Stop Making Sense

The same person* who takes great pride in eating directly out of cans (because it saves him having to wash dishes), and boastfully uses the same coffee mug, for a multitude of beverages from morning until bedtime, coffee (obviously), orange juice, soda, milk, beer (what have you), without ever rinsing it, is somehow also the same person who sparked out yesterday with an emotional decree:

"You shouldn't open the blinds during the day!!!  Eventually the carpet will fade."

Um, what? 

Hey, fuck you Heloise.  I'm opening the blinds.

What am I Howard Hughes?  If you suggest that I start wearing slippers made from tissue boxes because it helps prevent scuffs on hardwood flooring I am just as likely to tell you to go piss up a rope.  On second thought, don't do that.  There's a distinct line between fading and piss, let's not cross it.

To be fair there have been a lot of emotional decrees lately.  I get it, it's a new house, and we are filling it almost daily with new furnishings and bits and bobs.  We want it to stay nice.

1.  There will be no eating or drinking of beverages, other than ice or water, or any combination of the two, while in the living room or while sitting upon or near any of the new furniture.  (This is my rule, but I often find myself watching the new giant TV while standing just on the other side of the back of the sofa, feet firmly planted on the tile in the breakfast nook**, munching on a snack and thinking about how fucking stupid my new rule is and, if MDH isn't home, eventually breaking this rule by planting my snacky ass right on the new sofa and munching away.)

2.  The bed will be made daily by the person who remains in it the longest.  (Or in other words, last one up is a rotten egg.  This is also my rule.  What the hell is wrong with me?)

3.  The kitchen counter and bar will no longer be a repository for mail and crap from the bottom of a purse or pockets or any combination of these items.  (Yep.  Also my rule.  The rest of the rule should say: All mail and crap, etc., is to be shoveled haphazardly into the black hole next to the sink hereby referred to as "the menu drawer" before MDH arrives home from work.)

I suppose the theme of this post, if there has to be one is that I project my crazy shit onto MDH, make my own rules, promptly break them, and then hide it. 

Seriously though, not opening the blinds to keep the carpet from fading?  

Since I'm no longer allowed to enjoy sunshine in my own home, why don't we just never walk on it either.  In fact, let's just kill ourselves (neatly, over plastic in the garage, don't get nutty, concrete absorbs stains) so that we can hover over the new furniture and finishes, enjoying the glory of it all as ghostly spirits, so that it can all remain perfect and pristine forever and ever.

Maybe we can compromise and just wear sheets around the house in order to minimize the dust particles we shed.

No.  Fuck the carpet.  I want to live.  Preferably in my new home which, by the way, gets excellent light all day, which, by the way, is one of the reasons we moved here.

Right.  Now, please shut up, turn the sofa cushion over and pass me the popcorn. 

It's fine.

*In hindsight I'm not sure that I made it perfectly clear that it's MDH I'm referring to as the person who eats directly out of cans and uses the same mug all day without rinsing it.

**We don't have a table in there yet, so I will probably feel less stupid when I don't have to stand up while I'm snacking.  Probably.

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.

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.)

Ah-ha! That's Who It Is

MDH and I watched that movie Ted recently.  If I'm being polite I'll say it wasn't my cup of tea.  If I'm not being polite I'll say it suh-hucked. 

Sue me.  I don't think Seth McFarlane is all that funny.  And I noticed that they used up quite a lot of dialog mentioning over and over again that Mark Wahlberg's character in the movie is 35.  In fact they never shut up about it.  Perhaps because he has the crows feet and furrowed forehead of a 65 year old meth addict and his acting is... well.. I guess we needed convincing.

Anyhoo... I've been bugged for days, not about the stupid movie, but because that damn talking teddy bear reminds me of someone.  Who the hell could it be?  That voice sounds exactly just like.... and that crass, dismissive manner of speaking about women and Jews and saying fuck in front of everyone ... if I could only.... it's right there....

then the phone rang.  Eureka!

 

=

My brother in law Syracuse!!  (AKA Captain Caveman)

 

 

 

Yes ladies, he's STILL single.

Nobody In Their Right Mind Would Need This - Special "Get Away from Me With That" Edition

My bout of writer's block has lasted long enough that I'm ready to throw in the towel and refer to the salad days of my blogging as a fluke.  Seriously, sometimes I look back at some of my old posts and wonder just who the hell wrote them.

In an attempt to recapture some of that blogging magic I have decided to return to my roots.  Yes.  I decided to revisit the original source of inspiration when I started this blog - the largest compository of stupid unnessary consumer products - the Harriet Carter catalog.  I also decided to check in on my other old favorite - Skymall.

Let's see what's new in the world of wasting your MeeMaw and PeePaws money shall we?

Protein Ketchup


"Protein Ketchup is the first protein-fortified condiment. With 15 grams of protein, zero fat, and two servings of tomatoes in every "dipper-style" one-ounce cup, Protein Ketchup delivers the taste and mouthfeel you expect, with the nutrition you want."

 

 


First of all, shut up and stop saying "mouthfeel" you pervert.  And B, why not just eat something besides french fries and onion rings, eh Fattie?  I shudder to think of what kind of terrifying DNA alteration would happen if you slather this shit on a genetically modified beef patty.  I can say nothing nice about this except, at least it's not mayonnaise.

Hot Dog Slice 'n' Serve

I had to include this.  I mean, what an important invention for the 21st century and beyond.  Oh sure, laugh now, but we are going to need this when the robots take over and ban the use of all butter knives.

Pulse Massager and Pads

Apparently not for people who live alone. I mean how are you going to stick all that stuff on your back all by yourself.  What a useless piece of shit.  What else are you going to do with four little vibrating suction... cups... if you're at home by yourself... wait. Nevermind.  Genius.

Hot Feet Microwave Slippers

 

Because your house doesn't stink enough already?  I don't know about you, but my slippers smell like rotten chili-cheese fritos and are probably the last thing I'd want to put anywhere near a location where food is prepared.
 

Greetings from the Suburban Bayou

MDH likes to take what he calls a "radio nap" on Saturday mornings sometimes.  Basically, he sleeps in and snoozes with NPR going on the clock radio next to his side of the bed.  If you're an NPR fan, then you are familiar with the typical line up.  Car Talk, Only a Game, Weekend Edition, etc..

When we woke up on our first Saturday in our new apartment in Houston, he turned on the radio, but having just unpacked the clock radio and plugging it into the wall, the station that was NPR in Dallas, corresponded with a much different type of station in Houston.  Rather than a soothing stream of sedate and intellectual banter came a boisterous, knee clapping hootenanny.  Yes... NPR station in Dallas = Zydeco station in Houston.

Instead of this:

We got this:

and it was rather awesome.

 

It was our first indication of how different our life might be here, as compared to Dallas, and any other place either one of us has ever lived.  Prior to the Zydeco dance party radio station, we really didn't think that culturally there would be that much difference between Dallas and Houston.  Naive Yankees that we are.

 

So far my least favorite thing about living in Houston is Houston.  It's just damn hard to get around.  The highways don't connect and nothing is marked until you get right up on it, hoping like hell you are in the correct lane to make a snap decision.  It's as if the entire road system was designed by some asshat whose motto was one of these three:

 

1.  Inspirational: 
What doesn't kill the motorists will only make them stronger.

 

2.  Cruel: 
Get lost losers!

 

3.  Apathetic: 
Fuck it all, I'm going to lunch.

 

If you have the misfortune to be in the wrong lane when your turn is coming you are fucked forever.  There is bumper to bumper traffic moving at 80 miles per hour so forget it.  You should just relax, change your plans and go somewhere else.  Call yourself impulsive and keep moving.

 

The longer we live here though, the more we are able to carve a little niche for ourselves and figure out that there are some pretty great things too, as long as we continue to be brave or stupid enough to keep getting back in the car.

 

Here are some great things about living in Houston:

 

1.  Leaving Houston.  This city is located within easy driving distance to New Orleans, Austin, San Antionio and our beloved Dallas.

 

2.  Food.  We are not going hungry here.  We live about 15 minutes from an enormous Chinatown area, albeit weird because it's not the kind you normally expect where there's a brightly colored gate with dragons and pagoda lamps.  The Chinatown in Houston takes up a several mile stretch of beige strip malls, but don't let the blandness of it all fool you.  There are treasures here.  Endless noodle shops, dumpling houses, all day Dim-Sum and of course we are not restricted to just Chinese influence here.  It really ought to be called Asiatown.

 

3.  Trees and water.  Although Dallas is certainly rich with hot and sunny weather, this lady was missing trees and moisture, which Houston has in abundance, in addition to hot and sunny weather.

 

4.  MDH is gainfully employed and comes home happy and fullfilled every night.  This man has been miserable as long as I've known him, professionally that is.  The man has found his calling, his dream job and he's down right adorable when he's not grumpy.  I'm not sure how long this will last, but I'm going to enjoy it while it's happening.

 

5.  That's it for now.  We've only been here a few months.