I think it says “Abuse me.” Why else would I be doing work on a saturday for a job from which I’m fired in the future? While my christmas shopping goes undone, the laundry stays filthy, and my husband is a shivering, hacking heap in the spare bedroom. Where are my candy suckers and visits to the petting zoo? I’m resigning myself to the fact that I obviously perpetuated some atrocity in a former life. Or possibly three weeks ago, I’m just not sure anymore.
-xxoo
I second that emotion.
Also, decease I searched for “big obnoxious picture of Julia Roberts laughing,” but came up empty-handed. Mona Lisa Smile looks SOOOO GOOD. At least as GOOD as The Lizzie McGuire Movie. I have already ordered enough tickets for us to have a private viewing this evening.
-xxoo
America, these are scary times. I get through them just a bit more easily thanks to a few important people. I would say I add more important people every year than I subtract. Then there’s the people I’m out of touch with even though you live across town. What’s your damn deal? Who stops writing back first? Who lets the calls go to voicemail? Many times I’m guilty. Life gets overwhelming.
Like this week. I had to hop in a cab yesterday to get home to take Mr. H to Rehydration Camp. That’s like Guantanamo Bay, with Tylenol and surly nurses. Today the little sucker had to go back again because he couldn’t breathe, and it turned out he has pneumonia. Â He never really gets sick, so when he calls in the middle of the afternoon to say “Can you come home,” it’s a pretty big deal. I had this horrible thought that he might kick off even as I waited in line at CVS to purchase the exciting thermometer with 3 modes. You can tell which mode it’s in because the stick man on the LCD points to his head, his armpit, or his ass.
After all the prescriptions were filled, we sat on the couch and got weepy talking about how neither one of us is ever allowed to die or become gravely ill. I realize how my definition of family has changed over the years. For all intents and purposes, a lot of my blood relatives are nutbags. My own parents are kind and well-intentioned, but they just don’t understand half the stuff that comes up in our lives. Weddings? “In my day, you changed your name and liked it!” When I was busy doing the pee-pee dance about getting laid off, released from 1999-style hell, my poor mudder was unsettled. Until I put it like this: “I motherfucking retired. Like Coolio.” Retirement, that they get. “Oh. Well, CONGRATULATIONS!”
But I’ve got my boo, and we’re a family. We make big scary adult decisions. We are getting life insurance. We use the cat as a child substitute, because she’s people too. And then there’s the rest of the tribe, the friends we can count on no matter what. Sorry to be a sap, but it’s true, and you know it. Don’t underestimate what you have for a snot-covered second. It’s worth more than a job or a new car or even shoes. Sure, work kept me in cartoon underwear for a while, but there’s more to life than lame-ass pyramid charts and capabilities presentations. We’ve got empires to start, hairstyles to try out.
So thanks for being my people, people. All those rude conversations about other people’s outfits, all those rounds of drinks, oh, those times we paint each other’s nails, they mean so much.
-xxoo
…of the totally hypothetical layoff package!
From here on out, I recommend that larger layoffs be conducted like American Idol auditions. (Because waiting around all afternoon is the pits. I mean what if I had a dentist appointment?)
“Group two, please step forward.”
“Group one, you’re going to L.A.!!!!!”
And then group two would get cut on by people with British accents. Although that’s darn near what happened to me. But if I say another word, I might potentially jeopardize my theoretical agreement. Oh wait, just saying this much is bad enough. Maybe I’m making this all up. You just don’t know, do you, gentle reader?
In any case, I am unreasonably pleased.
p.s.: Lambchop, I have it on good authority that there is a magic bus that goes down Brighton Ave all the way downtown, thus avoiding the indignities of the train. Or is that just for poor people, whose ranks I may or may not be joining?
-xxoo
This is about right: fuh2
I stole that from Mr. Baby’s daddy. And the other day I was saying that I simply must meet his baby mama. You people have no visible means of contact on your site, what else am I spozed to do? Don’t you WANT crank letters? That’s the whole reason I have a site.
In the meantime, I’ve instructed him to make up things about me in advance of this potential meeting. I dearly love rumors, especially ones that go something like “Well, Helen’s a little different, she has a hump…and a speech impediment. You might want to prepare yourself.” Speaking of rumors, my co-worker who recently attended the FurCon would like you all to know that he missed out on the cold going around because of the protective powers of his squirrel mask.
The hump idea reminds me of a spectacularly bad roommate situation I had way back in college. I shall not begin to detail the faults of the third mate, but let’s just say they motivated mate #2 and I to go to great heroic lengths to pester her back. The single weirdest thing we did involved prosthetic deformities. She’d traipse in with a posse of ne’er-do-wells to find one of us scuttling into the kitchen with one giant fake butt cheek, or perhaps eating microwave popcorn on the couch in the guise of a hunchback. We wouldn’t acknowledge the get-up, and people would become very uncomfortable and frequently leave.
Come to think of it, I should reprise my Quasimodo role at the family Christmas jamboree. That would be a larf!
-xxoo
Whoa people, you don’t want to know what’s been coming out of my head lately. This is the sick that just won’t quit. It’s the time of the year when I start obsessing, thinking I must have HIV, oh why oh why did I ever do those things with all those sailors? Then I realize “ohhhh, I get ragingly ill every single year at this time, and every year I convince myself I have some dreadful auto-immune problem.” I have this sick schedule down. First we start off with a cold in October. Then the first two weeks of December are a total wash with some sort of strep-like thing. Finally, things cap off in January or early february with a bout of bronchitis. Sure, one year I bucked the trend and got pneumonia in November, but really that was just to get out of going to the symphony. I had an assignment to review a performance of some Mahler, and damned if I didn’t end up getting to review Being John Malkovich instead. Make up work, boo yeah. Lower culture, holla back.
Speaking of culture, I read a book. It happens. It was pretty good, even with all the Writing. Middlesex. I am sure Sofia Coppola has already optioned it. I shed a wee tear at the end. One little detail just absolutely killed me. No, I’m not going to tell you what it was. Freaking read it, then maybe we’ll talk. It’s got Detroit, it’s got incest, it’s got hermaphrodites, it’s out in paperback. What’s not to like?
That brain up there really is mine. I used to volunteer for any medical study involving an MRI in college. I love x-ray vision. I’ve been thinking a lot about what a bummer it is to be human meat. I’d totally go for being a brain in a jar, except then I couldn’t play at being attractive on weekends. Although the MRI tech did say I have lovely, perfectly formed ventricles. I have another shot that shows them. They look just like butterflies.
-xxoo
Just what we need, a manned base on the moon. Someone alert Astronaut Jones at once!
“”You’ve got the Chinese saying they’re interested — we don’t want them to beat us to the moon. We want to be there to develop the sweet spots,” Republican Senator Sam Brownback says.” Got it. Gay marriage is the new Communism. Asians are the new Russians. The new season of Queer Eye is all about turning straight men into clones of celebrities. Week 1: David Bowie. Week 2: Moby. Week 3: Adam Curry?! I’m hip to the jive.
Personally, I’d get more use out of a clone than a space station on the moon. Clone, go to work for me. Clone, go to the bathroom for me. Clone, administer to my mate, he had a rough day. Oh Clo-one? I could use some more scalloped potatos. Out of the box, just like I like ’em.
Confidential to the two co-workers on vacation while I sit at work rather peaked and weary: First one — I already coughed on your keyboard, or possibly your door handle. You too have a 50-50 chance of dying of rabies now. As for the other, I spread a rumor that you are off attending a FurCon. I keeeeed. Just making sure you’re paying attention. I would never ever do anything like that. Or would I?
-xxoo
Thanks to my pal Thrifty J for pointing out the stupid cheap $360 fare from Boston to Tokyo! Huzzah. Turned out to be a misprint (it normally would have been $3000 for us to fly on those dates), but American honored it anyway. When I called to finagle it, the world-weary Texan lady who answered said “Oh, the Boston thing again.” Sigh. And now it’s gone, and someone probably got fired. I can’t wait for April. We’ll pirouette ‘neath daintily falling cherry blossoms, and I’ll croon “Hot Child in the City” with some drunken businessmen. Mr. H is all hot to go to a country n’ western bar.
Other than that stroke of luck, today was a major ass-ramming. And not in that good way. Just as poor Heather suffers from ailments of the tract, there seems to be a capricious gnome squatting in my chest. His friend Stabby lives in my throat. Maybe it’s rabies. I’m about to hit the Nyquil pretty hard.
We took Spare Cat (a stray who lived on the front porch) to the animal shelter last night, and he savaged us right and proper. I understood, I really did. I don’t like to get crammed in tiny boxes either, even with my very small frame. You’re right, I *can* curl up into a very small ball. Oh no, you flatter me! It didn’t help that Spare Cat had space madness from being stuck out in the cold. In a triumph of my mother’s meddlesome DNA, I made him a wretched little insulated hovel on the porch, which is how he survived the past week. If anyone is interested in a handsome devil of a white cat (with big blue eyes and an extra toe), I can point you in the right direction. Unfortunately he does not play well with other cats, which is why we couldn’t keep him. And he’s got a meow like a rusty hinge.
-xxoo
Overheard, stomach competition between two grandmothers. “Your pictures are AFTER UTERO, hers are better because they are IN UTERO.”
So, Thanksgiving, as we do in my family. A lot of deep breathing, counting to one hundred, drinking, and stepping out into the bracing cold, usually to find another family member out there, cradling his or her head in hand. For Christmas, I hope to be on a plane to a place with umbrella drinks and cabana boys. Or I will beat someone to death with a bottle of rum.
-xxoo
So, not an hour after I am assured we can move into the new place on Monday, the human blowdryer at the real estate corral calls MY HUSBAND to say “um, you can’t after all.” I guess Verizon was right, the building is imaginary. It’s a good thing he decided to go over my head, because I would have taken his call, kicked my heels up on my desk, and had a voiceover segment. There would have been some spangly dream sequence music, and a perky voice would ask “What would Anna Wintour do?”
And then I would have REAMED HIM WITHIN AN INCH OF HIS LIFE. His office is a few blocks from mine. I still might. Throw a cellphone at his head and key his Grand Cherokee.
Point of clarification: I am not really a douche bag when I deal with people. This is a fantasy, designed to detract from how totally crushed and helpless I feel. We’ve scheduled a shut off for the utilities, scheduled them for the new place, given our landlord notice that we’ll be out, and hired movers. Even my new haircut, which looks amazing, thanks for asking, isn’t helping. I am so calling Hank Phillipi Ryan. And, as Aaron suggested, I’ll be booking rooms at the Ritz and deducting the bill from our new rent. One for me, one for the cat, one for all my stuff.