Saturday, November 9, 2013

How Now Brown Couch?

What goes hand in hand with my obsession with the new house better than my obsession with decorating and furnishing it?

Nothing.  Not a damn thing.

I have been trying to be ultra low key about it in my real life, with family, friends and the people I interact with daily, because I'm sure if I really talked about furniture shopping, out loud, with real people, half as much as I'm tempted to, that sooner rather than later, some one would come along and bash my obnoxious head in. 

But you know what?  I can say it here, on my trusty old blog.  Ahem:

It's possible that I've never been more excited about anything in my entire life. 

Maybe getting married, but I feel like I have to say that.  Polite society dictates that I should pretend to be more excited about love and family than I am about shopping for a new sofa, like a grown ass woman, for the first time in my entire life.  I want to shout it from the rooftops - I'M GETTING A BRAND NEW SOFA!!!!

I will love it, and pet it, and call it George.  But not too much.  I can't risk pilling or stains.

Cue the confetti* and operatic arias from high on the mountain tops.  This shit is important.

In real life though, nobody wants to hear the ridiculous level of earnestness in my voice as I iron out the decision making process regarding a splurge on the suede toss pillows versus the more affordable twill.  They will probably want to smother me equally with either fabric selection.

Nobody wants to listen to me yammer on, bright-eyed and nearly combustible, about a rolled arm versus a track arm.  Who besides me would possibly give a shit?  Maybe MDH, but frankly I'm asking for his input as little as possible, lest he should voice a real opinion and cause me to not get my way.

In fact, in order to keep him quiet and continue shopping as if I lived alone, I have placated him with the promise of something very special indeed.  A reclining armchair**.  A leather one.  And if a leather reclining armchair is not enough to keep MDH out of my grill, this one is electronic.  Oohhh... magical.  Yes.  There are such things as electronic reclining armchairs designed to appeal to the laziest humans among us.  If you are so lazy that you can't even be bothered to maneuver a lever with your hand in order to lay down in your bedlike chair - this is the chair for YOU.  Bang.  Push a button and the chair will recline and come back up automatically.

*What are you kidding me?  Don't throw that confetti - who's going to clean that shit up?

**Style of said armchair was subject to my final approval.  I'm not having some ugly ass chair in my beautiful new house.

Friday, November 8, 2013

Have I mentioned that we bought a house?

what's up chicken butts? 

This shit is harder than I remember and I think that's pretty obvious based on what I resorted to for an opening sentence for my first post since March.  My apologies.  I haven't written much more than work related emails and drippy Facebook posts for several months.

I'll cut to the chase and dive right into a numbered list of things that are up my chicken butt:

1.  We bought a house. 

It's your standard Texas-style stone and brick, brown suburban house.  Some might call it cookie-cutter, and I might tell them to go fuck themselves because I've been living out of goddamn boxes for the past 3 years and that's a tiring way to live after awhile.

The house is entirely bigger than anything we'd ever need.  We feel a bit silly since it's just the two of us and a cat, but we chose this particular model with my mother in law in mind, because there are 2 master suites on the first floor, so she could come stay with us for extended visits and never have to climb any stairs.  I love my mother in law.

2.  The woman who sold us this house is a leathery piece of shit and I hope that I never have to communicate with her again after we close or as long as I live, whichever comes first.

She looks about 800 years old, smokes electric cigarettes in the model home where her office is, and seems to think nobody will notice the smell.  She has a tall, teased out Ladybird Johnson style hairdo and wears neon colored suits and turquoise jewelry.  These things are all fine.  In fact when I first met her I thought she was a hoot.  Get a load of this old broad!

You go 800 year old lady!  Go ahead and smoke your electric cigs in public.  Go ahead, be leathery and have cotton candy on your head and call it hair.  What do I care? 

Good for you for somehow figuring out how to embalm yourself while still alive by using a combination of Aquanet, nicotine and Hawaiian Tropic spf 8.  Way to go Leatherybird Johnson.

But don't lie to me through your dentures and get my hopes all up about what the builder can and can't do for us, you sack of shit.  And that is all I have to say about that.

3.  I'm still working from home and haven't lost my fucking mind completely. 

Not completely, although it is quite maddening from time to time. 

The longer I do it the more clear it has become that although the policies at my company are very open to work from home situations and remote employees like myself, the policies and technology used by the IT department (which is also my department btw) to support us... is ummm not designed to support us at all. 

My laptop died recently and it took 1 full week for them to figure out what to do about it.  I had to ship it to them.  Bullshit.  Then I had to wait another full week after I shipped it for them to ship it back to me.  Also bullshit.  They wouldn't ship it directly to my home, because the policy says it has to be shipped a corporate recognized branch office.  Bullshit.  Bullshit.  Bullshit.

So I ended up going half the month not being able to accomplish much of anything.  I could work remotely using (a remote system of logging in that rhymes with) Bitfrix from my home computer, but the connections are so slow and sketchy that the best outcome of this story is that I didn't slit my wrists when it took me an over hour and half to send out an email with an attachment. 

I didn't kill myself, but I cried a lot.  Like, a LOT.  As in, it's been several weeks and my face is still a bit blotchy.

It's also a bummer as a remote employee to constantly get sent group invitations to lunch meetings, potlucks and having to respond to meeting invitations by asking for a call-in number.

4.  Did I mention that we bought a house?  We finally bought a fucking house!!!  Motherfuckin' A, man!!  I don't have to feel terrible for hating my upstairs neighbors and their goddamn barking dogs and anvil footed children who seemingly do nothing but run back and forth across my ceiling all night and wake up screaming bloody murder every morning and carry on all day running around and screaming and tossing toys and shit off the balcony.  Oh dear Llyod in heaven how I loathe them.

5.  I'm stressed out because we bought a house.  We're moving again for the 6th time in 11 years.  We still have that horrid house in Michigan that is still under water.  We had a tenant, but had to evict him because he was regularly 4 months behind on the rent.  Now the property management company has told us that no one will lease it out because the kitchen needs remodeled.  So we're in the process of remodeling a kitchen long distance. IT'S ALL TOO MUCH TO TAKE!!!!!

6.  I'm a bit consumed with the new house.

Anyhoo... that's it.  This is all I can manage for now.

I'm out of practice wrapping up blog posts into tidy packages with bows and ribbons like I used to do.  Besides, where the fuck is my scotch tape?  I can't find anything around here so I sure as hell can't find any ribbon.  Get out out of here.  This post is over.

(I love you.)