"The Goddamn House"... in haiku.
the refrigerator...
Outside, so polished;
your interior mocks me.
Just throw out the bowl.
the floors...
"Hardwood flooring, oh!"
Days, Weeks, months on hands and knees...
I've got your "oh", Ass.
the carpet...
My cream nemesis
Stretched out in the living room.
"Red wine," it chuckles.
To be continued.
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"Nah, I really only need them to read..."
I walk barefoot into the laundry room to get my gym clothes, and I kick a piece of lint out of my way... only it turns out to be a live scorpion.
Who was, needless to say, taken aback by my casual bravery.
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Resons why I should probably start thinking about getting a job again:
1) Costco brand shampoo is making me markedly less attractive wash by coconut wash.
2) Keep catching myself staring out the living room window for large blocks of time, transfixed by the perfection that is my home-grown irrigation system.
3) Putting on a bra shouldn't prompt someone else in my house to say, "Wellll, Fancy, what are YOU up to?"
4) There's no such meal as "dunch".
5) "Student Loan Dispersal Day" shouldn't be celebrated in the vein of religious holidays, replete with seasonal cards and gifts.
5.5) (Well, not
gifts so much as
"thanks again for fronting my car insurance" checks.)
6) It would give me that solid backing I've been looking for to not do anything helpful around the house.
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I haven't cleaned out my lint filter in so long that my dryer just spit out two extra sweaters. And sloth scores again.
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09:15...
The construction guy left. My morning is looking... not quite as
down. I'm sharing this, and then I'm done. I've already spent too much time here avoiding the construction guy.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: if there were an
ALL Celine Dion
ALL the time radio station, not only would I set all of my presets to it, but I would sport the station bumper sticker. And I don't care who knows it.
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I went to a baby shower yesterday for a friend I haven't seen in a while, and I gave my classic "protective outlet covers made out of aluminum foil" gag gift. Which is seriously the funniest gag gift for a pregnant woman EVER. And I stand by that, even though my friend's mom asked me to leave before I had any cake.
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I'm standing on my patio this morning, enjoying the fruits of my labor before the godless, flesh-gnawing heat could sink its teeth in, when one of the
vinca pulls on my pajama leg.
"I'm all
shady here. And my root ball hurts." Vinca scrunches around, annoyed. "What did you do to my root ball?"
"I had to sort of squish it to get it into this pot with these
portulaca."
Vinca squints its petals at me.
"You
squished my root ball??? My
root ball?!?! Owwwwww..." Vinca writhes in mock agony, wringing its leaves. Portulaca rolls its buds.
"You're totally faking. You're fine," I say.
Vinca gets sassy. Vinca leaves huffy on Vinca stem. Petals flaring.
"But the shady thing I can do something about."
Vinca brightens. Leaves come off stem. So I set Vinca on the sunny side of the patio. Vinca breathes dramatic sigh of relief. Bends stem luxuriously back, relaxes petals.
I hate to give in like that; it messes up the power hierarchy. I'm just asking to be inundated with whines for fertilizer and soft water. But to tell the truth, I felt pretty bad about the root ball thing. I bet that hurt like a bitch.
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THINGS THAT PEOPLE SHOULDN'T SAY TO ME WHILE I'M WORKING IN MY YARD:1) "Oh, God, it's
soooo hot out here! I should have brought you one of
these!" (
eating giant and refreshing frozen lemonade.)
2) "We're on our way to the Victoria's Secret sale, because J gets an additional forty percent off! We'll see you later!"
3) "Wow, your back is
really sunburned."
4) "Yeah, but you know what
else would look good here?"
5) "Hey, do you mind if I turn this radio off for a second?"
6) "You're still working on
this part?"
7) "HEY! Hurry up so you can get moving on
MY yard!"
8) "Whatever he's paying you, I'll beat it by a dollar! Ha ha!"
9) "Wow. I couldn't get
my wife to do that on a
bet. She says God invented orange coolers for a reason."
10) "Ewww! There's like thirty spiders in here! Have you been
drinking this??"
11) (C): "This pipe is leaking, I think."
(me):"That pipe is fucking
not leaking."
(C): "I think it is. The ground is sort of caving in, and it's all swampy. Gross."
(me):"That pipe is fucking
not leaking."
(C): "It totally is, see? Look where the water is bubbling up through the grass right there... and here... you should come look at this."
(me): "That pipe is fucking
not leaking."
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To the person who ended up here by searching for *occasional desserts can't hurt"...
... You're my Nestle Drumstick fortune cookie, Honey.
To the person whose google search *how deep is a vagina* led them here...
... I think someone is a little bit cocky.
*snort*
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THINGS I LEARNED BEGRUDGINGLY WHILE WORKING IN MY YARD:
1) When the channel 3 meteorologist says that Tuesday is going to be nine degrees cooler than Monday, with the added bonus of delightful slight winds, he is a lying cocksucker.
2) When S offers to come over and help with what turns out to be complicated and sweaty work, what she
really meant was that she would come over and kill a six pack.
3) My yard is a delicate ecosystem. The spiders eat the crickets, the snakes and chickens eat the spiders, the cats eat the snakes and chickens, and the hawks eat the cats. Two problems: I accidently killed all of the spiders; and what the fuck eats the hawks? Pumas?
4) Yes. I seriously have snakes and chickens randomly in my yard. The chickens hang out in the garage a lot; the snakes prefer the patio. And I live in a metropolis.
5) When I tell R that I am fully capable of finishing the sprinkler system based on the seven second lesson I received in the garage, and hence there's no need to call those saved again heroin addicts who took ten weeks to pour a concrete walkway, I am full of shit.
6) OHHHHH! TURN THE FUCKING
HOSE ON!
7) *Pascal*, the nursery plant specialist who came to the house and, for $120, told me how many geraniums I need, does not like it when you call her *Pazz*. Even when you point out that her name is ridiculous.
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I'm counting the ridiculously plentiful items on my "to-do" list as I type this, curled up on the couch. Typing this is not on the list, FYI. Luckily the *tree guy* came back today with his tree minions--a very unexpected and merciful gesture, as the yard is in state of half-handled tree shock and the tree minions were paid in full on Friday, usually a sure-fire way to ensure task-abandonment-- so I can scratch "hoist self into 150 foot pine tree with chainsaw" off the list. Which is nice.
I just got an exploratory email from someone from my Vagina class (archives, archives); exploratory in the sense that enough time has elapsed that the recollections have lost enough trauma that we're beginning to stretch and uncurl from our fetal balls. And eventually the curiosity about how someone
else did outweighs the horror of having to share that information about yourself. I responded succinctly, matching and slightly upping her hints of despair and her crushing disappointment innuendo. Her response should, if my predictions are right, be a total spill. And it may turn out that
everyone got punched in the face, not just me.
Yessss.
(UPDATE: It would appear as though I've fared either significantly
better or significantly
worse than this class. In a bold offensive maneuver I offered that I had received a B- (although, as we know, that "B-" had a "slash" and a "C+" immediately following) and that her comments drove me to bury the entire paper under my high school algebra notebook. All I got back was, "Yeah, she's pretty rough!!! If I didn't have to make a serious point to her, I wouldn't even bother calling or talking to her. What sucks is that I like her as a person, I just hated that class and that paper."
Oooooooh. Superior
AND full of advice! Thank you! The totally unnecessary, effusive love for the prof jammed in there is a nice touch... it reminds me of three-way calling in junior high, remember? When you had be
extra diplomatic when your best friend called and wanted to talk shit about somebody else in the first seven seconds of the conversation? Because I
might have Professor Vagina over here with me. We might be drinking wine coolers and painting our toenails when, out of boredom, we decide to try to trap random students into a scholastic relation faux pas.)
I need to get out there and start putting these plants in the ground before they all die in their pots and mock my honorable intentions. Last year when I was finishing my planting the soil was so moist and worked that the worms were chawing it up old-school. "Look at me! I'm on top of the ground! I'm on top of the ground!" And then they'd freakishly beat their little ends raw trying to get underneath again, because in the desert, worms can't chaw for long.
At the time I was okay with the worm squad. I think I even gently helped the little exposed sticky fatties back into the ground. But I'd been working outside on my hands and knees in the dirt for a couple of weeks. I'd been desensitized to that which I'm naturally prone to shrieking at and squishing. I don't know if I can deal with worms today. Worms today might not get any help. Unless they act all happy and excited to see me and shit, squinching around and
deliberately waving their ends. I mean, I can't just
turn on the worms like that.
Everyone has to go
here. I could only get to
"'Let's do a 68 and I'll owe you one,'" before I started choking.
Do with that pun what you will.
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PRO AND CON LIST FOR HONDA GAS-POWERED PRESSURE WASHERS:
PRO: Better for getting large spiders off the house than the Shop Vac, which the spiders gleefully breed and plan in anyway.
CON: Better for propelling said large spiders onto sprayer operator's neck.
PRO: Gets stubborn and nasty bird poo off the car.
CON: Gets paint off the car. Gleefully. And throws said paint chips onto sprayer operator's neck.
PRO: When sprayed into the air it creates a refreshing mist.
CON: When sprayed onto sprayer operator's hand in an attempt to rid hand of residual web, leaves blister the size of neck-impaling spider. Gleefully.
PRO: Rids patio furniture of dust and grass clippings.
CON: If sprayer operator becomes preoccupied with web on hand and accidently aims spray gun at the ground, sprayer will gnaw through twenty square feet of sod. Gleefully.
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Okay, C.
FRONTING: Apparently fronting is a flirtatious, nay seductive gesturing that women take part in largely without their own cognizant knowledge. An example: filling up one's car at the AM/PM in one's sweat pants, no makeup and a greasy, embroidered headband, trying to avoid the three sketched-out characters lurking (read drinking
Night Train forties) on the sidewalk who are shouting, "Aw, Girl! Why you frontin'? Why you gotta be like that?"
See? And I didn't even
know I was leading these gentlemen on! I should have walked over and given them all hand jobs, just for the miscommunication. It's tough being a girl; we as the weaker sex understand SO VERY LITTLE.
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I just learned that, apparently, it is still possible to *front* while pumping unleaded in sweaty gym clothes. My apologies, gentlemen. I had no intention of *fronting*.
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Things I Learned on Vacation:
1) When R asks me to research the ferry system, glancing momentarily at the appropriate page online doesn't count. I do not, as it turns out, have the Washington State Ferry schedule downloaded into my brain.
2) It costs forty-five dollars to take a cab from the airport to the house, and back to the airport again when you forget passports. In spite of American cable, area codes and driving strategy, Canada gets its ass on its shoulders when you refer to it as "Northern,
Northern U S of A.
3) Even when R runs multiple, crucial red lights, and even when he comes so close to nailing pedestrians that he taps some scared dude's bike with the bumper, and even when he stops
in the middle of the road to scream a direction question at an old woman,
do not criticize his driving. That will inexplicably tap right back in to the "you don't have the Washington State Ferry schedule downloaded into your
brain, you know" conversation.
4) Starbucks tries way too hard to be cool. And that gets worse the farther north you are. There were afghans in one.
Afghans.
5) Admitting to a group of forty-something mommies that I applied at Hooters once is not a good way to bond.
6) There is nothing more endearing than watching middle-aged white men dance with the women they love. Man! (hand on heart) There's no better combination of *loving* and *silly* out there.
7) By virtue of Number 6, nobody gives a rat's ass how
I dance. Which is refreshing.
8) Putting lipstick on at the table is tacky, tacky. Period. Putting powder on is more so. Applying a layer of peach eye-shadow is just weird. What are you doing?
9) The Sharper Image
relief band is
so worth the freakiness of seeing your hand spasm involuntarily. I want three more... just as backups.
10) I am so blessed and so lucky and so loved. I keep trying to justify that. I should probably quit trying.
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Just as a heads up... I'm leaving town tomorrow morning not to return until Monday. So if you check in about Friday and you see that this blog has been updated, that will be because someone has broken into my home, stolen all of my
hair sticks, put navy beans in my glove compartment and is now subscribing me to reams and reams of online porn.
Well,
more reams.
Have a great weekend!
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I successfully cut off all my hair. And colored it a respectable (and *cough* natural) brownish blondish. I love it. And it cost me HALF what it would have if I had let Shannon the Color Whore do it. I told R this morning that I feel kind of bad that when we started dating I had straight platinum hair to my waist and now he's stuck with a short and messy-curled brunette. It's like going from demure and perennially high-heeled Barbie to... Barbie's golf-playing, whiskey-drinking, fast-driving friend Skipper. Remember Skipper? I'm Skipper now. I'm George to Nancy Drew. I'm Thelma to Daphne. I'm pretty fucking hard core.
"Hey! I'm goin' down to First Round Draft to watch Nascar, drink Pabst and smoke a shitload of Winstons. Who's with me? Barbie? You big pussy."
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