Hammer Time

MDH and I returned from Florida less than 24 hours ago, and it's been so long since I last posted on my blog that I'd be quite shocked if anyone out there missed me.

Some (one or two) of you may be wondering, as I was, just what the fuck were you doing in Florida in the middle of June crazyface?

Central Florida is hotter than Hades in mid-June and judging (and I am indeed, very judgemental) from the snippets of overheard conversations between my fellow airline passengers, only mouth breathing degenerates and their screaming heathen progeny fly to Central Florida in mid-June.

Or people who already live in oven hot climates.

And us.

Seriously, the mental capacity of some my fellow travelers seemed pretty limited. Case in point: The young man and his "gran-maw", sitting behind us, who I'm pretty sure were both making their debuts outside the holler, had never seen a magazine and spent most of the runway taxi time and flight to 10,000 feet, (at which point the flight attendant said we could use portable electronic devices and I praised god's glory in heaven and giddily jammed my earbuds into my listening holes and was able to block these morons out), pointing in amazement at the "pitchurs" in a glossy men's magazine that I can only assume someone had left behind in the gate area, and reciting aloud the prices of each and every item of clothing in the fashion spreads and wondering who would spend $225 for a pair of jeans and the like.

When reading fashion magazines I often wonder the same thing. In the privacy of my own head. But then I quickly get over it. This guy hammered it all out in a twangy monotone. Item by detestable item.

Lookit this Gran-maw - it sez here this guys jacket costed 23 hunnert dollers. Can you believe that shit? Damn! That's a whole years wortha child support!

I've got nothing against rednecks. I've got no room to talk as I myself come from a long line of the finest Kentucky redneck stock, but when your conversational skills are that loud, that limited and I am forced to listen to your stupid ass bullshit it endangers my health. My eyes were rolling up and all around in my head, it's lucky I didn't sprain them.

Well I guess that's what you get for booking at the last minute on Squalor Airlines.

Anyhoo... back to my original question that I imagined you gave enough of a shit to care about or ask me - we went to Florida in the middle of June because we had to reschedule our original, more reasonably timed December visit to my parental units due to my mother's broken pelvis. Understandably, she wanted no visitors during her extremely painful and lengthy recovery. No problem-o. Then I had the brilliant idea to come down in June for her birthday.

It seems extreme, but I'm finding it increasingly necessary to pad visits with my parents with buffer periods both before and after our time with them. This year our 4.5 day visit with my folks was preceded with 3 days at the beach and concluded with 2 days at Disneyworld.

Let me give you some facts about how things go down at my parents house these days:

1. They keep the air conditioning set at 80 degrees.

2. 80 Fucking Degrees.

3. That is hotter than shit.

4. It is not possible to sleep when the air conditioning is set to 80.

5. My mother makes the weakest coffee known to man.

6. My mother is even more passive aggressive than I am.

7. One morning I volunteered to make the coffee and snuck in a couple of extra scoops.

8. She said it was a tad strong for her taste, but cheerfully decided that she could temper hers by adding a little water.

9. When she added the water to her cup she said that it made it too cool and she has this thing where she refuses to heat up coffee in the microwave - so she decided, rather loudly, that she just wouldn't drink coffee that day. "It's just one day. When I was in the hospital recovering from MY BROKEN PELVIS I went for almost a whole week without coffee. Can you imagine that?"

10. It was so over the top she could've won a Tony.

11. It took every ounce of strength left in my sweaty, exhausted, coffee depleted body to restrain myself from suggesting that she leave her cup in the guest room for a minute or two to heat it up.

12. On a brighter note the house rum is 92 proof, flows freely after 11am (new summer hours apparently as previously noon was considered appropriate) and is conveniently located next to the fridge (with built in ice maker) between the cocktail napkins and a bowl of limes.

The News Round Up

Hey all... I'm back. Sort of.

I'll be leaving again shortly as MDH and I pack up for a week long stay in a hotel starting Monday when the people we hired to refinish our hardwood floors begin to do so.

They told us that it will take 4 days and after they are finished we won't be able to walk on the floors in shoes or move the furniture back where it belongs for another week after that. That may seem like a long time to have things scattered all over the place, but because it's been this way for so long already, I've become accustomed to living in a pig sty. So whatever dude.

Actually, I've never been more excited to stay at a hotel in my entire life. It's just the crappy Ramada down the street, but it will be a week of living like a semi-normal person again. I won't have to turn sideways to walk through my kitchen and I already know exactly where the phone book will be (in the nightstand drawer).

The floor people were able to schedule the work in just the nick of time. I've gotten so used to living in this mess that one more day of it and I would have begun wearing nothing but mumus and eating all my food straight out of the can.

In the comments of this post, which contains the majority of my bitching, somebody made the clever suggestion that we move everything back to it's proper place until time came closer to the actual date when the work was to be done. Yes. Thanks for that. Marvelous idea. I hear you. It makes perfect sense and would probably have been a fine thing for us to do if we were not the two laziest people on planet earth and possibly galaxies beyond.

Anyhoo... now there is an end in sight.

Meanwhile I realized that not only have I been neglecting my blog I've also left it hanging with a couple of untidy loose ends that I intend to take care of in this post.

Like first of all:

Whatever happened between Gaydar and Jogger? Remember that whole thing with the old man with the crush on the young girl and the mysterious packet of Oreo cookies? Well I swear on a stack of chocolate cream filled cookies that the very next day after I wrote that post - what should I see displayed prominently on my very own desk when I got to work? Yes. A mysterious packet of Oreo cookies.

Anyway... here's what happened... Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was weird and I half wondered if Gaydar hadn't read my blog post where I all but called him a dirty old man because his annoying harassment of Jogger seemed to end right after I wrote it.

Jogger and I still don't know who gave us the cookies.

and loose end number 2:

The Case of the Olive Garden Charges
In this post I wrote a few months ago about a mysterious charge I noticed on our family credit card statement to the Olive Garden to the sum of $52.83 and the arguments and accusations of bad taste that ensued between me and MDH. A week or so later I called my mother who thanked me for the Olive Garden gift card I had sent to them for their anniversary. What a relief! Neither of us remembered having eaten at the Olive Garden because neither of has had.

And now a numbered list of random bullshit:

1. I dyed my hair back to my "natural color". At least I think it's my natural color. Over the years my blond highlight just kept getting lighter and lighter and my hair was starting to look fried. It's brownish now and very shiny again.

2. MDH does not like my new old hair color. He said he finds it "jarring". Too bad mutha fucka.

3. I drove around the block and wrote down the address of the house where the dog lives that barks all goddamn night and keeps me awake. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, probably call the police the next time it happens. I have also toyed with the idea of finding out the phone number of the house too and then calling these assholes at 2am when they let their dog bark and howl for hours on end.

4. I have become addicted to the new HBO series True Blood. I know, I know. Vampires. But trust me, it's really good.

5. I have also become addicted to the MTV show called Exiled where the little spoiled rotten assholes previously featured on My Super Sweet 16 are hauled off like criminals in the night, made to live among families in third world countries and forced to perform chores such as making huts out of cow poop and sleep on dirt floors. It's wonderful. A feel good festival of grins and evil giggling.

6. Mr. Boo got me last week. I vowed that I would never let this happen, but it did and I am ashamed. You see, I was deep in conversation with my back to the cubicle aisle way and the asshat snuck up behind me and burst a handful of bubble wrap in my ear. I won't go into detail about what happened or what I said to him afterward, but suffice it to say that he limped away from the experience holding onto his ball sack for dear life and has still not been able to look me in the eye nearly a week later. I have no fear that he'll ever sneak up and scare me again.

Planes, Trains & VW's

Gracious me! It's been awhile since I've checked in with my blog. MDH and I have been traipsing all over North America for the last 3 weeks. A veritable whirlwind of romantic and exciting locales.

OK. So it wasn't exactly all over North America.

Or romantic.

Or exciting.

It was mostly locations within a short driving distance or train ride from our home, like Columbus and Toronto. But - there was lots of hotel sex (OK, we did it once) which counts as both whirlwind, because it was over pretty quick, and romantic, because we brushed our teeth first.

Also we did fly to Philly using up the very last drop of the frequent flier miles I accrued from 5 long years of life on the road. I thought something on my boarding pass looked amiss and soon realized that there was a big giant empty space where it used to say "Silver Elite".

That's right.

I'm no longer Elite and am now one of the teeming masses. It's nothing but coach class for me from here on out. Before you know it I'll be standing around looking clueless, joking with TSA agents about having bombs in my luggage and generally annoying the crap out of savvy business travelers at an airport near you. Watch out.

And OK, we weren't exactly gone the entire 3 weeks. We were just away on the weekends. But they were long weekends, like 4 day weekends and I worked every day that we weren't gone off somewhere.

Anyhoo... I'm home now and lucky you I'm going to post some of my vacation photos, starting with our trip to Philadelphia where we met up with my best friend Amy and her lovely husband Ted*.

Philadelphia is known for it's murals - here's a jazzy one (har-har).

And now up close.

Amy got trapped on the wrong side of the turn styles in the subway... it's a long story. Why doesn't she just squeeze her bony, size 2 ass thru or climb over, you may ask? Surprise! She has a hernia and is only weeks away from surgery. I told you it was a long story (I will tell you more about it in an upcoming post. Hurray! Hernia stories. I know you are thrilled. Try to contain yourself. Seriously. Pipe down.)

A groovy newel post at Independence Hall.

A statue of some guy. Fen Branklin or something.

Ted enjoys a steak sandwich.

Amy & Ted at the Phillies game.

*There are no photos of me from this trip posted here as there is not one in the entire bunch that I approve for public viewing. In fact in every photo taken of me on this trip for some reason I look like a goddamn dairy cow, albeit a dairy cow with very expensive blond highlights. I posted the picture at the top, taken the day before we left for Philadelphia, in which I look somewhat normal just to prove to myself that I don't really look like livestock.