to touch someone else's poop again.  At least not in a work-related capacity.  What I do on the weekends is private, and we made a pact not to ever take pictures or disclose our real names, so there's no way that's ever going to end up on the internet oh god I've said too much already.

The fecal-free workplace was a welcome change for me, but I knew it wasn't a sustainable way to live.  Too much stress and frustration in a high school.  Not my bag.  After two years, I left the job so I could go to grad school full-time to complete my Master's degree in Library Science.  All I wanted to do was work in a nice, quiet, teenager-free, poop-free space filled with books.  Is that so much to ask?

Thus far, it seems that yes, that is too much to ask.  But my employment woes are no secret to most of you.  At the time, I realized that I needed some form of flexible, "easy" employment, so I applied to substitute teach in a "semi-urban" K-12 school district a couple towns up the road (and "up the road" kind of means closer to Camden, which pretty much everyone knows is a horrible place thanks to its designation in past years as the most dangerous city in the country, surpassing even Compton).

I spent my first day subbing for 2nd grade at the elementary school in the nicer part of town.  It was a cakewalk.  All these little cherubs were polite and obedient and gave me hugs (which was not that awesome, because children are crawling with germs, but at least they liked me) and told me I was pretty.  It was the easiest $80 I've ever made, except for that time I blacked out while hooking, and woke up next to a pile of sweaty $1's.  I don't remember a thing.  Probably because it didn't actually happen, but every once in a while I like to pretend I'm "hard" and have "street cred."

Reality is a harsh mistress, though.  The next time I was called to work, they sent me to another 2nd grade class at the elementary school across the street from the subsidized housing apartments.  What a difference socio-economic status makes!  I'm not going to fault anyone for being poor, and I realize that there are bratty children at every rung on the socio-economic ladder.  But these children were all kinds of bat-shit crazy, through no fault of their own.  There were maybe three nice kids who obviously had attentive parents.   The rest of the kids were probably born with crack in their systems and no self control whatsoever.  I almost lost my voice from screaming all day just to make myself heard over the din of ADHD crack babies whining and calling each other words I never heard until high school.

Each time my phone rang at 6 in the morning, I would cringe.  "Fuck" would often be my first word of the day on these occasions.  Almost without fail, I would be asked to sub at the ghetto elementary school.  Some days were better than others.  Fourth grade was manageable.  Kindergarten was very...soggy.  I lost track of the number of kids who peed their pants that day.  Fortunately the teacher's aide took care of the pants-changing and wet-underwear-bagging.  But still.  You're five years old.  Have some self-respect.

I quickly learned that the non-classroom teachers had the best gigs.  Art, gym, computers, music...they had the easiest schedules with the most prep time.  They also didn't have to endure any particular group of students for more than 45 minutes at a time.  So when I reported to the ghetto school to sub for the music teacher, I was ecstatic.  All I had to do was show a video to a few classes, spend an hour eating lunch and driving to another elementary school, show the same video two more times, and then I could go home early.  This assignment had all the makings of the Best Day Ever. 

I had just settled into the classroom and set to work relearning how to use a VCR so I could rewind the video I had to show to the first class.  My endorphins were surging, and I was mentally preparing myself for a great day, when the principal poked her head in the doorway.  "We need to reassign you.  Can you go down the hall and sub for the aide in the Preschool Disabled classroom?"

Oh.  My.  God.  It was happening again.  Just like the time old Jeanie commanded me to clean the shit off the wall in the bathroom, my vocal cords were paralyzed.  "Buh.  Uh.  Sure?"  Katie, you are a coward.  Why did you agree to that? I thought as I slunk down the hall to a place I feared more than clowns and bears and people staring at me.  I feared it more than being stared at by a clown riding a bear.  I was on the verge of vomiting.  I was so disoriented by the abrupt and unpleasant shift that had just been foisted upon my day.

I'm not good with kids.  Kindergarten was difficult enough.  I could have used a translator to help me understand kidspeak, and those children were developmentally normal, for the most part.  How on earth would I, the person who had never babysat, never changed a diaper, never interacted with children, function in a room full of three and four year old kids who have the bodies of toddlers and the minds of babies?  I guess I wasn't even worried for myself so much as I was afraid of how my ineptitude would affect the kids.  How am I supposed to understand what they want or need?  How am I supposed to act around them?  Regular kids are mysterious and difficult as it is, but this was just a completely different universe of uncertainty.

It was heartbreaking.  These kids had autism and cerebral palsy and all sorts of difficulties.  I can't even imagine what that is like for their parents.  Just looking at these kids forced you to imagine how much of a struggle the rest of their lives are going to be.  It was just sad.  The entire day was one giant Debbie Downer.  It didn't help that most of the kids cried the whole day and threw hissy fits over the most inane things.  It was just awful and sad.  My normal reaction to behavior like that from average kids would be anger and impatience, but with these kids, you just wanted to hug them or give them a cookie or something.  You just felt BAD.  It wasn't a feeling of pity, it was more a sense of injustice that life is going to be a lot harder for these kids than it will be for average kids.

It wasn't until mid-morning that I understood why I had been reassigned.  The other aide and I took a group of four of the higher-functioning kids to the bathroom for a potty break.  On the way there, she told me the sub caller had originally assigned an old man to the Preschool Disabled room, and when he showed up they realized he would be useless because it would be inappropriate for him to touch the kids.  I didn't realize that would even be an issue until she indicated that we had to go into the bathroom with them and help them undo their pants before they went into the stalls.  I felt a little creepy about this, but I guess I shouldn't have, because "I'm a woman" and it's obviously okay for me to unbutton a little boy's pants but not for a man to unbutton a little girl's pants.  If not for this hideous and unfair double standard, I would have been living it up on easy street, showing videos about walking, talking trumpets and flutes while some crusty old man was helping three year olds pull down their pants.  Ain't that a b'.

At 11:30, the first group of children went home, and we had a half-hour respite before the afternoon onslaught.  One child remained in the classroom with the teacher, the other aid, and me.  He was a little boy with autism who had a completely normal twin brother.  His parents were going through a messy divorce, and they kept him in preschool for the whole day so he'd be out of the way.  Oh.  My.  God.  Like I said before, absolutely heartbreaking. 

The kid could almost manage to feed himself, but the teacher had to help him a great deal.  After he ate a small portion of his lunch, he proceeded to run to the other side of the room, fling himself on the carpet, and start flailing his arms and legs and moaning.  It was disturbing, but according to the teacher, he did it all the time.  So we let him be and ate our lunches. 

Then we noticed pungent odor coming from the child's direction.  The teacher gave the other aide a knowing glance, eyebrows raised.  "You think he pooped?"  "Yep.  Come on, Katie, give me a hand with this."

For the second time that day, I was speechless.  I couldn't imagine what "giving her a hand" would entail.  Does it take more than one person to clean the poop off this kid?  Is there cause for concern?  Should I put on a hazmat suit?  I'm pretty sure I was shaking at this point, from fear, embarrassment, and nausea because by then, the poop smell was nearly asphyxiating me.  Did this kid eat an entire bag of garbage for breakfast?

As it turned out, "giving a hand" meant grabbing one of the kid's arms and half-dragging, half-carrying him between us as he protested, kicking and screaming, all the way to the bathroom.  What happened next was nothing short of a miracle of compassion.  I don't know if the woman really didn't need anything more from me or if I looked like I was so close to vomiting that she wanted me to leave lest she have two messes to clean up.  But once we got into the bathroom, she turned to me and said, in the most angelic voice you can imagine, "I can take it from here." 

So I staggered back to the classroom and managed to make it through the rest of the day.  On my way home, I stopped for coffee and a quick back-alley hysterectomy.

Purple Nurple

Hay guys.  Today and for the rest of this week, this blog will be wearing purple to show it's (my) solidarity with the LGBTQ community and to raise awareness about the issue of anti-gay bullying. 

Bullying is bad, y'all.  From an outside perspective, it's easy to see that most bullies are probably insecure people.  They choose targets who embody traits they fear in themselves, for whatever reason.  Or, out of jealousy, they bully someone who is successful or courageous in some way that the bully envies. 

But when you are the target of a bully, it's hard to see that.  All you know is that someone is making your life hell and telling you that you are worthless or you don't belong.  And it has to stop. 

And not all bullying happens on the playground.  It happens in high schools, colleges, workplaces, and social spaces.  It is even written into law in such instances where two people who love each other can't build a life together just because they happen to have the same kinda 'nads.  That is some bullshit right there. 

I'm not here to get up on some kind of soap box and be all serious and preachy, even though this is a very serious issue.  I just want to make sure you're all thinking about this for a few minutes today.

You might say, hey, you're white and straight and female, what do you know about being bullied?  Well, I'll tell you.  I had a bully once.  Her name was Stacey.  She used to curse at me and beat the shit out of me in 6th grade.  Once she actually kicked me in the spine during a game of Silent Ball, because I caught the ball and she didn't.  In the SPINE.  During goddamn SILENT BALL (I hope people at other elementary schools played this game, otherwise that will only make sense to like 10 people).  That is also some bullshit right there.  And the school did absolutely nothing to stop it, despite my mother's repeated visits to the principal's office to complain about the situation after teachers refused to do anything. 

So that really sucked.  But, her life is probably a shithole now, because she had hardcore ADHD and an unstable mother, and I'm pretty sure she bullied me because I was smart and she was dumb as a brick.  I didn't choose to be smart any more than anyone chooses to be gay.  It's just who I am.  And being smart is a good thing - certainly not a source of shame.  Just like being gay.  I think gay people are AWESOME, and if every gay person was out and proud, the world would be a better place.  You might call that reverse discrimination, but I just call it love.  I'm saying it.  I'm gay for gay people. 

Muffin

Just know that I made the most orgasmically amazing apple muffins yesterday.  Later, I will post pictures and a recipe, but I have things to do before I go to work, because I'm one of those people now (people who work and prioritize real life over the internet).  But anyway, these muffins totally redeem my Saturday night dinner shame.  Although, judging by all your comments, I'm not alone in my propensity for combining incompatible food items, heating it, and calling it a meal.  And some of you are probably going to have fajita lasagna the next time you cook for one!  So everyone wins.

Also, I've been reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  It's terribly interesting, and vaguely horrifying.  I've been wanting to read it since I heard NPR's Fresh Air interview with the author earlier this year.  If you haven't heard about the book yet, it's a nonfiction book about an African American woman from Baltimore who died of cervical cancer in 1951.  While she was being treated at Johns Hopkins, researchers took tissue from one of her tumors and put it in culture, only to find that the cancer cells grew like crazy.  Her tumor cells resulted in the first immortal human cell line, and were used in countless experiments and advances, like sending the cells into space to examine the effects of zero gravity, and developing the polio vaccine. 

Problematically, however, her cells were so hardy and prolific that they contaminated countless other cell cultures and totally effed up a lot of other people's research.  Also, her family was poor and undereducated, so not only could they seldom afford their own medical care despite the mother's contributions to the field of medicine, they didn't even understand the implications of the use of her cells, and thought she was alive in a lab somewhere.  And it was over 20 years before they even knew that anything was going on with Henrietta's cells.  That is some bullshit right there!  But this book is so good!  Can't recommend it enough!

This is what happens when I'm left to my own devices

Here's a fun game!  Let's play "guess how many layers of clothing I'm wearing right now to be warm inside my house!"  If you guessed two, you would not be guessing high enough.  Four would be too many.  Right now I'm wearing three layers.  A t-shirt, a sweatshirt, and a fleece.  It's only October, and I'm inside.  I would turn the heat on but 1) I don't want to pay for it and 2) the temperature decals are worn off of all the thermostats so if I did turn the heat on, I would have no idea where to position the dial.  If I don't turn it up high enough, it's pretty much a waste of energy because I'll still be cold, and if I turn it up too high, that's also a waste of energy until I realize it's too hot, at which point I would have to dial it down to a random position that may or may not be too low to be effective.  What is a girl to do?

Also, I reached a new level of culinary shame this evening.  When Andy's here, I'm really good at cooking respectable, nutritious meals.  When Andy isn't here, I have zero interest in cooking for myself.  He happens to be up on Lake Pend Oreille this weekend helping my cousins do some stuff at their lake property, so I've been left to my own sloppy devices.  Andy's cutting down trees with chainsaws and fighting bears, and I'm here listening to Prairie Home Companion and blowing on my frozen Reynaud's fingers to restore the sensation.  But that's beside point.  For dinner tonight, I examined my options, and found an unlikely combination of leftovers.  It was so wrong, but so right.

Tell me, what would you do if you had a few leftover lasagna noodles that you boiled but didn't use, and leftover fajita fixings, but no more tortillas?  If you answered fajita lasagna, you would be correct.  Correct and disgusting.  Actually, IT WAS DELICIOUS but I felt a little strange about slapping refried beans, tofu, veggies, and hot sauce into a lasagna noodle, rolling it up, and eating it with my hands (in my defense they were whole wheat lasagna noodles).  Although, you never know, maybe I just invented the hottest new kind of fusion cuisine.  Mexitalian.  You can thank me later, because your mouth is probably full right now. 

You're welcome, by the way.

Homesick for New Jersey - The things I miss...

I've been in Idaho for exactly four months.  It's alright.  I mean, it's pretty, and clean, and uncrowded, and has topographical variation.  In other words, it's everything New Jersey isn't.  Because New Jersey is a very particular sort of place.  Lately, it seems that the whole world wants a piece of it.  Whether that piece is desired for the purpose of mockery or sincere admiration is up for debate, but still, Jersey's kind of a big deal right now.

As this week's episode of South Park demonstrated, though, not every state can be New Jersey.  Only New Jersey can be New Jersey, and it's best for everyone if New Jersey remains within the confines of its current geopolitical boundaries.  Still and all, I miss it.  I miss it so.

Below you will find a photo montage of the things I miss.  Not all items on this list are Jersey-exclusive, but many are.  Some items are merely things that Idaho doesn't have because it is practically a third-world country.  Please also note that these items are not all in priority order, but I'm going to be sappy and place pictures of my family and friends at the top of the list because I totally miss them the most and even if I didn't I would still lie and say I did because some people might have their feelings hurt if I said I missed hoagies more than I missed them.

Mom, I'm sorry.  One could argue that this is the worst picture ever taken of us.

Okay I lied this might be worse, or at least more weird.

Ma and G-ma, deliberating over something vitally important, like which fork to use to serve the pickled herring, probably.

All these ladies.

And these folks, especially Keith for letting me grind all up on him.

These a-holes.

These creeps.

And all these people.  I think that about covers everyone.

Awww, this guy!

Hell yea I'm wearing footie pajamas and pretending to look surprised by the sight of the Christmas tree. 

Deciduous trees.  In the town and on campus, there are a smattering of deciduous trees.  But not enough for me to get my fix of fall colors.  And once you leave the town proper, it's nothing but rolling hills of brown, dead prairie grass or harvested wheat, and pine trees. 

So convenient.  So ubiquitous.  So delicious.

See above.  Possibly brewed with crack.

What I wouldn't give for a tuna hoagie right now.  It's unbelievable.  I would even settling for hearing someone call it a hoagie, rather than a sub or a hero.  It's a HOAGIE.  H-O-A-G-I-E spells delicious.

I-295.  Call me crazy, but I miss multi-lane highways populated by speedy, aggressive drivers in compact cars.  If you've ever been stuck on a one-lane road doing 45 behind a logging truck for 60 miles, you'd understand.

Yes, I'm posting this picture twice on purpose, because it's significance is twofold.  Not only is it a multi-lane highway where people drive like they have something to prove, it is also a prime example of a road that is both PAVED and FLAT.  No hills, no hairpin curves, no "unimproved sections."  We can all agree that 295 has plenty of room for improvement, hence it's status as perpetually under construction, but still.  When you drive down a road with "highway" in the name, you expect it to at least be paved, right?  Well, in Idaho, you can't make that assumption.

Guidos.  No, not Italian-Americans (although we could use some up in here - here being Idaho - because it is IMPOSSIBLE to find good crusty rolls or legitimate pizza).  I'm talking about anyone who tans to the point of looking like a suitcase, wears too much hair product, and single-handedly keeps Ed Hardy in business.  Guys who wear gold chains, multiple chunky rings, and who think a wife beater and gym shorts constitute a real outfit for going out.  Girls who think a hairstyle is skunk-streak highlights on a rats nest that has been flat ironed and subsequently teased.  I'm not really sure why I miss them, because, honestly, these people kind of suck, but I guess it's just a Jersey thing.  It's like comfort food.  You know that Cinnabon is going to make you gain 8 pounds and have 3 heart attacks, but it's so gooey and familiar.  Guidos pretty much play on the same sensations.  They are void of any and all value, but there's just something comforting about knowing they exist.

Punctuality.  As my former band director loved to say - "To be early is to be on time.  To be on time is to be late."  Everyone is late for everything here.  Showing up early gets you nowhere.  Showing up on time makes you look desperate.  Even if you are five minutes late for something, you will probably still have to wait for the person you are meeting, or wait for the event you are attending to start.  Everything takes forever because no one is in a hurry.  What the hell?  I'm just trying to get things done, is that so much to ask?

Full service gas stations.  Seriously?  You want me to pump my own gas?  Furthermore, to what are the slacker high school students supposed to aspire?  In New Jersey, at least you can rationalize their failure by saying, "Well, somebody's gotta pump our gas."  What are their alternatives here?  Flipping burgers?  Harvesting the potatoes that will become the french fries that go with the burgers?  Fortunately, I have an Andy, and he has become my full service gas station.  I have pumped my own gas exactly twice since leaving New Jersey.  Partly because I don't really need to drive anywhere except the grocery store and laundromat, and partly because I usually make sure Andy is in the car with me when I am close to needing a refill.

As you can see, there are a lot of things I miss.  I didn't realize how much I was missing all these things until I sat down and thought about it, and now I am sad.  At least I was sad for about 3 seconds until I remembered that I'm making veggie fajitas for dinner, and I have this sweet recipe for apple muffins that I want to try, and I made a bangin' veggie lasagna for dinner last night.  So, feelings for dinner.  And maybe for breakfast if the muffins turn out.  I like food.  And New Jersey.  This is becoming incoherent because I'm hungry.

Have a great weekend everyone!  And I hereby declare this weekend "Hug A Person From New Jersey" weekend.  Spread the love (but not the herpes - be selective about who you hug, and if possible, do not hug them if they are naked).

EDIT:  In reference to Kat's comment - "HELLZ YEAH! People here in England say I am very American. I think what they mean is that I am very Jerzey. I use acronyms constantly. I throw down terms like awesome, dude, word, and yeah yo."  I forgot all about the superb vernacular!!

Is it illegal to do something in New Jersey?  (Probably - I never realized how many rules there are in the East until I got to the West and found that I can pretty much do anything I want.  Shoot a bear?  Sure!  Drink and drive?  Probably not but the odds of getting caught are pretty low, there are like no cops anywhere.  But that's not the point.)  It's not illegal, it's illiggle.  And the Philadelphia Eagles?  Iggles.  

That small, trickling body of water that might also be called a stream?  Not a creek...crick.
All this discussion is making me hungry.  "Jeat yet?"  "No, jew?" 

A few weeks ago when I was on the phone with my grandmom, I realized just how Jersey she is.  She was talking about something being liggle that she felt should have been illiggle.  Then the conversation shifted to her impending 59-year high school reunion, and her apprehension about potential seating arrangements.  Apparently she didn't want to sit next to someone named Snooki.  I laughed, and she immediately explained that Snooki is an old man named Bill (or something else totally normal, I forget).  Because she knows who the Guidette Snooki is, and immediately saw the need to correct my confusion.  Ah, New Jersey.  South Jersey, anyway.  North Jersey might as well be another country.

 That's all.  Carry on.