Sunday, April 27, 2008
re: your brain
Hubby found this song by Jonathan Coulton that pretty much paints the exact picture of how we both feel about our jobs. Its so vivid and true to us, that we even have it as ring tones. I hope you enjoy it.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Junk, Crap, and other things
I just spent a few hours in our cluttered back room. Ok, cluttered isn’t the right word for it, its more like a hoarder’s dream room. Boxes and boxes, piles and piles, stuffed, crammed, and over-flowing with junk.
We haven’t used anything back there in years, so I have no idea why its back there. Oddly enough, we have a storage room that we rent that is also full of crap that’s never been touched in about 5 years. Why?
I DON’T FREAKING KNOW!!!!
Every time I walk through there to let the dogs out back I think “I need to purge this stuff”, and then I’ll walk back into the house. Well, enough is enough. It got to me today, and I spent a good 3 hours ripping the guts out of computers, and stacking broken non-working monitors into a pile. How did we collect so many computers? Where did this stuff come from? Why are we keeping it?
I suspect that my husband is a hoarder, as none of this stuff is actually mine. I’m a minimalist. I have clothes, I have one laptop, everything I’ve bought fits on one bookshelf, and the rest is his. I’m currently surrounded by 5 other computers, a printer (that doesn’t work with my mac) 2 filing cabinets full of stuff that isn’t mine, 5 wall shelves filled with junk that isn’t mine, and frankly I’m getting claustrophobic.
Dear hubby always says “we can sell it on ebay”. Um, who is going to want a viewsonic 15 inch monitor that doesn’t work? Who is going to want a container full of computer parts that we really have no idea what they are? I’m sure that 9600 baud modem will go for a lot, maybe to a museum, but museums typically expect you to DONATE things to them, not pay for their exhibit materials.
Purging all of this junk is tricky when it comes to circumnavigating a hoarder. First he wanted to “inspect” each computer before I took it to the dump. Why? Don’t know. I tried to hook up an old printer to my mac, but it wouldn’t even turn on, so I tossed it in a contractor bag and hauled the bag to the curb. He got mad that I was throwing HIS stuff away. It doesn’t work... would you like me to make it into a bookend? That thought has crossed my mind, taking the bin of computer parts and welding it into something artistic like a swan.
Little by little I fill up a garbage bag of junk and take it to the curb, disguising it as common household garbage. On Fridays, when I’m off and he works, I giggle fiendishly as I drag bag upon bag, load upon load to the local dump. I do have to be careful that I don’t toss something that he may actually want later on. “Honey, what happened to that Windows 3.1.1 video card we use to have for a proprietary computer that was bent into the shape of a “U” that I need for something right this very second?” Yes, its happened before, that look of a deer in headlights when he asks for something that I know full well went to the dump one friday. Usually I guide him to the back room and point to the precariously piled plastic boxes that will tip and crush a human at the slightest touch and say “I think I recall it being in a bin on the bottom in the back”. That usually deters him from trying to get it. Then he’ll make some snide comment about cleaning up that room, and it takes everything in my being not to bash him in the head with the weed whacker I just uncovered after 4 years of being buried beneath the pile of junk.
We haven’t used anything back there in years, so I have no idea why its back there. Oddly enough, we have a storage room that we rent that is also full of crap that’s never been touched in about 5 years. Why?
I DON’T FREAKING KNOW!!!!
Every time I walk through there to let the dogs out back I think “I need to purge this stuff”, and then I’ll walk back into the house. Well, enough is enough. It got to me today, and I spent a good 3 hours ripping the guts out of computers, and stacking broken non-working monitors into a pile. How did we collect so many computers? Where did this stuff come from? Why are we keeping it?
I suspect that my husband is a hoarder, as none of this stuff is actually mine. I’m a minimalist. I have clothes, I have one laptop, everything I’ve bought fits on one bookshelf, and the rest is his. I’m currently surrounded by 5 other computers, a printer (that doesn’t work with my mac) 2 filing cabinets full of stuff that isn’t mine, 5 wall shelves filled with junk that isn’t mine, and frankly I’m getting claustrophobic.
Dear hubby always says “we can sell it on ebay”. Um, who is going to want a viewsonic 15 inch monitor that doesn’t work? Who is going to want a container full of computer parts that we really have no idea what they are? I’m sure that 9600 baud modem will go for a lot, maybe to a museum, but museums typically expect you to DONATE things to them, not pay for their exhibit materials.
Purging all of this junk is tricky when it comes to circumnavigating a hoarder. First he wanted to “inspect” each computer before I took it to the dump. Why? Don’t know. I tried to hook up an old printer to my mac, but it wouldn’t even turn on, so I tossed it in a contractor bag and hauled the bag to the curb. He got mad that I was throwing HIS stuff away. It doesn’t work... would you like me to make it into a bookend? That thought has crossed my mind, taking the bin of computer parts and welding it into something artistic like a swan.
Little by little I fill up a garbage bag of junk and take it to the curb, disguising it as common household garbage. On Fridays, when I’m off and he works, I giggle fiendishly as I drag bag upon bag, load upon load to the local dump. I do have to be careful that I don’t toss something that he may actually want later on. “Honey, what happened to that Windows 3.1.1 video card we use to have for a proprietary computer that was bent into the shape of a “U” that I need for something right this very second?” Yes, its happened before, that look of a deer in headlights when he asks for something that I know full well went to the dump one friday. Usually I guide him to the back room and point to the precariously piled plastic boxes that will tip and crush a human at the slightest touch and say “I think I recall it being in a bin on the bottom in the back”. That usually deters him from trying to get it. Then he’ll make some snide comment about cleaning up that room, and it takes everything in my being not to bash him in the head with the weed whacker I just uncovered after 4 years of being buried beneath the pile of junk.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Where Is My Ketchup?
I ran out of ketchup last week and actually made it to the store and bought some. Ok, I had made it to the store a few times between running out and the time I actually remembered to buy some and forget every time until I pulled into the driveway and screamed "FREAKING KETCHUP!". I was still in the truck at the time, so the neighbors probably didn't hear me screaming about forgetting to buy ketchup for the 4th time and couldn't use that in my mental capacity hearing.
Last night I went to get the new bottle of ketchup out of the fridge, but it wasn't in the usual ketchup spot in the door. I looked on the shelf that held the myriad of things that we buy and never use, but it wasn't there either. It wasn't in the cabinet where we keep other things we've bought and never eat (the one that doesn't have a door, its painted, I just haven't put it back on yet). I went out in the rain to look in the back of the truck thinking that it fell out of the flimsy plastic bag that are now outlawed in Annapolis because they fill up the landfills and don't degrade, even though we were somehow forced to use them when paper became an endangered species and choked landfills. Nope, it didn't fall out.
I came back into the house and pronounced myself insane and asked my husband to please commit me now before I did something really stupid like cook a dog in the oven and take the roast for a walk. He refused. Frankly if he had done this, I would have been dialing the local loony bin, but whatever.
Tonight I get home and decide that I want a soda, so I lean down to pluck one from the landfill choking plastic bag that is sitting on the floor (because it won't fit on the shelf full of Costco sized soy sauce that we keep buying because we think we don't have any soy sauce) and lo and behold... there is the ketchup.
I blame the lack of bagging education given to the local checkout line people. Once upon a time when you went to the grocery store, you had a checkout person and a bagger. The checkout person would manually input the price of your item (which they knew from the little tag affixed to your item and put there by the person responsible for pricing every item in the store), then they would slide that item down the belt so the bagger would neatly pack your entire cart full of groceries into one large brown paper bag. It was an art form, and amazing to watch as every item was neatly placed like a Janga puzzle into the bag, fitting everything snugly.
Along came barcode scanners, and now not only do you have no earthly idea what the price of anything is (slowing up the technologically advanced line because the check out person has to shlep back to wherever you got the item from and see what the price is), but the person hired to price everything is now standing in the unemployment line. They have good company because the expert bagger is also standing in line with them. Now the poor checkout person has to scan each item, then fit it into the flimsy plastic bag (now outlawed in some locales), and heave the bag into your cart.
You take your load of 5,000 plastic bags and try to set them in your gas guzzling SUV in such a way as to limit the amount of shifting that will occur on your drive home, but invariably everything gets tossed out of the bags and you spend 45 minutes trying to cram everything back into plastic bags so you can carry them into the house (without them ripping) then try to figure out what to do with 5,000 plastic bags that you can always take back to the store for recycling, but since I can't even remember my coupons for food, I'm certainly not going to remember to take the 5,000 plastic bags back to the store. I do use them to scoop dog poop into, then toss the poop filled bag into my regular trash, as they have yet to provide me with a poop recycle container.
So, I'm not insane, I did buy ketchup, but it was hidden with the sodas.
Last night I went to get the new bottle of ketchup out of the fridge, but it wasn't in the usual ketchup spot in the door. I looked on the shelf that held the myriad of things that we buy and never use, but it wasn't there either. It wasn't in the cabinet where we keep other things we've bought and never eat (the one that doesn't have a door, its painted, I just haven't put it back on yet). I went out in the rain to look in the back of the truck thinking that it fell out of the flimsy plastic bag that are now outlawed in Annapolis because they fill up the landfills and don't degrade, even though we were somehow forced to use them when paper became an endangered species and choked landfills. Nope, it didn't fall out.
I came back into the house and pronounced myself insane and asked my husband to please commit me now before I did something really stupid like cook a dog in the oven and take the roast for a walk. He refused. Frankly if he had done this, I would have been dialing the local loony bin, but whatever.
Tonight I get home and decide that I want a soda, so I lean down to pluck one from the landfill choking plastic bag that is sitting on the floor (because it won't fit on the shelf full of Costco sized soy sauce that we keep buying because we think we don't have any soy sauce) and lo and behold... there is the ketchup.
I blame the lack of bagging education given to the local checkout line people. Once upon a time when you went to the grocery store, you had a checkout person and a bagger. The checkout person would manually input the price of your item (which they knew from the little tag affixed to your item and put there by the person responsible for pricing every item in the store), then they would slide that item down the belt so the bagger would neatly pack your entire cart full of groceries into one large brown paper bag. It was an art form, and amazing to watch as every item was neatly placed like a Janga puzzle into the bag, fitting everything snugly.
Along came barcode scanners, and now not only do you have no earthly idea what the price of anything is (slowing up the technologically advanced line because the check out person has to shlep back to wherever you got the item from and see what the price is), but the person hired to price everything is now standing in the unemployment line. They have good company because the expert bagger is also standing in line with them. Now the poor checkout person has to scan each item, then fit it into the flimsy plastic bag (now outlawed in some locales), and heave the bag into your cart.
You take your load of 5,000 plastic bags and try to set them in your gas guzzling SUV in such a way as to limit the amount of shifting that will occur on your drive home, but invariably everything gets tossed out of the bags and you spend 45 minutes trying to cram everything back into plastic bags so you can carry them into the house (without them ripping) then try to figure out what to do with 5,000 plastic bags that you can always take back to the store for recycling, but since I can't even remember my coupons for food, I'm certainly not going to remember to take the 5,000 plastic bags back to the store. I do use them to scoop dog poop into, then toss the poop filled bag into my regular trash, as they have yet to provide me with a poop recycle container.
So, I'm not insane, I did buy ketchup, but it was hidden with the sodas.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
What Possesses Me?
Painting the entire upstairs white seemed like a cool thing to do. It would be very easy to sell, as most realtors tell you to paint the place in bland muted colors like “eggshell” and “white” before you try to sell. Its like a blank canvas that the new owners can more easily picture painting the rooms something other than stark, institutional white.
Ok, I’m painting the entire upstairs white. Downstairs is paneled, nothing for me to do down there except replace the carpets when the time comes to sell. White is very white, and frankly its almost impossible to tell where the paint starts and stops and the primer starts and stops. You have to walk back and look and make sure you actually covered every square inch. Frankly that whole painting in a “W” is a pain in the ass, and shoulders and arms, so I prefer the up and down method, making sure to keep within a certain area so I’m sure I got it all.
Then it rained. Rain is a good thing as we’re also trying to get some grass to grow in the backyard, but the whole reason we have issues growing grass in the backyard to begin with consists of 12 fluffy legs connected to 3 fluffy bodies, connected to 3 devious husky heads who love to dig. They will dig during drought, they will dig during floods, it doesn’t matter to them, they love to dig and usually dig for something specific, like grubs or moles. Tasty things that live under the earth.
The walls have been an “earth tone” for quite some time, and for a reason (that I apparently forgot) and that reason was: dogs.
I let the dogs in from outside, being careful to wipe them down with a towel to limit the spray of muddy water on the walls, and wiped their feet to limit the amount of foot prints going up the walls, but no matter how careful, no matter how diligent I am with the towel, they seem to emit their own geysers of muddy water once they’ve hit the freshly painted walls. Smear of dog on one wall, splatter of dog on another, and a pawprint. Why? I don’t know, but a single solitary dog print on the wall, just because they could probably. Hey, look at what I did!
Even with only one coat of paint I was happy to see that a moistened paper towel was able to erase the various mud splatters and smears, but I have a feeling that keeping the walls white will be a full time job until we move. When we start showing the house, I’m pretty sure we’ll need to enclose the dogs in swiffers and mop material to keep them from marring the “ambiance”
Ok, I’m painting the entire upstairs white. Downstairs is paneled, nothing for me to do down there except replace the carpets when the time comes to sell. White is very white, and frankly its almost impossible to tell where the paint starts and stops and the primer starts and stops. You have to walk back and look and make sure you actually covered every square inch. Frankly that whole painting in a “W” is a pain in the ass, and shoulders and arms, so I prefer the up and down method, making sure to keep within a certain area so I’m sure I got it all.
Then it rained. Rain is a good thing as we’re also trying to get some grass to grow in the backyard, but the whole reason we have issues growing grass in the backyard to begin with consists of 12 fluffy legs connected to 3 fluffy bodies, connected to 3 devious husky heads who love to dig. They will dig during drought, they will dig during floods, it doesn’t matter to them, they love to dig and usually dig for something specific, like grubs or moles. Tasty things that live under the earth.
The walls have been an “earth tone” for quite some time, and for a reason (that I apparently forgot) and that reason was: dogs.
I let the dogs in from outside, being careful to wipe them down with a towel to limit the spray of muddy water on the walls, and wiped their feet to limit the amount of foot prints going up the walls, but no matter how careful, no matter how diligent I am with the towel, they seem to emit their own geysers of muddy water once they’ve hit the freshly painted walls. Smear of dog on one wall, splatter of dog on another, and a pawprint. Why? I don’t know, but a single solitary dog print on the wall, just because they could probably. Hey, look at what I did!
Even with only one coat of paint I was happy to see that a moistened paper towel was able to erase the various mud splatters and smears, but I have a feeling that keeping the walls white will be a full time job until we move. When we start showing the house, I’m pretty sure we’ll need to enclose the dogs in swiffers and mop material to keep them from marring the “ambiance”
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Ow
Is it possible to pull an eye muscle? Not knowing if there's even a muscle involved in the whole eye structure, I have a pain in my eye when I look to the right and I suspect its a pulled muscle from reading a whole bunch of technical crap at work. I wonder if there's a workman's comp thing for pulled eye muscles. I would mind a nice paid vacation where I didn't have to read anything for a week or two.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Professional Procrastinator
I need to make myself a certificate to donate that I truly am a professional procrastinator (but I just haven’t gotten around to doing it yet).
Any excuse is good enough for not doing something. Today’s excuse is:
I have to go somewhere in 4 hours.
Why haven’t I started doing laundry?
Why haven’t I taken the bags of leaves to the front for trash pick up?
Why haven’t I done the dishes?
Why haven’t I paid some bills?
Well, because I have to go somewhere in 4 hours. A quick trip for rescue to do a home check. Won’t take long at all, we’ll probably go to the mall afterwards, so its actually like going to the mall with a quick stop at a stranger’s house for a half hour, tops, but because its “scheduled”, I’m incapable of doing anything before that time.
I’ll try to spell it out, as its a bit confusing even to me. For some reason, if I’m waiting on a repair person, or have to go somewhere at a specific time, I’m incapable of doing anything because I will be interrupted. I’ll get stated on doing something, such as laundry, and since I’m the paranoid type that doesn’t like to leave appliances running while I’m gone for fear that they will spontaneously combust, or flood the house, I need to be around when they are running. Since I’m very bad at estimating how long it takes for the average load of dishes to run (I’ve only had this dishwasher for about 10 years now, so you would think I would have a reasonable time frame as to how long a load takes), so instead of pushing the limits of dishwashing cleaning time, I refuse to start the dishwasher if I have something scheduled. At least I’m not so pathetic that if I have anything schedule for next week is cause not to start the dishwasher, but it is pretty pathetic.
Same goes with the washer and dryer, except they really do have a count down timer on them that actually tells me how long a load will take to wash and then dry. Regardless, it just takes too much planning to figure out if I have enough time before the thing that is scheduled to know if I have enough time for a load of laundry.
I can’t possibly do anything that requires any sort of concentration if a repair person is coming to the house, because I have to be ever vigilant for the knock on the door, then the mad dash to get the dogs either outside or in their crates before opening the door. Its very stressful, so trying to do something that requires half a brain (the other half of my brain is always on vacation with no known return date) is just too stressful. Plus, I hate starting something and not finishing it, except in the case of painting the entire living room white, which has sat half finished (ok, one wall is done) for weeks now with painting supplies strewn all over. I also admit that I started painting my kitchen cabinets and now some don’t have doors, some are one color and others are the original color. Ok, so I’m sure there’s some deeper meaning to that not getting done.
Ok, so I actually started this blog entry when I had someplace to go in 4 hours, but now (because of constant interruptions) I have to leave in like 20 minutes. See! This is why I don’t do things when I have to go places because now I really don’t have a funny way of ending this blog because of the stress.
Any excuse is good enough for not doing something. Today’s excuse is:
I have to go somewhere in 4 hours.
Why haven’t I started doing laundry?
Why haven’t I taken the bags of leaves to the front for trash pick up?
Why haven’t I done the dishes?
Why haven’t I paid some bills?
Well, because I have to go somewhere in 4 hours. A quick trip for rescue to do a home check. Won’t take long at all, we’ll probably go to the mall afterwards, so its actually like going to the mall with a quick stop at a stranger’s house for a half hour, tops, but because its “scheduled”, I’m incapable of doing anything before that time.
I’ll try to spell it out, as its a bit confusing even to me. For some reason, if I’m waiting on a repair person, or have to go somewhere at a specific time, I’m incapable of doing anything because I will be interrupted. I’ll get stated on doing something, such as laundry, and since I’m the paranoid type that doesn’t like to leave appliances running while I’m gone for fear that they will spontaneously combust, or flood the house, I need to be around when they are running. Since I’m very bad at estimating how long it takes for the average load of dishes to run (I’ve only had this dishwasher for about 10 years now, so you would think I would have a reasonable time frame as to how long a load takes), so instead of pushing the limits of dishwashing cleaning time, I refuse to start the dishwasher if I have something scheduled. At least I’m not so pathetic that if I have anything schedule for next week is cause not to start the dishwasher, but it is pretty pathetic.
Same goes with the washer and dryer, except they really do have a count down timer on them that actually tells me how long a load will take to wash and then dry. Regardless, it just takes too much planning to figure out if I have enough time before the thing that is scheduled to know if I have enough time for a load of laundry.
I can’t possibly do anything that requires any sort of concentration if a repair person is coming to the house, because I have to be ever vigilant for the knock on the door, then the mad dash to get the dogs either outside or in their crates before opening the door. Its very stressful, so trying to do something that requires half a brain (the other half of my brain is always on vacation with no known return date) is just too stressful. Plus, I hate starting something and not finishing it, except in the case of painting the entire living room white, which has sat half finished (ok, one wall is done) for weeks now with painting supplies strewn all over. I also admit that I started painting my kitchen cabinets and now some don’t have doors, some are one color and others are the original color. Ok, so I’m sure there’s some deeper meaning to that not getting done.
Ok, so I actually started this blog entry when I had someplace to go in 4 hours, but now (because of constant interruptions) I have to leave in like 20 minutes. See! This is why I don’t do things when I have to go places because now I really don’t have a funny way of ending this blog because of the stress.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Things I forgot today
This morning when I tried to set the house alarm when we went to work, it wouldn’t arm. It helps if I close the back door, which I left WIDE open. Thankfully the alarm system didn’t mind me cursing it when it didn’t arm, thus pointing out my stupidity in silence when I discovered the back door open.
I came home for lunch and set aside some file folders to take to work with me. Yep, they were still sitting on my computer desk when I got home after work.
I blame this all on not remembering to take my Zyrtec. I refuse to believe that Alzheimers commercial that pretty much gave me a laundry list of signs that fit me to a “T”. Nope, can’t be that, I’m much too young to be going senile, although the stupidity of others is sucking the life blood from me. Its probably the lack of life blood to the brain that is causing all this forgetfulness.
I came home for lunch and set aside some file folders to take to work with me. Yep, they were still sitting on my computer desk when I got home after work.
I blame this all on not remembering to take my Zyrtec. I refuse to believe that Alzheimers commercial that pretty much gave me a laundry list of signs that fit me to a “T”. Nope, can’t be that, I’m much too young to be going senile, although the stupidity of others is sucking the life blood from me. Its probably the lack of life blood to the brain that is causing all this forgetfulness.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Distracted
Today I finished off the last bit of the taxes, going over them to make sure that TurboTax didn’t botch something up or anything. Dragging hubby by the ear, I made him sit down and sign them so I could get them in the mail and then anxiously wait on my whatever bribe name they’re calling it money to be sent in May. While the government wants me to go out and spend that on new junk, I think I’ll use it to pay down on a credit card that I used to buy old junk, which I’m sure will disappoint our Nation’s leaders, but screw them.
After that traumatic experience, I decided to go get some groceries so off I went, driving to the store. Got out of the truck, started walking to the store and thought “gee, my bag is awful light”. Yep, I had taken my wallet out and forgot to put it back in.
Its funny how you can drive like a loony to the store when all along you didn’t have your drivers license with you, but on the way back you feel as though your truck has a bullseye on it for the police to find you, and you drive like a 90 year old cataract patient.
Got home and I almost said screw it about going back. Its raining and cold here today, just overall gloomy and I really didn’t feel like going all the way back (3 whole miles) to the store, but I did. My main motivation was the fact that our milk was expiring and I wouldn’t have any to make latte. Frankly if we had nothing to eat in the house buy dog food, but we had milk, I wouldn’t go to the store, but when that milk gets close to expiring, the wonders of motivation.
I managed to get the two things we really needed: milk, bread, and entemann’s donuts. Ok, we didn’t really need the donuts, but after taxes I felt that I actually did NEED them, and they do go well with milk, so why not.
After that traumatic experience, I decided to go get some groceries so off I went, driving to the store. Got out of the truck, started walking to the store and thought “gee, my bag is awful light”. Yep, I had taken my wallet out and forgot to put it back in.
Its funny how you can drive like a loony to the store when all along you didn’t have your drivers license with you, but on the way back you feel as though your truck has a bullseye on it for the police to find you, and you drive like a 90 year old cataract patient.
Got home and I almost said screw it about going back. Its raining and cold here today, just overall gloomy and I really didn’t feel like going all the way back (3 whole miles) to the store, but I did. My main motivation was the fact that our milk was expiring and I wouldn’t have any to make latte. Frankly if we had nothing to eat in the house buy dog food, but we had milk, I wouldn’t go to the store, but when that milk gets close to expiring, the wonders of motivation.
I managed to get the two things we really needed: milk, bread, and entemann’s donuts. Ok, we didn’t really need the donuts, but after taxes I felt that I actually did NEED them, and they do go well with milk, so why not.
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