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.