Assume Nothing

Everyone has guilty pleasures; some like an occasional drink, or sneaking off to skinny dip, or eat ice creams out of the container. One of my guilty pleasures is Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum Series and this week a new book came out. My daughter, my summer sidekick, is also addicted to Stephanie Plum and the relationship she has with the men in her life.

As we were heading home from dropping my eldest off at a dance she said, “Ranger or Morelli?”

Since we had not been talking about the new release, in fact we were talking about her boyfriend’s upcoming birthday I didn’t make the jump.

(A jump can be equated to bouncing through the space-time continuum erratically during a conversation or a question or comment dropping out of nowhere.)

“Huh?” I responded in my most intellectual tone.

“Which one would you pick Ranger or Morelli?”

“I don’t know, Ranger is commitment phobic, but he is awfully sexy. Then again Morelli would be comfortable, but he is a cop.”

“I hate cops, but I would go for Morelli because I don’t go for the Latin types. Special Ed and I will never get married.” She said.

“Why do you say that, did he tell you he didn’t want to get married?”

“No, but I would have to get married in a religion. I don’t want that.”

“Who told you that you would have to have a religious ceremony?”

“That is what Special Ed would want.”

“Said who? I asked.

“He was raised religious, so …”

“He doesn’t even go to church… where are you coming up with this shit. Never mind I know… I suppose I would live with Morelli and have Ranger on the side. “

“Yeah I was thinking that too…” she said.

This is how we tackle life, relating things to fictional characters we fantasize about from books… how screwed up can that be?

My other guilty pleasures… well lets just say that Blue Bell makes this wonderful Mint Chocolate Chip, and did I mention I learned to make Majitos a couple of weeks ago.

Perhaps after I wake up a bit more I will be able to pull something humorous out of my prospective posterior later, however, now there is still a lot of cleaning to do. Did I mention that it is now possible to walk into my walk in closet? I have not been able to do that in the last three years. Oh yeah and the linen closest, it is soooo clean, that it is empty, only two sets of sheets per bed and one extra set of towels. That thing was crammed full… I hoard …shhhh it is a secret. There is still the closet under the stairs, where I keep everything that is high school or Christmas related…. but I might have to put myself in an altered state of consciousness to tackle that job.

I have yet to clean the carpets, sure some people do not think this is a necessity, but hell why do I own a fancy ass carpet cleaner if I am not going to use it.

Roger fantasized about using a practice family on occasions.

At times the feeling of helplessness was overwhelming. He had lost his friends, the women who loved him, and his families respect. All he had left was pity, disgust, and the wish for someone to either fulfill his dreams or to die.

He was leaning closer to the dying.

Roger’s life was close to the end…

On the seventeenth of February something unbeknownst to Roger happened.

As the year of the golden pig was ushered in, Julie was walking to her car when she nearly tripped over a small rise in the sidewalk. She stopped and looked carefully at the imperfection in the sidewalk, just in case someone had witnessed her clumsiness. As Julie swiveled her head around to see if anyone was watching, she caught a glimpse of something familiar in the corner of her eye.

Roger’s phone rang, he answered it like he always does when he thinks there is a bill collector on the other end of the line. “¿Hola quién es éste?”

If you so desire feel free to finish the short…

Yes it is a double entry day! See my furry family posted earlier today.

Things have changed a lot since I last wrote. The queen mother, though still drain bramaged has turned back into her hypercritical bitchy self. My daughter got hit with about 4 digs, everything from “you need to get a real hair cut” to “do you really need to eat that?” The former did was after my daughter got a very expensive extremely stylish haircut. I jumped to her defense, because the old bitch had pretty much just crossed a major line. The latter insult was weight related, my girl is not over weight. This is what the queen bitch does, she makes the people around her insecure, makes them feel bad about themselves, and as I have mentioned before never has anything nice to say about anyone ever.

My daughter asked me how I dealt with living with her for the short fourteen years that did. I explained that I would have tried to commit suicide had it not been for the fact that maids, nannies, and housekeepers raised me. My daughter then thanked me for her childhood. She reminded me about saving her from the queen mother’s wrath on the occasions where she felt that beating a four year old with a hairbrush was appropriate. Thank gawd my daughter was much quicker than the queen mother was.

So, what started this rant? We went out to eat with the queen mother yesterday; it was horrendous. I actually got physically ill from all of the negativity. Mind you, the food was wonderful; it was the company… one very negative hypercritical person can make someone like me physically ill. I have ended friendships and long relationships because of this quality. Yes I am fully aware that I am doing the negative thing right now, but seriously I expend more energy trying to make people feel better than not, yes even the queen mother. Yeah, I am sensitive… now not another word about that it makes me sound weak and the last thing I want to be is weak.

In other things that have pissed me off as of late the management company that is supposed to maintain the outside of my home is a bunch rude arrogant lazy low rent swindlers. . These people have been so neglectful that I actually have plants growing out of my gutters. They have not been balancing the chemicals in our pool properly and it smells as though someone just throws in a daily chlorine tablet, or perhaps they are just tossing in a bottle of Clorox, who knows. When I contact them about maintenance, it takes weeks for me to get a reply and when I do, I am treated as if I am a student renter. I am an owner not a renter and this little piece of property is my home and an investment in my son’s future.

Okay perhaps I have clamed down a bit… okay maybe not.

I would like to know why when anyone else uses my credit card for a return it takes all of a couple of hours for it to show back up in my account, however, when Victoria Secrets uses it I am told it will take up to 5 to 7 business days. What the frack is that about? They have no problem pulling my money out when I make an order, but have problems putting it back.

In good news, or maybe not so good news depending on ones point of view, I went and saw my doctor this week. He spent about five minutes in the same room with me and ordered an non steroidal anti inflammatory shot (used in emergency situations and emergency rooms only, his words) and doubled the number of pain pills that he dispenses each month. He then lectured me on not taking enough; yeah I am not taking enough pain medication according to him. He said it was a valiant effort on my part to try to decrease my intake of pain meds but since I truly needed them, he could not see why I would put myself through the ordeal.

Lets see if I can balance this out with some more good news… I am getting ready for my online friend of ten some years to visit from California next month. I have been cleaning, not knowing what his allergens are I thought perhaps the removal of all the dust layers might be in order. I still have carpets to clean, and more carpets to clean, and still more carpets to clean. Damn good thing I purchased a carpet cleaner last year.

Okay I do have good news…

I am happy, somewhat health, and am doing my best to stay positive. I have a story for you later, but now I need to get my butt out of the bed and get productive, I feel there is a closet to clean in my immediate future.

The oldest and only female of the family is Pyewacket, or Pye Pye as we affectionately call her. She is half Siamese and half Calico. The old girl will be fourteen in a couple of months.

The newest addition to the family and youngest of the males is Perry, attack dog extraordinaire. He will be two in September.

This is one of my favorite pictures of Loki, he was attacking empty boxes and bags as my son put away groceries one day; Loki got stuck in this Healthy Shake box, he is four years old.

Beebles refuses to come out from under the bed to be photographed. I will catch him as soon as he comes out to eat. Beebles is ten years old, and lives under the bed. He snores loud enough to disturb one or to turn up the television, he is also gaseous.

Damn, what a week this has been. I suppose I should start at Monday. I went for my long anticipated job interview. I had received a call the previous evening at about 10:30 from a friend of mine who had been prepping me for this interview. She was a little distressed and asked me if I liked surprises. I retorted with, ”It depends on the surprise.” My surprise was going to be that she was going to be on my interviewing committee. Okay at this point my anxiety level has just gone from 10 out of 10 to 20 out of 10, I do not really interview well. In addition to that, little nugget of information, it has been 8 years since I had to be interviewed.

Therefore, I did not sleep the night before the interview, and cannot bring myself to full alertness the morning of the interview. I drug myself out of bed, took a bath, put on minimal makeup, put on my teacher interview garb, and added my teacher glasses just so that no one would notice I had dark circles and my eyes were darting around with nervous tension. In hindsight I should have taken a half a xanax, but you know all about hindsight and the should have and could haves… I didn’t so lets just leave it at that.

The interview itself was like a horror movie. I would glance over at my friend and see her visibly cringe at every stupid thing that popped out of my mouth. I would have done much better with a one on one, without my sweet friend’s expressions that made me dig myself further and further in that hole of oral expulsion. It did not go well. On the upside, at least I am employed and did not do something stupid like not renewing my three-year contract. The downside is I return to a place that I am starting to dislike intensely.

Tuesday was spent dealing with three big problems in my life… No, not my darling children, my homeowners insurance, my homeowners warranty, and my laptops desire to turn itself off when I am half was through burring a movie, or anything else for that matter.

A little advice, well you might not need it because you might not be as stupid as I was… anyway do not ever fill out an online quote form using your primary email account or you cell phone number. I was bombarded with multiple calls and emails no more than 5 minutes after I hit submit. I noticed rather quickly that insurance people are more ruthless than any used car salesman, and as persistent as male chasing a feline in estrus. I actually once had one break a window out of an apartment I lived in to get at my cat. Another cat, not an insurance man.

After talking to a few of these guys on the phone, I decided it would be much easier to do it via email. I wrote them a statement telling them what I wanted and send it to them all. I finally received a quote that was so much better than the insurance I have now, and I took it. I suppose I never mentioned why I put myself though this hell. My insurance company out of the blue and with no claims decided to raise my premiums 430.00 a year. I was appalled, I also have very good credit, and did I mention no claims.

My other crisis of the day was my deteriorating satisfaction with American Home Shield a company I have done business with for over 20 years. I have gotten so sick of having service technicians come out say it is a maintenance problem when the problem has been maintained, or telling me that they have repaired a problem they have not and American Home Shields ever growing lack of customer service and ever increasing co-payments that I found a better service. If one might be interested in the name of the new company my email is under the about me section of this site.

Oh yes the third problem with Terrible Tuesday… my laptop has decided turn off half way through a DVD burn; this has become the bane of my existence. It reads it just does not write… the poor thing tries until it gets to able 50% and then it just turns off my laptop.

Now many people who are avid Dell customers are aware that a few years ago they outsourced all of their support to India. A friend of mine who is a male from India explained to me that women are still second class citizen there and are treated as such. He really didn’t need to tell me that I could deduce this myself talking to tech support. As many of you might not know I have a degree in Electronics, so I am really hardware savvy, I spent hours troubleshooting this problem, I restored my hard drive to before this problem started, went on all of the tech forums and read what was said about this problem, did everything that was to be done.

Then I called Dell teach support… after talking to the fifth, yes you read that correctly 5th tech support guy (all but one where condescending) I finally reached a supervisor who agreed I was have problems with my CD/DVD RW optical drive. Now all day Tuesday was spent on one of my two phones, mostly on hold. However, in the end I am finally getting a service tech out to the house. One does have to go through at least five levels of hell to actually receive next day (though it isn’t really next day) in home service from Dell as they so promise.

Tuesday though terrible was productive.

Wednesday I had lunch with my friend from Monday and a retired music teacher, they said those magic words, “Lets do Lunch” so we did…

That leaves us to today, were I woke up at 5:00 am because every bone in the lower half of my body ached so bad I had to get up to take something for the pain… Just waiting until noon when I can down another pain pill.

More later….

Okay my son just got back from the mail box where I received a form letter, thanks but no thanks… I can really nail those failures, it isn’t just my imagination. Everything happens for a reason… waiting to find out what the hell that is…