We’ll Look Back On This And Laugh
i suck, i know! if blogging gave out citations for not blogging i’d be in prison for unpaid fines. but i have a good excuse. you’ll laugh when you hear the story. and then we’ll be best friends again only until i go another month without writing and then you’ll call me drunk and want to break up. (more…)
firing squad
new years eve was spent on my front porch with several of my friends playing “name that gun shot”. beginning at 7 p.m. and ending somewhere around 2 a.m. you could hear the echos of semi-automatics and what someone claimed to be a .41 desert eagle. at several points during the evening i announced that i was going to call the police only to be rebutted and told that they would do nothing. of course they wouldn’t…kincaid won’t give them a raise. they’ll sit in their squad cars drinking their coffee and laughing at the city that hates them. as d-rock so eloquently stated: “i don’t care if my garbage man is unhappy. i do care if my policeman is unhappy.”
quite right. an unhappy policeman is a policeman who doesn’t give two shiny shits if your house is broken into, or if you were mugged, or if a bullet went whizzing through your living room striking your very fanciful topiaries from restoration hardware.
you kids and your crazy, mixed-up plumbing
i can’t think of a better way to spend the new year than to clean up a flooded basement. the plumbing in our house came to a crawl over the past couple of days causing any draining to back up and spill into the washing machine and subsequently the basement floor. i called my contractor connections and had them come out today to roto-rooter the line. now all is well and dry. we can now flush the toilet and take a shower without having to plug the bathtub first. i think i’m going to send $100 to sally struthers in africa for those kids who don’t have plumbing.
on monday at 8:00 a.m. we will be homeowners or as i like to say “homo owners”, because wouldn’t owning a gay person be totally cool?! i would name him hortense and he would decorate my house with track lighting and plantation blinds and make a very tasty artichoke spinach dip in a hollowed out bread roll. right now i am exhausted and frustrated and just want this process to be over. i want to be doing all the fun things that are associated with owning a house like hanging pictures and fixing things and telling those kids to get off my damn lawn. as of right now we are currently living out of approximately four million boxes which probably sounds like palm springs to a homeless person, but to me it is no fun. i can’t find anything, the dogs are freaking out, and there is still way more to pack. the only satisfaction anyone is getting out of this is the cats for they are like homeless people. let us not forget that it is almost two weeks into december and because our current home looks like a FedEx drop-off station i cannot assemble our christmas decorations. i appreciate every single person who has kept me sane these past couple of weeks, especially rush, without whom i probably would have doused myself in nail polish remover and driven to a match factory.
to lighten your spirits after reading the above “rant from a crazee ladee” here are two photos i took from this past week’s chilling temperatures. enjoy and pass the xanax.
fountain of ice: taken in front of my neighborhood.
between kev and i we have probably slept a total of ten hours in the past week. we are so anxious and excited to close on our house and it is keeping us up at night. i’ll just lie awake and stare at the ceiling making a mental checklist of all our stuff that we need to move and when. at work i’m not any better. during my lunch hour i’ll sit on the computer and play on the city of birmingham’s GIS system. you can check it out here. this is a neat tool to use when you’re an obsessive asshat like me!
yesterday a friend sent me a link to the FBI’s sex offender registry to show me how many sex offenders were in a 5 mile radius of our new house. um, gee thanks. in our zip code there are 29 registered sex offenders. immediately i called dmoney (because she lives a block away from our new house and well, she just rocks!) and began grilling her about the information i received. she assured me that all is well and that she never sees any strange and lurking men in her bushes. well that is a good thing because they would have to deal with my fists of fury and my crying like a girl if i met one on the street. though just for good measure i’m going to print out the list of these offenders with their pictures and tack it to the fridge. so when people come over and ask what the list is for i can say with confidence “oh those are just my bridge club members”.
the hunt is on. kev and i have finally come to a point where we can actually afford to buy our first home. it has been a long road, but we’ve made it. last saturday we spent seven hours driving around with our agent (hi cody! sorry we kidnapped you) getting ideas for what we would like to buy. although we are stuck in our lease until february i still wanted to atleast get an idea of what is out there before we sink 30 years into a home. our primary target is crestwood, avondale, forest park, and crestline. i refuse to live any further from work than i do now, so that is the main reason we are staying within that area.
this week we were pre-approved for a loan so now i have a number to use when looking at houses. if you know of anything please give me a shout. it must have the following:
yes, i’m picky but i don’t have a whole lot of money to throw into something that needs repair. if i could do that i would just build a house. or continue to rent for the rest of my life.
i am in no way an activist. i lean more on the side of pacifism if anything. there are some causes that get me up in arms but rarely do i do anything about them. and it is not because i don’t want to, but rather i feel there are people out there with stronger voices than myself.
last night kevin and i sat down to watch When The Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts, a documentary on HBO by Spike Lee. i expected much naysaying about the local and federal governments, but what i did not expect was the horror and devastation and truly tragic accounts of those affected by hurricane katrina. i realized what a blind eye i had turned to this event a year ago and felt smaller than i ever have. while people were drowning and losing their homes and loved ones i was becoming agitated that nothing else was on television. i kept thinking to myself “they had warnings. they could have left. it is their fault they didn’t heed the mandatory evacuations”. now, looking back, i realize that only a percentage of new orleans residents had the proper tools to evacuate. new orleans is one of the poorest cities in the nation so it is only understandable that many of the residents lacked the funds and/or transportation to leave. it never occured to me that evacuating your home, if only for a few days, requires a significant amount of money. those who had stayed behind depended on the very government that they elected and pay taxes to to rescue them. regretfully it was two weeks too late. and now it is a blame game. nagin blames blanco, blanco blames brown, brown blames chertikoff, chertikoff blames the president. everyone’s “hands were tied” or were “waiting on reports” while the big easy drifted into the abyss. i know i am telling you things you already know, but please realize that i did not know and did not wantto know. i was too busy being a selfish git.
because i have an overactive imagination my dreams (or nightmares for that fact) were plagued by visions of chaos and acts of god. in one portion of my dream kevin and i were separated and it wasn’t until i called a local hospital to locate him that i found out that he had passed away. i woke up from the dream around 4 a.m. feeling very sad and dreadful. i looked over at my snoring husband and saw that he was very much alive. i kissed him on the forehead and buried myself back under the covers, thankful that it was just a dream. the depressing thing is, is that this is not a dream for hundreds of thousands of new orleans natives. they cannot wake up in their own beds and turn over to see their sleeping loved ones. they are displaced and unwanted by the very city that their generations built to become the most beloved place in America. i cannot fathom being ripped from everything i have known and treated like a leper.
conversation in a wal-mart:
interior - intimates section
me: i’m not sure what size of undies i should get. i’ve gained a little weight.
kev: well, if they don’t fit then bring them back.
me: i’m pretty sure you can’t bring back an open pack of underwear.
kev: why not? they let you bring back everything else.
To Really Sell It He Could’ve Been Smoking Crack
i come home the other day and kev is sitting on the couch without his shirt on and a cold drink in his hand. this was our conversation:
me: why are you sitting on the couch without your shirt on?
kev: i’m waiting on the cops.
oh, that kev. he just knows how to poke fun at rednecks on television.
lets all thank kev for this little gem he put into my head this morning and it hasn’t left yet:
(sung to the tune of the Samford & Son theme song)
Simmer down now
Yes it’s time to watch the show
Yes it’s started
Don’t be licking me no mo’
And in fact hand me a handi-wipe!
yeah, can’t stop singing it. humming it. whistling it. shuffling to it.
Things You Will Never Hear A Man Say
conversation heard while folding laundry last night:
me: here is a pair of your boxers.
kev: you thief!
me: you caught me…i just wanted to utilize the little hole in the front. and i emphasize little. (giggles maniacally)
kev: (scoffs) that’s it! i’m cutting you off from sex.