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.)

Hello Walls

My post surgical confinement is at it's end (insert Hallelujah Chorus here). Yes. I still have 3 more weeks of official recovery and take 'er easy time, but my doctor has given me the thumbs up to start driving again today. Sadly though, in a cruel twist of fate, I'm unable to sprint out the door, scramble into my beloved VW and get the fuck out of Dodge, as MDH has decided to drive my car to work today (insert trombone wah-wha-wah here), a fact I didn't discover until he had already gone.

When I called him he said, "my car is there, take my car if you want to go out". But that is clearly a trap. And if it isn't a trap, then it was certainly insincere. He doesn't really want me to drive his car.

You see, last month MDH traded in his 12 year old rusty shitbox for a brand new fancy pants car with all the bells and whistles. I haven't driven it yet.

I'm not sure I ever want to drive it.

It's too shiny and fancy, and he's waaaay too much in love with it, and I'm far too likely to leave a smudge or fingerprint and soil it's pristine perfection. Seriously, the first week he had it I crossed my legs in the passenger seat and barely grazed the tip of my sandal on the glove box and he got this sour puss on his face and wiped the "soiled" area with a hanky. Or, the area that he perceived to be soiled, as my sandal left no mark.

Freak.

Worse yet, the new car is parked ever so delicately in our teeny-weeny, narrow apartment garage, and it's not like you can just back straight out, oh no-no. There's a security gate right next to it and the neighbors car behind it and flower beds and a fire hydrant. No. It's an art to get that thing out of the garage so it's not the smartest choice for my first outing after not driving for over 3 weeks.

I can wait.

Meanwhile I have plenty to keep me busy indoors (the TV won't watch itself now will it?).

In other news, while I was busy indoors recovering from my surgery, a horrible, noisy little bird family has made themselves at home in the upper corner of one of our terraces. The good terrace. It's small, but it's the one that is fully covered and gets the most shade. It's the one that I like to sit on in the morning while I have coffee. Or used to.

These little squatters know their shit because this is a prime real estate location. I'd like to use that space myself, except now it's a bloody mess of twigs, leaves, branches and general nest construction material (i.e. small bits of garbage) scattered all over the floor and two hysterical, squawking birds dive bomb my face anytime I try to sit down and enjoy my coffee out there.

And, oh yes, let's not forget the bird shit that's now super glued to all my patio furniture. It's infuriating. I really hate birds.

Doling Out the Punishments - Passive Agressive Style

People have gotten really dumb this week - have you noticed? I mean good lord, it's only Tuesday, but I've already received record volumes of frantic voice mails and moronic emails chock full of flaming envelope symbols and red exclamation points and the word URGENT! in the subject line from project team mates and co-workers who are normally quite lovely and reasonable.

These people are making demands, kicking ass and taking names and I feel like I have spent my entire day talking them down from ledges and reminding them of existing procedures that have been in place for 1000 years and asking them to revisit their old friend Common Sense and I've had about all I can take.

Calm down crazy face.

We are not performing neurosurgery here and nobody's life or job is on the line. Think about it for a minute - why would I need to request graphics for a vat of goo? That's right genius. You just sent out an angry gram, flaming envelope style email, copied to twelve million people including my boss and yours, demanding that I put graphics on a vat of chemicals.*

Re-fucking-lax dumb people.

Take yourself down to whatever is your gender appropriate restroom and splash some cold water on your face (get a coolpapertowel). Calm down and prepare for your punishment for bugging me all day fucking day with this ridiculous bullshit.

Your punishment? I will hit "Reply All" and publicly humiliate you by pointing out your blunder and reveal to the world that you have cotton candy between your ears in the form an email designed to appear informative and friendly, reminding you in a joking fashion that we cannot put graphics on goo (you silly!) copied to 12 million people including my boss and yours.

Take that jackhole.

I've also been experiencing a very high volume of asshats who are trying to work around the normal rules and procedures that have been in place for 1000 years, sending purposely wonky stuff my way and think that I won't catch on.

Well they are wrong.

The punishment is the same. Public humiliation in the form of an email designed to look like an innocent question and request for clarification about the wonky bullshit thing you sent me, copied to your boss and mine, that will make it perfectly clear to all parties involved that you are trying to get away with something sneaky and that I am on to you, you weasel.

URGENT! ? My ass.

*Not a real scenario, but similar and equally stupid.

Brace Yourself - I Hate Birds

This morning there was this bird guy on the radio who was the son of some other guy who wrote some big damn important nature book and also himself happens to be some big damn important guy in the bird watching world.

Allrighty.

Whatever. It was fine as background noise until they started playing clips of bird songs. The bird guy had a big high hard one for bird songs.

I don't care for birds, or much else having to do with nature, but I was willing to keep it going for awhile longer merely because I was busy and didn't feel like figuring out what the hell else to listen to.

Anyhoo... at one point the radio host introduced the next bird song clip and the crazy bird guy broke in excitedly and began to describe the subtle and brilliant nuances of the upcoming bird song.

The bird guy just knew that this was going to be the best fucking noise that anyone in the entire known universe and possibly even galaxies beyond our own have ever heard - so he prefaced the bird song clip by saying, "Brace yourself".

Yes. He said brace yourself.

And sweet jeezus didn't I prepare to have my mind blown? And wasn't I glad I braced myself for the clip he played - of a fucking Cardinal.

It was a fucking Cardinal. A Northern Cardinal, to be specific. I could scare away about 7 of them this very second if I stepped into my back yard. In other words, who gives a shit?

While the words brace yourselves used in preparation for the recorded sounds of a creature I hear every day did sort of make me laugh for a brief moment, it also caused me to tear off my headphones and take a moment to consider my own less than savory encounters with other commonly known bird species:

The Crumb Crested Fry Pecker
Natural Habitat: Outdoor cafes and open air restaurants, the occasional movie theater or mall.

Diet: Whatever can be scrounged from what you've dropped on the ground or sneaked off from your plate while you are not looking.

The Car Shitting Fuck Knuckle
Natural Habitat: Suspended above freshly washed cars for several hours at a stretch.

Diet: Blueberries, blackberries, cranberries, poppy seeds, pine tar, Elmer's glue.

The Rat Fucking Squatter

Natural Habitat - Dryer vents.

Diet - I don't know - but whatever they are shitting into the dryer vent makes the house smell like the gibbon cage at the zoo.