Category Archives: first world problems

showering with ghosts, aka: you can’t go home again

Posted on by

I spent this past weekend at my parents’ house. They had planned a trip out of town and we were staying at their house to keep their dogs company.We live three miles down the road from them so it’s not like we had very far to go to get there, but it was an interesting experience none the less.

Sleeping in my old room was weird but not terribly so. It’s funny how quickly you become reacquainted with things – traffic noise from the nearby road, the way the neighbor’s outside light shines in the bedroom window just so, the sounds of the house creaking and popping in the cold (it was 15 below on Saturday night, not including the wind chill). I wouldn’t say that I slept great while we were there, but it felt pretty familiar even so.

What really threw me off though, was taking a shower at their house. The shower isn’t any different than it ever was – same grey tiles, same black grout. Same creepy drain cover that isn’t actually attached but rather just sits there over the drain hole and slides off if you hit it with your toe. I read too much Stephen King as a teenager to ever be ok with anything other than firmly affixed drain covers, for what it’s worth.

Anyway – point being, nothing about the shower itself had changed appreciably since the last time I showered there many years ago. And really, it’s not like I’ve changed all that much either. But there was just something about standing there smelling the slight sulfur funk of the water, looking out the frosted glass door into the grey and blue bathroom, touching that damn drain cover with my toes and getting creeped the fuck out by it all over again. It wasn’t nostalgic as much as…just wrong feeling. It felt like I was intruding – like I had walked into a stranger’s house and gotten into their shower, but at the same time it was all incredibly familiar because I’ve done it thousands of times before.

It was like I remembered the shower, but the shower didn’t remember me. And that was a little bit sad-making.

But then I got over it because the alternative was to start taking showers at my parents’ house more often and I’m sorry but that drain cover is just WAY too fucking creepy. NO THANK YOU.

babyskunky1

Here’s a sassy baby skunk picture I found on Google after I did an image search for “creepy drains” and scared myself so badly that nothing other than a cute animal picture palate cleanser could make me feel better about life. Baby skunk says GOOD DAY TO YOU, SIR!

things I’ve told myself recently

Posted on by

This is also known as my “some day list”, because most of the time when these things pop into my head they’re prefaced by the phrase, “SOME DAY when I’m (rich / famous / in better shape / truly run out of fucks to give / drunk off my ass / fill in the blank)”.

  • Some day I’m going to hire a maid to come in two days a week and clean my house.  I wouldn’t ask her to do gross stuff like clean my husband’s hairballs out of the bathtub drain or exorcise the science projects out of the back of my fridge, but everything else would be fair game. The problem with this plan is that Junior The Dog would lose his sweet tiny ever-loving mind from stranger danger if someone he didn’t know came to the house while we were gone. Or even while we were here. So basically, if I ever want a maid for real, I’m going to have to figure out how to take my dog to work for a half day twice a week (not happening – last time he went to work with me he shit in my boss’s office), or I’m going to have to start tranquilizing him twice a week (probably also not happening. Probably.)

 

  • Some day I’m going to own a house of my own rather than renting, and I’m going to paint the rooms whatever weird-ass colors I want. To be fair, our landlord is pretty easy-going and he probably wouldn’t balk if I wanted to paint walls weird colors in our apartment – the last tenants had blood-red walls in their bedroom, in fact. When we came to look at the place, everything looked totally normal and chill until we got to the bedroom and then it was like, instant bordello. But not in a good way. If you see what I mean. Anyway, I want my own house for a variety of reasons, but chief among them is usually my desire to have things like a lime green bathroom and blue living room walls and stuff.

 

  • Some day I’m going to live somewhere where the driveway is not an icy death trap of doom every winter. This one is pretty much wishful thinking in New England, honestly – even the nicest, most well-maintained driveways end up with a layer of frozen slush and hate caked to them at some point in the winter here. Unless I want to cough up beaucoup bucks for one of those crazy heated-driveway setups, I’m destined to always be disappointed on this front.

 

  • Some day I’m going to develop good habits, like washing my face before bed, writing every day, not automatically adding “fuck” to every other sentence when I’m speaking aloud, cleaning up after myself as I cook rather than just piling all the dirty dishes in the sink and pretending I don’t seem them for the next three days, exercising on a consistent basis, not drinking as much…they all sound good in theory but none of them are very fun in practice so I’m basically doomed to never achieve any of them.

 

  • Some day I’m going to hang up a coat rack so that we stop just dumping our coats and sweatshirts and other outer-wear paraphernalia on the kitchen chairs when we come inside. This one is probably the most do-able of the whole list, to be fair.

 

  • Some day I’m going to go through all my dishware and silverware, take an inventory, figure out what pieces I’m missing and buy them. I literally have three soup bowls to my name, only two of which match, and one of which is structurally unsound and will some day crumble and dump boiling hot soup all over me. Also, another example of how bad it is: my mom actually bought butter knives and put them in my Christmas stocking this year because when my folks were over for Thanksgiving and mom was setting the table she could only find two butter knives. I replied that yes, we only have two, and she just couldn’t wrap her mind around why we didn’t have a full set of them. I explained that, you know, sometimes things need to be pried out of other things and butter knives get bent and then they have to be thrown away. Or like, sometimes you REALLY need to chip the ice off your windshield and you can’t find your scraper and you’re already late for work and the butter knife is the first thing you think of and then you forget to take it back inside. Stuff happens, and butter knives sometimes pay the price.

 

eye

Some day I’m going to remember to shut the bedroom door before I do my eyeliner so that things like this don’t happen when the dog starts barking at a squirrel out of nowhere, making me jump and stab myself in the eye. And worse, screw up my eyeliner.

roll on, 2016

Posted on by

Christmas is over. Time to breathe the collective sigh of relief.

sigh-of-relief

This is not me, and I didn’t take this picture. Just so we’re clear.

It’s not that I dislike Christmas, even. In fact, I’m one of those sappy assholes who really DOES think that Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year.

I’m just always really glad when it’s over.

Christmas is like the pot of water that gets heated up so slowly that the frog in the pot (that’s me…ribbit) doesn’t realize it’s slowly being cooked alive until it’s just a little bit too late.

It starts with Thanksgiving and my mom asking us for our Christmas lists. Then people start posting pictures of their Christmas trees on Facebook and Instagram and I start itching to get a tree. When I finally get a tree, I spend a weekend decking the halls. Then there’s the holiday party for work. Then, Christmas shopping…and wrapping…and cooking…and planning for family holiday get-togethers…and GOING to family get-togethers, and giving gifts and sending cards and receiving cards and OMG so much mail and trying to finish gifts that I inevitably (and often wrongly) think I can get knitted / stitched / constructed by Christmas, and drinking, and eating so so many cookies and worrying if this will be another year where all I get for a bonus from work is a Jelly of the Month Club subscription and more wrapping and last-minute shopping and super panicked knitting of doom and then YAY CHRISTMAS OH MY GOURD LET’S OPEN PRESENTS AND EAT TOO MUCH FOOD HOORAY…

…and then it’s over. Just like that. What was weeks of cheerful glow is now just a quickly-fading after-image and I am left feeling…bereft.

Which, granted, feeling mildly bereft is pretty much my standard mode of operation because chronic depression is a fucking barrel of monkeys like that, but still. It’s especially noticeable directly after Christmas. Like someone has yanked the rug out from under me or something. Like emotional whiplash.

And then, just as I’m starting to get my feet back under me after all that, the “New Year, New You” bullshit starts. Ads for home exercise equipment nobody will actually use. Jenny Craig, Weight Watchers, NutriSystem, Shakeology, every local and national gym and fitness center smugly implying that you are not a good enough version of you the way that you are, and pointing out that January 1st would be the most opportune time to change that for the low, low price of $49.99 a month. Asshats on Facebook making grand lists of completely fucking pretentious resolutions like, ‘be more positive’, ‘live my truth’ and ‘judge less, love more’. I hate shit like this not least of all because it implies that you only have one chance a year to change. I also detest the implication that in order for your changes to actually count, you have to announce them to the whole fucking world on social media. If I want to change, I’ll fucking change whenever I feel like it and it’s nobody’s god damned business. If I want to stay the same, that’s my prerogative and ALSO nobody’s god damned business.

So roll on, 2016. Let’s hurry up and get past this brief self-bettering phase. There’s Valentine’s Day chocolate waiting for us on the other side.

well that’s…disappointing

Posted on by

Ever one to leave things until the absolute last minute, I just bought my husband another Christmas gift on Amazon. Even with the super-duper-omg-rush shipping it won’t arrive until Saturday, but it’s the thought that counts, damn it!

Anyway.

A couple minutes after I placed the order I received the customary “hey you just placed this order” email from Amazon. A moment later ANOTHER email popped up entitled “Your Amazon.com Promotional Credit”.

OOOoooo! Promotional credit? How EXCITING!

It only took half a second for visions of sugarplums and new embroidery swag to start dancing in my head. Then I started reprimanding myself, pointing out that I should use the credit to buy something responsible like vitamins.

The sugarplum-obsessed side of my brain began to whisper sweet sultry nothings about the new pots and pans I’ve been thinking about getting. The responsible side scolded about boring shit that ran the gamut from compact fluorescent light bulbs to laundry soap.

I clicked on the email, all excited to find out how much new stuff Amazon was about to let me acquire for free, and scanned the email for a dollar amount.

No numbers? WEIRD. I read it again, more carefully.

“Purchase has qualified me for promotional credit, blah blah, yes yes…credit added to my account…but how much ISSSS ITTTTT? Can be used toward the purchase of…a digital HD copy…of Kung Fu Panda on Amazon Video.

…Oh.”

The visions of pots and pans and sugarplums and free laundry detergent all melted like the Wicked Witch after a judicious application of water. SIGH.

I mean…I don’t have anything against Kung Fu Panda. I saw it when it came out but it isn’t something I’ve ever felt the need to watch again in the SEVEN AND A HALF YEARS since it was released.

I wonder if I can redeem the credit and then send the copy to someone else as a gift. Do you want a digital HD copy of Kung Fu Panda? I might be able to make that happen.

 

panda

I share many traits with pandas, including body shape and general disinterest in physical activity.

 

 

 

 

the lost art of changing the roll

Posted on by

How long does it take to change the roll of toilet paper, really? I’ve never timed myself, but I’d guesstimate that it typically takes about 5-10 seconds. Maybe double that if you have to like, walk across the bathroom to get a replacement roll of toilet paper and walk it back to the holder (in which case, you need to maybe rethink the layout of your bathroom).

Given that it takes so little time and energy to change out an empty roll for a full one, why is it that so many people just leave the empty roll for someone else to replace? It’s not like it’s costing you any money. You don’t even have to elevate your heart rate. You’re not touching anything gross. You aren’t going to miss an important phone call or miss out on a big business deal by lingering in the bathroom an extra ten seconds.

Basically the only thing you’re achieving by NOT changing the toilet paper roll is making someone else’s day just a tiny bit worse, whether it’s at home or at work.  If you could choose between making someone’s day suck slightly more or making it suck slightly less, why wouldn’t you choose to make it suck less? I’m the nihilistic misanthrope here, and even I can manage to muster up enough give-a-shit for my fellow man to bother to change the fucking toilet roll when I empty it.

tp

The shreds hanging from it are just an extra dose of fuck you. Don’t be this guy.

 

 

cacked up

Posted on by

Today I’m supposed to tell you about the last thing I fixed or built.

The last thing I fixed was our bastard-ass bathroom faucet, like I do EVERY bloody day lately.

A couple weeks ago there was a notice in the paper that the town would be flushing the water mains and that water might “be temporarily brown in appearance” while this was going on, but not to worry, it would clear up quickly.  Fine, no problem.  Flush away, good sirs!

Two or three days after the water main flushing started, we had a catastrophic loss of water pressure.  I’m talking like, couldn’t shower, couldn’t do laundry, couldn’t wash dishes.  About the only thing we COULD do was flush the toilet (thankfully).  The landlord couldn’t figure it out, so he had the handyman come look at it.  It took the handyman almost 40 minutes of hemming and hawing before he finally grabbed a wrench and unscrewed the filter thingy on the end of the kitchen faucet.

“Oooh, look at THAT”, he said.

I peered over his shoulder curiously.  Lo and behold, the filter was full of sand and cack.  ‘Cack’ is our household technically term for unidentified gross stuff.

The handyman went around to the other faucets and the washing machine, which all have similar screens, and were all filled with similar sand and cack.  He rinsed them all out and everything worked beautifully again so I thought our problems were solved.

Thinking my problems are solved is usually where things take a down-turn, at least in my experience, and this time was no different.  The day after the handyman fixed everything, the shower suddenly went right back down to a trickle again.  Shortly after I stomped to the hardware store at 7:30am to buy a new shower head, knowing full well the old one was probably clogged up with additional sand and cack that I couldn’t get to in order to clean out (because it doesn’t come apart, it just unscrews from the pipe itself), the kitchen and bathroom faucets both seized up the very same way as before as well.

Being somewhat mechanically inclined myself, and being the type who doesn’t like to bother other people to do things that I know damn well I can do myself, I went around to the faucets with my wrench and I did the same thing the handyman had done – unscrewed the screens, found a bunch of cack, rinsed it out, re-attached the screens, et voila – happy flowing water, hooray!  Warm fuzzies and general smugness all around.

However, the warm fuzzies and general smugness have worn off now, because I have had to (literally!) rinse and repeat this process every day for the last week and a half now.  And my brand new $25 shower head that worked so wonderfully that first morning?  Has a markedly lower pressure output the last few days.  I’m giving it until Sunday, which will make two weeks of this bullshit, before I start calling the town office and asking when my taps are going to stop filling up with sand.

I probably won’t ask them about the cack though, because they’ll likely hang up on me.

tactical error

Posted on by

Last night on the way home from Carnage we stopped at the Long Trail Brewery for dinner and drinks with friends.  I really like Long Trail’s pumpkin ale, which is one of their specialties this time of year, but when I tried to order one the waitress informed me they were out.  Sadface.  Then she mentioned that they did have plenty of the Imperial Pumpkin and asked if I wanted to try that instead.  It sounded good to me so I said sure, and off she went to get me one.

It’s worth mentioning here that “Imperial”, when it comes to American-made beers at least, usually means that the alcohol content is higher than normal beer – generally somewhere between 8-12%, which is double what normal beer usually runs.

Long story short, I ended up drinking two glasses of the Imperial Pumpkin, plus about half a pint of my husband’s hard cider, by the time all was said and done. WHEEE!  By the time we were ready to leave I had decided that I really needed a growler of the Imperial Pumpkin to take home.  We bought the growler plus a bottle of a fancy stout that my husband wanted to try, and then headed home.

When I got home, I started reading the printed info on the back of the growler bottle at home, I noticed that it said it should be consumed within 72 hours of bottling…and within 24 hours of opening.

A growler, for the record, is 64 ounces. 64 ounces of beer is a LOT. I was definitely thinking this bottle of beer was going to last me the better part of a week, not A DAY. There’s no way I can drink it all tonight, certainly…especially given that I have to work tomorrow.  I’m just going to have to hope that it keeps ok for another couple days.

Moral of the story: don’t go beer shopping when you’re already drunk.

View this post on Instagram

Legit.

A post shared by Rhubarb Swank (@ealachan) on

what price good hair?

Posted on by
The last few days, my hair has been feeling kind of…crispy…but not like, dry crispy.  More like…sticky-crispy?  Like when you’ve been swimming in salt water and then you let your hair dry without washing the salt out, sort of.  The first day I noticed it, I was totally blaming it on the fact that my bastard-ass plumbing was on the fritz and I had really poor water pressure in the shower, the logical conclusion of which was that my shampoo wasn’t rinsing out of my hair entirely.  Last night I managed to semi-fix the water pressure issue in the shower though, and this morning it felt like all the shampoo definitely rinsed out fine.  And yet, here I sit with sticky-crisp hair once again.  I’m forced at this point to suspect the culprit may be the new shampoo I bought on Saturday.

Buying new shampoo is one of the quickest ways I can think of to send myself into analysis paralysis.  There are all these boxes to check: must be sulfate-free, must smell nice but not too strong, must not cost a crap-ton, must not make my scalp itch, must not make my hair look terrible.  Some of those are pretty easy – I can read the bottle to find out if it has sulfates in it.  I can sniff it to see if I like the smell.  But how do I know if it’s going to make my scalp itch or make my hair look terrible?  I don’t until I buy it and try it.  That’s the part I super DUPER fucking hate – the not knowing or even being able to make an educated guess.  It’s a total crap shoot.  I detest crap shoots.

But anyway, back to my current hair issue.

The real mind-boggler is that my hair actually looks pretty good despite feeling super weird.  It makes no sense.  My hair is very fine so it gets weighed down by product residue or oils ridiculously quickly.  Usually if I have enough gunk in my hair to cause it to actually FEEL gunked up, then it will LOOK gunked up too…but that’s currently not the case.  It looks fuller and thicker than usual (which is great since this formula I bought claimed to be thickening. Score one for truth in advertising), and it’s fairly shiny.  Things seem pretty good until I touch it, then the facade crumbles and I am left wondering why I can’t run my fingers through my hair and why my roots feel…well…sticky-crisp.

I can’t return the shampoo, so I’m stuck with it.  Do I just keep using it and hope that I eventually get used to it, or that it eventually makes my hair look so fabulous that I’m able to let go of the sticky-crisp issue?  Do I run, not walk, to the nearest store and go back to the previous brand that didn’t do much for me volume-wise but that smelled ok and didn’t make my hair feel weird?  Do I foist it off on some unsuspecting friend who quite possibly is more well-adjusted and has way less weird sensory issues than me?

It’s a conundrum, man.  I don’t know.
I want puffy alpaca hair. Is that so much to ask?

I want puffy alpaca hair. Is that so much to ask?