Scary Smoking Burglar Worms......It gives me chills.

Ive always been one of those annoying people that says "if ONE more crappy thing happens I'm gonna.....*insert nasty thing I would do here*...". Apparently that one more thing never happens, because I never had to *re-insert nasty thing I would do here*. Either that or I am just totally full of shit. More than likely it's the latter...

But this seems like one of those times where I'm going to pile on the shit and say, "if one more crappy thing happens I'm gonna.........well......probably bend over and take it, but you can damn well believe that I am going to bitch about it!"

The things that are oh-so-vexing me as of late are three fold, as most bad things are, aren't they? For the first of my thrice annoyances, we will start with Fire Safe Cigarettes, shall we?

As you may or may not know, 92% of the states in the Unites States have passed laws that require cigarettes to be made with new fire safe paper. They believe this will cut down on deaths and injuries caused by cigarette related fires. The fire safe paper for the cigarettes is made out of two or three bands of less-porous paper glued together with ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer emulsion based adhesive.....which is essentially; CARPET GLUE.. Good times. *what this is supposed to achieve is a paper that will cease to burn if not manipulated; ie, if you stop taking puffs off the cigarette the fire will go out. Now instead, while smoking the chunk of tobacco that is actually on fire will occasionally fall out of the paper.........HOW IS THIS ANY BETTER???

Now lets skip through all the crap where I defend a person's right to smoke (as long as it is done in respect to other's) and we also skip past the part where I say quitting is the only way out alive and all that other crap.... blah, blah, blah.... now we are back to the main point. The crap they are putting in the cigarettes to make them fire safe, is actually three times more dangerous than the cigarette itself! I spent close to four hours clutching my chest in horror as I scanned through website after endless website containing articles on this subject.

The horrible side effects from smoking the cigarettes with the new paper.......I HAD. All the while blaming each and every one on something else. Pets. Allergies. Stress. So on, and so on. Can anyone say "selective genocide". I wont go into my thoughts and feelings on THAT, we would be here all day....

Anyhoo. The other vex I am having is this new found fear I am having about my safety and the safety of all my worldly possessions. At the beginning of this week my neighbor left her apartment for roughly two hours. When she came back, her door was pried open and her apartment had been robbed. This was during the day. While I was home. My door less than 15 feet from hers! Several other neighbors home as well. What the hell??? Someone out there has balls....great big theft-lovin' balls. So now, not only am I afraid that someone is going to break in at any moment, day or night, I'm also afraid to leave my apartment in fear of coming home to find nothing but a wide-eyed traumatized cat. Being that I live in an apartment I cannot modify things in any way, like extra locks or an alarm system. I just have to hope like hell that the the constant bag of cat crap by the door, forever waiting to be tossed in the dumpster, and the wreath that is always three holidays behind will detour anyone from breaking in. "Nah, skip that one. I doubt those nasty slobs have anything worth taking anyway.." Yeah, that's right buddy......just keep on movin'..... I hear 3B has a new flat screen..

And last, but certainly not least: My cat now has worms...... How does an indoor cat who is absolutely terrified of even the open door contract worms, you say? I have no damn clue! but he's got 'em. Apparently its a pretty simple remedy, it just takes a matter of days for the meds to have a full effect. Meanwhile Ive got a mobile worm dispenser walking around the apartment, with worms shawshanking their way out of his anus and onto anything in sight. Do you know how hard it is to keep a cat off of the furniture?? Pretty damn hard. There is only so many times I can smack him before he just doesn't care anymore... So out of the 16-18 hours that I am awake I have been vacuuming for about 15 of those. On the upside, the market for Dirt Devil's replacement vacuum cleaner bags is going to sky rocket...

Im Gonna Blame Alice Cooper....

Throughout the span of my life up to this point, I have been blessed (surprisingly) with a very small amount of horrifyingly embarrassing moments. Now, don't get me wrong, I have had many many small ones. But very rarely have I had the huge "I wish a sniper would come pick me off right now, just so I no longer have to be aware of this moment in time" kind of moment. In fact I cant even properly recall the last time I had one of those moments. Or my brain has sympathetically blacked it out, knowing I cant afford therapy.

Well the universe stepped in and made up for lost time...

I am the proud owner of what my friends like to refer to as "emo cat". A large majority of the time he carries the look of anger or brooding on his face. Even when he is very clearly enjoying something; being scratched, eating, napping... he looks completely unimpressed and emotionally detached from the situation. This, and when he is spoken to he either has the look of boredom, disgust, or literally like he is on the threshold of rolling his eyes. Now I am fully aware that cats do not posses the ability to roll their eyes. Unless of course they are being choked..... Not that I'm speaking from experience.....haha!......ha!.......ha. Ahem..... anyway.

But due to his reaction to most things, I find amusement in trying to annoy the ever-loving crap out of him. This is what happens to people when they become shut-ins!

When "emo cat" is hungry, he makes the most god-awful sound he can accomplish, and will physically attempt to trip me every opportunity he gets. And today as I am walking down the hall of my apartment toward my bedroom, he starts doing just that. So, being the total dork that I am, started harassing him by singing "Feed My Frankenstein" by Alice Cooper, while poking him repeatedly in the side... Except I have replaced the word "Frankenstein" with "kitty-kitty"......

*sigh*..............

REALLY stupid, I know... Don't judge me, I was alone.....or so I thought.

As I have mentioned in the past, I live right along side the highway. Being that my windows face said highway, it drowns out a lot of the noise in the apartment. Much like low white noise, or having the washer running constantly. So when I am in the back of the apartment, ie my bedroom, I cant hear things that are going on in the living room. "Things" in this case would be the maintenance men knocking on my door....

One of the many things I dislike about apartment living, is that your space is never really "your space". And management likes to give you frequent reminders of that fact by entering your apartment at any given time. On many occasion they have knocked on the door, waited approximately 0.6 seconds before ramming in their key and thrusting the door open. And each time this occurs they open the door to find me, mere feet away reaching for the knob, with a look on my face that says, "you are SO incredibly fortunate that I do not have a firearm in my hand right at this moment-and-next time how 'bout giving me two damn seconds to open the door FOR YOU....mkay?"...

So today not being any different from the others, they apparently knocked and when no response was given by someone with vampire-like speed, they let themselves in. However, unlike all the other occasions, today they walk in to me off in the distance singing my own version of an Alice Cooper song. As if this was not bad enough, I was dressed in old sweat pants, an old tank top with bleach stains, (it was laundry day) and slippers. And to make things even more horrible, I was singing for the benefit of the cat.....and making it obvious that the cat was my intended audience...

By the time I realized that I was not alone it was waaaaaaay too late. WAY too late.... They had already heard enough, and then very shortly thereafter, they saw enough.... I wanted to die, right then and there. All the places I have never been, all the things I have yet to do, I no longer gave a shit. Dead....pencil to the temple....lamp cord around the neck......I didn't care, whatever would have killed me fastest. Ironically, the cat looked almost as mortified as I was.

I think its time to move..

"sigh....."

My Life is FILLED With Intelligent Moments.....sometimes.

Okay, so...yeah, Ive been gone a while. I'd like to say it was for some noble reason, like saving ducks and baby otters from oil spills, or feeding the hungry......... But, I was reading. And apparently all those doctors from my childhood who claimed I had A.D.D* can suck it, because I got so caught up reading that I kind of forgot about everything else. (*I should mention that I believe that attention deficit disorder is something doctors made up as something to label a child who has an over-active imagination, lots of energy, and are slower than the norm to learn some things. And by giving the child this label, it then releases parents, teachers, and other adults from the responsibility of having to put forth some effort to help, or frees them from being blamed for pre-mentioned behavior and learning ailment.)

Ho-boy! That was a bit on the bitchy side, eh? Sorry 'bout that!

Any-hoo.... So as I was saying... I wasn't just reading this whole time, that would just be sad and pathetic.. (and something I would be totally capable of) No, I did find other things to eat up my writing time. Some friends and I went to go see Sherlock Holmes, which was completely amazing I might add! The only part that was not completely amazing, however, was roughly 10 minutes from the end of the film the fire alarm goes off, the lights come on, and we are instructed via pre-recorded message on the loud speaker, that we are to "please evacuate the building in a safe yet timely manner"... So we all trudge out the emergency exit, at 11:30 at night. The ground c-o-v-e-r-e-d in ice. Outdoor temperature resting at around 20 below freezing. And we are in the theatre in the BACK of the building. Fun.

Then to prove how smart the general population is, they all proceed to make their way around the building (which at this time we have no idea if the building is actually on fire), walk right up to the front entrance, and go RIGHT BACK INSIDE...smart. And being that we didn't want to be the ONLY ones that have the guts to show our intelligence, we go back in the building as well. After a few minutes, we were informed that it was in fact a false alarm, we were allowed to go back into the theatre and our movie would resume shortly.
So other than that it was great. Probably not my smartest moment, but, come on! Sherlock Holmes........Robert Downey Jr......... Jude Law......need I say more?

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...