Knee Deep in Shit

Nikki always says I should have a reality show. She says it's because I'm funny and have an interesting life. I say it's because bad luck follows me around, usually with hilarious results (well, if you're watching from the outside). I imagine it like the little black rain cloud that follows Winnie the Pooh.

But this latest installment in real-life slapstick is just too funny for me to keep to myself in some attempt to maintain any semblance of dignity.

I was driving to Mama Lo's house on Saturday and for various reasons I haven't felt quite well lately. I'm assuming that the mini-keg of beer and the pack of cigarettes didn't do me any favors, but it was a holiday weekend. At any rate, roughly 15-20 minutes from my mom's house I get a bad case of the tummy gurgles. For reference, I despise public restrooms and would frankly rather go in the woods, so I decide that I'm a grown-up type person and can hold it while I drive like hell.

By the time I got to Mama Lo's I was confident in my ability to open the door to the house I lived in from the time I was 3 until I went away to college. Yeah, well, pride goes before the fall. Apparently, my mom had her locks changed since I last got a set of keys. The rumbling being more persistent now I dash to the back door to see if the patio door is open. Unfortunately, my somewhat paranoid and overzealous uncle now lives with my mom and insists on putting the whole house on lockdown. In a vain attempt to not shit my pants, I scamper to the front door, calling my mom to see what the code to the lock box is. It's at this point that I realize that my situation is dire. Fully aware that my neighbors are having a barbeque behind the hedges, I drop my keys and run behind the garage where I drop my pants and pray that none of the neighbor's kids decide to play in the hedges where they would be treated to a view of my naked ass and the aftermath of constant stress and too much to drink.

I'm so grossed out at this point I didn't think it could get worse. But, of course, one of the reason no one poops in the wild is because there's nothing to wipe with and I wasn't willing to risk the chance that the innocent looking weeds behind the garage were poison ivy. Because that's the last thing I need this month, poison ivy all over my naughty bits. Admitting defeat, I pull up my pants and start to search for a way to get into the damn house before Holly arrives, wanting to go to the barbeque. Finally, I get a stroke of luck. Mama Lo has stacked lawn chairs under a bathroom window. I Spidey my way up onto the window ledge and squeeze my way through the half-window and manage to climb down without breaking anything. The dog comes prancing in, despite my pleas to leave me alone in my shame.

Finally, I get myself cleaned up, get a pair of pajama pants and get my pants Spray'n'washed and in the washer. And I can return to normal life. So, I let the dog out and she does her little business so I start to walk inside so I can get her a treat. That's when she gets a funny look and makes a beeline for the back of the garage. That's right. I scream "NO!" (DO NOT WANT!), but by the time I got back there, she's rolling in it. She stands up and is just covered. I slam the doorwall shut to ensure that it doesn't get worse and grab the hose. I'm sure I sounded absolutely insane to the neighbors as I hosed off Satan disguised as a 35-pound cocker spaniel while screaming, "If you're grown enough to roll in shit, you're grown enough to get the hose."

Jennie asks me why all the interesting stuff happens at my house. Yeah, crapping in your backyard and having the dog roll in it is "interesting."

The final indignity, once my mother has stopped laughing her ass off at me she says, "for future reference, there's a spare key under the 'Welcome' mat."

I think it can be summed up: Fuck. My. Life.

Home is where your hair dryer is

Rick is annoyed. More randomness and stupidness has come into the office via a letterhead envelope.
"Why is he doing this? To harass her?"
I almost cannot believe my ears.
"If I could answer a question like 'why is this man acting the way he is?' do you honestly think I'd be standing here having this conversation? I'd be on my yacht in the French Riviera."

Rick is annoyed. I am sarcastic.

When I am King, I am going to require everyone submit written explanations for their behavior so when questions like this arise, I can pull the explanation out of its little file folder and say "Well, he's doing this because he's had a bad week at work and fucking with you is the only way to make him feel like a big man in control of his life." Thanks for calling.

It will also be helpful when people claim they are not doing something stupid, or when they are annoyed at your reaction to said behavior. And there will be ice cream and martinis. Life will be good when I am King. Less bullshit, more vodka.

Currently, the only domain I am master of is my apartment. And that dominance is tenuous. My main smoke detector is on my coffee table. I had Priest take it down when I was making dinner for Valentine's Day because I forgot to turn on the vent and the steam from the steaks I was searing was making the damn thing go nuts. Well, it never got put back up. Also, I have a pile of half-folded laundry and a bathroom that needs cleaning before Fitz gets here tonight. This is not what I planned when I got sprung from work early. It's also hotter than hell in here. The big box fan wasn't cutting it, so, I had to turn on the A/C. This is where things get a little tricky.

I can't reach the A/C. I just stand there, on tip-toe reaching out and falling over and wimpering because I can't reach. I had to pull a chair over and stand on it to reach.

This is the modern empowered woman. Climbing on furniture like a five year old because I'm too weensy to reach my own appliances (parenthetically, that's why I haven't put the smoke detector back). The sad truth is, Priest's predecessor, Mute Button always turned it on for me when we started living here two years ago and he and I broke up that December. Well, I started dating Priest shortly thereafter, and by the time summer rolled around, he got to assume air conditioning duties. I don't know that I've ever turned the damn thing on. Until today, when I stood on my little suede covered dining room chair and tried not to fall onto my t.v. as I turned the little knob. How inconvenient. I mean, really, Priest picked a very inconsiderate time to abandon ship. In the future, I will require cold-weather break-ups so I can break in successors in time for summer. Another thing on the list for when I'm King. A tall male slave will be required to turn on the A/C.

It's good to be King.

Hop, Skip, and a Week

A week break is so not long enough.

The escaped-Nazi war criminals who plan our academic calendar, in their infinite wisdom, give us just a little under a week from which to recover from the probably-Geneva-Convention-violating experience that is finals before the summer session kicks off.

This is PLENTY of time when applied to us, but such a short period of time when applied to activities such as processing financial aid and, God forbid, posting grades that were submitted to the Registrar's office well over two weeks ago.

"They can't post grades until after finals are over."
Mama Lo doesn't understand this. "Why can't they?" She asks, sounding alarmed, like maybe she's expecting an explanation like, the building will turn into a puppy-seeking missile if they try to imput grades a day too early.
I try to explain to her that it's not that they can't, I just strongly suspect they don't want to, so, they turn to that slackasses best friend: they make a policy.

Sorry, we can't post until after finals. And the day after finals, we have to have a cool-down period. And since the system updates in the middle of the night, like a refugee fleeing the homeland, nothing will actually post until about the following Monday. It's policy, dontchaknow.

The sick thing about finals is that you have a few, blessed hours in which you care nothing about school and want to be free of anything that reminds you in any way of law school and then the panic starts to set in. You know that grades will not be posted for weeks, you know that even if some miraculous professor actually turns in grades, you've got days before it shows up, you know that even when something does post, it only updates once a day, you still feel compelled to obsessively check the page once every half an hour, like maybe something will slip through the cracks.

I think it goes without saying that I was not ready to do 60 pages of reading and then sit in class for three and a half hours.

Up next, a fun-filled week of cleaning my house (eek!) to get ready for a parade of visitors including Fitz, Scott, and Lisa (YAY! VISITORS!)

Also, WHY in commercials are two people talking about a product, say, facewash, lipstick, vagisil and the person giving the "pitch" just happens to pull it out of their purse? I mean, I guess I can understand the lipstick, or pain pills. Something you might actually have in your possession, but Clearasil? Seriously?
Is it really necessary? And why do I care?