Buying used just might kill you, or at least get you lynched..

So I decided to spare everyone my the self-pitied version of my Christmas, and just skip to the end. AFTER I finally made it back home from being stranded at my mother's house for three days due to the snow, I came home to my poor animals that had been alone during that time.

The dog had left little land mines and puddles all over the apartment. The cat (whom I assumed would be ok) seemed to be traumatized from being alone, and was quite angry with me. So, Merry Christmas to me: an apartment that seemed would forever smell like the inside of a dog...

I knew what I would be coming home to, in the way of animal excrement, so I had asked my mother if I could borrow her carpet cleaner. I asked my boyfriend if he would go pick it up from her house for me, and his reply was, "why don't I just go buy you one?"

This is his usual solution for most things, to just buy it and leave out the middle man... Plus I think he just wanted me to own one so I would no longer have an excuse for having dirty carpet....

Being that he was between paychecks at that moment, he asked me to look on craigslist.com to see if I could find a cheap used one in the area. I looked, found one, and called to make arrangements for him to go pick it up. Little did I know what I was sending him into...

I should probably take a moment to explain a few things....
My boyfriend is of Mexican decent. He speaks perfect English, with no accent whatsoever, but can easily be identified as such.
Also, the town I live in is what I like to refer to as a big-small town. We have malls, internet cafes, museums, performing arts centers, and our share of vastly expensive homes, but from any point in the town one is just a short drive from the nearest field, complete with cow and/or horse occupying it. We seem to be a little of everything and everyone. Midwest. South. Yuppy. Traditional. You name it, we have it.... and that goes for good ol' southern racism as well...

So anyhoo. I unknowingly send my Mexican boyfriend to the unofficial KKK inhabited neighborhood in our area... He arrived and was greeted by Mr. Good ol' boy himself. He was eyed as if he had, or would at any moment, rape their daughters and slit their throats. He was afraid to ask too many questions, as to give the appearance of doubt, so he just bought the machine as-is and proceeded to load it up. They gave him the (verbal) instructions for the machine, which consisted of using the term "a shots worth" as a form of liquid measurement.... Nice.

But, he was able to make it out alive. And in turn I now have clean carpets.

And I did feel compelled to follow instructions and use a shot glass for soap measurement... Vodka smell is better than dog-pee smell, right?

Stupid Jobs and Stupid Overrated Paychecks.....stupid.....

A co-worker once told me that she hasn't needed an alarm clock in years. She gets up at the ass crack of dawn as it is, and is so used to it at this point, that about thirty minutes(ish) before she needs to be up she gracefully and slowly regains consciousness. So for close to half an hour before she has to rise from the warmth of the bed, she lays in thought and peacefully meditates.
I hate her.

On the other end of the spectrum, my mother wakes up like a wolverine coming out of sedation. Confused, alarmed, angry, and immediately on the defense and ready to claw someone's face off at the first sign of danger.

Then there are those that pop their eyes open, project themselves from the bed like it was on fire, and rush through their morning rituals like their employers have literally threatened execution if they arrive even one minute late..

All of this I thought of this morning as I realize that I have woken the same way for the last few years now, and it ah-sucks.

Although I am not employed, I wake around 7:30 every morning to get my daughter ready and off for school, and to assist my boyfriend with his morning tasks and see him off to work. However, my waking process inadvertently starts a good while before I intend.

Around 5am, I am roused by the impending sneeze that feels like it has been preparing itself for ages. Once it finally reaches the surface I explode with (allergy related) sneezes. Once this two minute installment of "Try to Push the Brain Out Through The Nasal Cavity" is finished, I settle myself back down into my pillow. Throat sore from the audible contribution of the sneezes, sniffles from all the god-knows-what that has attempted to release itself from inside the passages, I then will myself to go back to sleep.

Then around 5:15, I am again jolted awake by that automatic urgency ones body gives when the nose is running, and is coming dangerously close to purging itself to all its surroundings. I then have to scrounge in the dark for the box of tissues that never seems to be in the same place. Once this activity is over, and an adequate amount of mucus is projected and properly disposed of, I lay back down and drift back into slumber.

At around 6:30 to 7-ish (depending on the day and the weather) I am annoyed out of sleep by the rapidly growing sound of the highway outside my bedroom window.

Now, when I say that the highway is right outside my bedroom window, I truthfully mean: RIGHT outside my bedroom window. A major highway, one of four major highways in this town, runs parallel, and extremely close to my apartment. How close, you ask? So close that from my open window I could throw a rock and it would probably land two or three lanes in. And we are talking about my wimpy-girl-arm-throws..... its that close.

Once the time hits for your average "Joe and Jane American" to be heading off to work, via highway, they pass right by my stuffed and clogged head and mucus filled nasal cavity. I thought that once I lived here for a while I would get used to the sound of the highway. After two years I have mostly tuned it out..........while I am preoccupied. But when my brain and my body tells me that it is supposed to be "quiet time", the sounds coming from outside make me want to shove something into my ear canal just so I can get an auditory break. This I have not attempted yet, but it is sounding better and better as each morning passes. All this in addition to the fact that my neighbors, whom I share a bedroom wall with, will get up early on the weekends to share their love of 80's techno music at an alarmingly high volume with the entire building and all who come within a two mile raduis..

In the beginning, when I was trying to be glass-half-full about it, I saw this waking process as being made aware that I still have more time to slumber before I am forced to start my day. Now I just see it as being cheated out of two or more hours of wonderful, wonderful sleep. I like to think that instead of the cat hair all over the apartment, the large amount of flowering trees planted all over this town, the excessive amounts of grass-type weeds everywhere, the dust all over the apartment from not having vacuumed or dusted in over a week, the food molding in the trash from when I cleaned out the fridge last......that it is in fact the car exhaust and emissions that I am allergic to. And it is this that is waking me out of my slumber, night after god-forsaken night. Its the worker-drone citizens of this town, with their overrated jobs, and their stupid paycheck-getting habits that harass me.

They have jobs. They get money. They have somewhere to go on a daily basis. And they are smugly and inadvertently rubbing it in my face. Or more appropriately, my nose and all its contents.

Bastards.

Surprise Holiday Enemas

As the holidays come speeding toward us, I, like many others, have the dizzy-spinning head, forced-surprise enema feeling that comes with it. Yes kids, when one reaches adulthood Christmas time is then loosely compared to having your colon flushed and cleansed..... But only for a smidge, by the time it actually gets here, one finds the time and the heart to enjoy it.. I know I complain, but for the most part I enjoy it....... or I just try to repress it. Like the year my husband (now my ex-husband) gave me a toilet seat for Christmas. Nothing says "I love you" like a toilet seat. "Honey, I got you something to sit on while you crap! Now you can think of me every time you defecate!" Already there, buddy......already there..

In the past I had blamed that grouchy holiday feeling on the fact that I worked at an arts and crafts store. We would start stocking our holiday items before Halloween is even over, and had so damn much of it, it looked and felt like Father Christmas was murdered, and his entrails were trailed throughout the aisles. So basically by the time Christmas day actually arrived, I was so burned out on it, that the magic of it was dulled a bit. Then when I finally left that job, I assumed that the bad feelings of the holidays would go away, and the warm fuzzy, ugly sweater and santa hat wearing feelings would come rushing back.... This is my second Christmas to not be employed there, and I still don't feel compelled to spatter red bows all over every room in the house, and cover everything in that fake snow crap that is probably giving us all some sort of tumor or major lung issue. I did however catch wind of the holiday spirit for a moment and listen to a Christmas CD I made while wrapping gifts. Granted most of the songs were from The Nightmare Before Christmas, A Charlie Brown Christmas, and National Lampoons Christmas Vacation, it was still done with good intention.

But now that I have completed all of my Christmas shopping I can relax and try to enjoy what is coming. I like to refer to it as "completion of shopping" as opposed to its true definition: "ran out of money so I'm calling it done".. It just sound better, eh? But regardless of how it came to be finished, I am still glad the stressful part is over. I actually had time today to finish the scarf I had been knitting since last november.... I know I probably had plenty of time during the last year to finish it, but for some reason knitting scarves in the summer while its in the triple digits outside, just seems really off.. Like the old woman you see in the store every now and then that is pushing a baby stroller with no baby in it...and in lieu of the baby is a ratty old stuffed bear or a doll with one eye missing. Just......off.
Anyway(s). So I finally finish the scarf. And I. Love. IT.. It it my new favorite thing. I know my friends are going to get sooo tired of seeing me wear it at all times, indoors and out, butIdontcare! They still haven't held an intervention for me for wearing the same faded green hoodie all the time, so maybe they will let the scarf slide as well. *I should mention that the hoodie is the best thing in the world, and (unless its summer) (and even sometimes in summer) is never off my body more than once or twice a week. But it goes with everything! And it makes my t-shirt wearing bearable during the winter. Too cold for the vintage Spiderman tee? Wear the hoodie with it! The vintage 70's Japanese Star Wars movie poster tee? Wear the the hoodie with it! The new Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon tee that I just bought a month ago, but I have already worn like 10 times? Wear the hoodie with it!

One day it will fuse with my skin, and truly become apart of me...forever and always.

Emotional bouncy balls...

I really hadn't planned on posting today, but I just felt compelled. I didn't initially intend on this being a daily blog. I cant think of why anyone would want to hear what I have to say on a daily basis.......I don't even want to hear what I have to say every day, but being that I cant say it without hearing it too, I really have no choice. Although, I suppose you aren't really "hearing" this, as much as reading it. Unless of course you are reading out loud........mkay..moving on.

I had a conversation with a friend the other day, that I have been thinking on ever since. We were discussing how emotional we have become over the last few years. And for me its really come through in just the last year, year and a half. I brought this up to my friend to get a comparison, and hopefully an opinion as well. I should mention that my friend is about 2 or 3 years older than me, and male. I didn't know if what I was experiencing was due to my age, or my female hormones due to my age, or a combination of everything, or just that I had won the lottery of annoying emotional habits... And apparently I'm not alone. We were discussing the fact that we can't get through the Firefly series without tearing up in a few (or most, in my case) of the episodes. "OOooh the one were Zoe has to go and save Wash and Mal......and the one where you see everyone's back story of how they came to be on Serenity...I cry EVERY time!...." Yes, that is pretty much verbatum, and it has really gotten that bad.... *side note; if you haven't seen Firefly or the follow-up movie Serenity, WATCH THEM. It is totally worth it, I promise you...*

I think it just comes with age. I think I have just gotten to a point now where soooooo many things that once were important issues for me, are now just distant thoughts no longer clouding my mind. And my mind, now having so much more room for the "important" things, can now fully outline and dissect the meanings behind those hidden details of life.

Let me give you an example;

20 year old me watching Star Wars: "I still cannot fricken believe that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father.... That is mind blowing." End of thought.

30 year old me watching Star Wars: "What on earth could Luke have been feeling at that moment?? He was obviously angry and confused.... I just couldn't imagine what that must feel like! And for Vader/Anikin.....Oh....the torment he must have been feeling all these years, being so angry over the loss of his only love, but then finding his children. Then trying to kill them! Sheesh, what a roller coaster of emotion he must have been going through." And the thought trails on, all in a matter of seconds, and all while the tears start to flow down the cheeks and into the popcorn bowl in my lap....

(and I believe that I should state for the record that I never USED to be a crier. Don't get me wrong, I'm not heartless. I misted during Saving Private Ryan and Schiendler's List like the rest of the world, but otherwise I could keep it to myself!)

It's not that I think that we are simple minded or uncaring during our early 20's....its quite the opposite. I think that at a younger age we are just more accepting and open to absorb the things we are fed. I believe that the older we get, the harder we are to convince that things are the way things are.

It all comes down to imagination. When we are children, our imaginations are like silly putty. It can be shaped and molded to fit the things around us, but still remains recognizable as silly putty. Then the older we get, the harder it gets.....just like silly putty if you leave out of that little plastic egg.. When we reach a certain point, which I suppose the age would vary by individual, it becomes like one of those bouncy balls you get out of the machines for a quarter. Its still wild and all over the place if you throw it hard enough, but it never changes shape. You can put it in your pocket and it will be all warm and safe, collecting all your pocket fuzzies. The ball may admire the shape of the quarter you keep in the same pocket. And it can agree with the shape of the keys that's in there too. But its still a ball, because that is what is knows how to be.

It's harder for me now than ever to accept things for how they are, or how they appear to be. I have too many questions. I have too many needless, far-fetched comparisons. I for some reason feel the need to try to attach myself to the equation, only to bounce my stupid bouncy ball off of it and watch it go boinging across the room. I cant just conform to it and then quickly peel myself off to see what transfers. And if its nothing, then it's obviously not the right kind of ink....next!

I miss being silly putty...

Holy clogged artery, Batman!

I have accomplished the unthinkable and the dangerous. I went Christmas shopping....in December....on a Friday night.....and lived. And so did those around me for that matter. My friend and I started off the evening with dinner. We went to a nearby "sit-down" burger place and had two of the best burgers ever made in the history of man, and/or cow. This burger was so good that even cows themselves would eat it.... It was totally amazing. Along with the burger basics, it donned a fried egg. This may not sound like much, but it was worth slapping your mother over. This burger, from this point on, has ruined all other food for me.

Anywho, not the point. After leaving there we went to several other stores, including the mother-ship, Barnes and Noble. It was extremely difficult to get out of there without spending my entire Christmas fund on books for myself. But I showed great strength and just bought gifts. At this point it started getting late, so our last stop of the evening was Target, which has now changed to their new holiday hours, which means they close at midnight. Yay for employee suffering!! We were worn out and about to drop, but just had to get this last little bit of shopping done before we called it a night. As we sauntered through the movies (something I cant normally do without drooling in want over some of them) we came to an endcap of "value collection" dvds. These usually consist of four older movies of the same set or type, all in one case, and are usually anywhere from $10-$14 depending on the titles. As our eyes scan through the titles, I come across all four of the original batman movies....together....and on sale for 8 bucks. I almost wet myself right there in the aisle. Being a geek, AND adding the fact that I have a slight dvd obsession, I am ashamed that I do not already own these movies. But I do now!

We didn't think we were going to be able to go one more step, until we walked onto the aisle that holds the action figures. From a far, like a homing beacon, or that shiny star off into the north (yes I am comparing action figures to the star of Bethlehem, but they were STAR WARS figures!!) I spotted one lonely storm trooper sitting in its little clear plastic shroud on the floor. I immediately ran over and saved it from its abandoned plight. Upon retrieval, I notice a small hole in the front of the packaging, with a sticker that gives the instruction to "try me". Being that I can never ignore this type of invitation, especially when it is presented in the form of bright white sticker with bold blue lettering. My friend and I were absolutely elated to discover that it had something like 8 or 9 sentences. And this was no crappy computer voice......no. This was the actual voice from the actual movie. The way George Lucas had intended. Needless to say, we got our second winds, my friend purchased the storm trooper, and all was right with the world.

Later that night while hanging out over at my friend's, the storm trooper regularly gave his input into the conversation;
friend: "Donnie Darko was an odd movie, and it didn't make any sense."

me: "hey, I really liked that movie!"

Storm Trooper: "Close the blast doors!"

friend: "it didn't make any sense, and it was rather depressing.."

me: "I loved it! I thought it was great, sad or not."

Storm Trooper: "The Deathstar plans are not in the main computer."

friend: "i dunno, it just wasn't my favorite. It could have gone in so many different directions and ended up being a much better movie."

me: "well, I loved it. I....loved....it."

Storm Trooper: "move along".

This went on until about 3:30 in the morning...
I later retreated back to my home and plugged in the first Batman movie, and slipped into a "cheesy comic/movie" coma. It was a good day..

Insomnia may be hazardous to my cat's health..

From time to time, I've had problems sleeping. Nothing horrible, I just toss and turn for a few hours. Most of the time its simply due to the fact that I have so much on my mind that I cant stem the flow of thoughts long enough to drift off.

Even though these occasional sleeping problems are not major, they are much worse now then when I was younger. *just as a side note* I should clarify that I'm not THAT old, for I just recently turned 30, but I am constantly surprised how I feel physically now, and know that it is only downhill from here....so...good times.

Anyway..
So, last night I lay there wide awake and feeling horribly jealous of my boyfriend sleeping oh-so-soundly next to me. My boyfriend is a good honest person, a hard worker, and has often stated that he has very little imagination. He has the ability to just shut every thing off mentally and completely relax. So saying he sleeps soundly is an understatement.....he sleeps like the dead. At that moment I wanted to smack him, but I resisted.

Just as I start to doze off, the cat decided to sit outside our bedroom door and meow the same tone, over, and over, and over....... if it weren't for the fact that it would have just made things worse, I would have set him on fire.... Not that I think this would have helped with the insomnia, but it definitely would have made me feel better. Again, I resisted.

This went on most of the night. Getting up to yell at him or smack him was only a temporary fix, and only made me that much more awake. But they say that pets are intuitive, and I now believe that to be true. I am still so damn sleepy, and the cat has been hiding quieter than Anne Frank today..... but I have made it a point to wake him from his catnaps every thirty minutes or so throughout the day. Just to let him know how bad it sucks for SOMEONE TO INTERRUPT YOUR SLEEP....

YES its petty, and YES its a little on the crazy cat lady side...but I don't care! Little bastard deserves his payback..

But he'll get some peace and quiet soon enough. I'm supposed to go shopping tonight with a friend. This is one of the few friends that I have that allows me to drag him all over town to shop after endless shop without complaining about it.....much. But that is usually just because we always end up at the toy store playing with all the Star Wars toys!

So hopefully I make it through this evening without falling asleep in the store and being trampled by the many, many crazed-hardcore Christmas shoppers who will inevitably be out there tonight. Wish me luck!

Let's get this show on the road!

So, this is the first official blog post. I spent way too much time thinking about it, and now I'm going to spend like 30 seconds typing it out, so I'm sure it will make little to no sense, but that's just how things go...
I love to read, and I'm always taking friends suggestions on a particular book or author. I recently got turned on to Charlaine Harris. She is most well known for her Sookie Stackhouse series (which has been turned into the True Blood series on HBO). I'm totally obsessed.. She also has several other series' and I am almost through those as well. I read my first of her books at the end of this summer, and now 15 books later I have almost reached the end of her bibligraphy, and am getting frantic for something else to be waiting in the wings for me... so, we'll see what turns up.

Now that the holidays are upon us, I have realized that the general population reverts into three major categories:
#1. People who get into the spirit of the season; They are nicer to each other. They feel compelled to give to charities. They listen to Christmas music and feel nostalgic of Christmas' past. They feel guilty when they walk past that 8th bell ringer outside a store and day dream about taking the bell from them and tossing it in front of a semi. They feel sorry for people who work in retail and have to put up with all the shopping madness.
#2. People who treat it like any other time of the year; They go about their normal daily routine. They buy gifts for friends and family as a knee-jerk response to the date. They don't bake, but they won't turn down an invitation to come and have a huge dinner in celebration.
#3. People who act like the world is coming to an end (or wish it was); They get angry because two extra people in the line at the grocery store is just "outragous"! They get hardcore about their shopping and would rip the last tickle-me-elmo out of an elderly person's hands if need be. When the calender turns to December 1st they automatically become more agitated, and openly remind all of us as such with every passing day......
I don't recall these "categories" when I was younger. Did I just have that magical child's wonder about the season, or are people really getting angrier as time marches on? Sheesh...

Now THIS guy knows how to relax...