Thank You Mom and Dad

Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be... a year older.

My mom sent me homemade cookies, and the recipe to the homemade cookies. That’s a bit bittersweet because it sorta signals that there will be a day when she won’t be around to send me homemade cookies anymore, and she wanted to make sure that I knew how to make them when she’s gone... without actually saying that.

So that started me thinking about what I wanted for my birthday. I’ve never really been into the whole “wait until a special day to get something for yourself or someone you love” because you really never know if you or they will make it to that pre-determined time, so I just generally buy what I want when I want it and randomly send gifts to friends and family when the mood strikes me.

I’d REALLY like my birthday gift to be that the United States regains its sanity and doesn’t pass this craptastic healthcare bill, but I doubt that will happen. It will pass, people won’t get their freebies for 4 years, but the working class will pay through the nose for 4 years, everyone will be disgusted, vote people out of office, only to be replaced with equally if not more corrupted scum and our country will dive into a third world country. Whoot, I’m such a mood lifter, aren’t I?

So, on the eve of our country diving into socialism (yes, I said it, I believe it, and if you post a comment arguing against my belief, or try to convince me otherwise, I will delete your comment, unfriend you, and most likely mock you later on... cuz its my blog), the only thing I could think that I would want for my birthday is this:

Thank you mom and dad!

First of all, thank you for actually having me. Even though I was legitimate, whereas we did the math on my sister and somebody was fooling around unwed, you tricksters, I was planned and probably why I turned out so well... as opposed to my sister.

Thank you for not putting me in a gunny sack and throwing me in a lake, as you constantly threatened to do when I did stupid things.

Thank you for not selling me to the gypsies when I fessed up to masterminding how to remove the toilet paper rolls from the school bathrooms during the great junior high school toilet paper stealing gig. I would like to remind you, I just showed them how to do it and left, they’re the ones caught red handed while I had an alibi (I was at home with you), but yes, I was in cahoots and deserved the grounding.

Thank you for spanking me when I did something to deserve it. You taught me that there were serious consequences to my actions, and those consequences, while painful, could have been deadly to myself or someone else if not put in check.

Thank you for instilling respect and honor in my parents. You listened to me, you told me everything that went on with bills, jobs, what we could and couldn’t afford and why. There was nothing more that I wanted in life than to make you proud of me, and to never hear that I had disappointed you.

Thank you for giving me chores and teaching me that an honest day’s work got an honest day’s wage.

Thank you for being fiscally responsible and not going into debt for the sake of going into debt when we could make do with what we had, even though we didn’t have fancy cars, fancy clothes, or fancy other things, we had family and family was all that mattered, and that charity was for people that REALLY needed it, and handouts were demeaning and ugly.

Thank you for giving me the gene that made me want to right wrongs and help those who couldn’t help themselves.

Thank you for showing me that while we didn’t have much, others had less and those were the ones that needed a hand up once in a while.

Thank you for instilling in me the warm feeling of giving something to someone, be it a hand up, money, a gift, or a hug and not expecting a single thing in return. It truly is the giving and not receiving.

Thank you for telling me that I could do ANYTHING I wanted to do, there were no boundaries or limits, just the ones I placed on myself, which has led me to lead a wonderful life, make a LOT more money than either of you ever have, and all without any college education.

Thank you for sacrificing some of your dreams to give me a good, comfortable life.

Thank you for teaching me that if I wanted something in life, I had to earn it. While it sucked to see others driving their free new cars while I had to borrow the crappy pickup truck that stalled at every intersection, the sense of accomplishment and pride of earning everything I’ve bought with my own money was worth it. Looking back, I still miss that crappy pickup truck.

Thank you for the strange, twisted sense of humor and view of everything in my life. Its made getting through tough times easier (if not more amusing), and has helped me make friendships that have lasted.

To my dad; thank you for my cartooning gene, and your sensitive heart for animals. Thank you for naming me after your first dog. I couldn’t think of a more appropriate namesake. I miss you.

To my mom: thank you for your practicality, frugalness, and utmost devotion to those you love. Thanks for the cookies, and the recipe. When I make them, I’ll always think of you.

I'm going slightly mad

Friday it was a novelty. Snow. It happens every year here in Merryland, although you wouldn’t be able to tell that by the way that people drive. The moment someone mentions snow on the radio, or someone sees a flake... people immediately aim their cars for ditches, road signs, each other, and chaos ensues.

Luckily I don’t work on Fridays, so I was able to keep up with the shoveling throughout the day after a harrowing trip to the supermarket... where everyone was cramming their carts with supplies for the storm of the century of the millennium and the superbowl.

The problem was going to sleep. Yeah, probably should have stayed up all night shoveling because by the time we woke up, SNOWMAGEDDON!!!! About 2 feet of snow. LOTS of snow, and it was still freakin snowing. It snowed so hard throughout the night that we had thundersnow. That’s nutty.

So, half of Saturday and then most of Sunday hubby and I spent shoveling 2 freakin feet of snow. I even had to go shovel my neighbor’s front door because they were snowed in and couldn’t get out. You would think they would have sent over the hired snow blower they had come around later in the day, but NOOOOOO. See if I ever dig them out.

We managed to free the trucks and drive to... of course, Starbucks, but it was a carnival ride getting there. One lane (if that) on major streets, and one lane (if lucky) on major interstates, and the exits were a nightmare, but we made it... we have priorities.

I made it into work on Monday, although I don’t know why, nobody was there, nothing worked and the only road to work hadn’t seen a plow for 3 years and was a luge ride. I left after half a day and started doing online training stuff.

Tuesday was a no go because the next round of the storm of the century of the millennium or the universe started up and this one is OH SO MUCH MORE FUN! Its officially a “blizzard” thanks to the dumping snow and the pesky 50mph winds. Oh yeah, we’re having a ball. On Wednesday morning I started going out every hour to shovel the drive, and curse the random plow that would come by and block us back in... damn you! Around 3pm I gave up entirely... just forget it, I don’t have enough motrin to keep up all that shoveling.

The whole state is under snow lock-down... no driving or you get arrested. I guess this is to keep people who feel compelled to looky-loo or go to the store for something stupid at a minimum. I have to admit, we’re running low on milk so the latte outlook is bleak... I should have bought a whole gallon, but who would have thought the whole freakin state would be under 4 feet of snow this week.

I shouldn’t complain. We have power (knock on wood), everyone is home and warm, and its pretty... until I have to shovel it again. I have a feeling we aren’t getting out of here until friday.

Could someone in Pennsylvania find that groundhog and strangle him?

Verizon/MCI hate mail

Apparently calling and yelling TWICE about something isn’t sufficient enough. Note to Verizon customer service people: never give me your company e-mail address, I shall use it:

Actual e-mail:

You may recall that on 19 January 2010 I called and practically yelled at you about issues with my FIOS services and billing. The reason for the yelling is that it was the SECOND time I had to call for the same three issues.

During that call I outlined 3 issues:

1.) Although we had contracted to have FIOS internet, phone, and long distance installed, we were still being billed by MCI and had no FIOS long distance - You bundled my services and transferred me to the Verizon switch-over verification to confirm I wished our business long distance be switched to Verizon from MCI, which I did.

I have just received a "welcome to MCI long distance" package from MCI. I want to confirm that I do indeed have Verizon FIOS long distance so that I can call and yell at MCI again.

2.) I am not receiving any bills. I want to receive paper bills... in the mail... to my business address... I have not received any bills... make this happen.

3.) I cannot access my account online. Despite confirming my login and password, changing my password, performing voodoo rituals and sacrificing chocolate bunnies to the gods, I always get that Verizon is "unable to process my request at this time, please try again later". I'm pretty sure that trying every day for the past two weeks constitutes "trying again" sufficient enough to declare that my account is still irreparably hosed.

So, in a nutshell:
I can't check my account to see who my long distance carrier is.
I can't check my account to see how much I owe your fine company
I can't check my bill to see any of these things because you aren't sending them to me.

I've called about these issues THREE TIMES and still nothing has been done.

Please have someone with some clout in your company explain to me why I should remain a customer of yours, and to assure me that these issues are taken care of.

I'm Being Stalked

Everywhere I turn, there it is... staring at me... taunting me.

It wants me to buy it, it screams at me to buy it.

I hate you Cole Haan, you suck.

One little ad showing a whole way of life (ripped jeans, comfy shirt, comfy shoes, and THAT BAG!!! It pops up wherever I google, or facebook or read the news online. It stalks me, it knows that I am weak, that eventually I’ll obsess myself into an ulcer at the chance that this could be the “perfect bag” that so eludes me.

I know that if I bought you, you wouldn’t make my job any less tolerable, or my life any less easy. You wouldn’t find me at casual cocktail parties leaning against a wall looking so very cool that caused people to just throw money at me to attend casual cocktail parties to lean against a wall looking cool... or doing anything else other than what I currently do.

I would not exude spirited sophistication. I would most likely resent you after a while, you are so expensive, and I would feel compelled to cram your rich woodbury milled nubuck guts with ramen noodle soup, band-aids, and hands full of pilfered OTC pharmaceuticals from the company medicine cabinet. I would weep when the travel-sized bottle of hand sanitizer (that I only use to pretend that I actually care not to spread germs throughout the land) leaks and ruins your vibrant new color. I would feel guilty for spending so much on your soft unlined construction, enough money to feed a family of 60 in third world countries.

I’m seeking a restraining order against you Cole Haan Raleigh Whipstitch tote.

You know its going to be a bad day when...

You slather cream rinse in your hair only to discover that you actually slathered Oil of Olay Body wash on your head. There’s really no reason to get dressed and go to work after that, you might as well just go straight back to bed and call it a day.

Why Phone Companies Are Out To Drive Me Insane

I’m pretty sure I’ve ranted about the craptastic phone service before, I just can’t find any of these rants. Until we switched over the Verizon FIOS, every year EVERY STINKIN YEAR our phone lines would die a horrible death. Every year EVERY STINKIN YEAR we’d deal with appointments, technicians not showing up, or showing up at the wrong day/time, and one year we had them forward our calls to my cell phone, except they botched the number and were forwarding all of our calls to a Mitsubishi dealership. I hope they enjoyed all of the telemarketer calls.

Then came FIOS and angels sang from on high, bluebirds landed on our shoulders, rainbows appeared (RAINBOWS, I HATE RAINBOWS... chill out, its a South Park reference), and we had no problems.... or so we thought.

So on thursday I go into work and my work phone is dead. Doornail dead. Voicemail is equally dead. How odd (and peaceful) I figured it was a glitch that would get fixed. Around noon when I needed to call someone, it had become annoying. My officemate’s phone worked. Walking up and down the halls asking I found that it was JUST ME. FINE, I go upstairs to talk to someone and use their phone to call the helpless moron desk. I confirmed my number, confirmed that it was dead so asked that they send me e-mail instead of trying to call me (you shouldn’t have to remind a help desk that if your phone isn’t working, you shouldn’t call there... but the helpless desk is truly helpless), and went about my day without a phone... how special. I figured that when I came in on Monday, it would be fixed.

On Friday I check the mail and there’s a nastygram from MCI (our old long distance carrier) who is informing me that they’ve just cut off my long distance because I didn’t pay them $29 that was way waaaaaay past due. Um... I didn’t know I owed them $29, nobody sent me anything, not even a Christmas card, so how the hell was I suppose to know that I owed them $29, especially since we switched over to FIOS a few months ago, they shouldn’t even be handling my long distance. Of course, the number on the nastygram was closed, so I figured I’d call them on Monday from work.

Just out of curiosity, I went online to Verizon to check my bill... except I couldn’t check my bill or my services or anything, because they told me that my stuff wasn’t available... for some reason. They suggested that I should call them... except they were closed. Fine, I’ll call them on Monday from work as well.

Monday... my work phone is still dead, dead, kaput. Sigh. I walk upstairs to check my e-mail (if you are wondering why I can’t do that from my desk, well, I’m not going into the whole thing that I do, just trust me when I tell you that I can’t check “normal” e-mail from there.) There’s an e-mail from tech support asking me to confirm my phone number... the phone number I confirmed with the help desk minion on thursday... the number that is in all of the corporate address books, pseudo stupid company facebooky-like things, and in my e-mail signature line... same number. I e-mail the person back and confirm its the e-mail, log off, walk downstairs again.

Few hours go by, I go back up and check my e-mail, and there’s a response from tech support. What jack is my phone plugged into. Sigh. Sign off, walk downstairs, look at the jack, walk back upstairs, e-mail the tech support the jack number, log off, walk back downstairs, collapse in exhaustion.

Few hours go by, I go back upstairs, check my e-mail, there’s a response from tech support that says:

Peggy,
It seems that your phone was deactivated by mistake. I’ve reset your password and contacted a support technician to come reactivate it.

Oh... gee... so you are able to deactivate a phone without any sort of owner interaction, but to reactivate a mistakenly deactivated phone, you require a person to come do something... and my name isn’t PEGGY.

I dial in remotely to my voicemail, reset my password, rerecord my lame “I’m ignoring you and won’t return your call anyway, but humor me and leave me a message that I’ll laugh at and ignore” message... ok, its a bit more professional than that, but not by much, and then to my amazement... there’s a voicemail waiting FROM TECH SUPPORT! Some guy mumbles his name, rattles off a number and tells me to call him. I write the number down, dial it.... AND ITS NOT IN SERVICE.

I e-mail the tech support person a rather... nice.... response pointing out that my name isn’t Peggy and by this time I’m VERY angry and they should send the tech straight to my office to fix my phone ASAP as I will be waiting and sharpening some scissors.

I spend the rest of Monday cutting little paper tech support dolls and hacking off their limbs... ok, I just worked, but I thought of cutting little paper tech support dolls and hacking off their limbs. At the end of the day, no tech person. Before I leave, I go upstairs, log into e-mail and respond to tech person with: “Is the tech person coming today, this week, or this month?”

Tuesday morning I get to work, and lo and behold... my phone still isn’t working.

I go upstairs, log into e-mail and there’s a message from the tech person from yesterday saying she’s escalated the problem and I should hear from someone within the hour... except 12 hours have already gone by and my phone still isn’t working. I respond with “I’m still waiting”.

An hour later the tech guy shows up, punches 4 buttons and my phone works. He tells me that he JUST got the help desk e-mail and was scrolling through it thinking “oh man, she’s going to tear them a new one”, because he knows me very well.

Now that my phone worked, I called MCI and said WTF? MCI has been taken over by Verizon, and Verizon was suppose to be my long distance carrier, but apparently they are now Verizon, but still MCI, but not really, and frankly I began to drool with each explanation. I told them that I would just go yell at Verizon, paid them their stupid $29 and hung up, called Verizon.

First of all, I would like to say this to Verizon customer support: It is not a good idea to play the Muzak version of “Wind Beneath My Wings” over and over and over again while irate customers wait for a real person to pick up the phone... I’m just sayin.

I got a technician named “Hope”. Seriously... HOPE! Hope was very nice, and when I told her that I wasn’t getting bills, I couldn’t access my account online, MCI was still my long distance provider, WTF? She proceeded to read off my bill to me... line by line, each individual charge. I DON’T FRICKEN CARE WHAT MY BILL SAYS I CAN READ, I COULD READ IT FOR MYSELF IF YOU WOULD SEND ME ONE!!! Then I went on about global warming, why Keith Olbermann should be hung by his testicles (if he has any) and the annoying hang nail on my left hand until I nearly passed out from not breathing. Luckily I had closed my office door before I dialed. Hope was actually very apologetic (I’m sure she was cutting little paper doll customers as she spoke) and said she would make some adjustments based on all of the trouble I was having. She knocked off the FIOS installation charge, bundled my services into one for cheaper, and gave us faster internet for the lower bundle rate. Sweet.

The last thing she did was transfer me over to the official long distance permission to transfer service from one provider to another person, who asks you to verify information while being recorded, because apparently there is a lot of long distance carrier fraud going on and they have to make you verify everything on a recording... and yet will just tell you a password or PIN just on a whim... whatever.

So, now we have faster internet, a bundled service, didn’t have to pay for installation... how much you wanna bet I still don’t get a bill and can’t log into my account online... I’ll save that for next month.

My First 2010 Rant

First of all, I would like to announce that I will be pronouncing it Twenty-Ten, just because Two Thousand Ten has more syllables and is annoying. That doesn’t mean that I will mock you if you decide to go with Two Thousand Ten, but others may, so be warned.

Speaking of annoying, I would like to ask that our new Government Health Care system include therapy for those of us who are scared shitless by opening those annoying popping crescent roll containers. Oh you know which ones I’m talking about, and I’m sure the Pillsbury people that load those suckers do so while giggling and picturing people losing fingers or crapping their pants when they somehow make it explode like an errant IED, globs of dough spraying all over. To the butthead that sucked the air out of the “Grands” roll to create a lethal weapon that I opened the other day... YOU SUCK! (btw, that tale about the exploding roll can and the woman “holding her brains” is an urban legend... sorry to burst your bubble)

On another annoying fronts, I’m intrigued by the saga of the Asian Carp. Apparently these are the big fish that are taking over the world and love to leap out of the water and attack people on boats. There’s a war being waged to keep them from swimming up the Mississippi (and yes, I still do that grade school thing to spell that state correctly, so do you and you probably also do that whole knuckles on what month have 31 days thing, so shut up) because they will eat the other fish out of house and home and food.

But if you read the article, it seems that that’s not the only reason why they “aren’t good”. They have small mouths and don’t like to eat worms on hooks, therefore they’ll kill the recreational fishing industry (those who sell worms and fishing licenses because the damn things just jump in boats on their own). This has caused Federal and State officials to do whatever they can to keep the migrating fish from going any farther. Um, we can’t keep illegals out of the country, let alone fish, so I’m guessing this will be another expensive boondoggle that costs taxpayers and will fail.

So, why aren’t we eating these things? Aren’t there starving people all over the world that wouldn’t mind having a tasty bony fish? Of course they would, but we won’t eat them here because they’re CARP! Apparently “we” don’t eat carp, even though the rest of the world does, so why aren’t we exporting these things and making some money from them? Apparently some fishermen have started doing that, and are making good money from it... that’s how we adapt you see... unlike the Liberal Darwin lemmings who think that we have to keep everything the way it is by shutting off water to farmers in California to save a little fish, or spend a gazillion to stop the natural progression of Asian Carp. It seems that those who believe in Darwin (natural selection, survival of the fittest) don’t believe that species can do that by themselves and need “man” to help them survive, missing the whole point entirely. But that’s a whole nother rant about the godless who believe themselves to be god, and for another time.

So, lets rename the stupid things to something tasty sounding... like River Kittens (PETA would approve of that), or better yet: Mississippi Filet. Come on, good marketing made the Talipia (a poop eating bottom feeder) into the haute cuisine of 2009, we can do the same for Asian Carp.

Words Fail Me

This latest terrorist attempt... oh sorry, I mean this latest Man-caused near disaster has me speechless. I'm speechless with stupidity.

Apparently I don't get how denying travelers blankets and pillows will stop a terrorist.

I'm speechless at how Mr. Fiscal Responsibility, who is renting a Hawaiian compound for his friends and family manages to take time out of his busy vacation of golfing and partying to thank the brave citizens for jumping the killer and saving the flight (dude! The bomb was a dud, we should be thankful we weren't mourning the death of potentially thousands of victims on Christmas).

I'm speechless at how this cold blooded terrorist now has all the rights of the American citizens that he attempted to kill and is being treated as though he shoplifted.

I'm speechless how Mr. Golf praised citizens for thwarting an "isolated extremist"... how about citizens doing the job of your inept Department of Homeland Security who had him on a watch list, had a warning from his father, and still let him get on one of our planes.

I'm speechless about the money that will be spent to "review" the "incident" to find out how this happened. We've had a Major in the army e-mailing Al Quada, we've had the Crotch bomber e-mailing Al Quada and his father ratting him out... how do you think it happened other than your incompetence? Hello?

Granted, if the father had e-mailed the warning and said "Greetings, I'm a rich Nigerian banker and need your help..." I can see where that might have been deleted as spam, but still....

I'm speechless at "experts" getting on tv and broadcasting which seats are prime terrorist spots because of their vulnerabilities.

I'm speechless that our DHS leader thinks the system worked, then didn't work.

I'm speechless that somebody isn't pointing their finger at Bush yet (wait for it).

I'm surprised that they didn't say the pants bomber did it because he couldn't get health insurance.

I'm speechless that there is talk that providing x-ray machines that may reveal a passenger's yoohoo is being held up because people will be offended that some stranger will see their x-ray shaped yoohoo.

I'm speechless that our fearless leader has the gall to tell us that "we will not rest until we get those responsible", um, I thought we weren't going to rest until we had jobs, and we weren't going to rest until we had Bin Laden, and we weren't going to rest until we played that back nine... oh wait, that last one is probably the only one that will actually get done.

I'm speechless that the excuse from Gibbs is that there is 500,000 names on the terror watch list... we use computers you dolt, its not just one guy with a freakin pencil so it doesn't take that long to do a search on a name you idiot. And for that matter, if there are 500,000 people we suspect of wanting to kill us... shouldn't we be rounding them up and locking them up instead allowing them to show up at airports and saying "sorry, no ticket for you"? At the very least, the list will be much shorter.

so yeah... I'm speechless, can you tell?

Enough of the Snow, Someone come take it away

Part of the "fun" of owning Siberian Huskies is that they tend to wake you at 4am because they want to go play in the snow... and boy did we get snow. A ton of snow, 80 feet of snow... ok, it wasn't 80 feet, more like 2, but it drifted to like 4 feet, and then there's the wonderful snowplow that plowed the street which means we had 12 feet of packed chunky snow in our driveway... fine, it wasn't that much, but it felt like it.

So, bright and early, hubby and I were out shoveling out from all this crap, I mean; beautiful serene snow.

After 5 minutes hubby leans on his shovel and says: "Quick, go untie your tubes and squirt us out some 16 year olds to shovel this crap". I explained that the birthing process doesn't necessarily squirt out ready-to-shovel 16 year olds and in this day, they would be obese diabetic sloth children who would call protective services on us for even suggesting we put them to work. "Fine!" hubby snorted (which isn't a good thing to do in the cold because of nose icicle issues), then he proceeded to blame me for being selfish and not having the forward thinking to squirt out some kids 16 years ago so that we wouldn't have to shovel our driveway. I didn't hear the whole rant because I was distracted by someone driving by with a snow blower in the back of their truck and was trying to whore myself out to get them to come blow our cars free. Me, selfish? pffft. When the truck kept driving I turned to cursing them and flipped them off, but that's ineffective when wearing mittens.

After we had shoveled our drive, cleared off the trucks and reminisced about the good old days when neighbors came out and helped each other and people with snow blowers would spontaneously help their neighbors out, blah blah, bitch and moan... the neighborhood came alive with people with snow blowers helping each other out. THE BASTARDS!

So we left and went to Starbucks... and tried running them over on the way out of the driveway.

Oh, and you'll be pleased to know that my company's "holiday" party was finally canceled... so I bought a dress for nothing and don't have to teeter around in 2 feet snow in heels and freeze my butt off getting there... I'm crushed, which is why I'm sitting around in sleepy pants sipping hot chocolate. I'll get over it.

She's Fallen and She Got Back Up

Its been a while since I’ve ranted, but don’t fear, I’m still keeping a journal of rant topics. Unfortunately by the time I get off my butt and write them out, they’ll be so old that I won’t remember why these things made me so mad. Whatever, you’ll just have to suffer through them anyway.

Since I’m snowbound by the STORM OF THE CENTURY OF THE MILLENNIUM OF THE UNIVERSE, and thankfully didn’t have to go to a stupid company “holiday” party (because my firm is too much of a pussy to call it Christmas and face the wrath of morons that scream “SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND PRIVATELY OWNED FIRM” or something like that), because instead of screwing us out of $35 bucks for the party and canceling it, they moved it to Sunday, where I’m sure we’re now double-booked with someone’s wedding reception and all of the guests will be wondering A.) who are all the drunks, and B.) why do they speak in acronyms and describe the food like “That curry is a paradigm shift outside the box”.

So, instead of wearing uncomfortable heels and pretending like I actually LIKE the people I work with and am not at a party simply because its cheap food and free alcohol and the annual bet when someone wearing a WAAAAY too small strapless dress will fall out of it while doing the electric glide, I’m in sleepy pants with stew in the crock pot procrastinating on doing anything because we’re HAVING An UNPRECEDENTED BLIZZARD OF EPIC PROPORTIONS DURING CLIMATE CHAOS GLOBAL WARMING-VILLE.

Which reminds me of my blog title and you’re probably getting impatient and waiting for me to actually get to the subject... fine, be that way...

I called my mom. Well, actually she called my cell phone while I was pushing a cart filled with heavy dog food in the pet store, which isn’t conducive to answering a phone ringing in the bowels of my bag, but by the time I dug it out and removed the gum wrapper off the case, she had hung up, so I had to call her back.

She spent 20 minutes yammering about life in general while I tried to maneuver the wide load cart through the narrow crap filled aisles until she got to the part where she said “Oh, and I fell down and I wanted to tell you before your sister called and told you.” That stopped me cold in the aisle because the last time she “called before my sister called me” was when she chopped the tip of her finger off with a bandsaw.

Apparently, since she only had cataract surgery done on one eye, her depth perception is crap and she didn’t see that the sidewalk was messed up and she fell, but some nice people (one guy driving by stopped) helped her and made sure she was ok and then saw her to her house and sometimes its nice having your mom live in a small town because had she lived where I do, swarms of idiots would have picked her clean like pirana in seconds. Apparently she cut her chin and scraped her nose and messed up her hand a little, but she claims she’s fine. Of course in the aisle of Petsmart I’m all freaking out because old people bones are more brittle than those balsa wood airplanes you got as a kid and I was picturing one of her arm bones snapping like so much airplane wing with that sickening crunch noise. “Don’t make me put you in a home!” I said, probably too loudly because some woman walking by me stopped and glared at me. “I’ll put my mom in a home if I want!” I snarled at her.

Then I spent the next 15 minutes insisting that I would pay for her cataract surgery premiums but she had to call and make an appointment for the other eye ASAP or else I would put her in a home, which involved the usual “yes, I know you can take care of yourself, no I don’t think you’re senile, yes I know you can save up the money, but why owe an insurance company when you can just owe me money because I don’t charge nearly as much interest as an insurance company, and yes I know those government bastards are trying to take away your medicare benefits and no I promise that I won’t eat you even if you’re made into a tasty italian dish because you aren’t even italian I picture you more as a veal dish, but a lot tougher, and no I won’t break your arm if you don’t pay me back and yes I love you and would visit you in the home if I did stick you in one.” until I could convince her that I wasn’t sending goons to cart her away and she could go back to playing solitaire on her laptop with the tv turned up too loud.

About a half hour later my sister called: “Mom fell down!” she yelled at me all dramatic and freaking out.

“Well, get off the fricken phone and pick her up” I yelled and hung up on her.

It Must Be The Worms

Nothing reverts a grown up back to childhood like being sick. You wish your parents were there to bring you hot chicken noodle soup, put a hand to your forehead and instantly know by touch whether you have a fever or not, and wait on you hand and foot until you are well again.

Yeah, I miss the good ol days, now that I'm all adult-like and have to make my own chicken noodle soup, have no clue if I have a fever and the only thermometer in the house has been up the dog's butt, and the laundry sits and mocks me until I'm well enough to do it.

Today I felt well enough to take a shower. Actually I just couldn't stand myself any more and threw myself in the shower, my mom's words ringing in my ears "take a shower, it'll make you feel better and wash the germs off of you". Yeah, I did feel somewhat better. "Now don't forget to dry your hair, if you go out with wet hair you'll catch pneumonia". My mom really did think that going out in wet hair would cause pneumonia, ear aches, tuberculosis and all manner of other horrible things. Apparently that's not the case, but you can't convince her otherwise.

My grandmother felt that you could catch horrible "private" diseases and pregnancy just by sitting on a public toilet. She also felt that we would all meet the same fate as the Titanic if we took the Ferry over to Mackinaw Island. My grandmother was also the one that gave me the middle name "Lou" because I didn't have a middle name. Grandma took a lot of pills. She also thought that you could catch worms from a myriad of things, such as eating raw cookie dough. I guess this was why my dad thought that everything was caused by worms.

"What's wrong?"
"I have a headache"
"Its the worms"
"I don't have worms"
"That's the worms talking".

My husband has an upset stomach now, which he's blaming on the pepermint white mocha he drank earlier. I'm pretty sure he has worms.

The Economy

Despite the stupid title, I assure you that there's no need to run off and poke your eyes out with a fork, I'm not going to do one of those long drawn out, drawling, make ya wanna puke dissertations on the U.S. Economy or anything like that... although if someone paid me I could, but instead I'll just sound the alarm over something I found on the back of a Wheat Thins box that disturbed me greatly.

Oh sure, you've probably seen the commercials where people are telling you to rip the gold fillings out of your teeth and mail them to their company in this handy trustworthy envelope because the value of the dollar is in the crapper and you'll need something to barter with when the rogue element starts racing around in crazy looking cars and speak with Australian accents, and you only have so many viable organs to trade. I laughed at those commercials as well, until I was eating Wheat Thins (that delicious snack cracker, and yes, since I haven't received a semi trailer full of Butterfinger Crisps, I'm now whoring for the Wheat Thin people), and found this alarming statement on the back of the box:

You can clearly see here that the U.S. Dollar is now only worth 16 Wheat Thins and 2 Tablespoons of humus. Oh dear lord are we screwed!!! Well, I'm not too screwed, because I happen to have a whole box of Wheat Thins (that I only ate approximately $3.00 out of before learning how valuable they now are). I have no idea why the Federal Reserve wanted to go with a snack cracker as the next monetary thing, but whatever, I'll go with it. The toll booth operator apparently hadn't gotten the memo and yelled at me for tossing 36 hummus slathered wheat thins into the toll hopper. She's probably still using that paper crap, the poor thing.

My husband had called and left me a voicemail that consisted of a high pitched whine that is commonly used by one of our dogs when she wants something (oyster cracker, our dinner, a Lexus). Having been married for 3,000 years, we no longer leave real messages for each other like "Hey honey, hope your day is going well, give me a call when you have a chance". Nope, our voicemails consist of high pitched keening noises, sometimes a whispered "shoot me now, please, just shoot me", or the "I want noise".

I called him back:
"What do you want?"
"Um, I don't know, I forgot"
"Well, you left a voicemail that said EEEEEEEeeeerrrrrrrrr"
"Oh, I need to go buy a beard trimmer"

Yes, from EEEEEEEEeeeeeerrrrrr he got beard trimmer. Its now quite apparent that we've evolved into our own guttural language and we can just do away with english altogether.

In case you were wondering, he didn't get a beard trimmer, because I ate all of the wheat thins.

Why do I even bother with titles

Yes, its time for more ranting, but before I start my rant, I'm going to start with a commercial of sorts.

The Butterfinger Crisp. I bought one of those halloween sized bags of them, with no intention of giving them to children. Nope, I view Halloween as socialist propaganda, if children want candy they can get a job and buy it themselves, why should I work hard only to fork over good candy to kids who just want a hand out. Anyhoo, back to the Butterfinger Crisp. I would like to inform all of you that the only thing they could do to improve this candy treat is if they found a way for them to unwrap and throw themselves straight into your mouth. I can't vouch for the regular sized bar, but the bags o' little tiny bars are fantastic, and yes, I would definitely whore myself out to the Nestle company and accept a truck load of these treats for this stellar and unbiased review of their incredibly delicious treat.

I would also like to ask those people that design online courses that make you sit through an explanation of the "right" answer, even after you answered the question right, to immediately throw themselves off of a high building, and if you survive, crawl with your broken legs back up to the top of the building and jump again. You suck. You really, truly suck. If I get the question right, move on. Stop wasting my time by going over something I already know, I know it, I answered your stupid question, if I wanted to know more... well why would I need to know "more" if I answered the question right, you idiot. This goes especially to those types of courses that are mandatory and you have to take year after year. Sure, things may change, but ask me a question about the things that changed, and if I get the pre-test wrong, then make me suffer through the drivel, but for the love of GAH stop the madness!!!

There is a very big bug sitting near the ceiling of my living room. It hasn't moved for some time now, and since I'm too lazy to do anything about it until it swoops across the room and smacks me in the forehead, I'm inclined to let it just sit there. If you don't hear from me in a few days, please call the police and report that a large bug killed me. Of course, by that time the dogs will have eaten my carcass and frankly I'm ok with that.

I close tonight's very quick, yet efficient rant with the following: Facebook, I know you are free and I should be grateful for whatever I get, but lately I haven't gotten anything from you, other than a notice saying my account is under maintenance, and when I do get in, you won't let me do anything. You are about worthless for the past week and if you don't watch out, I'll just go back to the dark ages and start e-mailing people again... um... or not. Just fix it will you.